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The Roots of Political Violence and How We Prevent It · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. It's been
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: a weird, unsettling couple of weeks. On the day this
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: episode comes out, mourners will gather in Arizona for Charlie
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Kirk's memorial service. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Trump administration is
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: busily working on new ways to punish its political enemies,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: silence critics, and is reportedly even preparing to label entire
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: groups of American citizens as terrorists. And more broadly, people
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: are just on edge. The political conversation feels ominous. Elected
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: officials are And even people who just report on or
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: talk about politics for a living, myself included, are thinking
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: about and worrying about whether it's safe to say what
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: we believe. And so the questions I want to answer
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: today are, is the threat of political violence actually worse
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: now than in the past? Or is that just a feeling?
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  Speaker 2: Is this a partisan problem? What role does rhetoric play?
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  Speaker 2: And what can we learn from our history, from international examples?
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  Speaker 2: And most importantly, how do we take the temperature down?
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  Speaker 2: My guest today is Dr. Liliana Mason. She is a
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and the
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: co-author of a book called Radical American Partisanship, Mapping Violent History,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Its Causes, and the Consequences for Our Democracy, and Uncivil Agreement,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: How Politics Became Our Identity. Couldn't think of anyone better
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  Speaker 2: to have this conversation with. Here it is. Dr. Mason,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: welcome to Pod Save America.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 2: It is great to talk with you. So look, in
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  Speaker 2: the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, a lot of people
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: in politics and people in They're worried about some sort
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: of reprisal violence. They're worried about things maybe spiraling out
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: of control. And there's this feeling, I hear it in
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: my own life, in conversations I have with friends. I
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: see it in the media I read. There's this sense
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: that America and our political discourse is more violent now
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  Speaker 2: and more scary than it was before. But that's a feeling.
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  Speaker 2: I know you gather actual data on this stuff. What
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  Speaker 2: does the data tell you about the level of violence
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  Speaker 2: in the United States, political violence, compared to the past? Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So the... I mean, first of all, we don't have
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: an epidemic of political violence. I think it's important to
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  Speaker 4: note that. There certainly is a lot more violent rhetoric
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  Speaker 4: coming out of our political leaders, in particular Trump and
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  Speaker 4: people adjacent to him.
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  Speaker 2: I've noticed that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder.
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  Speaker 4: And rhetoric doesn't cause violence, right?
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  Speaker 3: It can encourage it and it can direct it.
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  Speaker 4: But we have seen these sort of very visceral, intense,
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  Speaker 4: individual events that have seemed to be happening more frequently
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  Speaker 4: in the last year, let's say. We're a nation of
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  Speaker 4: 300 million people. These are still a very small number
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  Speaker 4: of violent events. And the question is, for some of these,
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  Speaker 4: are they political violence or are they violence? I would
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: say we're a country with a violence problem and a
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  Speaker 4: political problem. And sometimes those overlap. And we don't always
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  Speaker 4: know whether they're overlapping, right? So for example, when someone
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: famous who is political is attacked, is it because of
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  Speaker 4: their politics or is it because the person who's attacking
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  Speaker 4: them wants to be famous, right? Is it because of
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  Speaker 4: their fame or their politics? So these things can be
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  Speaker 4: difficult to interpret. We don't always know exactly how to
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  Speaker 4: categorize them. I think it's fair to say that we
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: have had a couple of very high profile violent events
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  Speaker 4: over the last year that's sort of more than we're
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  Speaker 4: used to, but I wouldn't think of it as like
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  Speaker 4: a terrifying epidemic.
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  Speaker 2: Got it. That's nice to hear. I want to dig
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: into this question of like kind of the connection between
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: rhetoric and political violence in a minute. But first, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: Vice President J.D. Vance says this is a liberal or
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a left problem. As evidence in this live stream he did,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: he cited, I think, one online YouGov poll showing that
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  Speaker 2: very liberal respondents were more likely than very conservative respondents
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  Speaker 2: to say political violence can be justified. I don't know
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: that making, you know, declarations based off of one online
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  Speaker 2: poll quite meets like the gold standard for data science.
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  Speaker 2: But what is the totality of the data that you
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: look at? What does it tell you about where if
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  Speaker 2: there's a partisan split or not when it comes to
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  Speaker 2: justifying or accepting violence?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I haven't actually seen the numbers from that
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  Speaker 4: Yuga poll that he was citing, and I'm kind of
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  Speaker 4: curious what they are. But so my co-author Nathan Calmo
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  Speaker 4: and I have been collecting data on approval of political
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  Speaker 4: violence in the American electorate. since 2017, multiple times a year,
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  Speaker 4: and we're still collecting that data. So the question we
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  Speaker 4: would ask is very similar to the one that you
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  Speaker 4: just said. It's to what extent is it acceptable to
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  Speaker 4: use violence to achieve your political goals? And what we
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  Speaker 4: just measure is the percentage of people who say anything
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  Speaker 4: other than never, right? So it's like never, sometimes, always.
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  Speaker 4: We're only interested in how many people say anything besides never.
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  Speaker 4: And that in 2017 was only 7% of Democrats and Republicans.
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  Speaker 4: By 20, let's just say like last summer is one
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  Speaker 4: of the most recent times we asked that question. It's
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  Speaker 4: gone up and it's, you know, tends to be between
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  Speaker 4: like 15 and 20 percent now for both Democrats and Republicans.
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  Speaker 4: Sometimes Democrats are higher than Republicans. Sometimes Republicans are higher
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  Speaker 4: than Democrats. It just but usually it's by like three
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  Speaker 4: percentage points difference. Like it's never very far apart. And
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  Speaker 4: it's never very, like, consistently one party is more approving
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  Speaker 4: of violence than the other. But, like, overall, right, we
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  Speaker 4: still have 80 to 90 percent of Americans saying it's
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  Speaker 4: never acceptable. And that 10 to 20 percent is saying
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  Speaker 4: something that's either a little bit or somewhat or a lot.
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  Speaker 2: Got it. And they're very represented on social media, it seems.
