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Speaker 1: Also media.

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Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that

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Speaker 2: is just disastrously hungover. Right now, I am. I am

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Speaker 2: not doing well everybody. It is the day after or

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Speaker 2: around my birthday. Happened at some point in the last

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Speaker 2: forty eight hours or perhaps right now. Hello Dave, how

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Speaker 2: are you doing?

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Speaker 3: Woo?

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Speaker 1: Could I read the text message you set me at

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Speaker 1: four or five of the morning. Yeah, I have alarms,

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Speaker 1: but if they don't wake me, you can call me.

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Speaker 1: You not spelled out like you normally do, which was

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Speaker 1: my favorite part.

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Speaker 3: Was like, ewe you call.

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Speaker 2: We did just have another U yesterday, so that would

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Speaker 2: make sense.

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Speaker 3: I can't believe it was your birthday. Happy birthday, lovely Dave.

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Speaker 2: It was a birthday until I had to wake up.

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Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean that's yeah, it's life, man, you know,

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Speaker 3: just pummeling, just pummeling us.

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Speaker 2: But HiT's keep coming.

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Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm going to celebrate today, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Just to say I'm really glad you were born.

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Speaker 2: Good job, thank you. If anyone at home wants to

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Speaker 2: celebrate my birthday, just uh, I don't know, send me

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Speaker 2: some of your fingernails. Fingernails, I want as many fingers,

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Speaker 2: No you're right. Someone will do that. Someone will do that.

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Speaker 2: We probably shouldn't, Dave.

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Speaker 3: Yeah it bell. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah here hi co co host co impresario of

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Speaker 2: the Gamefully Unemployed network network, Mark my former co worker

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Speaker 2: at cracked dot com. Uh man about town at some

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Speaker 2: more news. How are you doing today, Dave?

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Speaker 3: I'm good. I'm living the dream. I'm wheeling and dealing.

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Speaker 3: I'm uh, I gotta figure out. I got to schedule colonoscopy.

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Speaker 2: Ooh, you're doting that just doing you.

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Speaker 3: Know, just doing the things, you know, just just live

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Speaker 3: in it, living life.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, that's good. You know, I uh do

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Speaker 2: you have? Is this a recreational colonoscopy or a necessary one?

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Speaker 3: It? Can it be both? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Okay, that's fair ye fair enough. I know.

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Speaker 3: I mean I probably have nothing wrong with me. I

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Speaker 3: just uh, you know, I'm hitting forty. I I have

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Speaker 3: like a slight family history. And and I talked to

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Speaker 3: my my. I got a new I got a new doctor,

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Speaker 3: and I was like, what about them colonoscopies? And They're like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: let's do it. Let's fucking do it. And then we're

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Speaker 3: we're doing it, doing a colonoscopy. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 3: exciting stuff. You know.

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Speaker 2: Well, I have not had a colonoscopy yet, although soon.

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Speaker 2: But you know, what is the the moral equivalent of

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Speaker 2: having a camera shoved up your ass?

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Speaker 3: Ooh what?

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Speaker 2: Living in the United States? Uh? In an election twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty four. And a big part of why it feels

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Speaker 2: that way is because of a little concept that you

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Speaker 2: might be aware of, Dave, the think tank? Ooh yeah,

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Speaker 2: what do you know about the think tank as a concept?

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Speaker 3: I mean I always picture like a SeaWorld style tank

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Speaker 3: filled with brine and just a giant floating brain that

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Speaker 3: a group of scientists sort of circle around, and that

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Speaker 3: brain is hooked up to computers and then the data

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Speaker 3: gets printed out, and they take that data and then

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Speaker 3: they use it or ignore it, and then they just

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Speaker 3: do whatever they want to do politically.

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Speaker 2: Wow, it's it's amazing. That's nearly the opposite of what

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Speaker 2: it really is. So what a think take really is

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Speaker 2: is a way in which to generate paper, and then

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Speaker 2: that paper convinces journalists that your policies are real policies,

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Speaker 2: and then you take over the Supreme Court. Right now,

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Speaker 2: I know this is going to sound convoluted. We're talking

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Speaker 2: about how the Republican Party kind of won and specifically

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Speaker 2: how they turned around the situation that existed in this

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Speaker 2: country in the United States, So we don't talk about much.

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Speaker 2: It's very especially because on the right there's this need

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Speaker 2: to believe that the fifties and sixties were this like

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Speaker 2: era where everything was better and like the whole country

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Speaker 2: was more conservative. And then there's this need among liberals

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Speaker 2: on the left to believe that like they have kind

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Speaker 2: of been ascendant lately and sort of the last couple

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Speaker 2: of years of resurgent right wing stuff has been a

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Speaker 2: severe disruption of the norm. And neither of this is

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Speaker 2: really accurate because the reality of the situation is that

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Speaker 2: in the fifties and sixties, basically any commentator who was

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Speaker 2: looking at it honestly would have told you that, like, well,

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Speaker 2: liberalism has clearly won, and we talk about liberalism, I'm

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Speaker 2: not talking about, like what the way we kind of

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Speaker 2: talk about liberals today, or the way liberals often like

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Speaker 2: to see themselves as progressives. I'm talking about like an

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Speaker 2: economic and kind of social set of political beliefs that

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Speaker 2: was the dominant way in which people viewed politics by

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Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, liberal economic policy and social orthodoxy reigned

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Speaker 2: supreme in the post war era, and it was it

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Speaker 2: was like it had such a degree of capture of

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Speaker 2: the system that literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in nineteen

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Speaker 2: fifty in the United States at this time liberalism is

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Speaker 2: not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition.

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Speaker 2: He claimed, there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in

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Speaker 2: general circulation only And I love this term irritable mental

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Speaker 2: gestures which seek to resemble ideas. Now a bunch of

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Speaker 2: people are going to be like thinking about all the

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Speaker 2: fucked up shit that they knew the government was doing

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Speaker 2: in the fifties and sixties, like overthrowing governments in Latin

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Speaker 2: America and getting it Vietnam, and being like, well, how

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Speaker 2: can you say that liberalism was dominant in this period?

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Speaker 2: And I can say that because, like what it was

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Speaker 2: liberals doing a lot of that, right, Like it was

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Speaker 2: JFK who got our asses into Vietnam, and LBJ the

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Speaker 2: great society guy, who accelerated it.

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Speaker 3: So I'm not, yeah, right, And like, I don't know

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Speaker 3: what's considered liberal or leftists, Yeah, you know, fifty.

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Speaker 2: Years not leftist, Yeah yeah, But it's.

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Speaker 3: Always going to be different, right, Like what you know,

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Speaker 3: I I you look at Star Trek, which is considered

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Speaker 3: pretty progressive, but then you go and look at TG

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Speaker 3: and you're like, man, they're almost there, but they still

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Speaker 3: don't quite you know, like I don't know.

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Speaker 2: They wouldn't let Ryker kiss a dude, right, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: exactly like he wanted to. Jonathan Frakes was in of course.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he he fucked everything and that My

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Speaker 3: favorite is the non binary aliens.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, where.

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Speaker 3: He immediately like upon meeting them, is like, oh, I

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Speaker 3: have to fuck one of these. I don't care which

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Speaker 3: I got to check off this box.

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Speaker 2: Mm hmm, poor Reich. But yeah, so when we're talking

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Speaker 2: about this, we're talking about the idea that like, and

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Speaker 2: it makes some sense if you think about like what

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Speaker 2: happened to the right is as a result of World

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Speaker 2: War two. Both like in the pre war period, you

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Speaker 2: have this kind of like isolationist, reactionary strain that really

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Speaker 2: has to retreat because we go to war with the

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Speaker 2: Nazis and they're like, oh shit, we have to we

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Speaker 2: have to get very careful about how we talk about

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Speaker 2: some of the things we believe. Suddenly so it's it's

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Speaker 2: just this this very like fundamentally different period. And one

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Speaker 2: of the few things that is kind of similar in

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Speaker 2: sort of how we look at liberalism from then to

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Speaker 2: now is that it was it was, and actually much

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Speaker 2: more so back then, defined by this kind of embrace

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Speaker 2: of public spending and huge public works projects, right, that

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Speaker 2: was pretty universally accepted as what the government ought to

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Speaker 2: be doing, to the point where I can look at

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Speaker 2: like Dwight D. Eisenhower, famous Republican president, builds a massive

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Speaker 2: interstate high system, right, which is not a thing that

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Speaker 2: you would you would get a Republican supporting today, like

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Speaker 2: a public's works project on that scale. It's it's kind

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Speaker 2: of inconceivable now. But that's what I'm talking about when

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Speaker 2: I'm talking about how like people, a lot of people

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Speaker 2: in public policy at the time were like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 2: this kind of liberal trend towards what the role of

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Speaker 2: the state should be in society has clearly won, and

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Speaker 2: there's not really any other game in town.

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Speaker 3: It's funny you should talk frame it this way because

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Speaker 3: I've actually I've talked about this with friends and stuff before,

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Speaker 3: and like people always frame it kind of not like, oh,

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Speaker 3: you know how they used to be liberal. It's more

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Speaker 3: of like, you know how what's considered quote unquote leftists

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Speaker 3: or liberal used to just be the norm. Yeah. It's like,

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Speaker 3: you know, we used to fix our highways up and

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Speaker 3: that wasn't seen as a political thing. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 3: just it was just a thing you have to do

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Speaker 3: when you run a government. Like would you would you

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Speaker 3: agree with that or would you say that they were

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Speaker 3: they were? It was seen at the time as very

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Speaker 3: liberal because I feel like these are things that other

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Speaker 3: kind do too, Yeah, that aren't seen as political leaning

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Speaker 3: at all.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And part of the story today and why we

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Speaker 2: have think tanks is to make all that seem more

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Speaker 2: political than it used to. But it's also just a

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Speaker 2: matter of like when you're when you're looking back to

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Speaker 2: that period of time, you're looking at a period of

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Speaker 2: time in which, like the Republicans we had a very

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Speaker 2: strong liberal arm of the party. There were like Rockefeller

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Speaker 2: was a liberal Republican. There were like that was like

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Speaker 2: a dominant part of the Republican party. There were liberal

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Speaker 2: Republican presidential candidates who did pretty well, right, And that's

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Speaker 2: a really different situation today like now, and again I'm

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Speaker 2: not saying none of these people you would call like

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Speaker 2: a leftist, although they are all people who, if they

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Speaker 2: ran today, would be called leftists by Republicans.

