Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Is In A Political Hole… And Can’t Stop Digging + How To Be A Dissident

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Full Episode - Trump Is In A Political Hole… And Can’t Stop Digging + How To Be A Dissident · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. Hello, They're happy Thursday, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of the Check podcast. Ah, it's
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: one of those weeks where I've been traveling a bunch
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and as always, it doesn't matter if the weather's great,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: and there's always travel hiccups, especially if you fly a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: certain airline. I'm not going to get ranty about that.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna channel my inner inner Tony Koennheiser, but
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I do want to It is when you're at LaGuardia.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I was a moderate pan I'm gonna tell you a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: little bit about it a little bit here in a
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  Speaker 1: few minutes. But I was moderating a panel today about
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: a conversation following the screening of this terrific new documentary
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: about a Jewish philosopher who surri the Holocaust name Hannah Errant.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Some of you may know know of her readings, know
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of her writings on tyranny, and and anyway, it was.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a terrific doc and I'm going to
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: get into it in a minute. But anyway, as somebody
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: who flies a lot, I uh, let's just say I
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: I have sampled just about every single TSA device there is,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and various airports clearly get you know, there's clearly three
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: or four companies out there that try to sell their
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: super snazzy security system and there's this one in particular,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and some of you may know it that is just ridiculous.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: It's clunky. It's this it's this screening system where you've
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: got you know, you have to put all your stuff
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: in a bucket and then it like gets it's in
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a line and there's like two two rows of buckets.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Then it goes into this conveyor belt. Then it goes
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: through and it seems to go through almost like it
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: looks like an MRI machine, and it just it slows
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: everything down. It's just that machine. Wherever I've dealt with it.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It could be at a small airport in the Midwest,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: it can be at LaGuardia, it can be in the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: West Coast. But whenever I've run into that specific machine,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: it just everything just gums up. And it's it's got
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: way too many component parts. I mean, that's the issue, right,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It's like you have to use the bins, and the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: bins have to be a certain size and they have
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to slot in anyway. And it's one of those that
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sure act when nobody, no human beings, are using it,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: it works wonderfully. When you actually introduce reality, the machine
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't work as well. So I've been obsessed who the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: hell makes this thing? So I'm sitting here waiting and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: waiting and waiting, because you know, you're waiting in line
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: for it to go through. The goddamn t s a
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: MRI machine and the company's name. I'm going to spell
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: it out for you. A N A L O G
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I C. I called it anal logic. It might be analogic,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: but when you're going through that thing like is this
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: really the name of your machine? Is this the name
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: of your company? And sure enough, this is whatever. This
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: machine's powered by anal logic. And let's just say, that's
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: kind of how I feel about how some of these
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: TSA security systems feel. It feels like about it feels
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: like it is nothing but anal logic. So anyway, all right,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: this is right. The whole point of having a podcast
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: is every once in a while you get to have
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: a point of privilege where you can just rant about
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: something in your life, right that just annoys you. And
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: let me tell you another thing about people that cut
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you off when you go onto the on ramp to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: three ninety five. Nevermind, no, I'm just I'm just kidding there.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I'm obviously taping after I just got back from my
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: little travel escapade. So I just thought, instead of getting
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: cranky on some unknown politician that I'm about to about
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to talk about here, I figured I'd go ahead and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: get cranky about our TSA security machines. By the way,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I think the TSA employees don't like it either. They
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: hear all the people complaining they sit here. It's like
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: they just have to sit here and wait and make
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that ridiculous conveyor belt work. I'm sure we're all safer
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: for it. And some some contractor is making a boatload
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of money selling an inefficient system to airports around the country.
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  Speaker 1: But if I have a theme for the monologue today,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: by the way, let me give you a rundown of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: everything we're going to do. My guest, terrific guest, Gal Beckerman,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and he is the author of a new Booklet's out
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: How to Be a Dissident. He has of course written
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: about in the town Sharansky and some other folks. He
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: has been deep in the dissident movement in other countries.
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  Speaker 1: And we spent a lot of time about whether this
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: supplies here now in the West, in any which way.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And we use Minneapolis as a pretty interesting example. But
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  Speaker 1: think of it as if you're fond of the book
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Rules for Radicals, and some of you on the left
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: or fond of it, and some of you on the
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  Speaker 1: right are fond of it. In some ways. There are
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: more movements on the right that I think that use
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Solomonski's rules for radicals than movements on the left these days.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I know. It's a huge favorite of Steve Bannon's and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: things like that. How to Be a Dissident. What it
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: really is is sort of describes, sort of and it's
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: a profile of sort of seven or eight different dissidents
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: from around the world and sort of what are the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: different characteristics that you that dissidents have that that maybe
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: normal political activists don't. And that's what it's a distinction
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: between political activism and true dissonance. You know, people are
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: just willing to say no, no matter the consequences on
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that front. But if I have a theme for the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: last sort of twenty four hours and certainly what feels
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to be going around going on inside the Trump administration,
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  Speaker 1: it's this inability to stop digging. Right, you're in a
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: hole and they and they, and it's instead of stop digging,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, maybe this is not the time
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  Speaker 1: to move this issue or move that issue. It's always
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: full speed ahead. It's always nope, we're not in the wrong,
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  Speaker 1: it's the other side. It's in the wrong. Consequences be damned,
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  Speaker 1: you know, and it is it is like that. There
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  Speaker 1: is no subtlety to this administration, which is why it's
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  Speaker 1: not very good at being a leader. Right this the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: president is not really a leader because leaders can get
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  Speaker 1: people to follow. He's got a following, but he can't
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  Speaker 1: get people that don't that aren't sort of part of
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  Speaker 1: his orbit to follow him. He's not much of a persuader, right,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: he doesn't really have any sort of soft touch everything.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You know, every problem is a nail and every answer
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: is a hammer. Right to beat up that cliche. So
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: here's how the Washington Post describes this. They call it
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a declaration that the United States is trying to get
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: other countries to sign onto, and they want to circulate
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: it around the UN. And this declaration, right, here's a
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: time where the United States is basically going it alone
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: all over the world when it comes to its foreign policy,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: telling Europe to pound sand, threatening to walk out on NATO,
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  Speaker 1: telling other countries, you figure out how to get your
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: goods in oil out of the straight of hormones, good
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  Speaker 1: luck to you. Never mind that we started this war
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and we caused this situation. So in the middle of
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: all this basically the whole world's economy is on edge,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and it's the fault of the United States. Right they did,
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  Speaker 1: And of course we didn't go into this warning our allies,
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  Speaker 1: preparing them, anything like that. So we're in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of this right now at a time where you could argue,
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  Speaker 1: we could use some friends, and the last thing we
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  Speaker 1: need to do is be antagonizing people. So what's good
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  Speaker 1: Trump administration pushing on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. According
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to the Washington Post, they're pushing countries around the world
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  Speaker 1: to sign a joint declaration that essentially calls for ending
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: humanitarian aid. It's being called Trade for Aid. So I'm
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: going to read you the reporting here from the Washington
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  Speaker 1: Post and a cable sent Wednesday night to all US
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  Speaker 1: embassies and councilor posts. The Secretary of State Mark Rubio
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  Speaker 1: ordered American diplomats to issue an official call to action
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  Speaker 1: in their countries to foreign nations no later than Monday
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that asks for those countries to back a US initiative
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: that's going to be introduced at the United Nations at
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  Speaker 1: the end of April. And what they want to do
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: is use the UN system to quote promote America First
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: values and create business opportunities for US companies. What it
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: really means is, you know, it's not just the United
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: States getting rid of USAID, it's getting the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the world to give up on aid to developing countries.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: They want is to privatize. They want to see money
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: funding pulled back from all sorts of multilateral efforts. And
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: they want other countries to get on board with this.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: And that has actually happened, by the ways, as the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: United States has cut usai D again, the best soft
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: power that the United States have, Donald Trump is pissing
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that away. And I'm just telling you this is going
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: to burn US. Other countries have scaled back their humanitarian budgets.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: They're not filling in the gaps. And as I've talked
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: with David Miliban, who of course runs the International Rescue
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Organization Committee Organization, it's leading to an aid recession. They're
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I guess you know the United States is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: thinks any aid to any country's welfare. But I got
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: to read you this anonymous quote because it's the anonymous
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: quote that just feels let's just say, I'm starting to wonder,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: are we even America? According to this anonymous quote from
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: a one State Department official, speaking on the condition of
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: news media quote, it's solidifying our stance on dropping aid
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: completely and letting companies enrich themselves on newer markets, so
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: to privatize aid all over. Look, I'm not going to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: sit here and say there aren't some things that the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: private sector or private charities can sometimes be more efficient
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: at doing. And you know, but when you take out
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the logistics expertise that governments have, particularly Western governments have,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and the far reaches that governments are in in some
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: way places that need aid, the private sector isn't going
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to be able to fill in those gaps. And they'll
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: only do it if they're getting something in return. So essentially,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: for any areas around the world in need, they're going
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: to now basically have to give up something. It's almost
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: like they're going to be stuck getting paid a loans.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Oh you need money, now, well let me give you
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a twenty five percent interest rate. But we'll help you.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: We'll help you with some sandbags over here, maybe we'll
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: get you some vaccines over there that you're short on.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: But again, in order to help you humanitarianly, we need
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a little something in return. It's just one of these.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: It's the timing of the move here. We are already
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: breaking up alliances all over the world, having all sorts
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of diplomatic rows over how we've gone about this war
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in Iran, and then we're just going to go to
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the United Nations and just stick a finger in the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: eye of the rest of the world. It's it's just
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: it's it's just head scratching time. I mean, I guess
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: America is not unpopular enough around the world. Let's see
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: if we can make America more unpopular. Let's see if
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: we can make more Americans feel uncomfortable that what the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: brand of America was about is just being squandered by
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: this president. I mean, he is absolutely making America just
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: look like the assholes of the world that we don't care.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's it's look it's bad politics, it's bad form policy,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it's bad diplomacy. It might save a the couple of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: dollars you think you're saving, you're only going to spend
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: twice as much when it comes to whatever whatever we
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: can't get from these countries' long term or when we
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: don't get the support we need when there's an important
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: when when there's a moment that we're going to need
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the help of other countries. But to sort of try
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: to accelerate this idea that no, no, no, no, we got
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to make sure the world does not come together on anything.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: We got to make sure we export heartlessness around the world.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: It's you know, we're we already. We don't take any
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: asylum claims anymore for the United States of America. We're
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: an idea that's open to anybody who believes in it,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: or so I thought. But this administration is just trying
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to shut every possible door there is. It's like I said,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: this is bad for our security, bad for our reputation.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's going to be It's just it's one of those
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: things that's just bad across the board. And you may think, oh,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: it's not a big deal right now, and this is
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: small potatoes, but it's just accumulating. We're at it. Like
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I said, we're at a time where we could use
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: some allies. It's like this fight with the pope. Shut up,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: stop trying to debate the pope. Jade Vance, You've been
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a Catholic for six years. Do you really think you
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: know more about the Catholic church than the Pope who's
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: been doing this for his whole adult life, or Mike Johnson,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: who has also been critical of the Pope. This was
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a good one. So Johnson, who's not Catholic, he's evangelical,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you know, said he was so taken aback by what
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the Pope said last week about this idea that Jesus
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: does not listen to the prayers of quote those who
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: wage war, and that their hands are full of blood.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So Mike Johnson decided to throws to basically to throw
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: some Catholic doctrine out, because he's such an expert, being
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: an evangelical, right, and I'm always a little hesitant to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: dabble in religious stuff because I'm not a religious scholar.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And so the speaker decides to talk about there's something
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: called the just war doctrine, right, and then you have JD. Vance,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: like I said, in a case, you know, a converted Catholic.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: He admonished the Pope told him he's got to be
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: quote careful if he was going to opine on matters
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: of theology. Well, the chairman of the US Catholic Bishop's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Doctrine Committee shot back with what he called a clarification
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: statement about what Catholic just war theory really means. Bishop
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: James Massa wrote this, for over a thousand years the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church has taught just war theory, and it is
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: comments on war. The Bishop goes on, to be a
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: just war, he said, it must be a defense against
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Father actually said. He does not listen to the prayers
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of those who wage war. And then the bishop Bishop
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Massa added, when Pope Leo speaks as Supreme Pastor of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the Universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: He is preaching the gospel. Again, It's sort of like
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: what is Johnson Advanced thinking? You know, and the president too,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Why are you picking a fight with this pope?