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  Speaker 2: I saw you tell the New Yorker that, like you
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  Speaker 2: just told us, very few people support violence. But that
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  Speaker 2: can change. If you say, well, the other side started
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  Speaker 2: it first. Can you can you talk about those sort
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  Speaker 2: of respondents? Because on the one hand, like it's kind
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  Speaker 2: of obvious on an individual level, like if someone punches you,
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  Speaker 2: you're going to punch back. That doesn't make you a
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  Speaker 2: violent person. But these people are saying, if you punch
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  Speaker 2: my team, I will punch you back. Like it seems
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  Speaker 2: a little different.
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  Speaker 3: So, I mean, it's important to note that this question
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  Speaker 3: isn't do you want to do violence?
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  Speaker 4: It's do you think that it's OK for some people
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  Speaker 4: to use it to achieve your political goals? And, and
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  Speaker 4: the vast majority of people who say, who even are like, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: violence is great. Like most of them will never commit
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  Speaker 4: political violence. So it's really about like, what are the
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  Speaker 4: norms in the places where we might have volatile people, right?
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  Speaker 4: Like are 20% of the people around volatile young man
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  Speaker 4: saying violence is okay. That changes the way that that
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  Speaker 4: person thinks about where to aim their violence. So we
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  Speaker 4: asked people a follow-up question, which was what if the
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  Speaker 4: other side starts it?
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  Speaker 3: And then we get actually pretty terrible numbers.
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  Speaker 4: Like 50 sometimes last summer, it was 60% of both
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  Speaker 4: Democrats and Republicans said it would be.
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  Speaker 2: And that's, I mean, and that's pretty scary because that's
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  Speaker 2: kind of what you're hearing out of Republicans right now,
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  Speaker 2: which is like, you shot at Trump. They, you know,
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  Speaker 2: killed Charlie Kirk. Therefore, we need to act. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I think that is kind of what is contributing to
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  Speaker 2: the climate of fear, or at least making me feel
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  Speaker 2: like this is different and new and worse. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Well, and also, I mean, I think what makes me
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  Speaker 4: the most worried is that I mean, you can easily
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  Speaker 4: see like the logical progression from, you know, if they
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  Speaker 4: started it, then I'm willing to keep going and then
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  Speaker 4: they're going to want to attack back and then we're
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  Speaker 4: going to want to attack back. And so the risk
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  Speaker 4: is that we end up in this sort of vicious
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  Speaker 4: cycle where, you know, one side starts at the other
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  Speaker 4: side fights back and we can end up with situation
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  Speaker 4: like think about like the Middle East, right, where it's
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  Speaker 4: like there's no good guys and no bad guys. It's
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  Speaker 4: just been fighting back and forth and nobody can stop
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  Speaker 4: it because whoever started it loses.
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  Speaker 3: Control of the situation.
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  Speaker 4: And that's a situation that we really, really want to
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  Speaker 4: avoid because once it starts, it's hard to stop. And
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  Speaker 4: so having politicians use rhetoric that's encouraging this type of
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  Speaker 4: cycle to start is really, really irresponsible. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I also saw there was a recent Wall Street Journal
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  Speaker 2: poll that found 93% of baby boomers and 86% of
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  Speaker 2: Gen X say political violence is never acceptable. But those
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  Speaker 2: numbers dropped significantly. among younger Americans, just 71% of millennials
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  Speaker 2: and 58% of Gen Z agree. Is that a function
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: of all of us kind of maturing with age? Is
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: this something we need to worry about? Like, how do
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: you think about those numbers?
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, young people tend to approve of violence more than
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: older people, like throughout time, I think.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: Um, most people, I mean, there's, there's a reason that,
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you know, when we see, um, uh, mass, mass violent events,
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  Speaker 4: no matter whether they're political or not, that it tends
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: to be young people who are, who are perpetrating them.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: We tend to, you know, our brains don't mature perfectly
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  Speaker 4: by the time we're, you know, even just in our
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: early twenties. And so all of our like risk assessments
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: and our ideas about, you know, what's, what's socially responsible and,
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  Speaker 4: and what, what our values are like that stuff isn't
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  Speaker 4: hardwired yet until we're like 25. And so it doesn't
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: surprise me to find that young people generally are more
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: comfortable with violence. Yeah.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: And even just like the minute you have kids, like
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I was talking to a friend yesterday, I used to
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: get on planes and have turbulence and be like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: this is fun. You know, like no concern about anything.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Now you're like, oh, no. What would I leave behind?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Not to be especially dark here.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: I'm just getting on a plane tomorrow.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I should tell the listeners, you're recording this in Austria.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: So no dark history of political violence there to speak of.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: We'll just kind of ignore that. So, look, for me,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: like figuring out how to cover this, to talk about
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: it and be responsible is kind of challenging because I
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: don't want to hype the threat. I don't want to
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: make everybody more anxious for the reasons we just talked about. Like,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I don't want people on edge that like the other
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: side's coming for them. I also don't want to have
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a terrible two weeks of sleep like I just had
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: because I wake up thinking about this shit. But also
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: we can't ignore what's happening in the world. Like, how
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: do you think the media strikes the right balance here?
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: It's really, really hard because the incentives are off. What
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: we know in terms of just like journalism, we've been
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: saying this like forever, right?
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: If it bleeds, it leads.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: People pay more attention to the media when it's about
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  Speaker 4: scary things. And we are more willing to click on
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: a story if it's telling us that there's a big
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: fight going on. We're much more likely to pay attention
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: to two people not getting along, for example, than like
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: two people having a pleasant conversation. This is like an
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: evolutionary thing where we have to pay attention to danger
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: because it might hurt us. And like a beautiful garden
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  Speaker 4: we can come back to later. Like that's not an
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  Speaker 4: emergency for us.
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  Speaker 3: So like our.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: Brains are drawn to conflict and negativity and violence. And
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: so for the news media, they're really in a bind
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: because they want attention and clicks and they want to
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  Speaker 4: sell ads. And they mostly don't want to, you know,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: encourage a wave of escalating violence that's impossible to stop.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: But those are incentives that are really at odds with
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: each other.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: And I understand, right? It's like a difficult situation.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: But I think that the most important thing that I,
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: whenever I talk to journalists, I try to remind them
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: that this is, it's a delicate situation. And if people
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: have the perception that everything is spiraling out of control already,
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: they're more willing to engage in risky and chaotic behavior.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Because it already feels like chaos everywhere.