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Speaker 3: Right Like. That's the thing. It's so hard to like

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Speaker 3: separate these words anymore.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And I know that's a frustrating part of this.

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Speaker 3: I think I've I like, I don't even know what

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Speaker 3: to call myself. I certainly I don't think I'm a liberal.

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Speaker 3: I'm very left leaning and very progressive. But like, I

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Speaker 3: think I've accidentally called myself just a liberal because they're

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Speaker 3: all like like leftist, liberal, they're all l words that

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Speaker 3: are just like, eh, I don't know, but it's just

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Speaker 3: interesting because like the idea of a liberal Republican, I'm

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Speaker 3: just like, I don't know how that works. But then

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Speaker 3: I think about, like, you know, Nixon. I think it

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Speaker 3: was Nixon created the EPA.

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Speaker 2: That's a great example of how things have shifted. Were

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Speaker 2: like a guy like and Nixon went to China and

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Speaker 2: normalized relations with MAO, right Like, another thing that you

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Speaker 2: wouldn't really I mean, Trump kind of tried to do

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Speaker 2: his version of it with North Korea, but it was

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Speaker 2: not really the same deal, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, no, not at all, and like, I don't know,

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Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff to me just seems like

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Speaker 3: just things you have to do right where it's like

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Speaker 3: we need to protect our like forest innational parts. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like it needs to be political at all.

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Speaker 3: But it's just funny when you start trying figuring that

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Speaker 3: out those labels.

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Speaker 2: When I'm when I quote these guys from the fifties

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Speaker 2: and sixties saying, were like, liberalism is clearly won. That's

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Speaker 2: kind of what they're referring to, is right, So much

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Speaker 2: stuff that is now seen as political. Spending any amount

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Speaker 2: of public money on anything to help people is deeply political.

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Speaker 3: Right. It sounds like to some people it was political then,

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Speaker 3: So it was.

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Speaker 2: There was a tiny number of those people who thought

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Speaker 2: of it that way, and they were mostly very very

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Speaker 2: wealthy business owners, primarily people who had inherited businesses and

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Speaker 2: whatnot from their families. And they're going to be kind

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Speaker 2: of the folks who actually wind up creating the network

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Speaker 2: of think tanks like that is the story we're talking

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Speaker 2: about today, because this was all started as a way

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Speaker 2: to shift public consensus away from the idea that like,

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Speaker 2: the government can do things to benefit people and towards

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Speaker 2: the idea that like any public spending is communism, right, Like,

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Speaker 2: that's that's a big part of what we're talking about today.

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Speaker 2: And there's a number of reasons why we went from

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Speaker 2: like FDR being the most beloved president in American history

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Speaker 2: to like, I think he's still broadly people have fond

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Speaker 2: memories of him. But if anybody pushed policies today like this,

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Speaker 2: you know, like FDR did, they would be called a dictator, right, Like,

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Speaker 2: it would be like unimaginably controversial. And there's a number

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Speaker 2: of reasons why the status quo he started to change.

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Speaker 2: One of them was the Vietnam War, right, and how

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Speaker 2: much fucking money it cost. And by the time you

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Speaker 2: hit like the mid to late seventies, you've got, you know,

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Speaker 2: the economy sort of grinding to a halt, inflation rising

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Speaker 2: stuff that will never happen again. And there's there starts

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Speaker 2: to be this awareness among like public policy people in

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Speaker 2: the United States that like, oh, the unlimited money train

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Speaker 2: from after World War Two isn't going to keep going

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Speaker 2: on forever, right, And so yeah, we're going to talk

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Speaker 2: about that because like getting us from FDR to LBJA

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Speaker 2: to Ronald Reagan and then the Trump was in part

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Speaker 2: the result of a concerted effort to shift the culture

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Speaker 2: by building a robust system for generating conservative thought and

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Speaker 2: then pumping them into the culture at scale, so they

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Speaker 2: looked like they had scholarly support and public support, and

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Speaker 2: they kind of did that until they made it true.

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Speaker 2: And I think a good place to start is with

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Speaker 2: the development of the concept of the think tank. These

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Speaker 2: are not a uniquely American institution, but they are uniquely

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Speaker 2: influential and powerful in the United States. There's not any

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Speaker 2: other nation on earth that has its public policy or

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Speaker 2: political culture shaped so much by think tanks, which are

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Speaker 2: basically dark money sinks. We're intellectuals who are bribed generate

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Speaker 2: the illusion of consensus in exchange for money. Right, that's

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Speaker 2: what they are there for people.

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Speaker 3: Who don't like reality. Right, Like it's the idea of like,

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Speaker 3: I have a thing, I want to get richer doing

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Speaker 3: this thing, or I want to support these people, but

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Speaker 3: like reality, like studies and facts are showing that, like

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Speaker 3: it's bad to do this, so let's recreate studies and

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Speaker 3: facts to look like they're pushing this thing.

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Speaker 2: And one of the ways in which because you have

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Speaker 2: think tanks, that are more intellectually rigorous, and they all

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Speaker 2: charge for their shit, and a lot of the shitty

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Speaker 2: think tanks that are like funded by the oil and

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Speaker 2: gas industry give out their papers for free. So you'll

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Speaker 2: have like journalists writing articles and they're like, wow, I

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Speaker 2: need I need two different opinions on whether or not

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Speaker 2: we should frack the oil fields in fucking Texas. And

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Speaker 2: one you know think tank that actually does real research

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Speaker 2: will say you have to pay us twelve hundred dollars

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Speaker 2: for our papers on what will happen, And the Heritage

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Speaker 2: Foundation says, here you go, here's a thousand pages of

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Speaker 2: shit that you can cite in your articles and it's

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Speaker 2: all free. That's like a simplified version of the game

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Speaker 2: that's going on here.

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Speaker 3: Right. It sounds a lot like studies, Like there's study

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Speaker 3: studies where like you start looking into them and you're like, wait,

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Speaker 3: this doesn't actually say the thing that the headlines are saying.

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Speaker 3: And again sometimes it's done insidiously.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes I think it's just people misinterpret things or like

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Speaker 3: they're trying to like you're saying like actual, actual like

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Speaker 3: work takes money because it takes people, and that's not

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Speaker 3: very sexy no, I mean you can.

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Speaker 2: You can have a fancy name for an organization and

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Speaker 2: just put out papers that say whatever you want them

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Speaker 2: to say. And if you do it with like a

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Speaker 2: good letter ahead, people will trust that there's there's something

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Speaker 2: to what you're saying.

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Speaker 3: It's amazing how how far a good font will get.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the idea that like we would

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Speaker 2: have and it's kind of worth going back of it

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Speaker 2: and talking about how like the field of public policy analysis,

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Speaker 2: which is kind of where think tanks has a concept

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Speaker 2: come out of, how recent it is because for most

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Speaker 2: of the history of governments, you didn't have professional people

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Speaker 2: who like analyzed policy and looked into how it was working, right,

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Speaker 2: like progress was. Sometimes you'd get a king who was

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Speaker 2: like reasonably smart, and sometimes you'd get an inbred royal

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Speaker 2: king who would either like take things back a couple

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Speaker 2: of decades or be weak enough that like a couple

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Speaker 2: of smart guys can move things forward you get it

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Speaker 2: dead or two you get a couple of world wars.

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Speaker 2: And then in the twentieth century, after we finally invented cigarettes,

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Speaker 2: people got smart and that's when we start doing actual

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Speaker 2: policy analysis. It's really not until like the nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 2: that we actually start in kind of a concerted way,

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Speaker 2: like looking at a lot of where you have these

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Speaker 2: guys who are like, I'm an expert in urban planning, right,

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Speaker 2: I'm an expert in like energy policy. Right. You had

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Speaker 2: like guys who were kind of doing that in the

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Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, but it starts to actually become like systematized

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Speaker 2: in the nineteen hundreds.

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Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, it's a bunch of people who is like,

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Speaker 3: I'm a pervert for this one thing. Yes, oh, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 3: and I can exist that way. Yeah, it's like cool,

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Speaker 3: you weird little freak. That's great. Well, we'll consult you

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Speaker 3: when we need questions about that thing.

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Speaker 2: M hm. And that's kind of like that is kind

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Speaker 2: of a quietly revolutionary concept because it implied like, well,

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Speaker 2: whatever our society is doing right now might not be

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Speaker 2: the best way to do things, and so we should

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Speaker 2: always be looking at doing them differently. And most that

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Speaker 2: hasn't always been like a thing you could expect from

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Speaker 2: a society, right. And there's a really fun nineteen ninety

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Speaker 2: one doctoral dissertation by doctor Susan Marie Willis I found

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Speaker 2: that notes that in the period leading up to World

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Speaker 2: War two, there was this kind of turning point in

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Speaker 2: the federal government's willingness to solicit expert advice in solving

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Speaker 2: the nation's problems, and as a result, quote, the country's

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Speaker 2: intellectual magnet shifted from New York City to Washington, d C.