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: This is a Streyssand effect because look, the pope said
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: what a pope should say. Like I said, if the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Pope's not coming out against war, we're all in trouble, okay.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: But if you don't mention, if you don't react, his
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: words stand and you just let people steing it. But
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: by reacting, what do you do? You're actually amplifying it.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And what you're doing is you're amplifying something that's making
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: you guys look like fools. So, by the way, what
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: is just war theory, Well, my friends at the New
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: York Times note at this. At its basis, it is
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a means for people to distinguish permissible killing from illegitimate
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: killing or murder. According to Joseph Kabezi, dean of the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: School of Theology and Religious Studies at Catholic University of America,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the criteria for how to act morally when getting into
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: a war and then once you are in it, it
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: is basically an ethic about the good end of politics.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, according to this theologian,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Christians should be peacemakers and that the issue of a
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: just war predates Christianity as empires like the Romans, had
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: their own theorists like Cicero. He said, but the Catholic
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Church has a specific theological tradition about just war. And
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: of course one of the ten commandments is you shall
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: not kill. So let me give you a little bit
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: more on this. What is the Catholic tradition on just war?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: The theology dates largely to Saint Augustine, the political theologian
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: from Northern Africa, who wrote in the early fifth century
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: as northern tribes sometimes called barbarians, were invading the Roman Empire.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: There was a kind of presumed pacifism in the first
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: few centuries of the Church's life. But now the Church
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: has responsibilities to society, responsibilities to protect the borders of
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the nation. But again, when you look at it, it
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: is more in self defense that you get the just
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: war doct So look, I don't know why a newly
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: converted Catholic thinks they out of debate Catholic theology with
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the pope. I don't know why somebody who's not Catholic,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: who's an evangelical thinks you can lecture the Catholic Church
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: about Catholic doctrine. You know, this is again a case
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of sort of like is this really the time, Like
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you've already dug a hole? Why do you keep digging?
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Please put down the shovel. You're embarrassing all of us. Right,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not one of those who thinks, oh, isn't this great?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: You know, one, they're hurting themselves and this is going
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to politically hurt them. No, it's bad for America. It's
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: bad for all it's a bad look for all of us.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And and by the way, it's bad politics for them.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: This isn't good for.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Them, and yet they keep going down this route.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 22:04
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  Speaker 1: use that code. I know it's not news to anybody
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: that you're like, oh, these guys, you know, they always
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: want to double down. It's always pedal to the metal,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: it's always never apologizing all of this, but you know
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: this is the stuff like at some point, you know,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: one of the tiktoks on you know, there's all this
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: hand ringing right now. Right, more Republicans than ever are talking.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Some of them are sower of anonymous quotes about how
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: bad the politics of the Iran war is. It's just
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: really hurting them. But they're still not ready completely to
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: go public in distancing things helves from Trump. But I
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: think we're getting pretty close. But that's the point here.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: It's like there is just there are no guard rails ors.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Is there anybody who's sober in that West Wing? And
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I don't mean sober like I'm saying, you guys are
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: all drunk, But it's like, who can sober these guys
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: up and say, guys, you may believe this, You may
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: think the pope is wrong, you may think he's some
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: woke liberal instead of instead of a Catholic, a Catholic
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: bishop who was elevated to the papacy.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: But this is not the time to pick that. This
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: is not in the best interest of what you're trying
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: to accomplish right now. Look, this extends to Donald Trump's
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: rant yesterday saying that if the Federal Reserve chair if
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Jay if Jay Powell, decides to stay on the board
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: after he steps after his term ends as chair that
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: he's going to fire him, which of course is going
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: to set up all, you know, another challenge, another court
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: challenge that you know, all of the independent stuff. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: it's like, you're going to get your guy, but if
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: you want to make sure your guy doesn't get confirmed,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: go ahead and threaten j Powell. You've just basically dared
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Tom tell Us, who is going to stand in front
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: of that confirmation and going to make it extremely hard.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: And Trump just is making it harder again.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: And I know the idea that that Donald Trump knows
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: subtlety and that Donald Trump will actually, you know, keep
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: his mouth shut because maybe, you know, maybe he can
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: get something done or get something that he wants done
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: his way. But it's like if he doesn't get to
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: publicly own whoever it is he wants to own, or
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: if he doesn't like that somebody's embarrassed him and gotten
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the best of him, he's just always got to find
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a way to come back and try to get the
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: best of them. And it's clear that Jay Powell is
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: one of those, right, And we also know this he
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: gets angriest at people he that he thinks are not
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: loyal that he appointed, right, and Jay Powell Trump appointing. Right,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: it drives Trump crazy. Remember, Donald Trump is upset that
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a guy who's kept our economy incredibly stable and frankly,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: incredibly resilient. You know, he's going out of his way
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: to make, you know, to make people feel less certain
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: about our economy. But he's obsessed with trying to embarrass
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: j Powell. Right. He can't stand the fact that Jay
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Powell has has sort of won this argument. He's won
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the court of public opinion simply because he just kept
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: his head down and did his job. You know, as
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: many of you know, I'm I am I think the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I think we could use a strong independent candidate for president.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I think the two parties are so consumed with their
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: own ideological fights right now that in order to get
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: both parties to sort of push back against some of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: their extremism, we kind of need a reset and a strong,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: sort of independent candidate could do that. And I was
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: musing with somebody who knows j Powell a little bit,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and I said, hey, if Canada's central banker can suddenly
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: become their political hero, I mean, Mark Carney is now
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: suddenly one of the strongest, politically strongest Canadian Prime ministers
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: we've seen and perhaps in a decade. How about Jay
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Powell for president? You know, I'm I'm only a little
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: bit facetious now. I think he's in his seventies, and
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I think that ultimately, if you're gonna go to the third party, right,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you need somebody a little bit younger, You need somebody
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you know. But you know, I'm also you know when
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: you when you look there there is something. There is
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: something about having somebody who was once appointed to office
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: by Donald Trump suddenly becoming a a an antagonist in
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the campaign running against him or running against his movement.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Looks familiar with that that just happened in another country.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Oh right, hungry Anyway, Look, there's nothing to Jay Powell
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: for president. I don't want anybody going, Oh, Chuck Todd's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: reporting Pal's thinking about ready for No, that's not what
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I'm saying. He was amusing with somebody. I said, would
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: he ever be open to that? And I was basically
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: told that shorty answer is an fw is I think
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: is how it was put to me. So I don't
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: think Jay Powell for president. But the point is, again,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: here's the president picking another fight. They're just picking and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: they continue to pick and pick and pick at a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: time when they kind of need to. You know, every
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: other president who's been in this terrible position that Trump
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: is in right now, creating approval ratings, unpopular coming up
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: to a midterms, Like you know, George W. Bush be like, hey,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you if you don't want me to come, just say so.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I won't endorse shit. You know, he didn't
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: want to hurt his party Barack Obama when his numbers
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: weren't going well, when he was not an asset on
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the campaign trail in twenty fourteen, he didn't force his
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: way into the conversation. He tried to work with his party.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: That's not Donald Trump, and it is why it is
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: unlikely Republicans will be able to mitigate to do what
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: they could be doing if they had a normal leader
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: of their party right who wasn't super narcissistic. But if
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: they had a normal leader their party, you would see
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: this these permission slips go out here. If you've got
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to you want to distance yourself, go ahead and distance yourself.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: It would almost be or look, that's the way Nancy
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Pelosi would operate. She would find if somebody needed to
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: show some distance from party line votes, you know, she
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: might even help find a bill to put on the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: floor so that they could show their independence. But that's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: what a party leader does. And Donald Trump is perhaps
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I mean again, he's not a leader of any kind,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: because a leader has the ability to get other people
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to follow, and a leader also knows when to turn
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: down the temperature. And this is not who Donald Trump is.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I want to make one other point. I was moderating
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: this panel and the pan hang on a minute. It
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: was panel after the showcasing of this new documentary called
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Facing Tyranny. It's about Hannah Aaron and look it is
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I really highly recommend it. She was a fascinating woman,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: and this documentary does a good job bringing her to life.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: You know, there isn't a lot of footage per se,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: but it does a good job matching footage in the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: in each period with the points that they're making. But
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: she's a fascinating you know, she's basically one of the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the great Jewish philosophers of the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: great philosophers of the twentieth century. You happen to be Jewish.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But she also became a political prisoner. She was a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: refugee during World War Two, Obviously, Aaron is best known
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: for her seminal work The Origins of Totalitarianism. And look,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: this documentary was made after January sixth, And I say
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: this because the documentary filmmaker who somebody I've known from
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: my previous life. He's the former executive producer of Washington Week,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bieber. He was the director of the film, and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: he said after January sixth he started diving into Eron's
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: work and on the origins of totalitarianism in the different
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: ways that this happens, and thought it would be a time,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it would be a good time to take a deep
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: dive into her work. Given the current situation. We are
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: not living in a totalitarian stay okay, and Donald Trump
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: is not him. But when you see the way good
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: people will do bad things and get caught up in
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: some of these things, and in some ways that that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: is I think one of the what Hannah Errant was
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: just obsessed with trying to understand and figure out. I
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: think it's important to understand sort of her thinking and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: her insights, and I think there's a lot to be learned.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: The panel, as any panel that is dealing with controversial subjects,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: got a little got lively, but it was the good
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: kind of lively, but it got lively and some interesting
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: back and forth. And one of the questions that created
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: some livelihood was what would Hannah Errent think of the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: current situation today when it comes to Israel and the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: rise of anti Semitism. And one of the things that
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bieber pointed out is that you know, Eron was
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: not necessarily she was. She was certainly Zionist, but she
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: didn't think Israel should just be a Jewish state. She
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: wanted it to be a federation, that it had to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: be an air of Jewish state that you couldn't and
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: her rationale was that, look what happened in Germany that
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: was a nationalist state, So you don't ever want to
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: be a nationalist state because then you can slip into
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: tyranny too easily. But if you want a pluralistic society,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you need you need to be a federation. You need
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to be of some of some sort pluralism, federalism, however
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you want to, however you want to describe it. Now,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: look that in itself will spark couldn't spark quite a debate.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Me just bringing it up now might trigger some interesting
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: comments that I may receive about this, but I was
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: thinking about that when it came to the vote that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: showed more Democrats voted against military aid to Israel than
