Latest / Politix / Junk Male

Transcript

Junk Male · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Honestly,
0:00
so many of the problems we talked about in this episode could
0:02
be solved if people,
0:04
SPEAKER_01: particularly men,
0:06
had this duality in their lives so that they could be dipshits
0:10
with each other in private,
0:11
but they remembered the kind of thing Kelly's teacher taught
0:14
her about how you
0:15
SPEAKER_01: treat people in public.
0:16
Yes,
0:17
do not wreck the economy in an attempt to restore traditional values.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: This week,
0:30
we'll talk about the gender politics of Trumponomics and really
0:34
of Trump's whole worldview.
0:36
What's the connection between his obsession with men out of
0:40
quote-unquote central
0:41
casting and his appetite for chaos and incompetence in his
0:45
administration or his
0:48
SPEAKER_01: vision of a manual labor workforce?
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Who in his inner circle shares his vision?
0:53
And who's just kind of hoping to exploit it to reestablish old
0:57
gender norms and
0:59
SPEAKER_01: advance the cause of natalism?
1:01
SPEAKER_01: We'll get to all those questions and more in this episode.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to hear the whole conversation,
1:05
SPEAKER_01: you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boyler.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:18
So we talk a lot about how the realignment of kooks and
1:21
conspiracy theorists into
1:22
SPEAKER_01: the GOP is good for liberal smugness,
1:26
SPEAKER_01: but bad for America.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: And we have a whole thing laid out for this week,
1:32
SPEAKER_01: but I kind of feel like we should throw it out,
1:35
SPEAKER_01: be the change we want to see in the world,
1:36
SPEAKER_01: and do a full episode about how J.D.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Vance quite obviously killed the Pope.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes, J.D.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Vance, he gave him a Medusa-like stare.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: You can see the photographic evidence is very clear.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: He had the means.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: He had the motive.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: There's no love lost between those two.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: And he had the opportunity.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's like an open and shut case from a prosecutor's standpoint.
2:01
And now Trump can threaten to tariff the Vatican unless the
2:05
conclave picks a
2:07
SPEAKER_01: right-wing pope,
2:08
which is like a way better way to advance the cause of natalism
2:11
than like,
2:14
SPEAKER_01: wreck the American economy, put all men in the mines,
2:18
SPEAKER_01: turn women into baby factories.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, this all relates, though.
2:22
Okay,
2:22
because last year,
2:23
sometime in the summer,
2:24
it was like,
2:25
it was really hot.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was asked to come to the Mercatus Center's office out in Virginia.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: This is like a center-right think tank.
2:36
And I was supposed to talk to some of their interns about
2:39
housing type stuff,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: because I have center-right opinions about housing.
2:44
But so I was out there and there was like lunch and stuff and,
2:47
you know,
2:47
some of the grownups.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And there was a woman there who I don't know that well,
2:52
SPEAKER_00: doesn't really work on housing stuff,
2:53
SPEAKER_00: just kind of like general libertarian economic policy.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: And she was talking about how much she hates J.D.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Vance.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, she was firing off hot takes.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: And one of them was that all these losers,
3:08
SPEAKER_00: her words,
3:09
SPEAKER_00: convert to Catholicism,
3:12
SPEAKER_00: rather than sticking as Protestants,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: because they don't ask you to believe anything.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: It's all just funny dress up and misogyny.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: That was her take on why J.D.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Vance converted to Catholicism.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And then she also said that,
3:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
3:29
SPEAKER_00: she thinks that the point or she thought that the point of all of this...
3:35
SPEAKER_00: tariff talk was to essentially like it transfers wealth.
3:43
It reduces the relative wages of people who work in the service
3:47
sector compared to
3:48
SPEAKER_00: people who work in goods producing sectors,
3:51
which means it reduces the pay disproportionately of women
3:55
compared to men.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And so is going to make,
3:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:00
SPEAKER_00: women want to get married and stay home barefoot and pregnant.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: To be clear,
4:06
SPEAKER_00: she was not saying this is an endorsement of the policy,
4:09
SPEAKER_00: but she was saying that in her view,
4:13
Vance and these people could not possibly be so stupid as to
4:18
think that this
4:19
mercantilist trade regime was actually going to boost GDP and
4:23
make people better off,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: but that it was an effort to sort of –
4:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:29
gerrymander the gender structure of the economy and bring back
4:34
sort of more
4:34
SPEAKER_00: traditional norms and vibes.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: You showed this tweet, I guess it was from the energy department, right?