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Speaker 2: During that time. The shift is placed on reliance on

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Speaker 2: policy experts earlier during World War One, when many businessmen

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Speaker 2: and academicians played key roles in wartime management on the

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Speaker 2: War Industry's board. It is certainly true that Roosevelt had

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Speaker 2: the help of his famous Brains Trust in formulating some

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Speaker 2: new Deal policy, and also that Woodrow Wilson took selected

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Speaker 2: scholars with him to the Versailles peace Conference. In both cases,

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Speaker 2: these were individual consulting scholars and economists, many drawn from Harvard,

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Speaker 2: but not siated with any formal senses a group or

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Speaker 2: policy research body. So this is kind of when you

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Speaker 2: start to get the idea that, like, the president would

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Speaker 2: not just bring in his own people specifically, but might

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Speaker 2: like actually pick experts who were at least ostensibly independent,

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Speaker 2: and they would advise him on stuff. Right. That's when

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Speaker 2: this starts to become more common, right.

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Speaker 3: And that just seems like good leadership.

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Speaker 2: For the most it seems smart, right Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I Like I remember in film school talking about

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Speaker 3: or like being a manager, right where it's like part

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Speaker 3: of being a good manager or a director is to

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Speaker 3: consult the people who are very ultra into specific things

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Speaker 3: and hear what they have to say. I mean, now

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Speaker 3: we got Wikipedia, so yeah, well, don't.

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Speaker 2: Need any of that, but you can see how there

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Speaker 2: could be a good and a bad side, right where

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Speaker 2: if the president's trying to, like, I don't know, deal

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Speaker 2: with the aftermap of World War One, yeah, you should

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Speaker 2: probably bring an academic who knows something about like fucking

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Speaker 2: Austrio Hungary, like, and it's different political factions and whatnot.

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Speaker 2: That makes sense, seems like that guys should be there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but they shouldn't necessarily. I mean, it's only as

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Speaker 3: good as the person, right person. If your expert is, say,

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Speaker 3: a racist, then everything they're going to do is tinted

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Speaker 3: that way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's why people look to like

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Speaker 3: the idea of computers as being impartial. But then also

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Speaker 3: you need someone who has instincts on something as well,

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Speaker 3: like being an expert and something should also mean being

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Speaker 3: able to interpret that information in a good way.

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Speaker 2: And also kind of the problem with this is that

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Speaker 2: when it's just seen as like, well, yeah, we elected

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Speaker 2: this president and he and all the people in his

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Speaker 2: administration are all like, you know, members of the same team,

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Speaker 2: when you start to see like, well, no, some of

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Speaker 2: the people giving him advice are like independent experts and

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Speaker 2: they're just trying to do what's best based on the facts.

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Speaker 2: Well are they right?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: Like, they won't always be. Sometimes they'll be just as

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Speaker 2: political as anybody else the president might hire. But if

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Speaker 2: you start thinking about them as like possessed of some

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Speaker 2: sort of objective wisdom that's above the fray, you can

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Speaker 2: also wind up not being critical enough of like what

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Speaker 2: they're actually doing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they also become it's that thing. It's we've seen

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Speaker 3: it a million times where someone's really smart about one thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that doesn't mean they're smart about everything. And so like

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Speaker 3: you have to know how to use that person and

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Speaker 3: that information, yeah, and like know what to do with

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Speaker 3: that information that the broader consequences of that because experts,

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Speaker 3: I mean, there's a reason why there's that weird stereotype

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Speaker 3: of like, yeah, these snooty college type yeah, right, where

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Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, I sort of get it, like, you know,

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Speaker 3: and we get to having a lot of authority in

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Speaker 3: one thing, you start acting with that authority on everything sometimes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm kind of on the other side of things.

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Speaker 2: If you're like some scholar who's a weird wonky expert

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Speaker 2: in different kind of obscure European political conflicts and shit,

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Speaker 2: and the president comes to ask you to help him

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Speaker 2: at a peace conference, you might just kind of try

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Speaker 2: to figure out what the president wants to hear and

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Speaker 2: tell him that, you know, because you know, it's noteworthy

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Speaker 2: that Wilson took all of these scholars with him to Versailla.

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Speaker 2: But like we all know that didn't go well. That

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Speaker 2: wasn't a good peace treaty, right, Like that was It's

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Speaker 2: like a famously bad peace treaty. So this is sort

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Speaker 2: of the prehistoric era in think tanks, if you're thinking

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Speaker 2: about like your evolutionary chart, this is when like the

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Speaker 2: fish gets on to land, right, and the fish is

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Speaker 2: eventually going to be named the Heritage Foundation.

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Speaker 3: It's a good fish name.

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Speaker 2: But this period you start in, kind of the period

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Speaker 2: after Wilson, you get this groundwork laid for what's going

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Speaker 2: to come after it becomes the norm that private economists, lawyers,

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Speaker 2: and experts will be brought in to advise presidents in

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Speaker 2: Congress about like you know, just over time during like

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Speaker 2: their entire periods in office, but also about specific issues. Right,

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Speaker 2: it becomes more normal. And again this isn't like a

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Speaker 2: clean break. You could find examples of this, you know,

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Speaker 2: in earlier decades and centuries, but it becomes normalized that like, well,

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Speaker 2: we're debating this bill on like setting up I don't know,

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Speaker 2: fucking phone infrastructure for the country. Let's bring in an

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Speaker 2: expert on that, right, like an actual like policy expert

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Speaker 2: to like talk about how this should go or what

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Speaker 2: they think will happen with this thing. And it becomes

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Speaker 2: really desirous for experts to get positions like this, and organizations,

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Speaker 2: specifically corporations who have a lot of vested interest in

435
00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 2: some of these like different bills being put for building

436
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:22,959
Speaker 2: infrastructure start to realize that like, well, if we fund experts,

437
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,719
Speaker 2: if we like have experts that we have paid to

438
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:28,840
Speaker 2: get to that position in society, that could really help

439
00:22:28,920 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 2: us out when it comes time to like we want

440
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:32,320
Speaker 2: to make sure that these laws are written in such

441
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:34,680
Speaker 2: a way that we get some of these government contracts, right,

442
00:22:35,359 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 2: you know, you get all of this happening at once.

443
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:39,680
Speaker 2: Both this positive benefit of like, yeah, we actually have

444
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:42,679
Speaker 2: people who know what they're doing being consulted about laws,

445
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:47,240
Speaker 2: and also these people are often deeply corrupted because they

446
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:50,119
Speaker 2: need money before they hit that point. And there's always

447
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:54,600
Speaker 2: corporations willing to pay for people to become experts as

448
00:22:54,600 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 2: long as they know who buttered their bread.

449
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean so money, money's a real problem.

450
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:06,399
Speaker 3: Like it involved it shouldn't be involved in everything we do. No,

451
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:09,119
Speaker 3: there should be things we do that don't have to

452
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 3: be motivated by money.

453
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 2: But you no, that's the that's the beautiful dream of

454
00:23:13,359 --> 00:23:16,359
Speaker 2: Star Trek that sometimes we could just act purely based

455
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,000
Speaker 2: on whether or not Will Riker wants to fuck something.

456
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:21,240
Speaker 2: And Will Riker always wants to fuck something.

457
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:23,640
Speaker 3: His dick is its own currency, that's.

458
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:36,480
Speaker 2: Right, Speaking of Riker's dick, these ads, Oh, we're back now.

459
00:23:36,840 --> 00:23:39,119
Speaker 2: Before you can have someone who's an expert in like

460
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:42,800
Speaker 2: any kind of policy field, you have to have I mean,

461
00:23:42,840 --> 00:23:44,399
Speaker 2: I guess you don't have to have this, but it

462
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 2: really helps. You have to have like the ability to

463
00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 2: get degrees and stuff like economics and political science and

464
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:53,919
Speaker 2: that wasn't always specifically like graduate degrees, and that was

465
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 2: not always a thing like it was kind of a

466
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 2: process of consolidating these broad feelings of knowledge into discrete

467
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 2: fields of studies, and it was sort of a thing

468
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,119
Speaker 2: that kind of happens along kind of the late eighteen

469
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 2: hundreds early nineteen hundreds where you actually start to get

470
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 2: like graduate schools and a university system that looks like

471
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 2: the one we have today. Right, and we'll be talking

472
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 2: about like what happens to the university system because this

473
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 2: is really going to piss off a lot of people.

474
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:24,880
Speaker 2: But you start to get the very first like kind

475
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:28,400
Speaker 2: of modern looking colleges that aren't just you know, among

476
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 2: other things, aren't just a place for rich kids to go,

477
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,439
Speaker 2: right where it becomes more normal for like regular people

478
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 2: to go and get degrees and then they can become

479
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 2: experts in fields and influence public policy. And that is

480
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 2: kind of a quietly radical change. It has a lot

481
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:45,400
Speaker 2: to do with why, around the time of the Great

482
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 2: Depression and the New Deal you get all of these

483
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:51,160
Speaker 2: to us seemingly radical policies is because you have all

484
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:53,840
Speaker 2: of these people who were educated at a time in

485
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:58,920
Speaker 2: which like there wasn't really education wasn't politicized in the

486
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 2: kind of way that it is now. It's still obviously

487
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:04,359
Speaker 2: had plenty of biases, right, it reflected the biases of

488
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 2: the culture that it was in. But you did not

489
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,919
Speaker 2: have like right wing schools. You did not have like

490
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 2: this kind of like culture warship over schools. And so

491
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 2: as a result, educated experts tended to overwhelmingly be progressives.