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: we've ever seen before. I think it was got up
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to forty Democrats, and I know that the number is
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: going to get interpreted, you know, those that look at
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: it through the lens of uh you know, the Democrats
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: hate Israel. That's I would just be careful not interpreting
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: it as that. This is about bb This is about
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: one person. This is about Bibi. And I know I've
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: said this before, but it bears repeating. You know, he
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: polarized Israel in the American political electorate when he decided
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: to get involved in our elections in twenty twelve, right
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: when he was doing everything he could to defeat Barack
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Obama and didn't hide it, right, and it was he
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: inserted himself. And I do think there's a reason why
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: younger Democrats in particular are more likely to be skeptical
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of aid to Israel than older Democrats, and it is
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I think it all began with net Nahu's and treatment
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: of Barack Obama. You know, look, he's I've pointed this out,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He's been he's he's sort of treated every US president
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: since Bill Clinton pretty badly and tried to bully them
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and push them around. Now, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden all
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: knew how to push back at BB. Not Donald Trump.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's a growing belief that Bibe essentially talked,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: you know, knew, knew how to work Trump and convinced
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Trump to launch this war in Iran. There's a belief
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that bib is wants to keep Israel at war because
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: as long as Israel's at war and feels it's under threat,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: there isn't going to be a focus on his on
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: the investigation and his political problems. And it's there's always
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: been this sense that the only way he thinks he
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: knows how to stay in power is to make sure
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the elector thinks that you may not like BB, but
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you need BB on that wall, right, that he's your
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson. And so he's got to constantly keep Israeli's
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: constantly thinking that it's on edge, and he's got to
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: keep the country at war. But I do think one
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: thing that American audience is under estimate about what October
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: seventh did inside Israel is that it really did galvanize
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: the Israeli population. They're not. It doesn't mean Bibe's gotten
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: more popular. He hasn't gotten more popular, but there is
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: there's a lot less empathy for the Palestinians inside Israel
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: than there's been a long time, and so that certainly
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: did real damage. I think there's still plenty of people
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: inside Israel that don't like how BB's managed this war,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and there's still plenty inside Israel who think Bebe should
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: be held accountable for essentially looking for not for the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: security failure that allowed October seventh to happen. And there
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: really hasn't been accountability for the failure of IDF to
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: see this coming, and for the Israeli government to not
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: see this coming. My goodness, there's even conspiracies that somehow,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: maybe they did see a company and wanted it to
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: happen because they somehow thought it would be it would
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: galvanize the country and all that. But I do think
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: the correct interpretation of what you're seeing here is it's
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: about frustration with BB. It's frustration with the Israeli government.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: That's what this is. There was a time that when
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you would see some American political pushback at Israel that
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the Israeli public would pay attention and they would put
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: some pressure in their leaders. No, no, no, no, they really
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: only have one ally. Don't alienate that ally. But bb is,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you mess this up? Right? He has partisanized the issue.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: He thought it was good politics for him to partisanize
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the issue. But look what it's done, right, everything he's
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: you know, he's gotten what he wanted. He got the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: irandeel torn up, and it made things worse. He got
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Trump to launch a war with Iran. It's made things worse.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So at some point, at some point, maybe even the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Trump administration will start to see maybe Bibe doesn't quite
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: know what he's doing here, and that he's a bit
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: too enthusiastic to go down that road. But for those
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: of us that want to see Israel thrive and don't
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and want to see Israel be able to defend itself,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: it is disheartening watching what's happening here. But again, it's
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Babe's fault and he's got to if he wants to,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: if he wants to fix this, he could, But realistically,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: the only way this gets fixed is with a new government.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And who knows, I've been thinking there was a new
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Israeli government coming around the corner, you know, any day. Now.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I'm less convinced to that than ever, but you know,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes in these parliamentary systems, you know, something can happen overnight.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: But I do think that you're going to start to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: see some peeling away on the right too. So far,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: it's really just Ran Paul in the Republican Senate, but
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Todd Young, Toddy Young did an interview earlier on Wednesday
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: with PAC and he certainly isn't interested in seeing this continue.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: After sixty days now, I think it's pretty clear Donald
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Trump wants out of this thing. The question is what's
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: he going on? How much is he going to capitulate
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: to Iran in order to get out of this? And
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that's also an uncomfortable and uncomfortable reality that I think
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: we're all dealing with. So as much as I think
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: that sometimes people are hoping that there is a clean
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: way to look at Israel, or there's a clean way
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: politically to see to see where this is headed, this
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: is one of those cases where it ain't very clean.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of nuance here, there's a lot of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: but you know, I would just I would just be
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: careful when you see some of the overriding I think
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: about what this vote means and where this is coming from.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I think, more than anything else, what you're seeing is
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's essentially like a vote of
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: disapproval of Bebe. And that's I think the new dozen
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Democrats that climbed on board on that, those are those
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: are Democrats that are pro Israel but Antibbe, and I
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: think that's the better way to look at that. All right,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna sneak in a break and coming up
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: my conversation with Gal Beckerman on his new book called
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: How to Be a Dissipator. This episode of the Chuck
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Toddcast is brought to you by Soul. So if you
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  Speaker 1: code podcast for thirty percent off. And yes, I too,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: am a customer. SO one of the questions I get
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: a lot from various people frustrated by the current political system.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: And this comes from folks through throughout The spectrum is
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: what do I do? What can I do? Versus you
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: need to do more referring to me and or the media,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: et cetera. And my answer is always the same, Well, ultimately,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: my vote is the same as your vote. You've got
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: to just everybody has a role here, but he's got
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to do something.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: The conversation I want to have today is about it's
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: it's a new book that's out called How to Be
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a Dissident. It's by Gal Beckerman. That's my guess. Gal's
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: here now. But the real point is it's sort of
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: like when you're living in a fairly free society and
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: you feel as if you're not being represented, what do
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: you do and what did others do? And are there
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: is there inspiration to take from others who lived in
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: less free societies. And obviously when you hear the words dissident,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: it immediately invokes people fighting less free societies. But the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: current situation we're all in, I think there's this feeling
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: that we when you feel unrepresented or underrepresented, do you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: start is it good to start to think like a dissident?
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: So this is a question that we're going to simply
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: ask and Gal's going to give us the answer. Gal,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: So let me start with the premise of the book,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: How to Be a Dissident? Is it intentionally written for
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: an American audience? In your head? Like, who were you
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: talking to when you when you when you frame it? Look,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: the book's about it's a little bit history, it's a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: little bit of communications, it's it's a little bit of
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. But you must have had a motivation.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: What was it? Oh?
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I was thinking about an American audience
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: that needed to hear about the experience of people in
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: other times historically, and needed to hear about the experience
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: of people right now in other places in the world,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: like Iran, like China. Why did they need to hear
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: about those experiences? Because to my mind, being a dissonant
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: is saying no, experiencing a reality that somehow violates your
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: sense of what is normal, what the normal conditions for
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: a sort of free human life should be, and refusing
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: to go along with it. Now, in authoritarian systems that
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: can take on a pretty extreme form. You know, you're
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: not allowed to say whatever you want to say. You're
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: not allowed to read whatever you want to read. You're
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: not allowed to wear your hair in the way that
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: you want to wear your hair or leave it covered
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: or uncovered. You're not allowed to gather with other people.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: But there are ways that I began to feel that
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: those sort of conditions for a quote unquote normal life
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: were beginning to be impeded upon even here in the
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: United States, and in ways that I had never really
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I had never really experienced it, certainly in my lifetime.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: And you know, to take an example that's just fairly recent.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: If you think about Minneapolis, when that happened, when people
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: responded and citizens in Minneapolis responded the way that they did,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: I saw dissidents.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I saw yeah, they even created these networks like you
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: hear about in other countries that they had a code
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: or they would honkoorns or you know, you hear this stuff.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: But it was yeah, yeah, ID to hear stories like
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: this in Cuba, for instance, if you thought somebody was
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: watching the little things you do, right, But I.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: But I mean, even at the level of motivation, I
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: think what happened in people's minds is I don't think
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: this was political. I think people said, look at what's
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: happening to my neighbor, look at what's happening to the
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: people who live in my community who are afraid to
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: send their kids to school, or a hiding in their houses,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: or are being harassed on the street. And those are
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: those are impulses that back Club Hubble, who is the
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: great Czech dissident, playwright, check dissident, who became the president
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: of a free Czechoslovakia. He had a concept, he said
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: that and starts with the pre political. It's not these
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: aren't These aren't sort of motivations which say, oh, here's
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: this one leader in charge. I want to put my
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: guy in charge. It's about those conditions of life. It's
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: about saying how do I think my neighbors should be treated,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: and then seeing that being violated and saying I have
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: a choice. I have a moral choice. I can put
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: my head down and do nothing, which is actually very
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: hardwired in human beings right to do nothing in those circumstances,
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: to just conform. Or I can say no, I can
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: refuse and do something about it. And I think that
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: it's out of that. It's at that crossroads that the
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: dissident is born.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: So in your mind, what makes a dissident is somebody
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: who's not looking for political power, but is just looking
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: for to write a moral wrong.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It's less even about writing a moral wrong than saying
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: no in an instance where they feel that a certain
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: value or a certain part of their conscience has been violated.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: I have a great sort of I love this particular
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: quote in the book from Hannah Reant. Hannah rent the
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: German philosopher, was trying in the post war years to
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: understand why certain Germans, very few of them, refused to
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: go along with the Nazis. They refused in every circumstance
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: to just conform. And she came to an interesting conclusion.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: She said, these weren't people who just like you know,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: had a strong kind of set of moral precepts and
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: sort of and those were the things that guided them.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: In fact, a lot of the people with moral precepts
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: were able to switch from thou shalt kill to thou
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: shalt not kill, you know, as soon as somebody sort
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: of switched them from one side to the other. She said,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: the people who refused were the like perpetual sort of
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: doubters and skeptics who took everything, everything that they experienced
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: and it's at face value, and try to answer it
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: with one single question. Can I live with myself? Can
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I live with myself if I don't do anything in
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: this situation? Can I live with myself if I go
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: along with something that I may ask to go along with?