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: And if it's not chaos everywhere yet, then let's not
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: try to tell people that.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: It is because then they're going to behave in ways
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: that are undesirable.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And that's so hard these days. I mean, look, I
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: live in Los Angeles. There were weeks and weeks of
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: coverage about Donald Trump sending the troops here to put
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: down protests that like literally I had not seen. No
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: one I knew had seen because they existed within like
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: a three block area downtown that and were quickly stopped
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: by a local curfew. But everyone I knew outside of
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: LA was like, are you guys okay? Is your house okay?
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, you wouldn't hear that story coming from the
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: White House though, right? That it's in their interest to
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: make it feel like they are like this mass force
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: taking over major political cities and that there's a battle
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: going on and And they were doing this even during
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: the campaign last year, right? The American cities are full
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: of crime, and it's impossible to walk down the street
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: without getting hurt and mugged, and it's terrifying to be
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: on the subway. All of these things are false. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: anybody who lives in any of these cities knows that
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: that's just not what it's like to live there. But unfortunately,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: we have a situation where we are actually polarized by place.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: And so rural areas are much more Republican, urban areas
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: are much more liberal. And so it's, you know, it's
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: in the right's interest to say all those liberal places
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: are super dangerous.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you about this, this regional polarization question,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: because I thought it was really interesting. I was reading
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: something you'd written about it. On this question of the
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: connection between rhetoric and violence. I mean, I'm wondering how
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: you think, where do we draw the line? Because like
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: there's historical examples of clear direct incitement to violence. The
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Rwandan genocide, for example, was precipitated by months of this
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: dehumanizing rhetoric about the Tutsi minority and barely disguised calls
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: to kill them. But there's more nebulous. Democrats said that
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Trump's January 6th rhetoric led the mob to attack the Capitol.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I happen to think that's true, but a lot of
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: people dispute it. Republicans are now saying that Democrats even
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: using the word fascist or fascism is, uh, contributing to
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: violence or led to the attack on Charlie Kirk. How
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: do you think, how do you think about where to
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: draw the line?
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: It's, I mean, it's hard, right? Especially if we're talking
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: about like a legal line.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: Um, a friend was just telling me the story about
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: during the, during the trials after the Rwandan, um, genocide, uh, the, the,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: the people who are running the media channels that were,
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: that were sort of spreading dehumanizing language, um, They were
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: on trial, and the lawyer asked a witness, like, they
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: never touched a machete, right? They, like, why are they supposed,
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: what did they do? They didn't actually kill anybody. And
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: the witness said, no, but they sprinkled petrol all over
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: the ground, everywhere they could, so that when one person
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: dropped a match, everything caught on fire. So, right, there
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: is this idea that, like, I didn't actually do anything violent.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: I just made people ready to start being violent as
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: soon as I told them to, right, or as soon
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: as anything went wrong.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: And that's that's a realistic narrative, I think.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: But it also I think it's important to think about
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: the other the other end of it, which is that
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: our leaders can make us less violent, too. And I've
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: run experiments where we sort of have people just read
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: either a quote from Joe Biden, a quote from Donald
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Trump or nothing at all. And the quotes are sort of,
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: you know, saying, don't be violent, basically. It's a short
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: little sentence. It's a very simple test. And what we
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: find is that the people who read the quote from
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: either Biden or Trump are much less supportive of violence
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: than the people who read nothing. And it doesn't matter
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: which leader said it. It doesn't matter whether it was
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: their leader or the other party's leader. It's just hearing
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: from elected people and leaders that makes people step back.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: And it's so easy to do that, right? We just
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: had them read one sentence from one of these guys.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: And so the bigger problem, I mean, it is a
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: big problem to have violent rhetoric going on, but it's
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: also a problem to not have discouraging messages of just saying.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Like, we don't do this. This is, please don't do this.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: Don't do this on my behalf.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: I'll disavow you if you engage in this type of
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: behavior on my behalf.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: It's pretty simple to knock it back.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: And the fact that we don't see The sort of people,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: you know, people in the White House right now actively
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: trying to do that.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: That's also pretty worrying.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, yeah, the one example,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, the radio hosts were calling the two T's,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: you know, cockroaches and telling them, talking about how we
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: need to go chop down the trees, which was their
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: code for like, go attack them with machetes. So again, yeah,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: quite overt.
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• 19:08
  Speaker 2: But it was interesting, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I thought it was great to see, like, basically every
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: former president come out and condemn it. Obviously, Donald Trump
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: has not, you know, turned down the heat at all. Like,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: how impactful do you think it would be were he
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: to say... political violence is bad. I condemn it. Don't
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: do this in my name. Given the research you have
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: that shows that like sort of any president condemning violence
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: or turning down the temperature tends to have an impact
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, I mean, I think part of the reason
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: though that any president has influence is that we tend
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: to overestimate the degree to which the other side is violent.
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: So we are always thinking that people on the other
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: side are more violent than they actually are. And so
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: to hear the leader of the other side condemn violence
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: actually is like surprising. And so we kind of feel
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: less threatened by them. And then we don't have to
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: then we don't have to advocate for violence either. Um,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: and so it would be against type if he did that.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Right. I think it would be, I think it would
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: be surprising for a lot of people.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: And I think it would be pretty refreshing to hear
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: that kind of message come from him. I think the
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: good thing is that it doesn't have, doesn't have to
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: be him. It would be great if it was him,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: but it doesn't have to be him. As long as
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: we have like sustained condemnation from other people, it, that
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: does help also.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: That's good to hear. Um, unfortunately there are some other
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: arts in this out there. I mean, about a week
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: ago there was this huge rally in London, um, organized
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: by a far right activist named Tobi Robinson, who's just
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: a hooligan. Elon Musk video conference into it. He said, quote,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: You either fight back or you die. He said the
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: left is the party of murder. He also talked about
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: the great replacement theory. What are those comments by our
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: buddy Elon sort of rank in the incitement meter? And
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: how worried are you about kind of the meta narratives,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: the conspiracy theories like the great replacement theory? when it
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: comes to inciting people.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's really losing it. I don't know what, this
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: is like, even for Elon Musk, this is pretty remarkable.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's very bad to the extent that he
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: still has people, you know, he's famous for having like
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: a bunch of fanboys even before he became involved in politics.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: Like he just has these like very loyal supporters and
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: they tend to be young men, which is the group
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: of people that tends to be the most violent and
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: the most inclined towards violence. So it's not great to
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: hear him kind of using this existential language and really
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: threatening language too, right? It's like, you can't escape it.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: What he's basically narrating is like, the time has come.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: And that's absolutely not true, right? We are not in
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: a national war. This is not happening on the streets.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: And what he's doing is it's honestly making it more
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: likely that somebody else uses violence. Because I mean, I
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: think about As I was sort of saying before, like
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: these young men, often, you know, we have a lot
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: of volatile young men and they have very easy access
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: to guns. And some of them kind of are ready
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: to do something violent anyway. What language like that does
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: is it tells them where to point their violence. And
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: so it points them in a political direction. It aims
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: them at elected officials or just liberals in the neighborhood.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I don't actually know. You know, we don't know.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: How the violence exactly comes out. But by connecting these
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: violent impulses directly to politics and to an entire political
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: group or category of people, which is half of the
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: political people in the country, it's just extremely irresponsible.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: And I really hope it doesn't actually end up hurting somebody.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. You've sort of taken a look at
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: the broader structural challenges in our politics and how partisan
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: affiliation has evolved over time to become about our identity
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: more than just sort of a bucket of policy views.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Can you talk about that evolution and how it factors
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: into this nastier, you know, kind of zero-sum brand of
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: politics we're all now living with?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I call this social sorting.