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they deleted it.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: They deleted it.
4:46
It was about the exciting job opportunities opening for you in
4:48
the mining industry.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And it was just like three dudes, you know, with headlamps on.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And,
4:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
4:54
it was funny because if a democratic administration was to try
4:58
to make people
4:59
SPEAKER_00: excited about working in coal mines,
5:02
like they would feel that you had to have like a very diverse
5:04
group of coal miners.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:06
And show that like women and like people with disabilities and
5:10
all kinds of people
5:11
SPEAKER_00: can be coal miners.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: But like this was the opposite, right?
5:13
It's like three white guys looking real dirty and they're going
5:17
to be coal miners.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And I just I keep thinking about what this is.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: this woman said to me because it's like,
5:25
SPEAKER_00: it's deranged,
5:27
SPEAKER_00: but it's the kind of thing that's like so deranged that it might be true.
5:30
It's probably less deranged than the idea that like Stephen
5:35
Mirren and Kevin
5:37
Hassett and Scott Besson and like all these guys can't like
5:41
crack an economics textbook.
5:44
I've been thinking about this since you told me this anecdote
5:48
yesterday while we were prepping.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: And like,
5:51
SPEAKER_01: I actually think it's correct at some level,
5:55
SPEAKER_01: like maybe not at a conscious level,
5:56
SPEAKER_01: but at a subconscious level,
5:57
SPEAKER_01: right?
5:57
SPEAKER_01: Like,
5:58
why did we go like lightning speed from the right wing view
6:03
that like facts don't
6:04
care about your feelings and you should learn to code if you're
6:07
a sad journalist
6:08
SPEAKER_01: whose job is being eliminated by AI to like,
6:11
actually everyone should unlearn to code and like really learn
6:14
how to lift with
6:15
SPEAKER_01: their legs instead of their back,
6:17
SPEAKER_01: right?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
6:18
And I think the answer is that you get a lot of right-wing
6:25
religious natalists into
6:27
SPEAKER_01: your movement and their goals can be pursued in one of two ways,
6:34
SPEAKER_01: right?
6:34
SPEAKER_01: One is like consistent with
6:38
SPEAKER_01: liberal views about the goodness of family,
6:41
SPEAKER_01: but also the importance of economic growth,
6:43
SPEAKER_01: pluralism,
6:44
SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: You give money to young families.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: You increase the child tax credit.
6:52
You make it easier for people to move and live here permanently
6:56
or become citizens.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: The country grows.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: The generational imbalance between the boomers and millennials and Gen Z
7:06
SPEAKER_01: gets a little bit easier, the public finance becomes less of a problem.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: And it all fits together neatly,
7:15
but it doesn't fit together with traditional right-wing
7:19
economic ideology,
7:20
SPEAKER_01: which says we should actually be cutting spending to the bone.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: We should kick all the immigrants out, let alone let new ones in.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And so somebody like J.D.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Vance, who I think is a religious fanatic, but also...
7:37
SPEAKER_01: a right-wing economic fanatic or something like that.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: He's not a right-wing.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Let me rephrase that.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: He's a religious fanatic more than he is a doctrinaire conservative.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: I think you put him in a different milieu.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to revolutionize like
7:57
SPEAKER_00: The conservative view of taxes and the welfare.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: If you put him in a different context,
8:01
SPEAKER_01: he would support a higher child tax credit,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: but he's in this context.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: And so how do you pursue your goals?