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: And she said those people, for them, it was quite
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: quite simple. It's they didn't want to live with themselves
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: because who they would be would be murderers. So they
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: didn't want to live with a murderer. So it's it's
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: this sort of very essential question of conscience, of kind
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: of of of your gut in a way. I know
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: it can sound a little bit sort of vague when
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: you talk about it that way, but I think we
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: all know like those moments where we have I call
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: it in the book moral nausea, you know, where you
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: open the newspaper and you see something and you just
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: you just don't it doesn't feel right to you. But
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: then you have this next moment where you think, well,
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: I've got to go on with my day, like I'm
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: not gonna you know, and so so I I you know,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: and we can't all be dissidence, you know. I mean,
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: I think that's one of the takeaways that I have
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: from this experience of spending time with dissonance. It's in
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: some ways it's a very extreme position, you know, to
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: always be the one at the front line of that
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: particular moral quandary. But what I learned is that, like
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I need to understand that I do have choices. There
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: is moral choice. Even when I look in the newspaper
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: and I see something that really bothers me, that gives
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: me that kind of nausea, I can choose to do
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: something about it. I can also choose not to do something,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: which is also a choice. But it's the accepting the
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: idea that there is a choice, that I have some
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: agency as a human being in these circumstances.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Let me let me get it something that you're in
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: a ex burn on because you've written another You've written
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: a book on it. Right, You've written a book about
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: the Soviet jewelry. What made the dissidents in the Soviet
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Union successful that the dissidents in today's Russia are struggling
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: with It's same country in theory. Obviously, it's a smaller
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: version of it. But sort of similar ways, although it's
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: slightly different how the Soviet Union operated versus how Putin operates.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Is it? Is it because the Soviet Jewelry is no
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: longer there? Is that it? I mean, you know, and
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: if if they were, you know, I mean, what's what's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: what's your explanation for why the Soviet Jewelry was so
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: successful and so far the dissidents in Putin's Russia have
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: not been.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: It's a good question. It's listening that I really thought about.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: But you know, I I the thing about Soviet this
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: jury movement, which for those who don't know about it,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: was a movement of Jews who were trapped inside the
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not let them leave.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: They would not give them exit visus to leave. At
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: the same time, their existence as Jews in the Soviet
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Union was pretty terrible. They couldn't really like have any
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: kind of Jewish identity. But they were also actually there
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: was also actually a lot of a lot of prejudice
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: against them. Schools that they couldn't universities you couldn't go to,
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: professions you couldn't go to. But at the same time
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: they couldn't leave. So the Soviet Union had almost like this,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: It was.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: They were yeah, yeah, and and and uh and and
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: so they made a cause out of this desire to leave.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: And here again just to point, you know, to go
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: back to something earlier I said, what made their cause
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: powerful was that they were drawing on, I think, what
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: is a very human impulse, which is that we want
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: to be able to live where we want to live.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: So the idea that they were actually imprisoned in the
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union, once they were able to dramatize that to
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: the world, and they did in all kinds of ways
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: over a long period of time. That's the other thing
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: we can talk about is dissidence takes time. It takes
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: time to sort of incubate in a way. These were
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: small communities of people. They built loyalty amongst themselves. They
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: were outcasts within their own societies. As soon as they
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: asked to leave, they were thrown out of their jobs,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: out of their sometimes out of the department buildings. So
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: they really formed these tight communities of people, and they
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: appealed to the world, the United States in particular, which
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: then put pressure back on the Soviet Union, used it
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: as a leverage negotiations you know, the benefit I think
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: they had was that that was a world in which shame,
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: the kind of shame that was being worked, it still worked.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: The idea of human rights was still had currency and
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: not something that you know, an American president could sort
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: of just like, you know, laugh off. So those are
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: all powerful levers that they could use against the Soviet Union.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: So you might make the argument then that take the
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: navalney dissidence, okay, and just loosely that you know, it's
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: in the same stages of where Soviet Jews were in
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the sixties, and it's going to take time, and that eventually,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm with you. I mean every dictatorship
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: ends the same way. It takes forever, and then it
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: happens overnight, right like a sod in Syria. Just one night,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh he's now in Russia. It's over right,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: like all of a sudden. You don't think it's ever
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: going to end, and then it ends immediately.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Well you yeah, And I'll give you an even more contemporary,
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: very very contemporary example. I've been doing some reporting today
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: on what happened in Hungary because we saw this the
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: fall of Orbon, which people didn't think was going to happen,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: you know, or happened quite as dramatically and you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: as it did, and as totally as it did. You know,
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: two thirds of the country voted against him. But I
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: learned that there was something you know, incubating, percolating over
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: the last two years in the Hungarian countryside, in rural
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: areas which were which were strongholds of Orbon. This is
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: where most of his support came from, where for people
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: who lived there it seemed almost impossible to imagine that
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: they would ever be a different leader than Orbon. There
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: began to be these small groups, uh they called them
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: island actually Tisa Tisa, which is the political party that won.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: They call them Tisa islands. And this was like civic organizations,
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: you know, in places where civil society had really almost
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: disappeared under Orbon. So you have like the local entrepreneur
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: and the doctor and maybe like a you know, a farmer,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: and they start meeting to discuss things like a local
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: factory that's causing pollution. They organized to do clean up,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: like cleaning up litter in the village or having like
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: a movie night or something. And these were happening in
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of rural areas. People weren't they were
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: not directly connected to the party that won, but they
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: were sort of affiliated with the idea of some kind
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: of change. But what it did was it built up
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: this kind of like citizen muscle, and it made people
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: less scared. It made them I mean, I heard today
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: what people told me is that it got people out
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: of this spiral of fear and of silence that there
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: could ever be anybody but orbone because otherwise people understood
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: that things were not great and hungry, the economy was
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: not good. You know, there was the education system is
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: not good. There was all kinds of ways that they
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: wanted to change, but they needed to take this kind
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: of step of both recognizing there were other people who
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: felt like they did, to do activities that were not
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: at first risky, and have those sort of slowly ramb
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: up to the then bigger task of voting against the
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: man who they had voted for for the last sixteen years.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: So it's I mean, it's a kind of a perfect
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: example of how dissonance needs to grow. I'll give you
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: another example if you want from here is the No
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: Kings Day rallies. You know, people witnessed those and they say, well,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: on one hand, like what's the immediate effect? We always
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: want to know, like is this going to translate into
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: mid term election wins? But I think that's a really
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: wrong way of thinking about it. I think these organizers
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: have really been smart about how they've ramped up these
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: rallies or these demonstrations, which have been totally decentralized. They
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: have happened in I think the first one had like
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: two thousand and the last one had like four thousand.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: They're local, people can come with whatever clause they care
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: most about under the umbrella of creeping authoritarianism, and they
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: are seeing each other. They're seeing each other in real life.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: They're saying, Okay, I'm not alone in this feeling. Right.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: They're doing things like being irreverent or jokey about the president,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: which you know, doesn't sound like it should be important,
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: but it actually is. Like it's important to be.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Able to spend a whole chapter in comedy I do.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: I think being able to sort of laugh at the King,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: to see him naked is the first step towards imagining
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: him gone, you know, so that there are sort of
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: sites where people can reinforce these feelings in one another
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: and build towards something bigger.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. I'm hungry, and one of the things that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to digest is the fact that the leader
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: of the movement that toppled Orbon was was once a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: member of Orbon's party. That it was not somebody who
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: had been part of the loyal opposition for twenty years,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: but in fact had been you know, and I wonder,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: how is that is that a model? Are the best
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: dissidents the ones that used to be a part of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the system, Are they the most effective dissidents? What's Is
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: there a pattern that you feel like you've uncovered.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: I think in Hungary it's certainly made a difference because
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: it provided a kind of like permission structure. Yeah, people said,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: and and this is of a piece with these islands
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about, because it's like, once you see your
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: neighbors start to say, okay, I'm not going to vote
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: for Fidez this time, then you think, okay, it's okay
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: for me too. And leader of the party is a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: guy who was once a loyalist and turned you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: turned around. So it all sort of like trickles down.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Unique to Hungry or is it in any system like that.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean I do think of somebody
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: like NAVALNEI, who was like, you know, very much a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: creature of the establishment in Russia. He wasn't this like
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: wild eyed you know.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: In fact, some of the critics of him say, you know,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: he's not really this and he's not really that. Well
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: you know what he is. He's a guy who stood
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: up to Buten and that many people were willing to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: I know, he actually got a lot of heat for once, uh,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: sort of becoming too cozy with nationalists, you know, when
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: he was trying to sort of build well.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I think in his own way he is a Russian nationalist,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: but he thought Buten wasn't a real nationalist, right, I mean, right, right, right.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: But you know, I think people saw in Navalny also
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: like he created it. That creates the kind of safety
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: to say, like, okay, if this guy who is like
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: comes from a certain I mean, he was a lawyer,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: he kind of has a sort of you know, elite background.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: If he's the one who's willing to take on the dictator,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: like we can't too.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, why didn't Liz Cheney serve
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: that purpose for the for the opposition to Trump.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, she in some ways fits that definition, right,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and I mean look at it, it's like, yeah, well,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: she never really was part of the Trump movement. In
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: fact that you could argue she was a member of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: the establishment that Trump overthrew inside the Republican Party too.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: So maybe maybe that isn't the right you know, maybe
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence is the better is the better avatar? I
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: don't know, Yeah, I.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Mean I think in both instances, and this is true
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: of Hungary and Trumanavalney. You have to build a base, right,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: you can't be you know, to have an individual who
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: does a brave thing is helpful as an example, but
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: it has to sort of create a culture of people
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: each doing their brave things, you know. So for her
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: to take on, for Pens to take on the sort
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: of maga world and the culture that is Maga, would
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: demand building an alternative, you know, an alternative that has
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: its own distinct value system.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the archetypes you come through. You
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: sort of the book is structured in a way where
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: there's almost like a structure and a dissidence. You did
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: this by studying various ones, So so hit me with it.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: You know, what would you say, why do you think
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: qualities travel history? You know, like sometimes a certain quality
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: might have made sense two hundred years ago but it
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't now, but you sort of see it as it
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter you're a historic era. Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: No, it was important for me to sort of understand
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: what was universal about these qualities, which you know, I've
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: some people have looked at the book and they go, oh, wow, well,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: how amazing that you're you know, you have like a
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Chinese woman and a you know, ancient Greek philosopher in them.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: It's so you know, you know, multi faceted in that way.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: And that wasn't right, like the benaton for dissidents, right,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: that is not what you were going for, right, No.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: That wasn't my intent. I mean I think that I
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: felt that the universality of these qualities had to be proven,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: and the only way to prove them was to be
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: able to say, I'm going to show you how this tracks,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: you know, to talk about the qualities a little bit.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's sort of like three sets
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: of you know, things that I was looking at. You know,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: I wanted to understand sort of like what, uh, what
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: makes a dissident in some ways? You know, like what
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: what sort of what the essential aspects of a dissident
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: has to be? You know, so something like a certain
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: kind of aloneness, a certain ability to step away from conformity,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: which is such a strong I mean, in that chapter,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I looked at what a strong human impulse that actually is.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: We we are hardwired to conform.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's survival, It's it's allowed our species to exist.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: As long as that we have these sort of we
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: can create social bonds and and we are loyal to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: one another in this way that you know, it's very
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: hard to break away from sou So there is this
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: sort of a weirdness around, you know, the disson and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: who's willing to to say I'm going to just like,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: you know, the world has to stop. I can't go on,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: you know, living the way that I'm living as long
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: as this thing is happening in the world. I looked
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: at pessimism.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an interesting one. You're just like really pessimist, Like, yeah,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: all right, you you need to have pessimism in order
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: to understand optimism. You know. I used to try to
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: tell my kids that you know, in order to have
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: good days, you have to have bad days. That she
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: used to be how I explained to my you know,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: when they were in their single digits. You know, now
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: they're young adults. But like, in order to understand what
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: a good day is, you have to have bad days.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: That was the simple way to do it. Is that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: the thesis here.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: That's part of it, But it's also that well, first
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: of all, I think people misunderstand pessimism as being you know,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: this as being fatalism, as being this notion that like
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: things will always and from never you know, get worse.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: So what's the difference between pessimism and fatalism.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: So pessimism is just that things will probably get worse.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: So the word probably is doing a lot of work there.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Well, no, not really, because like you know, maybe they
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: won't you know, maybe they won't get worse. But what
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: that opened up for, what that opens up for the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: activeness is a space of action, right, because like if
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: if if you think that things are going to get worse,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: but there is a possibility that they won't, then you're
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: really motivated to act. If you think things are probably
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: going to get better, then yeah, you could be passive
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: the arc of justice is going to bend in the direction.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Why get off my ass to do something? You know,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: if I know that one way or another, climate change
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: will be solved, you.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Know, it's what you say, I'll use. Let me give
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: you a dark version of how I yeah about climate change?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: And I ask people this question, and I'll ask it
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, if in fifty years, well, let's say
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: by the year twenty one hundred, the world's population is
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: three and a half billion, did we survive climate change?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Three and a half billion people did?