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: Basically, after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, a
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: bunch of conservative white Southern Democrats were very, very, very
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: upset with their own party. before passing civil rights legislation.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: And the thing is, then, there's no way they were.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Going to call themselves Republicans, right?
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: Because like, in the South, the Republicans were the aggressors
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: in the Civil War, they absolutely despised them. And so
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: it took like a generation for white conservative Southerners to
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: switch parties completely. Basically, their kids had to had to
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: switch party affiliation. So that was like over, you know,
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: 20 or 30 years of realignment. And then at the
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: same time, the Democratic Party became clearly the party of
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: civil rights. And so people who were into civil rights
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: became Democrats. And then in the 70s and 80s, we
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: had the Christian Coalition emerge, which was basically evangelical churches
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: deciding to leave their prior position of just sort of
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: leaving public life altogether. Like they just didn't want anything
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: to do with the secular world until the 70s and
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: 80s when they started to be courted by the Republican
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Party and realized that they had a lot of potential
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: political power. So now we have racial identities lined up
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: with our party identity and religious identities lined up with
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: our party identity. And then in the eighties and nineties,
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: we saw this, this emerging segregation of, of partisanship by
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: geographic area. So people in rural areas, like I said,
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: were increasingly Republican people in urban areas were increasingly democratic.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: And so we just sort of like piled identity on
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: top of identity on top of identity. And one thing
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: that we know from social psychology about social identities is
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: that we're really, really strongly motivated to want our groups
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: to win. And it feels really good when they win,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: and it feels really bad when they lose. And so
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: what this sort of stacking of identities did is it
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: made it so that our elections were not just about
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: which government policies we wanted enacted, It was about.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Like, is my party a winner? Is my racial group
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: a winner? Is my religious group a winner, right?
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: Like, is my whole cultural identity going to be a
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: loser after this thing? And so the stakes of elections grew,
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: not because of specific policies, but because they just took
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: up more of our kind of emotional and psychological space
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: when we think about our status in the world, where
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: we belong, like, are we accepted to people like us?
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: And so that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Period, you know, sort of I would say it culminated
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: in the early 2000s, and we're pretty much totally sorted
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: by now. There's fewer cross-cutting identities, so we don't know
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: as many people from the other party. And it just
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: makes it easier to hate each other because we barely
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: know each other at all. It's harder to hate somebody
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: when you meet them at church once a week.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is true. Well, can you tell us a
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: little more about that? I heard you talk about status
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: threat in the social identity theory and sort of the
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: roots of it and how how the evolution of the theory,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: it's sort of who came up with it, because I
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: think it was an important, it was helpful for me
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: to understand kind of where this came from.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you for asking that. No one ever, I'm like,
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: I can talk about the science.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: So, so there's a guy named Henri Tajvel who was,
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: he was a chemistry PhD student in, in France right
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: before World War II.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: He had, but he had grown up in Poland and
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: he was Jewish. He went to France.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: He didn't really like studying chemistry. He was super into
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: learning French, though. So he learned French really, really well,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: had a perfect accent. And then the war broke out.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: He decided to join the armed forces and fight the Nazis.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: And he was not very good at fighting Nazis. And
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: he was immediately captured by the Nazis and put in
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: a prison camp. And he stayed in that prison camp
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: for six years. While he was there, he lied to
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: the guards and told them They knew he was Jewish,
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: but they didn't know he was Polish. And he told
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: them he was a French Jew, which kept him alive.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: He believes that that's the reason he lived through the
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: entire prison camp experience, because he saw Polish people being
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: murdered in the camp.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: He got out.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: The war was over. Most of his family was dead,
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: had been killed. And he was thinking about, like, what
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: do I do? Do I go back and, like, get
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: my chemistry degree? And instead, he decided to start studying
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: intergroup conflict, like what makes people hate each other? Because
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: it was just so amazing to him that the fact
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: that he had lied about which group he belonged in
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: kept him alive. Like it was a matter of life
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: or death, whether he was French or Polish. And it clearly,
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: you know, the difference wasn't real because like they couldn't
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: tell by looking at him. And that's why he survived.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: So he decided to study this. And the first step
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: that he took was to say, all right, so... We
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: know about groups hating each other, but I want to
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: know when that starts, like how much competition or conflict
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: between the groups has to exist for them to start
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: being prejudiced against each other.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: So he started, he was like, I'm going to start with.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: A baseline test where I'm going to use an identity
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: that no one ever had or heard about before. I'm
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: going to assign an identity to people randomly. They're definitely
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: not part of this group because he said, I want
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: you to look at a page of dots and estimate
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: the number of dots you see.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Okay, thank you.
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: You're an overestimator. Some people are underestimators, but you're an overestimator.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: Brand new identity, never heard of it. And then at
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: the end of the study, he said, we're going to
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: do a money allocation task. So you can decide how
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: to allocate this little pot of money that I've given you.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: And this is a simplification, but.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: Basically saying, You can either, and we're going to use
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the overestimator, underestimator thing just for convenience.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Don't worry about it. We just have to make groups.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: You can either give $ 5 to everyone in the whole study.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: Just every single person who took this study gets $ 5.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: Or the overestimators, your guys, can get $ 4 and the
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: underestimators can get $ 3. So you're literally sacrificing the well-being
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: of your group. In order to win, in order to
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: be better than the other guys. You've never met the
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: other guys. You've never met your guys. You're just alone
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: in the.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Lab, right?