8:07
SPEAKER_01: You pursue your goals by like literally or figuratively tying –
8:12
women in the workforce,
8:13
tying their hands behind their backs,
8:14
sending them home.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: And the only reason I feel like it might not,
8:18
SPEAKER_01: like the theory of the case might not fit together is that in practice,
8:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
8:24
SPEAKER_01: like,
8:24
SPEAKER_01: like when,
8:24
SPEAKER_01: when,
8:25
SPEAKER_01: when countries are poor,
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I think that the,
8:26
SPEAKER_01: the,
8:27
tendencies that people have more children because it's like a
8:31
sort of strategizing idea,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: subconsciously or consciously for old age.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: If you have seven or eight kids,
8:39
it doesn't matter that you didn't have a lot of savings or any
8:42
savings because your
8:43
SPEAKER_01: kids are working and they can all pitch in.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: This falls apart if men leave their computer jobs and go into the mines,
8:53
SPEAKER_01: but women also have to leave their computer jobs to go
8:57
SPEAKER_01: do dishes or clean hotels as employees as opposed to being at home.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
9:04
And that actually seems to be more the direction Donald Trump
9:07
is sending us.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: And so even though...
9:11
Like the Mercatus lady's theory like makes sense on paper and I
9:15
think there's
9:15
SPEAKER_01: actually something real there that in practice,
9:18
SPEAKER_01: if anyone is actually trying to advance that,
9:20
SPEAKER_01: it's going to fall apart with these guys.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, yeah, probably.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But so again, here's another exchange that I thought was –
9:28
SPEAKER_00: useful, right?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: So Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: another conservative think tank.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: He's like a healthcare guy,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I think,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:39
SPEAKER_00: he'll do some takes about how Medicaid is bad or something like that.
9:44
But he's commenting on Twitter about,
9:46
there was this New York Times article about the sort of
9:50
center-right natalist community and how they're pitching Trump
9:54
on various baby
9:56
SPEAKER_00: bonuses and different kinds of social policy interventions.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And so Pope says,
10:01
SPEAKER_00: the main cause of falling birth rates is rising opportunity costs,
10:06
the great growth in alternative appealing things for people to
10:09
do before they
10:11
SPEAKER_00: settle down to raise a family.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Tinkering with taxes and subsidies are unlikely to shift that much.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: And then Stefan Schubert,
10:18
SPEAKER_00: who's a Swedish philosopher,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: I think works in the UK,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: a great Twitter follow.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: He says, well, it depends on how large the tax breaks and subsidies are.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: So I agree with both of those guys, right?
10:32
That there is a – the nature of the more prosperous society
10:37
isn't just that it's
10:39
SPEAKER_00: more gender egalitarian,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: but that there's just like more you could do.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: you know, today than there was 50 years ago.
10:48
And,
10:49
you know,
10:50
having kids takes up a lot of time,
10:52
like just like dating takes up a lot of time.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Um,
10:56
SPEAKER_00: being alone, being lonely is like annoying.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: But just like being alone is less boring than it used to be.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: There's like just like more shit you can do at home.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: So it's like people are dating less,
11:09
SPEAKER_00: they're settling less,
11:10
SPEAKER_00: they're marrying at lower rates,
11:11
SPEAKER_00: they're having smaller families.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And that's the fundamental economics are driving that.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And like a little tweak, right?
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Like a
11:20
SPEAKER_00: You know,
11:20
SPEAKER_00: giving somebody like a gold ribbon for having a kid is like not going to
11:24
SPEAKER_00: fundamentally alter that.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: As Schubert says,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: like if you do dramatic tax and spending initiatives,
11:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:31
SPEAKER_00: you can always change behavior if you spend enough.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: But like obviously conservatives don't want to do that, right?
11:37
Like they don't want to like turn the whole shape of the
11:41
economy upside down.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But so if you really believe, you know, as Elon Musk does, as J.D.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Vance does,
11:48
SPEAKER_00: as various people do,
11:49
SPEAKER_00: that there's some kind of like,
11:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:51
SPEAKER_00: deep civilizational threat that needs to be overturned.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: You know,
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I think that that does make you think that,
11:59
SPEAKER_00: well,
12:00
this idea to like shift the relative earnings power of men and
12:04
women will be bad
12:06
SPEAKER_00: for growth,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: right?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: It's redistributive, but it's a leaky bucket.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: But you might think, well, it just doesn't matter that much, right?