492
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 2: And again, these are people who, in a lot of

493
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:24,719
Speaker 2: ways we would consider deeply reactionary today, but they were

494
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:29,360
Speaker 2: all pretty supportive of, like widespread the idea that like, yeah,

495
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 2: you should use the government's money to help people, right

496
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 2: to do things, to have a society. You know, that

497
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 2: was the normal view of this kind of group of people.

498
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's that feels like that's the point

499
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 3: of a government. It's a group that basically has taken

500
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:46,239
Speaker 3: control of land and went like, all right, we're going

501
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 3: to make it easy for everybody to live here, and

502
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 3: you know, in exchange, you won't chop our heads off.

503
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 2: Yeah we should have roads. Oh, everyone is starving. We

504
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,879
Speaker 2: should give people jobs and just have them build stuff

505
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 2: for a while until this great depression thing shakes out.

506
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be like and all of the

507
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 2: experts were progressive, so the world was perfect because no,

508
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 2: everybody was still racist as hell. We did all sorts

509
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 2: of fucked up stuff back then. Progressive then did not

510
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 2: entirely mean the same thing it does today. But there

511
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 2: were certain things that just like weren't controversial back then, right.

512
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 2: And among the first great think tanks of American society

513
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 2: was the Russell Sage Foundation, which had been established in

514
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven from a ten million dollar donation. And

515
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from and that was a lot

516
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 2: of money back then. That's like in about twenty something

517
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 2: a year. To me, it's a lot of money for

518
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,120
Speaker 2: a dude. Yeah, that's not a lot in think tank

519
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 2: terms back then. But I'm going to quote from Willis again.

520
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 2: It brought together amateur social investigators and charity volunteers with

521
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 2: professional social scientists for the purpose of applying new research

522
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 2: methods in the permanent improvement of social conditions. There was

523
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 2: a particular concern with child labor laws, child and family

524
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 2: and health services, and education. The staff of educators, sociologists,

525
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 2: and settlement house veterans comprised few academicians, but they compiled

526
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 2: statistics and other pertinent information on social problems and abuses.

527
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 2: These data were made available to the general public as

528
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 2: well as to state and local governments to guide them

529
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 2: in practical policy formation. This pamphlet was the most typical

530
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 2: publication of the Sage Foundation at the time, and traveling

531
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 2: exhibitions which visited county fairs and schools were also sent out.

532
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 2: So this is you can see some similarity in that

533
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:27,160
Speaker 2: a lot of these today, these kind of like particularly

534
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 2: more political think tanks, will put out stuff that's meant

535
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 2: to be widely consumed, information that like you know, is

536
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 2: meant to be sort of disseminated via social media or whatnot,

537
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 2: are be like widely quoted in the news. The Russell

538
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 2: Sage Foundation is taking a more direct route because there's

539
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 2: not as many organs for people to get that kind

540
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,440
Speaker 2: of stuff out, So they're just like handing out they're

541
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 2: looking into like, hey, how should we actually like educate children?

542
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 2: Is it bad for little kids to work? We put

543
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 2: together a pamphlet on this, like let's all look into

544
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 2: the And again, these people were extra And when I say,

545
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 2: I said earlier it wasn't really controversial to be against

546
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,680
Speaker 2: child labor or be in favor of public spending. It

547
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 2: was among like very wealthy people. Obviously the business owners

548
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 2: in America are going to stage a coup against FDR

549
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 2: in the early thirties, right, but not among these educate

550
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 2: like these academics and stuff.

551
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 3: It's controversial, like controversy, you know, it's is the implication

552
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 3: that there are multiple competing views, and it's weird when

553
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 3: we count the views of the people who directly stand

554
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 3: to gain, you know, like it's weird to be like

555
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 3: it's it's weird to say, like there's controversy amongst like

556
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 3: the victims and the criminals that did this, Like like

557
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 3: there's controversy amongst the bank robbers and the bank.

558
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 2: Crime haters can't agree about on robbery.

559
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like, I mean, it's just a group

560
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 3: of people doing something bad and then a group of

561
00:28:56,600 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 3: people saying like, yeah, what you're doing is bad, and

562
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 3: they're like, I just and oh, there's controversy.

563
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 2: We'd like to keep doing it. When it comes to

564
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 2: the term think tank, which again kind of the Russell

565
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 2: Sage Foundation is one of the first organ like institutions

566
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 2: you could call a think tank. They weren't using that

567
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 2: term back then, and I wanted to look, like try

568
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 2: to figure out like where the phrase comes from, because,

569
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 2: as you noted when we started this, it sounds like

570
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 2: it should be a big tank full of Brian with

571
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 2: a brain in it, and that's actually pretty apropos to

572
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 2: the history. One historian traces it back to the forties

573
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 2: as a just a slang term for brain, like someone

574
00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:33,560
Speaker 2: like my think tank's not ticking do well today.

575
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 3: That's such a good slang for brain. Yeah, but I'm

576
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 3: kind of mad that they took that away from us.

577
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 2: We can take it back, Dave, we can take it back.

578
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,000
Speaker 2: Pour some poor some knowledge into your think tank, folks

579
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 2: with this podcast. I've heard another history and trace it

580
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 2: to World War Two, where it referred to like a

581
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 2: war room, right, like you get all of your military

582
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 2: experts together into your think tank and they figure out

583
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 2: how to do a normandy. It's like a tank for yeah,

584
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 2: that too. Yeah, it makes sense. And it's also possible

585
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 2: that it comes from a guy named Burton Pines who

586
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 2: was a historian who wrote about the traditionalist movement in

587
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties, and he used the analogy gathering

588
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 2: different fish into a tank and concentrating the brain power, Dave.

589
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say that's that's the dumbest, right,

590
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 3: that the dumbest.

591
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 2: I wanted to try it because whenever I hear like

592
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 2: an insane analogy like that, like this is just a

593
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 2: book about like traditionalists by this historian, and I'm like,

594
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 2: why the fuck would you use that analogy. I haven't

595
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 2: been able to get a copy of the book that

596
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 2: he says this, and it's not like online in a

597
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 2: way that I was able to find it. That's like,

598
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 2: I don't know what the context meant here.

599
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 3: Was this person a child? They were they? Because that's

600
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 3: the sort of thing like when you're a child you

601
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:47,400
Speaker 3: hear about like earwigs, you assume it's a wig on

602
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,200
Speaker 3: an ear, Like that's that's what a child would think

603
00:30:50,400 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 3: when they hear think tank, It's like, oh yeah, like

604
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 3: a bunch of fish are thinking you need to track

605
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 3: down this person, Robert I do.

606
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 2: I kind of think maybe he was making fun of

607
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 2: the traditionalists by being like they're as dumb as a

608
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 2: bunch of fish in a tank. That's also an insane

609
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 2: way to call someone dumb, Like what would you do

610
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 2: it that way? Just say they're silly man.

611
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:14,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need to track this person down and find

612
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:18,200
Speaker 3: their family. Yeah, and have them on the show, and yeah,

613
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 3: make them answer for themselves.

614
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 2: See usually, Dave, when I suggest finding someone's family, someone

615
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 2: then posits something that's a crime. You're the first person

616
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:28,960
Speaker 2: to just say we should have them on the show.

617
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 3: I'm appraise you could do a crime while they're on

618
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 3: the show. It doesn't be a crime against that, but

619
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 3: like they'll be crimes, you know.

620
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: See, this is why you're a pinch hitter, Dave. You're

621
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 2: able to swing left and right.

622
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

623
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 2: So I don't know what the fuck, Why the fuck

624
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 2: he used this phrase. It's baffling to me. But the

625
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 2: development of what become known as think tanks, you know,

626
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 2: really starting in the eighties, primarily happens before we have

627
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 2: a name for them, and a big like a guy

628
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 2: who's kind of influential in development of this concept is

629
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 2: Frederick Taylor. If you've ever heard of Taylorism. It's this

630
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 2: thing that in kind of the mid century is going

631
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 2: to become increasingly common in every different field of endeavor.

632
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 2: We tailorize police forces, which is we're like, well, what

633
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 2: if we standardize police training and what if we try

634
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 2: to have like metrics for police officers and see if

635
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:20,240
Speaker 2: we can make them, you know, work better and more.

636
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 2: And we do the same thing with factories. We're going

637
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 2: to tailorize this factory. It's it's scientific management, right. Frederick

638
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 2: Taylor is that guy.

639
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 3: You're talking about standardized?

640
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 2: Absolutely that all is in that same tradition. Yes, yeah,

641
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:39,239
Speaker 2: it's optimizing organizations and workflow for efficiency. Taylorism is going

642
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 2: to be a big deal every It's where we get

643
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 2: Deloitte and McKenzie, these consulting firms, right, Like, they all

644
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 2: have Taylorism in their DNA. And one of Robert Taylor's

645
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 2: friends is this guy named Robert Brookings. And does the

646
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 2: Brookings sound familiar to you, Dave, It does, Yeah, he's

647
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 2: this is the Brookings Institute guy, right, And the Brookings

648
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 2: Institute is from this earlier generation of think tanks that

649
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 2: actually think about things right. They're not just going to

650
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 2: put out stuff to like make one politician or the

651
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 2: other happy, among other things. The Brookings Institute are the

652
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 2: people who like help put out the Vietnam papers or

653
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 2: the Pentagon papers. Like they're the guys Elsberg is working with.

654
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:21,400
Speaker 2: And that doesn't make anyone in the government very happy, right,

655
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 2: Like that's just actually something that needed to get out.

656
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 2: So we're talking kind of about like the pre evil

657
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 2: days here, although they're also not purely good either. Robert

658
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 2: Brookings had spent time in German colleges in the early

659
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds, and like a lot of Americans who did this,

660
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 2: he came back with a thought that those Germans are

661
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 2: onto something, right. Surely their mechanistic obsession with pushing the

662
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 2: limits of efficiency will only lead to good things for Germany.