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: So there's no incentive, normally, rationally, there's no incentive to
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: take the less, the lower amount of money.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: But this is what people kept doing. And this is
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: one of these experiments that's been replicated hundreds of times.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: People always choose the condition where they get less money,
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: but the other group gets even less than them. And
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: so Toshfeld was like, what is happening? I don't understand
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: Like he was like, this is supposed to be the baseline, right?
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: So like there's something going on here that's like really
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: deeply rooted in the psyche. And he developed social identity theory,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: which basically says that our identities form our sense of self-esteem.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: And there's almost nothing more important to us than our
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: sense of ourselves in the world.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Which seems to undercut every single political theory you hear
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: from progressives, which is like, look, we're going to lift
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: all boats and we're going to make schools better for everybody, right?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: And we're going to give everybody health care and all
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: the wages are going to go up. And in reality,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: everyone's just like, no, fuck you. I don't like that
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: guy over there or that group over there.
• 30:43
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  Speaker 1: code crooked. That feels like an unfixable problem to It kills.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: Me because the Democrats are constantly like, if we just
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  Speaker 4: told you how much we were helping you, like if
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: we just told you all the facts about the things
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: that you are really interested in, then you would love us, right?
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: And it's just not how people process information. It's not
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: about the specific hard facts. It's more about how people
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: feel and whether they feel like they're losing or winning.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: And that's when they're going to chase the win every
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: single time. And like, I don't know if you remember
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: in 2016, of course you remember in 2016, Trump was just.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: Like, he used the word winning constantly.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: He was like, you're going to be so tired of
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: winning by the time I'm done. Like, you're going to
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: be like, please let's stop winning. Like he used the
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: word and it's not because he knows about social identity theory,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: but like he, I think he does have an instinct
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: for this type of kind of psychological dynamic that we
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: all have, where we're, we're chasing the high status feeling. Um,
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: and it's so deeply hardwired in us that we do
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: things that make absolutely no sense.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: In order to get that feeling.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: And look, part of the sort of zero-sum political fight
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: problem we have in the United States comes from our
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: history of slavery and Jim Crow and racial segregation against
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Black people. I think the sort of modern iteration that
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Trump is using to divide us has come from immigration.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And that's not, you know, unique to the United States, right?
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, the MAGA folks have demagogued immigration. Viktor Orban
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: in Hungary has demagogued immigration. The AFD party has risen
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment. The FP party in Austria,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: where you're at currently, do they have the prime minister?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: They were close, right? Anyway, super far right, scary party
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: running things. How does immigration factor into partisan splits in
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: discord and potential violence in your view?
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: And you're right that like immigration is one of these
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: things that just sort of works to turn immigrants into
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: a scapegoat basically anywhere. It is also racist, though, right,
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: because it's like it's not the white immigrants that they're
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: really about in those places. The the the what Trump
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: really did, I think, in taking advantage of this in
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: the 2016 election was effectively to say, like, everything sucks.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: We're all losers. America's a loser. But the reason for
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: it is those people.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: Right. And if we could just get rid of those people,
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: then we would be winners again. And that is basically
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: a way of saying, I know you're not feeling great,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: but the reason you're not feeling great.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Is because of this group. And this is a.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: Tried and tested method of authoritarians everywhere, populists everywhere to
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: identify a minority, make them the scapegoat, and then make
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: people so angry at them that they forget about the
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: things they really need. And so instead of thinking about,
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: do we really want a billionaire in charge of a
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: populist party? Like, none of those things had to be
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: thought about because, or do we really want someone who's
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: going to like get rid of our healthcare? They didn't
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: have to think about those things because there was this
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: very vivid example of some people who were taking stuff
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: away from you.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: And it's very simple. It's very emotional. It's easy to understand.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: And it feels like the solution is easy too.
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: And those types of stories just land. They always, they
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: always land. And Meanwhile, you know, the Democrats over here
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: being like, I want, you know, whatever Hillary's doing, like
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: Alaska for America plan. Like, trust me, when you hear
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: about this policy, you're going to love it. And like,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: here's all the details.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: We're reading all the white papers here in America.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. And meanwhile, Trump is just like, those people
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: are the reason that you don't feel good right now.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: And so we should go get them together. Yeah.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Well, let me channel my inner Bernie for a second,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: which is to say, like, I could also probably argue
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and you tell me if this is right. that political
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: violence is more likely when people feel like the system
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: that we have to solve problems is intractable and broken, right?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, politics is what we do to avoid going
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: to war with each other, shorthand, basically. And when the
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: politics part isn't working, it's going to lead us to war.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: So aren't these wonky, lame, good government Democrats talking about
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: their programs that benefit everyone? Isn't that part of, isn't
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: that necessary maybe to avoid violent outcomes?
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think doing those policies is, right?
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: But this is, it's like, it's like describing an antidepressant
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: to somebody instead of giving them an antidepressant, right? Like it's,
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: it isn't the way that these things work and you,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: you have to get them involved and emotional and like
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: be part of, they need to be part of the
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: story that you're telling about America and about the future
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: and about the things that we could have together. But it,
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: but you also have to deliver the things, right? So
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: It's it's having having relief, but it's also knowing actually
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: who's to blame for your suffering. Right. We've convinced rural
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: America has become convinced that Democrats are taking money away
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: from rural America.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: And that's just absolutely not the case. Right.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: The people that have disinvested in rural America have pretty
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: consistently been Republicans. I mean, I think you can you
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: can point to Bill Clinton for NAFTA and like they
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: that is the entire explanation that rural America needs to
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: blame Democrats for everything that's that's hurting them.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: But in specific, especially in red states, right?