12:14
Like the first order consequence is to increase women's
12:18
dependence on men,
12:20
which is good.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm paraphrasing.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's good, but they maybe think it's good.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: This is a thought you're putting in their heads.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And like,
12:27
SPEAKER_00: yes,
12:28
SPEAKER_00: it makes the country as a whole poorer,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: but like maybe it's fine for the country to be poorer,
12:34
SPEAKER_00: right?
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Like if you couldn't afford as many vacations and things like that,
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Maybe people would be more inclined to just kind of go –
12:42
SPEAKER_00: settle down.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's, it's interesting, right?
12:48
SPEAKER_00: Because if you think about it,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: on like a short term level,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: you ask anybody,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: particularly people with multiple kids will say,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: like,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: it's so expensive,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: like childcare,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: and like,
12:59
SPEAKER_00: these fucking shoes,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: and you know,
13:00
SPEAKER_00: all this different stuff.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And like, you know, if we had more money, it would be easier.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: But if you look at the long term trend,
13:06
SPEAKER_00: like,
13:07
SPEAKER_00: clearly people were having more kids in the past,
13:10
SPEAKER_00: when we were
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:12
It's like not actually that it was like,
13:14
quote unquote,
13:15
easier to afford children in the 70s.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: It's that like people had less was going on in their lives.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: So you weren't so the opportunity cost wasn't as high.
13:27
The annoyingly anonymous Substack or Cartoons Hate Her also did
13:32
a post a couple
13:33
months ago sort of relating this to Doge that like at least in
13:37
Elon Musk's rhetoric,
13:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:40
SPEAKER_00: he seems to feel and a lot of his acolytes seem to feel –
13:45
SPEAKER_00: that the economy is full of like fake jobs for women.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And they keep posting that like Tik TOK of the Australian girls,
13:53
SPEAKER_00: um,
13:54
SPEAKER_00: like dancing,
13:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
13:55
SPEAKER_00: you know what I mean?
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and like, just like,
14:01
It's like not really true if you look at federal employment
14:04
that it's like all
14:05
SPEAKER_00: women with white collar office jobs.
14:07
But it is true that there are a lot of jobs like that,
14:09
you know,
14:10
across the economy.
14:11
There are women holding white collar office jobs that in some
14:15
sense you might think
14:16
like we wouldn't need if everyone was working on the factory
14:20
floor in the mines.
14:22
Maybe the mining company like doesn't need an HR department
14:26
because it's just like
14:26
SPEAKER_00: all bros down there and nobody cares if they sexually harass each other.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that there is something to this.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: And you constantly see this nostalgia posting where people will be like,
14:40
SPEAKER_00: oh,
14:40
SPEAKER_00: it used to be that you could afford all this on just one income.
14:44
But it's not actually that people were richer when you could
14:47
afford all this on one income.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: It's that women didn't have outside career opportunities.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: So they weren't giving anything up by being a stay-at-home mom.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Can I say how I think this – so two things.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: One is that surprisingly,
15:00
SPEAKER_01: like maybe surprisingly,
15:02
SPEAKER_01: I actually sympathize to some extent with the sort of meme-driven idea.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Not that it was better that people were poor in the past,
15:11
but that the way people spent time in the past was more
15:15
elevated and it wouldn't be
15:17
SPEAKER_01: such a bad thing to get back to that,
15:19
SPEAKER_01: right?
15:19
SPEAKER_01: Like I –
15:21
SPEAKER_01: I had a great grandmother who lived to be 102.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: So she was born in 1896 and she died in 1998.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: So she almost made it into three different centuries.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: She lived through World War I as a German youth.
15:35
She became a doctor when all the men died in World War I.
15:39
She had to flee Germany.
15:40
She saw a lot and she had interesting answers to questions when
15:44
we would ask because like –
15:46
SPEAKER_01: We grew up with television and she grew up before television.
15:49
And so we would ask her like,
15:50
what did you guys do to entertain yourselves?