663
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 2: It's nineteen thirteen, and I'm very optimistic, like.

664
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 3: Those Germans are doing something over there. Exactly.

665
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 2: So Brookings, unlike most of Americans who come back from

666
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 2: Germany with ideas, he just gets into the dry goods business,

667
00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 2: and he does well enough in dry goods that he's

668
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,360
Speaker 2: he becomes very rich, and he gets a position on

669
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 2: the war industry's board in World War One, which ironically

670
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 2: puts him directly opposite Germany. The whole process of having

671
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 2: doing a world war and of advising the government through

672
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:24,520
Speaker 2: a world war because we had never had to mobilize

673
00:34:25,040 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 2: the milidy. The closest thing was like the Civil War.

674
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:29,240
Speaker 2: But you know that had been quite a while before.

675
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 2: So this is like a big deal, and it convinces

676
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:35,600
Speaker 2: him that like having the government bringing in experts like

677
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,879
Speaker 2: me really helped the process of doing World War One,

678
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 2: So maybe we should make that normal across the board. Right,

679
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 2: Maybe when the government wants to face when mean, when

680
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 2: Congress is voting on what the national budget should look like,

681
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 2: they should talk to experts, right, And so he decides,

682
00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 2: I'm going to put a bunch of my money, this

683
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 2: wealth that I've got into building an institution that can

684
00:34:56,640 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 2: provide the government with the best possible information so it

685
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:00,720
Speaker 2: can make at our choices.

686
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 3: Right.

687
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 2: That's that's his dream. And that's where we get the

688
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 2: Brookings Institute. And he gets a bunch of his rich

689
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,160
Speaker 2: friends together and he's like, put some money into this thing,

690
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 2: and it's important. This is going to be basically the

691
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 2: same way think tanks work in the modern era, where

692
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 2: you get all of these think tanks that are paid

693
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 2: by a company. Hey, we're exon Mobile. We want you

694
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 2: to put out a bunch of research saying that gasoline

695
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:26,359
Speaker 2: is great for the environment. Right, The Brookings Institute looks

696
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 2: like the same thing. It's not quite because at this

697
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:31,760
Speaker 2: point there is not really the expectation that by putting

698
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 2: money into this thing, it will only publish information you

699
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 2: want it to publish. That's not really the case yet,

700
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:40,399
Speaker 2: and people are going to get pissed about this as

701
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 2: time goes on. But yeah, yeah, it.

702
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 3: Seems like, sorry, this seems like a good idea on paper, right,

703
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 3: and you can immediately kind of see like what if

704
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 3: we do this like direct channel to the government through experts,

705
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,399
Speaker 3: like that won't get corrupt or like yeah go bad, right, Like, yeah,

706
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 3: accept the information we give them, even if the information

707
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 3: is like let's not do a war, like they'll listen

708
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:03,759
Speaker 3: to us.

709
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 2: We keep going back to star Trek. It's kind of

710
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 2: like the borg, right where you shoot at them once

711
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 2: and you can fuck them up, but the second time

712
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 2: their shields will have modulated. So for a little while,

713
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 2: the Brookings Institute actually works the way it's supposed to.

714
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 2: Rich people fund it and it puts out information and

715
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 2: it's usually just information based on like what these experts.

716
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:25,200
Speaker 2: They're not perfect, they make mistakes, but it's what they

717
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 2: actually think is best in these different fields of endeavor. Right,

718
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 2: it's actual like attempts at analyzing policy and impact, and

719
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 2: it's not Again, this is not always good. For example,

720
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 2: the Brooking is an institute is going to oppose much

721
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 2: of the new Deal because they're really market driven, and

722
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 2: Roosevelt is saying, we need more central planning.

723
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 3: Right. Oh interesting.

724
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:49,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, but by the time Nixon's in office, you know,

725
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 2: they are seen and derided a lot by Republicans as

726
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,839
Speaker 2: the liberal think tank. Right. And again, by the time

727
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:58,239
Speaker 2: Nixon's in office, these are the guys who published the

728
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:01,080
Speaker 2: Pentagon papers. So like they are this symbol of like

729
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:05,839
Speaker 2: liberal progressive like ethos by the seventies. And the fact

730
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 2: that they switch like this is not because like there's

731
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:11,360
Speaker 2: much of an ideological capture. It's that they're they're actually

732
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 2: the people here are actually generally trying to do what

733
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 2: they think is right. Again, that doesn't mean they're always right,

734
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 2: but like they are actually trying to analyze policy here.

735
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 3: For sure, there's always that like I I mean when people,

736
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 3: you know, there's been a big push about like you know,

737
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,799
Speaker 3: colleges and schools and being liberal and stuff where it's

738
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,799
Speaker 3: that weird situation where you're like defending this thing, but

739
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 3: you're like, I'm not saying it doesn't have problems. Yeah,

740
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 3: it's that weird in between where it's like, yes, it's

741
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 3: more just that the criticism goes so over the top

742
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 3: that you're is like, no, they can be criticized, just

743
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 3: not for this shit you're saying. Jesus.

744
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like when we talk about like, oh, the

745
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 2: good old days when progressives were a sin, and it's like, well,

746
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:57,520
Speaker 2: people called Woodrow Wilson a progressive and he was like

747
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 2: maybe our most racist president. Yeah, we had presidents who

748
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 2: were slave owners, and Wilson might have been more racist,

749
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 2: Like he was a terrible man.

750
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:09,760
Speaker 3: There's a lot of nuanced that gets lost in these conversations.

751
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not trying to paper over like oh,

752
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 2: to go back to the good old days of the

753
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 2: progressive fifties. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, So in the UH, it's

754
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,360
Speaker 2: one of those things where like the partly like after

755
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 2: World War Two in particular, like the Brookings Institute is

756
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 2: kind of a little bit more what we might call

757
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,560
Speaker 2: conservative prior to World War Two. In the post war years,

758
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 2: like half of the world's money, literally half of all

759
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,439
Speaker 2: of the wealth in the world is in the United States, right,

760
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 2: And so for a period of time, debates over stuff

761
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,439
Speaker 2: like the budget and fiscal policy, like part of why

762
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 2: Eisenhower is able to do these massive public works projects.

763
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 2: Part of why there's not that much organized resistance to

764
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 2: the idea of public funding is that we have all

765
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:58,360
Speaker 2: of the money there's ever been, right, and so stuff

766
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 2: like you don't get a lot of people worrying over

767
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 2: the budget so much in the fifties. You know, one

768
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 2: article I found from The Atlantic in nineteen eighty six

769
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:09,439
Speaker 2: by Greg Easterbrook describes the economy in like the mid

770
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 2: century as a dead issue and writes social justice in Vietnam.

771
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:17,240
Speaker 2: And this is by the sixties dominated the agenda. Brookings

772
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 2: concentrated on those fields, emerging as a chief source of

773
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 2: arguments in favor of the Great Society and opposed to

774
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 2: US involvement in Vietnam. In the Washington swirl, where few

775
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 2: people have the time to actually read the reports they debate,

776
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 2: respectability is often proportional to tonnage. The more studies someone

777
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 2: tosses on the table, the more likely he is to

778
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 2: win his point. For years, Brookings held a monopoly on tonnage.

779
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 2: It's paper supporting liberal positions went unchallenged by serious conservative rebuttals.

780
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:44,720
Speaker 2: And so that's part of why there's not much counter

781
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:48,720
Speaker 2: weight to like a lot of these liberal ideas about

782
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 2: like how money should be spent, is that the only

783
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 2: people researching them as the Brookings Institute. So if you're

784
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 2: going to like look at, well, what's the evidence on

785
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 2: whether or not we should you know, engage in this policy,

786
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 2: where you've got like three hundred pages of shit from

787
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 2: the Brookings Institute and nothing else, So I guess, I

788
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 2: guess it's easier to make that case right right now.

789
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 2: This is going to start to change by the period

790
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 2: of the Nixon administration. And part of what changes it

791
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,879
Speaker 2: is that this first wave of think takes and expert advisors,

792
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 2: a decent chunk of them, had been intimately involved in

793
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 2: like convincing the government that it was the right time,

794
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 2: that Vietnam was a good thing to get into, right,

795
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 2: this was going to go well. And these are not

796
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 2: Brookings Institute people again, they're they are pretty much pretty

797
00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 2: consistently like this is a dumb idea, we're like fucking

798
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 2: ourselves over by sending troops to this war. But it's

799
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 2: another think tank that's going to be heavily involved in

800
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:41,880
Speaker 2: US getting into Vietnam, and that thing tank is called

801
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 2: the Rand Corporation. You hear these guys, these fund did

802
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:47,280
Speaker 2: these cool guys.

803
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 3: Were they right? Were they right about Vietnam?

804
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:50,439
Speaker 2: Yeah?

805
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:51,359
Speaker 3: Really?

806
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:53,800
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I just read Biden just signed a treaty

807
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 2: with Vietnam, so it must have gone well, yeah, I

808
00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 2: haven't this is this is the last piece of history

809
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 2: about Vietnam I read until a week ago. So it

810
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 2: seems like it.

811
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:03,680
Speaker 3: All went well in the end, it all went well.

812
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 2: Why would we be at peace with them otherwise?

813
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.

814
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 2: So the RAND Corporation is founded right after the big

815
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 2: dub dub dose, and they're like a defense industry think

816
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 2: tank and their initial obsession. They come out of this period.

817
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 2: We've just nuked Japan, the Russians shortly thereafter get their

818
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 2: own nukes, and we're like, we should probably have some

819
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 2: smart people figuring out what might happen as a result

820
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 2: of the fact that we all now have these these weapons. Right, Yeah,

821
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 2: that's a good idea. It's not it's not a bad idea.