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: Like the state governments have just completely de-invested in rural areas.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: They don't help them at all. And it's not because
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: the Democrats are evil pedophiles, right? It's because the state
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: governments have decided that they don't want to tax their people.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: And so they don't want to spend money to help
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: the people who are suffering. And that's like, that's a
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: story where you understand who is to blame for the
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: thing that's really hurting you. But it has to have like,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: stories need protagonists and they need good guys and bad guys,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: and you have to be able to explain things to
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: people so that they connect their feelings to whatever.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: It is that you're talking about.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we learned this the hard way after
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: the Affordable Care Act passed and a bunch of Republican
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: states rejected free Medicaid money to give more people health
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: care in their states. So is what you're getting at
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: that Democrats need an enemy in this story and need
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: to tell a more coherent story that includes, I don't know,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: the billionaires, the oligarchs? Like, is that kind of message
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: the solution in your view?
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Sure, it can be. I mean, it almost doesn't matter, right? Like,
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: this is what we learned from the Republican Party. They
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: just pick somebody.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Pick one, yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: And usually it's somebody they hate, right? And so it's
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: convenient for them. It works really well because it's like,
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: we wanted to get rid of those guys anyway. But
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I think it's more, there is a game that the
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: Republicans are playing that Democrats are just constantly being fooled
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: into playing along with them. And so it's like, you know,
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: Trump's immigration platform is super popular. So Democrats can never
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: say immigration is good, right? Like let's never get on
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: the wrong side of that. And this whole like popularist argument,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: which makes me crazy, which is like, whatever the.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Public opinion is, you got to do that.
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: Instead of like admitting that you have leadership abilities, you're
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: supposed to be the leader, right? Like you as the
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: leader are supposed to explain your side of the story
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: instead of constantly taking the losing side of somebody else's story.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: They're just not, I mean, what's driving me crazy about
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: the Democrats right now is they're just not taking advantage
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: of any of their opportunities to actually scream right now, like,
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: things are really bad, you guys. This is really scary.
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: And listen, this is what we need to do, right?
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: This is who's hurting you. This is what we need
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: to do. Let's say it's the billionaire oligarchs.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: It's a great opportunity to do that because they just
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: turned their backs on Democrats, right? I actually think that
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: might have been a tactical error. They were donating to
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: Democrats before, and Democrats kind of let them off the hook.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Now they're not.
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: So it just feels like they need to have a
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: better sense of their job as leaders.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I disagree. I think our leadership is perfect and everything
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: is going great. No, I'm totally with you. The hardest thing,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: a couple of hard things as a politician these days.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: One is figuring out when you are trying to shape
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: public opinion and lead people versus be responsive to the
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: people who voted for you, right? Like that's a perennial challenge,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: but you're right. I think the balance is off big time.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: But then also, you know, the Democrats who are saying
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: the right things, who are screaming as loud as they can,
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: actually reaching the voters these days in a algorithmic driven
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk world is a real bummer. I've heard you
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: talk about the political divisions and partisan divides and the
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: way they've become more geographic. It's not just like red
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: states and blue states. It's like cities and areas within
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: cities that are more Republican and Democrat. And honestly, like
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: I used to roll my eyes when I would hear
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: liberals be like, I could never live in a red
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: state because I was like, fucking get over yourself. But
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: now the Dobbs decision happened and it's like, okay, actually
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the risks are quite obvious, right? Like my wife and
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of pregnancy challenges. If she had
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: a miscarriage, would she be able to get that care?
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Like that's a very real scary thing for me. This week,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you're seeing Florida, they just got rid of their vaccine
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: mandate for schools. Now you're seeing a push for like
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Louisiana and Texas to follow suit. And I worry about
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: those stories for a lot of reasons. Like I don't
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: want a bunch of kids to get the measles, but
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: also like when the stakes go up like that, am
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I wrong to fear that this could supercharge these divisions
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: that you've written about?
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think it also calls into question
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: like what is a nation, right?
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, if if your physical rights as a human
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: being change as you drive across a highway, are you
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: in one country the whole time?
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like, it's a very.
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: Strange way to think about one country as sort of
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: depending on which state you're in, you might die or
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: you might not die if you have a miscarriage. Or
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: you might die or you might not die if your
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: kid is in school and gets, you know, whooping cough
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: or whatever.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: And so the.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: I think it not only supercharges the way that we
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: think about ourselves in terms of being Democrats and Republicans,
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: because now we have different rights, whether we're a Democrat
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: living in one state or another, but it makes us
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: feel more disconnected from each other also, right? It's just like,
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: I just don't understand what it's like to live there.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: And that's a situation in which it's really, really, it
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: gets harder and harder and harder for us to understand
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: each other and to sort of think of each other
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: with compassion because we start we're having these like really
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: difficult conversations about like, you know, do I want to
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: be alive? Do I want to be able to survive
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: a miscarriage if I'm.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: On a car trip?
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: And both, I think I would probably say that Democrats
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: are furious about the idea that they can't, you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: just drive in a straight line across the country if
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: they want to. And Republicans are furious because they believe
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: that they don't want people to murder babies in their state, right?
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: It's like, The stakes are so high and we're having
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: these very vicious fights. And the idea that what this
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: court has done, what the Supreme Court has done is
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: remove federal protections kind of one by one, which makes
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: our states more and more and more different from each
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: other in terms of the rights they provide to their citizens.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: It's just making this country more and more fractured.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very scary. All right, we're going to take
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a quick break, but in case you missed it, Alex
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Wagner is officially joining Crooked Media. She is a Pod
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Save America contributor. You're going to hear her doing these
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: episodes on Sunday very soon. And she's the host of
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: a brand new podcast. She is also joined the latest
• 43:08
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• 43:12
  Speaker 2: It's our loosest, funniest, most unscripted conversation with hosts and
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• 44:40
  Speaker 2: When you look internationally at examples, maybe in history of
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: other countries, that kind of things went bad. They devolved
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: into ethnic or political violence. You always hear people talk
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: about before the breakup of Yugoslavia, people lived as neighbors,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: and then one day they were battling each other, and
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: they just could not fathom how they got there. Are
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: there triggers? Are there warning signs? Are there things that
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: you look for?
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: Well, there's one political science paper that looked at 112
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: countries and found that, unfortunately, Countries where the political divide
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: is lined up along racial, ethnic, or religious divides are
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: 12 times more likely to fall into civil war.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But it's not inevitable.