15:53
And she was like,
15:54
we learned to play musical instruments and we listened to the radio.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
16:00
I feel like people would be better adjusted today if they had
16:03
pursuits like that
16:04
than pursuits like sitting on the couch watching Netflix or
16:07
doom scrolling or
16:08
SPEAKER_01: whatever else,
16:09
SPEAKER_01: right?
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:09
She – you'd ask her like what the greatest invention of her
16:13
lifetime was and she
16:14
SPEAKER_01: said central heating because she grew up in Berlin,
16:17
SPEAKER_01: right?
16:18
And so appreciating things that genuinely make your life better
16:22
as opposed to
16:23
things that probably make your life worse even if they make you
16:26
a little richer.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: But –
16:30
The reason I don't like succumb to this as like a temptation
16:33
where I would ever
16:34
advocate for adjusting policy to bring us back to that kind of
16:39
more hardscrabble
16:40
SPEAKER_01: life is that I think you end up getting the French Revolution.
16:44
Like you can't do anything about the problem that the people
16:47
alive today experience
16:49
SPEAKER_01: the world now.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: or the country at least in its affluent context, right?
16:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think that they get this too.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: If they didn't get it, TikTok would already be banned, right?
17:00
SPEAKER_01: They realize that,
17:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
17:05
SPEAKER_01: like their unwillingness to enforce the TikTok ban,
17:10
SPEAKER_01: I think,
17:11
reveals that they understand that if you take away the things
17:14
that prosperity
17:15
SPEAKER_01: provides people that they become addicted to,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: that is their source of leisure,
17:19
SPEAKER_01: right?
17:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't understand how TikTok can rest or relax anybody, but whatever.
17:25
If they took it away,
17:27
people would be really upset and turn against them politically.
17:30
And they're talking about doing that kind of thing on an
17:34
industrial scale.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And not just like career opportunities away from women, but like –
17:42
SPEAKER_01: PhD level,
17:43
SPEAKER_01: master's level,
17:43
SPEAKER_01: bachelor's degree level,
17:45
SPEAKER_01: white-collar jobs for men will be turned off,
17:49
SPEAKER_01: and those people will either be unemployed and without health insurance,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: or they'll be in mines.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Or they'll be in the mines, right?
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: Or they'll just overthrow the government, right?
17:59
And then you have this sort of non-proletariat level,
18:04
this bourgeois-driven...
18:07
SPEAKER_01: Like we – that prosperity was ours.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: We liked life under it,
18:11
and we didn't assent to this new cultural revolution that
18:14
you're trying to foist on us.
18:16
Like I think it's a recipe for trouble even if – and I don't
18:21
necessarily suspect this,
18:22
SPEAKER_01: but even if the impulse in that direction – like I think with Trump,
18:27
SPEAKER_01: it's – he's a psycho.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: But even if it's like well-motivated in some sense, like the way I –
18:36
have some projected nostalgia for the way my great-grandmother
18:41
was raised.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: You can't just impose it on people or they will kill you.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that.
18:50
You know,
18:50
this is challenging because,
18:52
you know,
18:52
I'm over 40 years old,
18:55
as are you.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: And I feel ever since I turned 40,
18:59
I'm like very skeptical of like all trends in our culture and
19:03
all changes that have occurred.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, wouldn't it be better?
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I used to like hear a song on the radio and
19:11
SPEAKER_00: You know,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: and if I liked the song,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: maybe I would like try to tape it,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: the next time it came on so that I could have it.
19:17
Or maybe I would like go to the record store and like try to
19:20
listen to the whole album.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: But I'd have to like talk the record score guy into letting me do that.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: And it was just like hard to obtain things.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that was better because I was like...
19:32
SPEAKER_00: building character.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I was, like, talking to people, right?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And moving around, you were leaving your house.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I was leaving my house.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to my friends.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: I was,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: like,
19:40
going to my friend Jeff's house to listen to his copy of the
19:44
Snoop Dogg CD so that
19:46
SPEAKER_00: I could check it out,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: right?
19:48
SPEAKER_00: And, like, you know, so people had friends.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: They were living.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: But then I saw yesterday –
19:55
this clip of a comedian named Andrew Schultz talking about how
19:59
he used to be a
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Democrat and now he's not.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, when I was younger, Democrats were cool.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: They were getting their dick sucked in the office.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: They were supportive of hip hop music.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: They said, do whatever you want.