822
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 3: Right, we all have doomsday devices. Maybe get some of

823
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 3: them brainiacs to.

824
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 2: Same you think about this, Is this a good idea?

825
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:42,959
Speaker 3: And what's gonna happen is the brainy acts are gonna

826
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 3: be like, no, everything's bad and they're like, cool, thanks.

827
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:47,959
Speaker 3: I mean we're not gonna do it, we're just gonna

828
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:48,840
Speaker 3: keep them, but thanks.

829
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is if they'd had This is kind of

830
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:55,359
Speaker 2: The RAND Corporation is kind of the first really influential

831
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:57,879
Speaker 2: think tank that is funded by a deep because they're

832
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 2: they're funded by the US Air Force, so they are

833
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 2: not in fact going to be like, perhaps we shouldn't

834
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 2: have these things. You know.

835
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:06,839
Speaker 3: What this is all reminding me of is when you

836
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 3: go out with like friends, I'm sure you can relate

837
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 3: and you're making a series. You're like you're drinking or

838
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 3: you're doing whatever, and you're tuned too your friend and

839
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 3: go like, I can have more drinks, right, and the

840
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 3: friend goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

841
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well you're like good, look, you're.

842
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,799
Speaker 3: Looking to someone to just justify the bad decision you

843
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 3: know you're gonna make. Yeah, And that's what friends are for.

844
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:29,279
Speaker 3: And these things thinks are like they're they're good friends. Now.

845
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:29,600
Speaker 2: Yeah.

846
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 3: They go to them and go like, it's fine that

847
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 3: we're doing this right, and the thing too is like yeah,

848
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 3: it's fine, man, the experts say it's fine.

849
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 2: Escalating our involvement in Vietnam is like me saying last night, yeah,

850
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 2: I can get up at ten am to do this podcast.

851
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 3: Yeah why not?

852
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 2: And you did?

853
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,240
Speaker 3: You did it, So Vietnam was fine.

854
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 2: I have felt like this is my Vietnam since about

855
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:51,840
Speaker 2: when I ran out of coffee.

856
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

857
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 2: So the initial obsession of the Rand Corporation is thinking

858
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 2: the unthinkable. That's kind of like their unofficial tagline, right,

859
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:04,680
Speaker 2: which is planning for a nuclear war? Right, the idea here?

860
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:07,879
Speaker 2: And it's interesting, like they're sore. They're right in near

861
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 2: where we used to work, Dave. They're kind of in

862
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 2: between like Santa Monica and Hollywood.

863
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 3: Oh, we should have went and seen them.

864
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 2: We should have gone. I don't know if they're still there,

865
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 2: but they were for a time. That the fact they

866
00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 2: were across the street from Mary Pickford's beach house. And

867
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 2: one description I've read at the time said that they

868
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 2: quote did little but sit, think, talk, right, pass around memos,

869
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 2: and dream up new ideas about nuclear war, which sounds

870
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:32,600
Speaker 2: like a fun life.

871
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:33,959
Speaker 3: It kind of does.

872
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 2: Yeah I could do that, yes, Jerwa, bring me on, guys,

873
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 2: And again, like everything here, it's easy to see how

874
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 2: it's like, well, yeah, that could be a good idea, right,

875
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 2: you probably want someone thinking about this for a living.

876
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:52,319
Speaker 3: It's yeah, there's this romantic idea of like the quote

877
00:43:52,400 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 3: unquote like scholars, right, this idea of like, Okay, there's

878
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 3: so many humans and we have so much money, and

879
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 3: we've built the civilization. People don't have to worry about

880
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 3: just how to survive day to day. Yeah, what if

881
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 3: we have a building where just a group of people

882
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:09,799
Speaker 3: get together and think about stuff and just like like

883
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:12,439
Speaker 3: read all the books and like then when we need

884
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 3: an expert, we go to them and go, like, what

885
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 3: do you think if.

886
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 2: We put all of the smartest boys in a room?

887
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: Yeah?

888
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 2: Work.

889
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 3: It's a romantic idea. It's just that people are always

890
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 3: going to be people too.

891
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the problem day've number one, they're funded

892
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 2: by the Air Force, and number two, the kind of

893
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,600
Speaker 2: guys who are both interested in and able to get

894
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 2: a job thinking about nuclear war all day. They're the

895
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:39,879
Speaker 2: kind of people today we would cording these people off

896
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:43,000
Speaker 2: from the rest of society by getting them into Warhammer

897
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 2: forty thousand right right.

898
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 3: By the way. Instead of expert or enthusiasts. I often

899
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:51,359
Speaker 3: say pervert because I think really breaks it down, which

900
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 3: is like they're a weird little sick freak who's into this. Yeah,

901
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 3: I think of there's nothing wrong with that. You just

902
00:44:58,320 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 3: have to remember that, right.

903
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that idea, Dave, because think of how

904
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 2: different decades of like nuclear weapons policy would be if

905
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 2: instead of bringing like nuclear weapons expert, it was like

906
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons perverts on CNN.

907
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, they would make a organization and thank you.

908
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 3: I mean, we're all aware that you're a weird pervert

909
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,000
Speaker 3: about Yes, we're going to take it with a grain assault,

910
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 3: but thank you for your advice.

911
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,399
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the RAND guy wants to jack off

912
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 2: on the MORI CBMs. Let's let's now talk to him

913
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 2: not getting murdered experts.

914
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, No, not getting murder and murdered pervert.

915
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, perfect pert. You're right here, right. We got to

916
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 2: be we gotta be consistent, Dave, otherwise we have nothing.

917
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 2: So the RAND guys are a bunch of their war gamers, right,

918
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 2: like a lot of them literally are. But that that

919
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:45,399
Speaker 2: is the kind of guy that is drawn to this job.

920
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,520
Speaker 2: These are like game theory nerds, yeah exactly, And they

921
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:51,239
Speaker 2: didn't have anything better to do in the fifties and

922
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 2: sixties because there weren't many good war games then give

923
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 2: the president bad advice about Vietnam. Secretary of Defense and

924
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 2: a list war criminal Robert mac namara got most of

925
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 2: his top aids from the RAND Corporation, and they provided

926
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 2: more recommendations on US policy in Vietnam than any other organization.

927
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 2: In fact, RAND reports were critical in influencing every stage

928
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 2: of the war in Vietnam. And this is where we

929
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 2: really get into the think tank evil. By the mid sixties,

930
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 2: LBJ was trying to decide should we escalate US involvement

931
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:23,880
Speaker 2: in the war or not At this point, like sixty

932
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 2: four or something like that, the US could have backed

933
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 2: out right, we could have left. We could have said like, sorry,

934
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 2: this regime is bad, we made a mistake, let's go.

935
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:35,920
Speaker 2: And North Vietnam probably would have been like, hey, that's great.

936
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 2: That's all we ever wanted, Like like we're good. No,

937
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,720
Speaker 2: no more conflict is necessary. This is not what happens.

938
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 2: Because a researcher named Leon Gower, who was a project

939
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 2: headed RAND, published several papers on morale among North Vietnamese

940
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:54,800
Speaker 2: soldiers and civilians. He spends months traveling around the country

941
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 2: talking to captured North Vietnamese soldiers, Viet Cong militants who

942
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 2: had been like captured and stuff during like actions, and

943
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 2: also just a bunch of like villagers living in kind

944
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 2: of around the line of contact at the time. And

945
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 2: his conclusion based on these interviews is that Vietnamese morale

946
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 2: is right around the corner from collapsing. If we just

947
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 2: stick it out a couple more months, victory is inevitable.

948
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 2: That we've got them on the ropes now, no, weal

949
00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:24,240
Speaker 2: they talked.

950
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 3: To prisoners and was like, I talked to all these

951
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 3: people that were captured, and I predict their morale is low.

952
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 2: They're really sad. I think we're winning.

953
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 3: I talked to all the people who would be said

954
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 3: that's ridiculous, of course not.

955
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you talk to the talk to the British

956
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 2: people who were captured in nineteen forty, Yeah, they're probably

957
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 2: pretty bummed about the way the war's going.

958
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 3: And this is the thing about experts or sorry perverts,

959
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:51,439
Speaker 3: which is that like it's so tunnel vision right where

960
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 3: it's like it's also academic that a lot of the

961
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 3: time the big thing they're missing is like the big

962
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 3: obvious thing or the human factor, and that that happens,

963
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:04,839
Speaker 3: you know, that's like I think a legit criticism of

964
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 3: like colleges and shit like that off.

965
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:09,439
Speaker 2: Yes too, it's just a legit criticism of the way

966
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 2: human beings analyze. Like there's a famous study of like

967
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 2: World War Two. They're looking at like all of their

968
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 2: planes that get damaged, like where are they getting damaged?

969
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 2: Those are the parts of the planes we should reinforce.

970
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:20,440
Speaker 2: You can see that diagram that's got like here are

971
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 2: all the areas that planes are most often damaged in.

972
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 2: And then they like realized later like, well, but we're

973
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 2: just counting the planes that actually made it back. So

974
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 2: actually those aren't the damage. That's not the damage to

975
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:33,960
Speaker 2: focus on. It's the planes that went down we should

976
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 2: be paying attention to.

977
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 3: That's such a good example of me.

978
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's going to happen with all of Vietnam.