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: Like we lost two thirds of the world's population. Right,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: So it is one of those I mean, you know,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: it's like, do I think eventually we'll serve we'll survive it?
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: But how much damage is done? How many people lose
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: their lives? How many? Is that optimism or pessimism?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Well, you're your notion that we're surviving it is. I
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: mean that you have a very clique. You have a
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: distinct idea of what it means to survive, which is.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Well, the species survived, then we've survived.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, species technically survived, right, But the amount of misery
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: that was caused along the way, right now something to
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: contend with. So I mean, you know, if you're a
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: climate activist, you can say to yourself, look, I think
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: that you know, somebody is going to figure this thing out.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: You know, why should I You know, maybe I should,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: I should go out into the street. But like, you know,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: eventually it's going to be okay, or maybe that it's
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: the species will survive one way or the other. But
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: if you are a pessimist, you think humanity is probably
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: going to be wiped out. Uh, your motivation is a
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: little bit higher. It doesn't mean that it will be
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: wiped out. You're a pessimist, and.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: That's why pessimism at least gives you the the ability
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: to come up with a place.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: It's a it's a sobering way of sort of understanding
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: reality and change and how things happen. That's saying like,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: there's actually a great Dutch philosopher contemporary Dutch law for name,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Mara vander Luke, who has an expression that I kind
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: of stole from her. She talks about hopeful pessimism, and
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: hopeful pessimismism is this idea that things will probably get worse,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: but that you need to you need to find hope
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: within that. Within that sort of bubble that opens up,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: you know, in that word probably you know that like you.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: Need to do the good things, like the old John
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: McCain joke, it's always darkest before it goes completely black
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: It's more than like you should do that. You should
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: do the good that you can do right now, and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: maybe not worry about whether or not we're going to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: save humanity because like that's a question that you can't
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: answer in any case. But you know that, like right
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: now there's something that you can do, and that to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: me is is that that's what hopeful pessimism is.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: Now. We talked a little bit about satire and funny,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: but that I mean to me, you know, I've always
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: viewed humor and satire as a way to talk to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: a larger audience. That that's ultimately you know, I think
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: the South Park guys are probably our best satirists, and
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: satirists are different than comedians. Satirists sometimes don't make you
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: laugh right right, you know, but they're going to point
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: they're going to do something so absurd that you're like
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: it takes it back, right, And the South Park boys,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I've always thought, capture that spirit of satire that is uncomfortable, right.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: It's also it's also just like I mean, I use
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: the word reverence a lot. It's like it's just so
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: over the top sometimes, right, I mean talk about South Park.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're very over the top. But it's intentional.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're taking the like, you know, it's not
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: just let's do the King naked, Like, let's do the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: King naked.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll do one that's not even political. I think
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: the remember the human iPad if they that, I don't
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: know how much you watch it, but the idea was,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: what do you mean you didn't you just accepted without
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: reading the terms and conditions. Well, now Apple can use
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: you as the first human iPad. It goes the absurdity.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: But that was the point if like, do you know
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: what you're reading? Right, Well, I.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: Think absurdity is the right word, because there's also and
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: this is actually very very old. This is a very
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: old mode is to flip things upside down to create
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: like such absurd it's a carnivalesque, you know, it's the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: it's the one day a year you know in the
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: Middle Ages where men with dress as women, women as men,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: poor people as rich fuel richeal as poor people, you know,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: throwing the world into disarray in a way that that
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: makes you actually question the taken for granted, you say, well,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: would do things have to be this way? Do we
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: have to have these crazy uh you know contracts that
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: we sign, Like what is that about? Like it's these
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: things that you don't actually think about that you just
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: assume our a natural part of our world. That what
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: humor does is it it deflates that, it says, you know,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: it says, let's look at it from this totally other angle.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: And uh, I mean, you know there was even I
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: was reading in the in the seventeenth century, there were
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: these like posters when when printing press became more popular,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: there were posters of like, you know, the world in
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: which uh you know, cats were chasing mice or like
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: auxs were butchering the butchers, and you know, the authorities
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: would confiscate these because they saw it as threatening the
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: idea that people would do, yeah, that they would have
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: this almost like revolutionary sense of things don't have to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: be in the current order, they can be different.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about your advice about being reckless, right,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: because reckless, I mean this is you know, reckless can backfire. Oh,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: if you do it wrong. Yeah, So why why is
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: it a Why is it an attribute that you think
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: is the mark of a successful DISSI maybe it was
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: a better way.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: Well it was. I mean, you know, that chapter was
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: actually the hardest for me to write because I just
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: felt like I needed to wrestle with this idea of
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: you know, if we're going to take we're going to
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: take this to its ultimate conclusion, that dissonance often you know,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: put their bodies on the line, put their lives on
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: the line in order to make in order to make
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: the injustice that they're trying to illustrate perfectly clear.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: This is the metaphor of handcuffing yourself to the tree
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: that's going to get chopped down. Sure you have to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: chop me down with it, right, yeah?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: Or I mean, you know, you know I have in
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: the chapter I talk about the children in Birmingham, Alabama,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three and the decision, you know, which was
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: a very you know, we don't we see it now
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: with such a successful campaign actually that we don't know
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: that Behind the scenes. King was tormented about this. He said,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: what do you mean put sixty year olds in front
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: of you? Know, dogs and water cannons, even though he
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: knew that what it would do would illustrate, you know,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: his point. He would illustrate the brutality of segregation in
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: that city in a way that nobody could dispute. Nobody
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: with a heart who was watching it could dispute. On
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: the other hand, I mean, they were lucky nobody got hurt,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: but somebody could have very well been hurt. So how
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: do you what is the calculus there? How do you
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: understand when it makes sense and when it doesn't make sense?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Is it a strategy? Do you view reckless and it?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: I mean you have to be strategic with it, because
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: one would argue if it's strategic, it's no longer reckless.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: No, it can be a strategy. I mean, it's certainly
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: a strategy for king. But I think what you have
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: to you have to know, you know, is that it's
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: not about uh, it's not self destruction. That you're not
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: doing it h is kind of a martyrology, you know,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: as a way to that that it's sort of outward focused. Actually,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: the fact that there is a strategy is I would
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: say a good aspect of recklessness, because you know, there
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: aren't people who just become so enmeshed in the moral
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: purpose that they feel that they're pursuing that they lose it,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: they lose track of strategy, and they actually just want
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: to and they set themselves on fire. Right, they would
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: do something like that to prove their point. I don't
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: think that that's always the right thing to do, or
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: maybe ever the right thing to do. But you know,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: another complicated example from that chapter one that I really
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: actually touched me in a real way. It was Navalny,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: who he's mentioned before. You know, he had already been
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: poisoned once by Putin, so nearly killed, was saved when
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: to Germany, and then had to make a decision was
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: he going to go back to Russia? Now, think about
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: how hard that decision is. You know, he, on the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: one hand, if he's going to be true to his
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: cause and actually if he's going to set the example
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: that he wants to set for his people, for Russians,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: he kind of has to go back. But he knows
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: that he's going to.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Die to death's not going to let him live.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: He'll let him, you know, the best case scenario, he's
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: in prison for the next for the rest of his
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: you know, of Putin's reign. And uh, and this is
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: a guy who has kids, he has young kids, he's
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: got a wife. You know, he's a guy full of life.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know, if you'll.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: How would you have judged him if he chose not
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: to go back. I mean, I mean, how much more
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: I could argue, how much more did he have to
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: give to the cause? Right? But he did it anyway, right,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: he had already give it. You almost sacrificed himself. And
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: and and he had every right to say I'm gonna
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: let somebody else take the next hit, or or do.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: What he was doing for Meg you know, I mean
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: he was. I mean, social media was his tool he
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: could have you know, kept it effective a thorn in
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: the side of Putin. But I think that he really
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: understood the need to go back as a kind of
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: Actually he wasn't even you know, when you read his memoir,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it was like in his head,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: But when you read his memoir he talks about it
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: is not even complicated. He said, what what what else
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: could I do? Like, I made a promise to the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: Russian people, And if I have convictions, then I have
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: to follow through my convictions. Otherwise who am I now?