20:10
And so I was sharing this with a younger friend who's a
20:14
political operative.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, what do you mean Democrats were supportive of hip hop?
20:19
SPEAKER_00: like wasn't like tipper gore, like against lyrics and music.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: And I showed him some clips from the 96 campaign where like, it is true.
20:27
Like Bob Dole was like really hitting Bill Clinton for being
20:31
soft on gangster rap.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: This is like a major, um,
20:35
I mean,
20:35
it was a scandal that he went on Arsenio Hall and played the saxophone,
20:38
right?
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Miscegenating culture.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: That was like just like pure racial panic.
20:44
But there was like a real thing where like Dole was pointing
20:47
out that like an
20:49
SPEAKER_00: executive from Death Row Records
20:51
was his fifth largest donor and bundler and was accusing Bill
20:55
Clinton of being soft
20:58
SPEAKER_00: on the rap industry as a result of these financial ties.
21:03
They put out press releases detailing how many Interscope
21:06
Records employees had
21:07
SPEAKER_00: given money to the DNC,
21:09
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
21:09
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
21:10
And so Bill Clinton,
21:11
being Clinton,
21:12
it's true,
21:13
he was triangulating on this issue.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: And,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:17
he rolled out the V chip to help parents get violent
21:21
programming and did various
21:23
SPEAKER_00: things like this.
21:26
So,
21:26
of course,
21:26
I was a teenager then,
21:27
and I thought Republicans were being ridiculous.
21:30
And I would not go as far as Andrew Schultz on this,
21:34
but I see what he's talking about.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember the cultural moment that he is referencing then.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: And so,
21:40
SPEAKER_00: of course,
21:40
SPEAKER_00: I look back very nostalgically on the pop culture of,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: like,
21:44
SPEAKER_00: when I was young,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: and I'm like,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: but now it's really bad.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: But we've always had cranks on this level.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: What I do think— Yeah.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: I—
21:54
I try to be careful when I am skeptical of something about
21:58
modern culture to ask myself,
22:01
am I just being a grandpa or is there really something
22:04
different about this that's
22:05
SPEAKER_01: worth being concerned about?
22:06
Like what's the difference between somebody who's a Luddite and
22:09
somebody who is
22:11
SPEAKER_01: skeptical in particular about a certain kind of technology,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: right?
22:15
Like I think that there's an important difference there and you
22:18
can be basically a
22:19
SPEAKER_01: modern-minded person and also think that –
22:23
SPEAKER_01: things like TikTok are not a step forward for humankind,
22:27
SPEAKER_01: even if young people really like TikTok,
22:31
SPEAKER_01: right?
22:31
SPEAKER_01: And so I, in the same way that like,
22:38
Like you can see modern social media technology as being the
22:43
latest iteration of
22:44
SPEAKER_01: many since the printing press where communication becomes easier,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: bringing ideas to larger segments of the population becomes easier.
22:52
Social media strikes me as different even than television in
22:56
that it's not just
22:57
SPEAKER_01: that ideas are easier to disseminate.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: It's that you're performing for an audience of strangers constantly.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure that...
23:07
We understood whether civilization as we've built it is capable
23:12
of surviving if you
23:15
SPEAKER_01: introduce that desire into people's lives.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: It's an important question irrespective of which age of people likes this
23:25
SPEAKER_01: technology or uses it all the time.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: And then because it's been so lucrative,
23:31
you get this upwelling of revolutionary sentiment from the
23:35
people who made it,
23:36
SPEAKER_01: right?
23:37
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm wrong,
23:38
but I don't think that whoever invented the television or the
23:44
group of people that
23:45
were responsible for prior communication revolutions would go
23:49
out and say,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: well,
23:50
SPEAKER_01: we built the future,
23:51
SPEAKER_01: so now we should get to run the place.