979
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote from a report in Ramparts magazine,

980
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 2: which is a thing that no longer exists, but was

981
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:49,320
Speaker 2: fucking dope for a very long time, And this is

982
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 2: their report on the Rand Corporation in Vietnam. It was

983
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 2: Gower's analyzes that provided the scientific underpinning for the light

984
00:48:56,680 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 2: at the end of the tunnel mentality that were so

985
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 2: crucial to the escalation of the war and the devastation

986
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:04,440
Speaker 2: that followed. In nineteen sixty six, his work was identified

987
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 2: by Carl Rowan as the study which lies at the

988
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 2: heart of President Johnson's strategy. The implications of the Gower

989
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 2: study are profound, for they indicate yet another aspect of

990
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 2: the erosion of democratic decision making process that has attended

991
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 2: every phase of the present conflict. For both the Rand

992
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 2: interviews of the nlf cadra the most complete portrait available

993
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 2: of the other side in this war, and the reports

994
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 2: from Leon Gower were classified and kept securely within the

995
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 2: contact between the within the contract between the war bent

996
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 2: executive and the private corporation, and thus and thereby unavailable

997
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,400
Speaker 2: to the American people. In fact, to this day, Gower's

998
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 2: reports are unavailable to Congress and will have to be

999
00:49:40,680 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 2: written and you will have to read them in ramparts.

1000
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 2: And it's like so this is the by far, like

1001
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 2: the best collection of information that we had at that

1002
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 2: point on North Vietnamese people's thoughts on how the war

1003
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 2: was going. And it was entirely filtered through the lens

1004
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 2: of this very biased man who was being paid effectively

1005
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 2: by the US Air force, but was in a private

1006
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 2: corporation and so none of his worker methodology was open

1007
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 2: to being scrutinized by the public, and his analysis that

1008
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 2: we were right around, right around the corner from winning

1009
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 2: in Vietnam had the biggest impact on Elbajay's decision to

1010
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 2: escalate of any like individual factor.

1011
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 3: That's bleak.

1012
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:25,319
Speaker 2: It's really bad, right, and you probably shouldn't do it.

1013
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 3: Like that, Right. It's like according to this expert who

1014
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:31,839
Speaker 3: literally like it's asking an expert to look into whether

1015
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 3: or not they should continue to pay this person, and

1016
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 3: you should have the job too. Like it's that's like

1017
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:41,680
Speaker 3: when when one of the possibilities of like your study

1018
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:43,799
Speaker 3: means that you no longer get to do the thing

1019
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 3: you're doing, you shouldn't get to do that study, right, Yeah. Yeah.

1020
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 2: It's the same thing with like police departments like inspecting

1021
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 2: each other, investigating each other over crimes. Yeah, probably shouldn't

1022
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:56,440
Speaker 2: let it because it is it is like as the

1023
00:50:56,520 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 2: as rampartson, it's really anti democratic, right, because you've got

1024
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 2: a bunch of people saying, I don't think we should

1025
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 2: be involved in Vietnam, because why in the fuck are

1026
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:08,279
Speaker 2: we sending soldiers to Vietnam, and then you've got the

1027
00:51:08,280 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 2: president saying, well, look, you're all a bunch of casuals,

1028
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,239
Speaker 2: a bunch of Yahoo's who don't know anything. I've talked

1029
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 2: to the experts and they say, we're about to win.

1030
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, this is it's such a tricky. This

1031
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 3: is where nuance comes into play, because there's this idea, like,

1032
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 3: you know, very recently we had something that happened in

1033
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 3: this country where a bunch of experts were saying everybody

1034
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 3: needs to do this thing, and people are like, ah,

1035
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:34,880
Speaker 3: screw the experts. Yeah, and there was sort of this

1036
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 3: battle over it where it's like sometimes experts, like when

1037
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 3: it's very when it's very black and white, is just like, yeah,

1038
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 3: you know, you should probably just do what they say, right,

1039
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:47,879
Speaker 3: Like you know, if someone says, you know.

1040
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 2: Don't lick toilet seats, wow, I probably won't.

1041
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:56,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very tricky because I understand why over years

1042
00:51:56,360 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 3: and years there are people who are like, h fuck

1043
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,680
Speaker 3: the experts, because then you get these cases where it's

1044
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 3: like you're saying undemocratic, where everybody's sort of saying like

1045
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 3: we should do these I should have the freedom to

1046
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 3: do these things, or I believe we should do this,

1047
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 3: and it's like, no, we're going to consult this handful

1048
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 3: of people to make the decision. Feels very undemocratic, And

1049
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:21,000
Speaker 3: for the most part, it's just like it's there's no

1050
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 3: right answer across the board right where it's like I

1051
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:28,560
Speaker 3: wish we were undemocratic about like climate change, Like I

1052
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,360
Speaker 3: wish governments would just go listen, this is what we're doing,

1053
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 3: because otherwise we'll all die. But that's very dangerous thinking

1054
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 3: across the board. So it really is like a case

1055
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:41,560
Speaker 3: by case situation.

1056
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the overwhelming lesson of history is that

1057
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 2: there's actually no good way to do things. Yes, but

1058
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 2: the right way certainly isn't the one we're doing. I

1059
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 2: think we can all agree on that. And you know

1060
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 2: what else we can all agree on, Dave what products

1061
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 2: and services? Oh, we're back Dave, the Rand Corporation. When

1062
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 2: we left them off, they had just told LBJ. Hey Man,

1063
00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:16,239
Speaker 2: just a few more guys, just a few more one

1064
00:53:16,280 --> 00:53:18,839
Speaker 2: hundred thousand US troops and it'll win us the war.

1065
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 2: We're right around the corner, like the Vietnam's on the ropes.

1066
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 2: Nor the Vietnam can't hold out much more. They're just

1067
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 2: about to give up, right.

1068
00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:29,040
Speaker 3: Right, and then we won. Yeah.

1069
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:31,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, As we all know, nineteen sixty four was the

1070
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,720
Speaker 2: last year of the Vietnam War before our glorious victory,

1071
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 2: and we started air dropping McDonald's into the jungle. So

1072
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 2: when you look at like the kind of analyzes the

1073
00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:45,799
Speaker 2: RAND Corporation was providing the US government, the Johnson administration

1074
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:50,960
Speaker 2: during Vietnam, they kind of dispassionately advised this kind of ladder,

1075
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 2: A ladder of escalation is how it's usually described, right,

1076
00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:56,879
Speaker 2: where like, if the enemy does this, then you add

1077
00:53:56,920 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 2: more troops. If the need of it is this, then

1078
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 2: you carry out an offensive. If the enemy does this,

1079
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 2: then we launched another bombing campaign. Right.

1080
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:04,920
Speaker 3: This was the ladder of escalation.

1081
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:08,799
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, escalator, an escalator. I don't know if they

1082
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:10,920
Speaker 2: had them back then. It was the sixties. It was

1083
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:13,399
Speaker 2: the sixties. We hadn't invented science yet.

1084
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 3: Right.

1085
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:16,400
Speaker 2: They were throwing spears out of planes. That's how the

1086
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 2: air force worked. Yeah, and all of this this like

1087
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:22,520
Speaker 2: ladder of escalation that RAND advises, it's based off of

1088
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:27,279
Speaker 2: their belief about what Vietnam would do in response to

1089
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 2: US ordering a bombing campaign right of the north through

1090
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 2: of like you know, of their capital, right, and it

1091
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:36,040
Speaker 2: was based on their understanding that this is what an

1092
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 2: opposing government would do in this situation. So they're thinking,

1093
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 2: if our capital was bombed, how would we act, Right, Well,

1094
00:54:44,239 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 2: we would probably seek to super peace or whatever, because

1095
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 2: like Americans would not put up with the capital being bombed.

1096
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 2: You know, there would be a real issue for us.

1097
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'd freak out, we'd call French fries freedom fries.

1098
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 2: Yes, we would lose our minds.

1099
00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:00,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, things would get very yea.

1100
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:03,279
Speaker 2: Yeah. The I actually, I mean the idea was that

1101
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:06,200
Speaker 2: I think you've actually you've actually predicted what happened here,

1102
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 2: which is that like, well, when they bombed our capital,

1103
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,719
Speaker 2: we went insane. We didn't, we didn't seem to. We

1104
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:13,919
Speaker 2: didn't go for negotiations. But the RAM Corporation is like, well,

1105
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 2: if we bomb the capital Vietna, North Vietnam will want

1106
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 2: to come to the negotiating table. They'll make concessions to us.

1107
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:22,759
Speaker 3: Then, right, Yeah, it feels like we were we were

1108
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 3: riding high on nukes, which is that, like I get why, Like, well,

1109
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:30,760
Speaker 3: I mean Japan had already surrendered, right, I'm pretty sure

1110
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:32,439
Speaker 3: or like no, no.

1111
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:36,280
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's that's a whole separate.

1112
00:55:37,640 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 3: But like it's all to say that, like nukes was

1113
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 3: a new thing, and so seeing a new and not

1114
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 3: knowing what it is, I can imagine the government being like, oh, okay,

1115
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:47,879
Speaker 3: we're done here, you know, like I don't know what

1116
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 3: that is.

1117
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:53,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, it because like the nukes are such a you know,

1118
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 2: we dropped two nukes on Japan and the government sues

1119
00:55:56,520 --> 00:56:00,399
Speaker 2: for peace. Right, that's the reality of what was going

1120
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,800
Speaker 2: on is a bit more complicated than that. But because

1121
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 2: that's like kind of the last thing that happens, you

1122
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 2: do get this attitude that like, well, we can bomb

1123
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:13,120
Speaker 2: our problems away with enough bombs, and the reality is that, yeah,

1124
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 2: we bomb the shit out of Japan prior to that,

1125
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:17,879
Speaker 2: and they didn't surrender until the nukes, And we bomb

1126
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:20,400
Speaker 2: the shit out of Germany and they didn't surrender because

1127
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:24,200
Speaker 2: of the bombing. Right, Bombing doesn't make people surrender usually,

1128
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 2: and it doesn't in the case of Vietnam. Right, the

1129
00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:31,799
Speaker 2: RAND Corporation has utterly misread North Vietnam, like they are

1130
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 2: not going to respond to the latter of escalation the

1131
00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 2: way we expect they are. As David Landau wrote in ramparts.