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We can all sort of like dream
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: that we could have such you know, these have such
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: a moral core. But but I think for him, when
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: you ask how I would judge him, it's the question
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: is more how he would judge himself. And I think
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: that he really wouldn't be able to live with himself.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: To go back to that Hannah.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: R End question, Well, he in some ways fits better
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: in the immortal and the idea of that be immortal.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, And I actually come back to him
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: chapter because.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: Because he for me, this is the obi wan kenobe.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: If you strike me down, I become more powerful than
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: you can imagine. Right, That's the great Star Wars line.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: And there is something to that, right, like you know,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: you got to you you kill, you kill one of
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: these leaders, and you actually could end up elevating the cause, yeah,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: in a way that they couldn't do in life.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's sort of what he had accepted.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: I really do. I think he understood that, like he
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: was probably going to die, and that it would serve
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: the purpose of his cause, you know. And uh, And
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's because he you know, when you mentioned
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: the immortal. I think what I was trying to describe
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: in that chapter is this sort of this this this
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: duality that dissonants often have. I mean King had it too,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: which is that they they both are are are sort
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: of operating at this at this higher level of principle
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: and values you could call them. Sometimes those values are
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: religious values. I mean they were for Navalny in some respect,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: they were for King as well. Sometimes it's just like
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: a sense of justice, like a deep, deep sense of justice.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a sense of you know, life, death and
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: the cycles of just how the world works. But they're
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: they're tuned into that, They're tuned into it in a
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: deep way. At the same time that their feet are
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: sort of firmly grounded. So they're trying to do their
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: work here on earth. They're trying to actually, I mean Ivanny,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: you know, had this great religious, sort of virtuous feeling
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: that he was he was being righteous and what he
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: was doing, But he was also talking about the education
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: system in Russia, the corruption. I mean, most of his
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: work was about, you know, looking at how Putin and
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: his circle were, you know, stealing money, enriching themselves. I mean,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: these are very earthly things he was. He was focused
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: on on on the on the reality that he wanted
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: to change, but he was also tapping into the sort
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: of greater righteousness of doing that work. So and you know,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: these aren't unique individuals. I mean, I think I try
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: to establish early on in the book that like I'm
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: looking at them as almost like north stars. You know,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: these are people who live, but will you know, have
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: these qualities. And I'm not I'm not suggesting small significant
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: person that I am that I could you know, wake
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: up tomorrow and become a dissident and act like one.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: But it somehow felt like right to try to understand
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: like what are those qualities, like what actually what actually
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: makes up that personality, because maybe that would give me
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: and readers like a sense of, you know, things to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: strive for.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: So I want to bring this to sort of back
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: to America. Yeah, because on one hand, look, we're not
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: we're not anywhere in the situation that Russians are in.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: But we've had we've seen some co opting of institutions, right,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: whether it's media organizations, universities capitulating to the state. You know,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: maybe it's setting in a lawsuit, maybe it's trying to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: get government funding from being cut. That's obviously not behaving
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: as a dissonance right now if you work at it,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: right if you work at one of those organizations. But
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: are they arms of the state or are they just
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: simply making compromises under pressure that many a good person
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: might make under similar circumstances. I mean, that is what
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: do we do with those folks? Right they it goes
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to the people that didn't want to be Nazis but complied.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: Oh well, this book is for them, Yeah, because no,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I mean that was a big reason why I felt
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: impelled to write this, because I saw that capitulation, and
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: I think, probably like you, I was sort of struck
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: by how quick it happened and how widespread it was.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I'm still so upset. A look, I obviously I care
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: about the press first. That's where you know, the decision
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: to settle the Stephanopolis lawsuit is the single biggest mistake
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: I think that mister Iger has ever made. I fully
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: understand that the CEO of Disney had to make a decision. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: he made a decision that was in the best interests
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: of Disney. Yeah, and it absolutely destroyed I think corporate
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: ownership of media going forward for the foreseeable future. It
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: put a stain on it that is going to be
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: you know. It's look, it's turned into an opportunity for
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: some of us that are now in the independent space,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: but it has made it where it's impossible to ever
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: think about going back because you cannot find yourself being
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: a journalist and feeling And I wonder how many academics
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: feel this way. If you don't believe the institution you
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: work for will fight for your right to do the
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: job for the best of your abilities, then you'd rather
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: be on your own.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think that's absolutely true. I think you know,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: so many of those examples of universities and law firms,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, and people in the federal government who were
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: forced into impossible positions but then decided to just keep
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: their head down, you know, I am.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: And there's good rationales for them to do it. There
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: are people that need to get their funds. There are
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: people that you know, of course, there is paved with
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: good intentions, right, you know that's gonna say.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: But of course there are good reasons. But I'm telling
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: you there are good reasons for people in you know,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: Stalin's Russia to know, you know, to look the other
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: way when much worse things were happening. And and so
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: you then you start to wonder, like where is the line,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: you know, like where is the line where people feel
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: that it's not just uh something that they can you know,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: justify to themselves as Okay, well it's this one time thing,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: and you know it's not gonna have a it's not
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: gonna have a ripple effect. Everyone has to find that
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: line in themselves. And I think that's everyone has to
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: sort of. I think what made me want to think
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: about this question is because I think those people weren't prepared.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: I think there's what people weren't prepared to act in
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: good conscience because We've never been faced with a situation like.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: That, but it's always another country that has this. We
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: believe it. Wow, how did that happen? That happened really fast?
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: How did that happen?
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: Right? Right? And and I and I mean think about
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: when the Ukraine War started and all those people left Russia,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: you know, overnight or some of them did, you know,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: because they said, I just can't be here anymore, you know.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: So I know those people maybe we're more prepared than
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: Americans were to be forced to make more of those
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: kind of moral choices. And so I think, you know,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: I feel sympathy to some extent because I don't think
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: people were prepared, but I think we are now. I
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: think we've learned something over the last year. I think
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: when Ice entered Minneapolis, you know, grants at a different
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: context than being Bob Biger. But I think people were
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: not political people, not lefties, not people you know, you
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: look at the people who sort of took a stand,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: They did feel like they had a choice they had
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: to make. And I think that that is something, maybe
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: something we've learned over the last year and a half,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: that that being a citizen in this country does sometimes
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: demand a hard choice.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: You're getting at something that we went on and I'm
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: going to you know, we're about the same age, our
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: generation sort of everything kept you know, you know, I
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: entered adulthood with the Berlin Wall falling. We won, We
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: had won the argument, right, like, Okay, so boy, this
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: is going to be great. How quickly are we going
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: to be spreading a version of democracy all over the world? Right?
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: And it was really moving in Eastern Europe and it
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: was really moving all over and shoot, you know, I
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: you know, up until about ten years ago, I'd have
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: been convinced China was you know, oh, welcome to having
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: a middle class China. Just trust me. Democracy is coming,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: whether you want it or not. You know, because the
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: middle class has demands. Wherever you have a middle class,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: you're going to have. Uh. You're you're gonna almost have
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: a foce democracy at some point. Uh. And then it
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: didn't happen.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I I I I think that's why, you know,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: And when I when I took about this book with
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: dissidents in other countries or with people just people in
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: other countries, they sort of laugh and they're like, yeah.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: Because it's true. I had to go back to you know,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about an American context, you know, but
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: of course there are differences.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Look, there's King, there's Susan B. Anthony. There's certainly plenty
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: of Macarthy era. You know.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: You know, you think about people on the you know,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: the blacklists, and you know, how do you respond? You know,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: if somebody comes to your to your office and starts
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: asking you to name names, what are you going to do?
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: But that was before long before us. You know, that
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: was not the world that we grew up.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: That was our previous edit. We took care of that, right,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: you know, we we sort of wiped all that clean,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: you know, with with the whole you know, the bacle
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: of Vietnam and Watergate. We realized, oh, you can't can't
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: do that anymore, right and right? Yet Nope, and.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: That And I think the thing that I hadn't really
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: fully contended with in terms of what that meant for us,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: for our generation and for people who kind of come
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: came up when we did, is the individual aspect of
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: like the choice that it would sort of impose. And
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: I keep using this for choice, but I think that's
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: what felt new to me, was like, Oh, I have
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: to actually decide what my relationship is to this government,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: uh and to this and to this society and to
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: the people around me. Am I going to care when
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: something happens to my to my neighbors? Am I going
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: to do something about it? I haven't actually ever been
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: forced into that position before, you know, so I I think, uh,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: I think understanding it at the individual level is important
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: for people to well.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things I I remember my first
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: trip to Israel was in the early two thousands, two
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: thousand and four, two thousand and five. And my immediate
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: takeaway was everybody here understands that citizenship is active, it's work.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: And it was the and I realized, and this was
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: on had piggybacked. I'd done a trip to Cuba about
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: the year or two earlier, and where I understood how
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: how the government oppression works when I saw kids coming
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: home with bread to bring to mom and dad, to
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: reinforce the nature that the state provided mom and dad
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't provide. Right, So you started to see and it
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: was just sometimes you have to just as you know.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: It made me a better reporter to be around and
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: visually you understand these things. And I realized in our
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: country we had become passive citizens. Right now, there is
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: an upside to the Trump era. It's been the highest
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: votter turnout we've had in one hundred years. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: And I attributed to when you when you when the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: stakes are higher, we more people get engaged, and maybe
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: that's a net positive in the medium.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's it's funnier. The thing that's
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: reminding me of is a is the day after Trump's
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: first win, I had left two little girls who were
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: you know, like six and nine then or somewhere around
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: those ages, you know, and they, like a lot of us,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: they went to bed thinking that they were going to
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: wake up and see the first woman.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: First girl president that was my daughter. My daughter was well,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: I thank you, and she was in tears. What do
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: you mean we don't have a woman president?
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: And they said, well, I said, well, don't worry. I'll
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: wake you up at night so you could see, you know,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: it's enough. And in the morning they came to me
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: and they were like in tears, and they were and
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: and and I think the only thing that I could
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: pull out of that was also because like you know,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: we'd come to think of Trump as this completely unanged
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: character who you know, and for them, in their young minds,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: what would it mean to have somebody, you know, who
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: was president who acted like the way that they had
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: you come to understand he was acted? And I said,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: the metaphor, the only metaphor I could grab, although it's
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: kind of a horrible metaphors, I said, you know, think
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: of it. We were like we were sitting in the
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: backseat of a car and there was the president who
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: was driving the car, and we kind of trusted that, like,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: you know, we didn't agree with him always, but that
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: he would basically you know, you know, do you know,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: keep keep keep his eyes on the road, you know,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: and get us there and get us to where we
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: need to go, and we could kind of relax in
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: the back seat and have conversations amongst ourselves. I was like, well,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: that's not the case. Now we have to sit up
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: in our seats. We have to watch the driver. We
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: have to make sure that he's not hitting the potholes,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: and we have to I mean, it's kind of a
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: terrifying metaphor.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: No, I have often It's funny, I have, I have
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: used that metaphor of saying, if America were a vehicle,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: we'd be led by a drunk driver, right, which is
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: like he kind of knows the direction to go, but
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: he might swerve into crazy places or fall asleep all
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: asleep at the wheel. You have no idea where we're headed.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: And it's sort of no, I've I've but that metaphor
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: myself or analogy or whatever whatever is the correct FORMU.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: But yeah, but I agree that I think I think
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: that I have seen it in my own sort of
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: social world, and and I do think, you know, to
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: come back to things like no King's Day or Minneapolis.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: I think we've actually become more sophisticated as a country
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: when it comes to protest. I think that, you know,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: we've something I've seen in Trump two point zero is that,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we don't believe that we should just have
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: like the one big, massive demonstration, you know, in Washington
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: and then it's over. It's this notion that we need
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: to build networks of people who are engaged and involved
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: doing like what those folks are doing in Hungary, you know,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: finding ways to connect and care about local issues. You know,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying this is happening perfectly, but I think
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: that that is the path towards that more engaged citizenship
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: is to sort of understand that it's it's a slow
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: process of connecting way.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: This is the most important lesson to take away from
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: your book, I believe, And it happens to dovetail with
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: a project that I'm involved in. It it's about some
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: boring electoral reform. When I say boring, right, it's not
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: the sexiest thing. But you know, there's sort of there
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: are things you can deal with now, and then there's
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: things you've got to deal with that will make things better.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: In the next thirty years. But it's going to take time,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: and it may be you have to start one state here,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: then maybe you get to hear and then maybe a
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: party adopts it, or maybe there's this and is that?