23:52
But that is actually a very prevalent attitude among venture
23:56
capitalists and technologists.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: like executive technologists in Silicon Valley,
24:01
that because they made these technologies that have reshaped
24:04
American and global
24:05
SPEAKER_01: culture in ways that,
24:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:09
SPEAKER_01: they just assume are good,
24:10
SPEAKER_01: but I think might actually be bad,
24:12
SPEAKER_01: that they have earned the right to just take power.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: And they're trying it.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: And it's not like, I think, a problem with me being a stuffy old guy.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: I think it's like,
24:29
we might wake up in 10 years and really wish we hadn't made
24:32
this wrong turn.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't feel that way.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel that way about every technological advance in my lifetime.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: It's really just this stuff.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I think there's something to that.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: I guess the distinction that I would draw personally is between,
24:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:53
SPEAKER_00: there's sort of disputes about the content of the media environment.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: And then there's disputes about like the format, right?
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Like what is actually –
25:06
SPEAKER_00: changing.
25:06
And I think that it's just probably true that not just social
25:10
media and streaming video,
25:12
but like a longer term trajectory of like cable and broadcast
25:16
television has the
25:19
impact of just sort of progressively encouraging people to
25:23
spend more time at home
25:25
SPEAKER_00: alone in a way that has sort of deleterious social emotions,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: which is different from the question of like,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: what is the TV show?
25:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, and so like a lot of TV shows like are slop infamously.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Some of them are really good or like you can at home on streaming video,
25:42
SPEAKER_00: watch like the great works of cinema via the Criterion channel,
25:46
SPEAKER_00: but you're still sitting at home alone.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Which is,
25:49
SPEAKER_00: like,
25:49
different from checking the newspaper listings and going with
25:52
your friends to the movies.
25:54
Because then,
25:55
like,
25:56
you'll probably,
25:57
like,
25:57
meet up for a drink or dinner,
25:59
like,
25:59
after the movie.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, you'll talk, right?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Versus, like, sitting at home alone.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: What I think has changed,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: though,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: when I think about,
26:08
SPEAKER_00: like,
26:09
conservative crankery from the 90s to what we're talking about
26:12
today is that,
26:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:14
SPEAKER_00: the old conservative view,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I think,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: was very much...
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Hegelian, right?
26:21
Like they were really interested in like what are the rappers
26:25
saying and that if we
26:27
SPEAKER_00: could like get them to like rap different stuff,
26:29
SPEAKER_00: we could reform society.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
26:32
SPEAKER_00: And we actually saw like a big boom in Christian rock.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: in the early zeros.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that had any sweeping impact on society, right?
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Like when like creed had like a mainstream breakthrough hit,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: that like did not revive religion in America.
26:50
Just a lot of people didn't actually realize that that was- It
26:53
also didn't like
26:54
SPEAKER_01: reflect anything about creed.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Creed is like super pro-Trump now.
26:58
And also,
27:00
did you know that Scott Stapp is Michael Waltz's brother-in-law?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: So, okay.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad, I'm glad to have Creed's renewed relevance.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Um,
27:11
SPEAKER_00: when I was an intern at Rolling Stone,
27:13
SPEAKER_00: I had to,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: um,
27:15
SPEAKER_00: like do this whole thing about like people on like Creed fan forums,
27:19
SPEAKER_00: um,
27:20
SPEAKER_00: as like a research assignment.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: So I wound up learning way too much about the Creed fandom circa 2000.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Um,
27:27
SPEAKER_00: All that being said,
27:28
SPEAKER_00: what you have now – I mean at least what we are alleging,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: what we are speculating about is this like quasi-Marxist approach,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: right?
27:37
That like to make the culture more conservative requires some
27:42
kind of attack on the
27:44
SPEAKER_00: economic base of like –
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Modernism and cultural liberalism, right?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And that economic base is higher education,
27:55
SPEAKER_00: white collar employment in general,
27:57
SPEAKER_00: and economic opportunity for women in particular.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: so that just like takes you from like people talking about the old days,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: which is just like,
28:08
SPEAKER_00: that's how it is,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: one way or the other.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And like the older you get,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: the more nostalgia you have to like,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: actually,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: actually,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: we are going to make people poorer.