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: And so, you know, one of the biggest challenges for
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: us right now, I think, as a country is that
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: I don't think that there's been, I think that there's
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: maybe like a couple teeny tiny places that are exceptions
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: to this, but basically there's been no country where the
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: ethnic majority is has become a minority in a peaceful
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: and democratic fashion. And that's happening in the US by 2045.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: So we have maybe 15 to 20 years before.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: I think it's kind of a beautiful thing.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: There will be no racial majority. Everyone will be minorities
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: in the United States in like 20 years. But that
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: process has never occurred peacefully anywhere because people obviously don't
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: want to give up power. And when you start seeing
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: that kind of change, one thing that happens is that
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: democracy breaks down because the majority sees their electoral advantage
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: disappearing and they therefore don't like democracy anymore.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: And that, I think, is a.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: Symptom of what we're seeing in the Republican Party right
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: now is people basically being like, we can't win elections.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: You know, we're losing the people battle. And to the
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: extent that we can rig them, we're going to have
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: to do that to set things up for the future.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: when we won't have enough people to vote for our
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: party anymore.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the degree to which ostensibly long-held principled positions are
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: just being discarded minute by minute is quite unnerving. I mean, look,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I think when it comes to gerrymandering, It is shocking
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump has demanded that Texas do a mid-decade
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: gerrymander just because he wants five seats and he's overt
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: about it and no one seems to care. Both sides
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: have been terrible on gerrymandering. You can look at some
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: pretty ugly maps that are red and blue, but that
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: is new and novel. I have, though, been– I mean,
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: the one that's really shocked me has been this week where, like,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: the FCC blatantly intervened and was like, hey, Disney– Nice
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: little network you got there would be a damn shame
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: if we had to rip the license away from ABC.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: And then they fired Jimmy Kimmel. And you've got a
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: lot of people that ostensibly talked about free speech and
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: cancel culture for their entire lives and careers who are
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: now saying, well, you know, these are just consequences.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really bad. It's unprecedented. I mean, and it's
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: not cancel culture, right? It's like government suppression of speech.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: This is like what people used to think of, like
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: what people... People used to say that cancel culture is
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: like a speaker coming to campus and being shouted down, right?
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: So they were canceled.
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: Or it's a professor says something too conservative and they
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: get fired, which, by the way, has never happened.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Or an old tweet gets surfaced, right?
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: But then every time I talk to people about this,
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: I'm like, do you know anybody who's actually been fired?
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Like the number of people actually losing their.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Jobs for the speech that they have made is very,
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: very small.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: It's prominent.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: Those stories are the things that everybody wants to talk about,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: including the New York Times. They put it all over
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: the place, but it's very rare.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: This is different than that. This is the.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: Government telling our media what they're allowed to say and
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: not say. And the thing that they punished him for
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: was not even really very political. It was just kind
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: of making fun of Trump talking about construction instead of
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: instead of expressing compassion. But that wasn't even a very,
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: I don't really think that that was a very political
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: thing to say.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: It was also an objectively weird comment to be like,
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: how are you holding up, sir? Your friend was just murdered.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: And he's like, check out the construction going on over
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: from my ballroom.
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: This is great.
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Completely bizarre. Yeah, I think that the FCC calling over
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: to a network and saying, fire a guy my president
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: doesn't like, that's clear first amendment violation. I think that
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: the cancel culture thing was like was overstated in a
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: lot of ways. I think what people were talking about
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: was not actions by governments or elected officials or Democrats necessarily.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: They were like upset about online mobs and people surfacing
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: things from the past that destroyed lives and careers. And
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I think where they had a point was people were
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: seemingly given no pathway to back. Like there was no
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: way to apologize. There was no grace offered to people.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: And that is actually a thing I think we did
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: on the left that was uniquely bad and harmful and
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: scary to people that's been course corrected on. I think long-term,
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: big picture, like cancel culture has been a both sides
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: thing forever. You think like gay people haven't been getting
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: canceled by the far right? Like, come on, what are
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: we talking about here?
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's also just like it, you know, in
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: the eighties, it was called political correctness. It's a concept
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: that's been around for a very long time And a
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: lot of it is people just saying like, I don't
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: want consequences for saying terrible things.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: And yeah, we can talk about like how fair it is, right?
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: For like a social media mob to like attack somebody.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: And like, that's definitely overwhelming and terrifying.
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: But I think that what was happening in the 1980s
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: was coming out of like the aftermath of the civil
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: rights legislation where people throughout the 60s and 70s were
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: kind of trying to figure out like, okay, how do
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: we live like this? Like, how do we have a
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: society where we're all in the same neighborhoods and going
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: to the same schools and like, what am I allowed
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: to say? What am I not allowed to say? And
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: that the term political correctness emerged out of that era
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: where it was like frustration with not understanding the rules
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: anymore because now all of a sudden, you know, segregation
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: ended and things looked or not ended, but it was
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: being remediated and things felt socially really, really different.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So whenever people ask me like, are we going
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: to survive this? Are we going to make it? I
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: usually think about the sixties and, uh, you know, the
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: JFK assassination and then Martin Luther King's assassinated and RFK
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: is assassinated. And like, I can't imagine what it was
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: like to be alive during that time. Like the horror,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: the fear, the uncertainty, the utter failure of the government
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: to be transparent about what happened, but here it's 2025, right?
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: We're still a country. We're having this conversation right now.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: We have freedom of speech. We have a democracy. Um,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: What did they do then to fix things? And what
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: can we do now to like calm things down and
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: kind of reduce the risk of political violence or just
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: like chill people out a little bit?
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to make you feel better.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, good.
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: The difference between the 60s and now is that the
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: violence in the 60s was like there was a lot
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: of it.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: It was social chaos.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: It was related to a number of things that were
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: going on, including the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement,
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: things that were happening that were social upheaval. And so
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: things felt very chaotic, and they were very chaotic. But
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: the Democrats and the Republicans were not on two different
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: sides of that violence. It wasn't structured along political lines. Well,
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: it was structured along political lines, but not along partisan lines.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Because the parties hadn't been sorted yet fully.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: Right. I mean, the, you know, the Democrats and Republicans
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: were on both sides of the civil rights issue. They
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: were on both sides of all of these different things.
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: And so the, you know, we saw huge amounts of
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: protest and, you know, then the 70s where there's like environmentalists,
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: like a violent leftist environmentalist movement, right?
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Things were just like chaos. Now the violence is organized.