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: How do you? And there isn't a straight line to success.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: It is it's plotting along. It's plotting along. It seems
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: hopeless until it isn't right. And in fact, you may
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: not live for when it happens. You may die before
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: it happens.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: That's pessimism, chuck.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: But you still believe it. It's going to happen. I
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: just may not be here to see it.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, got it.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: I think the hardest thing because Americans want change yesterday
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: right right, and in fact, we want change so badly
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: we keep voting for it. We vote this century whichever
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: party is the new is running on Hey, we're not
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: them in power. We're different. They won't they're winning rights.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: It's almost like it's a bit, you know, and at
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: some point the voter is going to say, well, wait
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: a minute, we're now windshield wipers and neither one of
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: you get it, and maybe we have to wear ourselves out.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: And you know that's what happened in the mid nineteenth century,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: and finally a third party came along named the Republican Party,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: and Lincoln and Loan behold here we are. You know,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: maybe that's what it is. I don't know. But one
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: of the things you preach in this book, but more
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: so in your previous book, is that it takes time.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm and and that's hard in our
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: world today because you know, there is this unfortunate constant
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: speeding up and a constant search for you know, immediate
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: gratification and metrics, and you know, there is there is
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: a countervailing force to this, to the to this quiet,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: slow process that is so hard to challenge. You have
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: to do it deliberatively. You have to do it, you know, consciously.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: And it's but it's the I the only thing that works,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: you know, otherwise you do get exactly what you're describing.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: It is sort of like sea sawing that appeals to
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: our basest instincts. You know that we we want the
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: thing that we want right now, and then okay, we
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: want the opposite thing, and then you know, and and
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: what I see, I mean, I'm not saying anything that's
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: that new, you know, but when when I see social
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: media and the sort of what what social media sort
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: of biases us towards in terms of the way we communicate.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: That's the thing that worries me the most because I
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: feel like it robs us of that slow, deliberate process
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: which which we need to all get on the same
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: page to figure out how to meet the bigger challenges.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: But yeah, that is I think that is the thing.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: Somebody reading your book, let me get you out of
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: here in this Somebody reading your book or listening to
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: this interview. Yeah, they're a mid level staffer. Maybe they're
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: in a government agency. They maybe they serve in the military.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe they work at a university, maybe they work at
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: a major news organization. What should they learn from your book?
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: If they want to do something but they're not sure
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: what to do?
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: I think. I think first, if they're putt in a
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: position that they feel gives them that moral nausea, sit
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: with the moral nausea, don't you know toward of swipe
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: it away or pretend that it's not something that's actually
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: bossed doing it?
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: Second, I would say, understand that you have a choice
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: that you know you don't have to conform and and
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: really ask yourself the question, that essential question. Can I
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: live with myself if I'm forced to do something that
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: violates some sort of core principle that I have, or
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: something that's going to hurt other people, or something that
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: you know that that is going to make me feel
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: like I have given up some essential agency that I
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: think that I should have as a human being in
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: this world. So live with that choice, ste with the uncomfortableness,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: live with the choice, and then make a choice. And
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: I say this, even if the choice is that you've
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: decided not to do anything, understand it as a choice.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: You understand way out. Okay, Well, on the one end,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: I have my family and my kids and my livelihood,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: and I really can't sacrifice that because it's going to
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: be hurting them, and hurting them is you know I
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: would I would rather not hurt them, you know, as
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: opposed to sort of take a stand you know that
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: I need to take.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean it goes to the Navaalney exercise
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: that we just did, right, which is which is he'd
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: ha gotten a zero criticism for making the choice of
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: that conduct. Yeah, yeah, he'd already given a lot. So
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: and then I guess there's no shame. There's no shame
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: in that, but you do have to live with it.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: And the third thing, and this was the hardest actually
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: to sort of wrap my own head around, is like
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: the notion that you need to act for its own
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: sake because you think it's the right thing to do
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: and not because of the result that it will bring.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: That's hard. Like it's hard to say I'm going to
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: act on behalf of let's say, climate change because it
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: brought it up earlier, even though I think that probably
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: the world is gonna warm by two degrees and we're
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: all gonna, you know, die, Like, I still need to
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: do the thing that I think is the right thing
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: to do. So that that not being able, That that
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: ability to tell yourself that you're acting because you know
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: that it's the right thing to do and not because
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: of the of you know, what it will tangibly, the
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: tangible metrics is is something that's important to sort of accept,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: but to just be positive about it. I also want
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: to say that when I talk about those moral choices,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: they're burdens obviously, Like it's a burden to open the
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: newspaper and to see a dying child and to say
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: oh shit, Now I have to actually do something about it. Right.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: But and this I kind of took from Jean Paul Sartre,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: or the French philosopher. He talks about moral choices as
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: being creative acts. This is the substance from which our
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: lives are made. Are these acts? Are these choices, these
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: decisions that we make about how we're to live our life?
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: You know, that mid level person you're talking about, he's
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: going to be you know, he's going to look back
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: at his life in his eighties and he's going to remember.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: He's going to remember that moment where he was asked to,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: you know, to do a thing that just violated every
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: sense of sort of conscience that he has, and it's
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: not going to make him feel good about the kind
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: of life that he lived.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Well, I will say that I said this to others.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: Any every dying person I've ever been around, never talks
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: about the things they did, yeah, always talk about the
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: things they didn't do.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: So gall Look man, it's uh. No one's saying this
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: was easy reading. But it was. And I don't mean
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: that like it wasn't well written. It's not that, but please, no,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: what I mean it is it's a it's a good read,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: but it it may it it forced, It forces your
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: own reckoning as you're reading. Yeah, that's all because I
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: think that's the and that's the point. Put yourself on. Understand,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: here's some here's some people in similar situations, or here's
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: people that and here's how they handled it, and here's
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: where they're and look, you have the everybody you profiled
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: in some ways were successful. The question is did they
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: know they were successful in the moment. That's true, that
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: they were a choice. And I think the answer is
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: now none of them did right.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they still did it.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they still did it. Well, congrats. The book
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: came out this month.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: Right, it's coming out on the twenty twenty.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: First, Yes, people will be hearing this just before it
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: comes out, so it'll be perfect, excellent how to be
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a dissident in an election year. But is it one
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: of the rules for radicals? Is this an updated version?
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, you like the comparison or do you not
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: like the comparisons?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: I like the comparison. I thought that. I think that
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: book is a fantastic look radical sort of gives it
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: a I remember I always remember Nute Gang Rich used
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: to throw around Saul Lensky's.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Name with this kind of the right loves so I
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: think the right used more Sololensky advice than the left
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: ever did. Right, that's all right, yeah.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: Right, No, I mean that that book is all about
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: preparing the ground. It's about uh, not looking for easy victories.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: I mean he was Solinsky was responding to Vietnam War protests,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: and he thought, you've gotten You're at the last act.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: You gotta do act one and two. You got to like,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: you got to lead up to it. Yeah.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: Well, anyway, well congrats and look now your voice will
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: get better for the rest of it. Thank you, thank you.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: Go all right.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a little extra ass chuck here
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: because I don't have a ton a ton to say
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: about the sports world. I wish I had a lot
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: of thoughts about the playing games. By the way, I
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: don't understand why both I don't understand why they did
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: one nine ten on Tuesday versus ten, and then one
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: nine versus ten on Wednesday, and then seven versus eight
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday and one seven. Shouldn't the nine through tens
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: both be on Wednesday? Shouldn't they get the least amount
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: of rest. Right, shouldn't the seven seven eights both be
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday? It just seems like that you ought to
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: get some advantage if you're seeded seven and eight over
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: those that are seated nine and ten. But to me,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're the winner of that Tuesday nine ten,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: like Charlotte is, they're getting plenty of rest before they
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: have to face they they're weirdly going to get more rest.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: I guess you can say, well, they won their game,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: but the eight seed, right, I think? You know? Anyway, Look,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure this playing stuff is helping. Right. It
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: was supposed to be an anti tanking measure and let's
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: just say didn't work, now, did it? I don't I
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: think adding playoff teams helps. I'm pretty convinced if they
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: shrank the playoff pool, they shrank the number of teams
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: that could make the playoffs, more owners would want to
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: try to get into because the playoff revenue is important
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: cash to those owners, And I think if you if
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: that was the reward, you know, I was thinking about
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: watching when I was watching the Master's Tournament. How you
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: know John Rahm still cared where he finished because every
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: place you finish is a little bit more money, right
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: if you the higher up on the leaderboard that you finish.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: Is there a is there some sort of financial reward
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: structure that you qualify for? Right? It used to be
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: just playoff money. And that's why I wonder if they
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: made it too easy to get into the playoffs. With
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: now twenty of the thirty teams get into the playoffs,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: they actually put it down to six in each conference,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: would you have then more owners? Really, you know, you
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: suddenly have more people caring, you know, that were sitting
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: in that seven, eight, nine, ten area. They would actually
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: desperately would be trying to play hard to see if
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: they can get into the six slots so they can
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: get into the playoffs, because there's a pretty good bonus
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: for that. So, but good luck trying to shrink playoffs right,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: too much TV revenue? All right, let's do some questions,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: ask Chuck. This one comes from Braddy says, greeting from
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: Grand Rapids. Appreciate how engage with listening questions? Wait, I've
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: elready done that question, didn't I It was a question
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: about news sources for the average person trying to stay informed.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: That's what I thought. Okay, yep, all right, all right,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: all right. This first question comes from a TK show listener.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: It's Pete, and he writes, heard you last week say
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: you take the Georgia and Arizona senators over the field
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: for VP in twenty twenty eight. I know, adding two
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: more kind of takes adding two more kind of takes
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: away the field aspect. But shouldn't Whitmer and Slockin be
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: on the list as well? Seems just as likely that
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: a male nominee would want a female nominee from one
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: of the most important swing states. So if you add
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: those two in, you pretty much have who would be
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: the pick let She's a repeat, that's interesting. So essentially
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: what you're saying is if now, I think you're just
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: going to get crappier odds right if you did that.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: But what you're saying is that the VP nominee is
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: going to be one of the following six people Diego
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: or Kelly from Arizona Asafwer, Warnock from Georgia, Whitmer, Slockin
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: for Michigan. It's probably a pretty fair call if you
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: if you put it in those terms, and I see
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: what you did there, there's some people that think it's
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: going to be an all mail ticket, that you're not
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: going to see some gender diversity here. I you know,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: I I do think that if it's a male nominee,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: that it's likely to have a woman running eight. Not
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent guaranteed, but I think it would be.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: I think it would. I certainly think there would be
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: plenty of grumbling if there wasn't on that front. But
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: you're right though, too that once you add those six,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: like who's left, right, So sure add them in. But
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: I think now we're looking at like a minus two
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: hundred if you're if you're doing this under under gambling
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: terms there anyway, now here's of those six, none of them
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: they are the likelihood any of them end up at
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: the top of the ticket. I'm kind of bearish on
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: any senator ending up at the top of the ticket.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: And Whitmer seems to be not wanting to do this.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I think Ruben Diego has an