28:19
And like,
28:19
I remember my grandmother at one point when one of my grandmothers,
28:22
when she was,
28:23
um,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: getting on in years,
28:26
talking to me and she was like rambling about how things used
28:29
to be better when she
28:30
SPEAKER_00: was a girl.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, you know, Grandma, like that was the Great Depression.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't think things were actually better.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, well, but you know, at least we had hope.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: That's like the kind of thing you say when you get into your 80s.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: But there's something to that.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that picture of the happy, smiling minors, right?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: When like...
28:54
Without wanting to deny that there are mining communities that
28:59
regret the loss of
29:02
SPEAKER_00: economic vitality in those industries,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: everybody knows that mining jobs are bad.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: This is like a quintessential bad job.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Like infamously, right?
29:13
SPEAKER_00: And like when mining was a thriving industry,
29:17
SPEAKER_00: the workforce of mining was like a super left-wing constituency,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: right?
29:22
This was like a hotbed of labor militancy because the working
29:26
conditions in mining
29:27
SPEAKER_00: are like so bad,
29:28
SPEAKER_00: right?
29:28
SPEAKER_00: It's such an intrinsically challenging kind of workplace environment.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: That it wasn't like some locus of like, oh, we're on cloud nine, right?
29:39
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the foosball table in the office, right?
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Like your soft Google employees and stuff like that.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And they're creating this,
29:51
SPEAKER_00: not just a hazy cultural nostalgia,
29:53
SPEAKER_00: but this really misguided nostalgia.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: tariffs on Asian apparel.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: So like we're going to all go work in sweatshops.
30:03
And my grandmother who was nostalgic for the depression – The
30:07
sweatshop days.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: You know,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: at an earlier time in her life when she was thinking more thoughtfully,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: again,
30:12
she was like a militant member of the garment workers union
30:16
because like those jobs
30:17
SPEAKER_00: were terrible.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:18
And they go to third world countries because as terrible as it
30:23
is working in an
30:24
SPEAKER_00: apparel factory,
30:25
SPEAKER_00: it's like even worse to be a subsistence rice farmer.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: So you can pay people shit to do these terrible jobs.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: And for them, it's a step up.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: And so this is why trade –
30:38
It's like a step up for the Cambodian farmers to work in
30:41
garment factories,
30:42
and it's a step up for Americans to get out of the garment
30:45
factory and go work in
30:46
SPEAKER_00: an office.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: But it does have these, like...
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Downstream consequences for society where if your job is better,
30:55
SPEAKER_00: you are like less likely to say,
30:57
SPEAKER_00: I want to quit my job and be like a full-time nanny and maid and cook.
31:03
Well,
31:03
and I think like maybe this is just a projection or something,
31:08
but I think it also –
31:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, working in a job can also get boring.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: And so if you're prosperous for long- Hearing the take minds.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
31:18
SPEAKER_01: but if you're prosperous as a society for long enough,
31:21
SPEAKER_01: you might develop a large,
31:24
quiescent population of people who yearn for things to be a
31:31
little more exciting
31:32
SPEAKER_01: because they don't-
31:34
presuppose that shaking things up will necessarily mean that on
31:38
the other side of it,
31:39
SPEAKER_01: you're poor and less happy.
31:41
And so it becomes easy for this sort of revolutionary
31:44
right-wing force to come in
31:46
SPEAKER_01: and break things.
31:47
And then maybe they can break them so bad that people only
31:51
realize what they lost
31:52
SPEAKER_01: after it's been shattered.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: Let's pause and then talk about
32:01
SPEAKER_01: where this all comes from in Trump's head.
32:04
Because I think Trump is not an ideologist and he's not a
32:08
religious fanatic,
32:09
SPEAKER_01: but he has similar ideas.
32:11
And I think it's worth exploring why there's the symbiosis and
32:14
then maybe like what
32:16
liberals and Democrats can do to kind of shake guys like that
32:21
comedian you
32:22
mentioned out of their view that like what they're embracing is
32:27
like libertine
32:28
SPEAKER_01: culture and not –
32:31
SPEAKER_01: like indentured servitude culture.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about that on the other side of the paywall.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear that half of the conversation,
32:40
SPEAKER_01: go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.