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: And that's what makes me worried is that it's organized
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: along partisan lines and that allows violence to be institutionalized.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: in a way that we really don't want it to be.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: We don't want it to become part of our party system.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: We don't want it to become part of the way
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: that we think about elections and voting and governing and
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: legislating and making judgments if you're a judge and deciding
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: on electoral outcomes if you're an election official.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: And these are all things that we really don't want
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: violence to become embedded in.
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: And so that difference makes me a little bit more
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: worried than, I didn't live in the 60s.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it was absolutely terrifying.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: And our violence right now is not at that level
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: I think one thing that changed was that in the
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: sixties was that we kind of just settled into some
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: of these new kind of social realities.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: And we're still dealing, right?
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is, I think part of what we're
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: living through right now is still coming out of that
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: era because we've made really fast social progress in this country.
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like it because we're humans and.
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: We have certain lifespans, but like on a historic level,
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: My mother couldn't get a bank account without her husband's
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: permission until she was 28 years old.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: Same-sex marriage is 10 years old.
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: The Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: were the largest and most racially diverse we've ever, ever
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: had in terms of civil rights protests as a country.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: Like things are changing really fast. And the way that
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: I'm kind of trying to think about this era in
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: my mind is that if I were to like, Like,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: you know, 10 years ago, if I were to say
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: to you, like, OK, so imagine the U.S.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: Or 30 years ago, imagine the U.S.
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: Goes through a process where we undo a huge amount
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: of the social hierarchy that we've been forced to live
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: with for hundreds of years. And white Christian men are
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: no longer guaranteed to be given preference and priority in
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: every single job and for every single leadership position.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: What do you think will happen?
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: Do you think the white Christian men will just sit
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: there politely and say, oh, no, please, madam, go ahead,
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: take my power?
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing no.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: That's not how we behave. We don't give away power.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: And so my prediction would have been, well, there's probably
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: going to be a big backlash and it might be violent.
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: That's what I would have assumed would happen. And so
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: this is like the optimistic take here is that we're
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: in that backlash right now. There's no way for us
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: to go through that process without having some kind of
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: fight from the people who used to have the most power.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: But like, what we get to decide now is whether
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: this is a backlash and we get past it or
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: whether it succeeds and the last 40 years are actually
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: the blip, right? That we had 40 years of increasing
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: equality and progress. And then that just turns into like
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: this weird era in American history.
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: But that's like, it's sort of empowering, right? Like it's
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: up to us, we have to decide.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: No, you're right.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: You did not make me feel better. But I guess
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: what you're talking about is, I think, a very smart,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: reasonable observation on a structural level. I guess what I'm
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: thinking is like to your point you just made, we
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: do have agency here and we as individuals, I do
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: think we can do things like I do think that
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: if you're a progressive or Democrat posting something about how
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: it was wrong and evil to assassinate Charlie Kirk is
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: like a good thing. Like I I was in my
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: feelings after it happened. Charlie Kirk has little kids about
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: the same age as my kids. And it really hit
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: me hard. Like there was this video of his daughter
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: running up to him on the Fox and Friends set.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: And I just thought like that it just really it
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: like was gutting. And so I just texted or emailed
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: a bunch of people I know that are. NAGA media types.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: And I was just like, hey, you know what? I'm
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: so sorry this happened. It is like evil. It is gutting. Like,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: I just was thinking of you and I wanted to
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: say this. And it maybe felt trite and like, I
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: don't know. I wasn't sure if it was the right
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: thing to do, but they were like, thank you for
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: saying that. It meant something. Because I also think, because
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: we're living in a moment when everyone is seeing the
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: shittiest people on the planet lifted up algorithmically on social media.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: And so like, maybe just a little human interaction could
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: help that. Yeah.
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: Cause you would have appreciated it if they had sent
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: something like that to you when, you know, Nancy Pelosi's
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: husband was, was brutally attacked, right. To just say like,
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: this is not how I want to be living. Um,
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: I want you to know that this is not how
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: I want to be living. And, you know, I, I just,
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: it would be nice to have a little bit of,
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: you know, uh, uh, less asymmetry in terms of the
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: way that we deal with these, these terrible, terrible events.
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: And I felt the same way. I saw the same
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: video of his daughter and I just, it's just, It's awful, right?
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, nobody wants this. Nobody wants to live like this.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: And the idea that we have leaders who are encouraging
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: more of this is insane, right? It's actually so deeply unpopular.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: Nobody likes this. And so there are, you know, I
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: think that there are real, possibly real opportunities for connecting
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: with other Americans on that sentiment. I think that we
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: all pretty much agree that it's not how we want
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: to live and it's not how we want to treat
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: each other. And it's not how we want our political figures,
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: you know, to be treated rather than, you know, debated with.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: It's just not how we want to do democracy in
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: this place. Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: And it's just, I think we all just have to
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: realize that like the Donald Trump, it doesn't, the unity
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: product is not on the shelf. You know, you go
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: to that store, you can look forever. You're not going
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: to find it. So All we can do is like
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: we have agency as individuals. We can only account for
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: our own actions and influence things ourselves. And so I
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: don't know, maybe trying is worth it. And hopefully we
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: all will.
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: Well, actually, we have more agency than that because a
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: lot of these things are norms, right? These are just
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: social norms.
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: And there's no law that you have to be compassionate
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: about the murder of a political figure, right?
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: It's a norm to be compassionate.
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: And One thing that we've been seeing over the last
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: decade is that our social norms have been eroded so fast.
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: Just norms of like kind of basic like decency, being
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: a human being to each other. These things, you know,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: we've normalized like really rude and cruel language. We've normalized,
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of like laughing at people who are suffering.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: It's something that is enticement. socially constructed. And the only
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: way that social norms are enforced and.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: Spread is by us, right?
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: It's by people reminding each other that we would prefer
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: not to be hanging out with someone who's behaving that way.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: And it's that we've lost a lot of that, right?
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: We've lost a lot of sort of our our sense
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: of how we want to behave around each other. It's
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: entirely up to you to be the spreader of social
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: norms in your community and in your society. And every
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: single person has the ability to do that. I think
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: that we've kind of forgotten that we're responsible for those
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: things too.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: Very well said. Well, Dr. Mason, thank you so much
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: for joining the show. Thank you for doing this all
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: the way from around the world. I really appreciate it.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: I'm happy to do it. Thank you so much.
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