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: Eric Swallwell problem. And you know who thinks Rubin Diego
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: has an Eric Swallwell problem, Rubin Diego, because you don't
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: do that incredibly talkative presser and throw Swawell under the
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: bust as fast and as hard, and he got on
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: the bus and he reversed, and he drove over him
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: and did all these things. If you're not worried about
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: something on that front, So anyway, let's just say that's
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: something I'm keeping an eye on. Next question Ted from Cincinnati.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: Here he says, longtime listener, first time rid. Please don't
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: hold it against me that my wife is and always
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: has been a huge Indiana football fan, long long before
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: it was cool. All right, kudos Star. Then my question
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: is about Trump the showman. Like many Americans, I watched
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: transfixed by the amazing launch mission and safe return of
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: the Artemis two mission. To be perfectly honest, I watched
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of it with tears in my eyes. Throughout
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: I kept expecting Trump to use it as this, Hey
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: look over here. He did this for the recent rescue
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: of the down pilots and weapons specialists, and it probably
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: got him a day or two of okay coverage. But
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: out on this just some truths but no pressure pressers
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: or any of the things he normally does to say, man,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: I made this great thing greater. Any thoughts on why
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: go reds go Savers? Ted? K Yes, because we're at war.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: I mean I think it was the timing, because you're
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: absolutely right. I think under almost any other circumstance, he
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: would have tried to find a way to be there
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: right to meet the astronauts. It was perfect, by the way.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: I watched every second of it too, you know, it
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: was interesting. Netflix carried the Nassave feed and I was
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: mesmerized by it. We ended up we I you know,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: it was up again the Nats game, and we didn't
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: watch much of the Nats game. We watched the entire thing,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, and they had a correspondent on the USS,
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: John P. Murtha, And you know, I was waiting for
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: them to tell me who John Mirtha was. I know
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: who John Martha was, but I wanted them to tell
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: the audience. It's a reminder that members of Congress, once
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: you become Armed Services Chair and you deliver a lot
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: of money the Pentagon, you might get you might get
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: a ship named after you. And let's just say John Murtha,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: who was a marine, did get a ship named But
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: yet there was something pure about it, right, And let
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: me just say, I'm kind of thankful Trump didn't insert
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: himself in it, like like I'm I want to get
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: excited about America two fifty, and he is making it
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: hard to get excited about America two fifty because he's
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: trying to make it all about himself. And it's like,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to let him stand in
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: the way of my love for our country, but he
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: makes it very difficult. He makes it really hard not
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: to love my country, but he makes it really hard
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: to express it publicly because he turned again. He's he's
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: bad for the brand. As I discussed at the beginning
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: of this podcast, he's terrible for the brand. And thankfully
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: for NASA, he didn't insert himself. By the way, during
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: this broadcast, they had, like I said, they had a
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: correspondent that was on the ship that was going to
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: have the astronauts in, and the NASA administrator, Jacob I
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: think his name is Jacob isaacman Man. He just exuded competence, right.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: This was the person that I guess used to be
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: part of SpaceX, sort of an Elon Musky. Trump would
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: canned him at one point, and then I think everybody said, no, no, no,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: this guy's really competent. What are you doing? Please bring
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: him back at there was something there was he really
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you just and again it's it's an
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: interview with somebody who may actually technically work for Isaacman.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: But he he came across competent without being showboat. He
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: was like he did things like made sure the astronauts
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: were getting the credit, make sure that everybody who were
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was everything that you want and a
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: good leader, you know, he certainly was. He checked all
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: the boxes I was looking that I'd be looking for
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: in a moment like that. So but I think Ted
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: it's simply just, you know, not a good look when
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: you're in the middle of a war and you're in
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: the middle of negotiations. Right, it wasn't just the middle
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: of a war at that point. Vance is on his
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: way to Pakistan at that time. Next question. During the
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: recurring discussions of federal pardons, one aspect keeps nagging at me,
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: regardless of who decides or agrees confirms. Isn't there something
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: wrong with preemptive pardons. I don't understand why the whole
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: pardon process shouldn't begin after conviction and sentencing. Am I
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: missing something? Brian in Orington, Virginia, Yeah, I don't. I
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: you know, we have we tested the premise of a
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: preemptive pardon right as somebody tried to execute it. I
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: think that's what you know, we're sort of getting a
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: little bit. I don't think it's I think it's apples
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: to pairs, not quite apples to oranges. And that is
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: the the January sixth pipe bomber. And there's some questions
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: about whether the blanket pardon covers him and whether he
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: can't get charged. And then there's some question, well was
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: it about for actions in January six and if he
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: planted the bombs on January fifth, then the pardon isn't there.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: So but look, you're you're right, and I could. I
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: don't know if we've really constitutionally tested this premise of
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: where a preemptive pardon would would hold up in court. Hey,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: who knows. Maybe Hunter Biden, James Biden right right now.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: The folks at the preemptive pardons I think are Fauci.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: I think Liz Cheney took one. I'm not one hundred
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: percent sure. I think Fauci took one. I think Cheney
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: took one. I don't think so. I think I think
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: it was just simply to prevent him from from doing charges.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: And then of course he gave a bunch to his family,
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: but again, we haven't tested it. I'm not sure. Look,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm questioning why we had the whole thing there
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: in the first place. What Why was an individual given
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: this power? Why isn't it a board the way it
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: is in many states? All right, next question, apologies if
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: you've talked about this on your show today, but I
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: would love to get your take on the latest Massy
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: polling showing him up quite a bit on Trump's mega hopeful.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: Is this the damn that, if broken, really spells the
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: end for Trump? And how much will this race become
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: a focus for Trump over the next forty days. If
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: Republicans find that they can be successful in opposing Trump,
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: and worse for Trump, possibly even more successful in opposing
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: Trump then agreeing with him, then this must be his
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: biggest threat. Thanks Joe in Texas. PS, love your podcast,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: loved you on MTP and thank you for dedicating your
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: life to holding the powerful to account. Oh man, thank
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: you for all those thank yous. Fourth pillar is the
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: most important. This is my first note to you. My
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: next won't be weighed down by all the platitudes. Joe,
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: fair enough, you can just fire away with a question,
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: what did Rush Limbo used to call it? Just dittos
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: Megadidto's right. I don't want to emulate limbab on that front,
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: but we come up with something. You can give me
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: the CT salute, right, which is t K salute if
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you know well, I do think that Donald
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: Trump believes that he's got to you know, the reason
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: he involves himself in these primaries is to make it
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: clear that what he says goes, and when somebody steps
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: out of line, he's gotta he's got to prove that
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: there's consequences for stepping out of line. Right, But I
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: guess i'd caution on on just all things to say
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: to Kentucky. I think, you know, look at the Kentucky
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Republicans are the ones that Trump has had the hardest
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: time taming, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Thomas Massey, even in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: some cases Hal Rogers, who keeps his head down. So
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I just the Kentucky electorate is is is
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: pretty discerning, right. This is an electorate that will elect
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: Republicans up and down the ballot, and they also elect
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: Andy Basher, right, So I just I will if it
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: were another state.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: I might, I might say let's let's let's overreact here
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit and say, hey, this is the beginning.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: But I also think that we're, you know, we're we're
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: going to look back and say this presidency ended a couple,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: you know, a few months ago, and you know, he's
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: just got to play out the term. I mean, I
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: I do think his ability to make the weather politically
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: inside his own party is still there, but is not
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: as is not as good as it once was. And look,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: a massy win is pretty damaging to Trump. It will be,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: it will be, and it will make him nuts. And
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: that's the other thing, right, It's it's going to become
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: imaging because Donald Trump will let it bother him. This
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: goes back to the point I made earlier in this
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: time he goes out of his way to continue to
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: have fights where the best, you know, sometimes you walk away,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: but he's never known how to walk away. He just
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: is never known how to walk away unless it's to
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: pay a contractor. All right, Michael from Omahall right, it's
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: curious to hear your thoughts on the increased calls for
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: expulsion of members from Congress relative to the historical norm
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: for a role where each member faces the voters every
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: two years. I'm surprised there isn't more deference to the
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: democratic process. I'm with you, Michael. In addition to Santos,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, the embattled members up for expulsion
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: either have announced their resignation or will likely lose reelection.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: Why do you think this is being used born more
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: as a threat to force members out? Is it just
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: that many members now are more shameless and brazen when
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: nudge to quietly resign. Thanks, Look, I just think you
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: have I guess I view this moment as Epstein fallout, right,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: you know that it was so many members of the
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: House have been so you know, have have been so right,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: you know, self righteous about the Epstein files, and deservedly.
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not you know, I'm not saying it to be
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: critical using the phrase self righteous, just they have been.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: So if if you're going to be, then you better
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: hold your own accountable. Right. So, I think if if
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: we didn't have the Epstein file, the backle that we've had,
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: and the whole and the whole fight right for the
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: two hundred and eighteen votes and sort of forcing Congress
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: to vote on this and making this such a huge issue. Right,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: Let's say let's say this is not an you know,
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: let's say you know, somehow we're let's say we're we're
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: no longer on this dumb timeline that we're all living on,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: and we're on this other timeline and where there is
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: no Epstein files or something like this, but we still
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: have all these men behaving badly. They're not exploded. You
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have this expulsion moment. So I think this is
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: this is sort of in the aftermath of Epstein. All right,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: last question for the weekend. Hello, Chuck, just started listening
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: to the podcast and love it. Well, thank you. I
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: was thinking about the Trump's pure hatred of Obama. Could
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: the Iranians just say we will go back to that
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: when Trump says no, wouldn't that just put even more
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: of the world against Trump? David, Well, No, remember what
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: Trump's going to do. I mean, it is going to
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: be the Iran nuclear deal that Obama and John Kerry negotiated,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: and he's just going to slap another name on it.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe he gets one more year, two more years of
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: the moratorium on enriching uranium. But if you know, he's
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: he's in a box, and he's got to get out
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: of it, and I think he wants to get out
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: of it before he meets with She in China in May.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: And I'm just checking the calendar here. It's April sixteenth,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: which means Mace coming up pretty quickly. So, you know,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: I suspect this weekend that they don't have a deal,
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: but they start that what we get is some sort
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: of agreement to begin a new round of of long
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: term negotiations. Right, so they won't necessarily say they're extending
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: the ceasefire, but they will somehow do something. There'll be
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: some extension of the seasfire. Maybe they won't call it
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: extending the seasfire. Maybe it's a we're beginning, you know,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: we're going to start writing the long term. You know,
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: we've agreed to a long term deal. Right, but they
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: won't even tell us anywhere from five to twenty five years, right,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: There'll be some general sense. But you know, Trump is
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is why he's not very good at
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: making deals. He is. The Iranians know he's desperate to
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: make a deal, which is why he did, you know,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: which which is why he he had to go find
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: some leverage in some form, which is why he shut
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: down the straight But ultimately he wants a deal. The
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: Iranians know he wants a deal. And the fact that
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: I go back to what I said the other day,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that they leaked out that both sides offered
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: one offered five year moratorium, another offer twenty year moratorium
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: on enrichment. Well, the Iranian nuclear deal I think had
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: had ten years in there. We're going to get to
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: somewhere between twelve and fifteen, and they're going to call
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: it a day. And he's going to claim he's this
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: incredible deal maker when all he had to do was
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: never tear up the deal in the first place. But again,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: he's got to go out of his way to somehow
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: make this harder on all of us and somehow make
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: this worse. Anyway, David, with that, I'm going to put
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: a pin in it. I will see you in seventy
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: two hours or sooner happens. Thanks for listening, don't forget
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: to like and subscribe, Appreciate it. We'll see you Monday.