1132
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:40,320
Speaker 2: Underlying almost all of Rand's work on the war in

1133
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 2: the late sixties and early seventies was the unquestioned assumption

1134
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:45,439
Speaker 2: that the enemy in Vietnam would behave just like any

1135
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:48,240
Speaker 2: other sovereign power at war, that he could be lured

1136
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 2: by attractive negotiating offers which fell short of his stated position,

1137
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 2: or that refusing to negotiate, he could be brought to

1138
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 2: the peace table with the threat and use of force.

1139
00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 2: It was a universal failure to grasp the unique nature

1140
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 2: of the insurgency Vietnam. In other words, the kind of

1141
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:05,800
Speaker 2: guys who work at RAND, who are like war gamers,

1142
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 2: who were obsessed with their own careers and like rational thought,

1143
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:13,080
Speaker 2: could not accept that, like, well, there's people over there

1144
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,719
Speaker 2: that believe in things, right, The people running the war

1145
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 2: effort in North Vietnam might not just come to the

1146
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 2: table because they get scared because of a bombing. They

1147
00:57:21,520 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 2: might actually have principles that they're holding too, you know.

1148
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems like an oversight that's common, which is

1149
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 3: like looking at them like NPCs, you know, where it's like,

1150
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 3: if we do this, then they'll get scared. Yeah, it's

1151
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:38,280
Speaker 3: dehumanizing the enemy, right, and the thing about doing that

1152
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:41,760
Speaker 3: is it often screws yourself over where it's like if

1153
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 3: you're not thinking about them like human beings, yeah, then

1154
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 3: you don't actually know how to deal with them.

1155
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 2: That's exactly it. And it's the same thing you get

1156
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 2: with like we're seeing with the houthis right now right

1157
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,920
Speaker 2: where it's like, Okay, well we sent we started bombing them.

1158
00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:58,880
Speaker 2: Oh that hasn't changed what they're doing. They're still still

1159
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 2: throwing cruise missiles at ships.

1160
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1161
00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:03,480
Speaker 2: I also as if yeah, yeah, no, you.

1162
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:06,520
Speaker 3: Could even scale it down, Like I think like that

1163
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:10,120
Speaker 3: that whole Libs of TikTok interview where she just froze

1164
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:13,520
Speaker 3: up to me has that stinks of like, yeah, they

1165
00:58:13,560 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 3: have this idea in their head of like a liberal journalist,

1166
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 3: this straw man, and then when you actually sit down

1167
00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:22,919
Speaker 3: with these people or like Elon Muskin don Lemon, where

1168
00:58:22,920 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 3: it's like then you realize like, oh, they're completely unprepared

1169
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 3: for this situation because they had this straw man in

1170
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 3: their head that they thought like, oh, this will be easy.

1171
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 3: And then so like it's this, yeah, you can scale

1172
00:58:36,280 --> 00:58:37,919
Speaker 3: it up. It's a war too, where it's.

1173
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like the same psychological like the Rand

1174
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 2: Corporation in Vietnam are in the same position as like, yeah,

1175
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 2: Elon Musk in that interview, or the libs of TikTok

1176
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 2: lady when she get like this happens repeatedly. I mean

1177
00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 2: it's the same. You could go back to like Nazi

1178
00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:57,000
Speaker 2: Germany right when they invade Russia, being like, because they're

1179
00:58:57,160 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 2: very much if you look at like the Rand Corporation

1180
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,160
Speaker 2: is telling ob they're right around the corner from collapse.

1181
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 2: Just push a little harder and they'll fall apart. Hitler

1182
00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:07,320
Speaker 2: invades the USSR being like, yeah, if we just kick

1183
00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:09,520
Speaker 2: in the door, everything's going to collapse. It's like, now,

1184
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:12,480
Speaker 2: it never quite works that way, does it, Guys.

1185
00:59:13,680 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 3: Russia?

1186
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:16,880
Speaker 2: Anytime you're true And you should think about this when

1187
00:59:16,920 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 2: people talk about like, oh, you know, the Republicans, you know,

1188
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:22,520
Speaker 2: don't have any real strip, Like we outnumber them by

1189
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 2: so much. You know, Trump is on the ropes, right,

1190
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:26,440
Speaker 2: All we have to do is push a little harder

1191
00:59:26,480 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 2: and we'll beat them forever. Yeah, anytime anyone's telling you

1192
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 2: that about your enemy. No, people believe in things. It's

1193
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:35,640
Speaker 2: hard to actually win a fight like this.

1194
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:39,200
Speaker 3: It's wild how we keep doing it. Because like this

1195
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:43,240
Speaker 3: not to deviate too far, but like the Oscars this year,

1196
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 3: they like read a Trump tweet on stage and everybody

1197
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,320
Speaker 3: had a good laugh, and it's like a member like

1198
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:52,919
Speaker 3: the static election, Like you guys gotta start like they're

1199
00:59:53,000 --> 00:59:56,960
Speaker 3: such humorous and it's like when does this ever worked

1200
00:59:56,960 --> 00:59:58,520
Speaker 3: out for you? Jesus Christ.

1201
00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 2: Part of it this reveals something like fundamentally like kind

1202
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 2: of horrible at the center of a lot of the

1203
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:07,560
Speaker 2: human experience, which is that a huge number of people

1204
01:00:08,160 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 2: don't want to think that there can be other people

1205
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:15,200
Speaker 2: who believe wildly different things from them and really believe it.

1206
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 2: They're just like doing it to be like evil or

1207
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:21,200
Speaker 2: like try to like get but like actually have are

1208
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:23,240
Speaker 2: like that is the center of their being. Like the

1209
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 2: idea to a lot of these guys, the idea that like, yeah,

1210
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:32,439
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, there are actual committed communists nationalists who are

1211
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:37,160
Speaker 2: willing to die, lots of them for a cause and

1212
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:41,200
Speaker 2: are not willing to compromise on that cause. Right, Yeah,

1213
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 2: you almost can't believe that because then you have to

1214
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:46,720
Speaker 2: kind of accept that, like people can live in a

1215
01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 2: way that is wildly different from how I do, and

1216
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 2: there's they're just as much people they're not like brainwashed

1217
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 2: or anything like. This is actually just a deeply held

1218
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 2: set of beliefs.

1219
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:59,080
Speaker 3: Right right, And even if you think they're doing it,

1220
01:00:59,120 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 3: like they don't fully belie leave it or they're doing

1221
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:03,920
Speaker 3: it in mouth. I mean, we have like what sunken cost

1222
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:06,760
Speaker 3: fallony or a fallacy, or I call it being pot committed,

1223
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 3: which is like that idea that when you've put so

1224
01:01:09,160 --> 01:01:11,480
Speaker 3: much into it, you're not going to back out.

1225
01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that's really where we're headed here, because

1226
01:01:16,360 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 2: the Rand Corporation is very, very much integral in the

1227
01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 2: US getting pot committed to Vietnam. Obviously, you can trace

1228
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 2: a lot of people's deaths back to the Rand Corporation's

1229
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,840
Speaker 2: work there. And this has two major effects on domestic

1230
01:01:30,160 --> 01:01:33,680
Speaker 2: politics in the United States. One is that think tanks

1231
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:37,000
Speaker 2: and experts, the concept of expertise you brought up sort

1232
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 2: of like the way in which everyone a lot of

1233
01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 2: people reacted to experts talking about like what we should

1234
01:01:40,960 --> 01:01:43,959
Speaker 2: do with COVID. A big part of why there's such

1235
01:01:43,960 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 2: a rapid backlash to like very basic public health shit.

1236
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:50,760
Speaker 2: It all kind of starts with the backlash to Vietnam.

1237
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:54,439
Speaker 2: All of the experts say we're about to win, throw

1238
01:01:54,520 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 2: some more shit in here, right, throw some more money

1239
01:01:56,800 --> 01:02:00,560
Speaker 2: behind it, and they're horribly wrong. And that kind of

1240
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 2: that helps sort of fuel this anti expertise backlash in

1241
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 2: American popular culture, right, and it is you have to

1242
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 2: say that this is a big part of conservatism today.

1243
01:02:11,640 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 2: It's not wrong for there to be that backlash, right,

1244
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 2: You should be really skeptical about people who claim to

1245
01:02:18,680 --> 01:02:19,800
Speaker 2: expertise in this shit.

1246
01:02:20,080 --> 01:02:23,800
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, yeah, but yeah, it's yeah, all about the

1247
01:02:23,880 --> 01:02:26,360
Speaker 3: nuance where it's like, yeah, being able to think critically

1248
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 3: about these things is a good idea. Yeah, it's just

1249
01:02:30,280 --> 01:02:33,000
Speaker 3: that that's not often what people do.

1250
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. Unfortunately, the response for some people is like, well,

1251
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 2: since all the experts are crooks, I'm just going to

1252
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 2: vote for the angriest man I've ever seen. You know, Well,

1253
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:45,400
Speaker 2: that's not really a good idea either. The other equally

1254
01:02:45,440 --> 01:02:48,080
Speaker 2: important takeaway, though, and this is kind of it might

1255
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:50,280
Speaker 2: seem like it's separate, but a lot of people recognize

1256
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:53,439
Speaker 2: both these things is that think tanks have power. Right.

1257
01:02:53,920 --> 01:02:57,720
Speaker 2: A bunch of eggheads writing policy papers helped provide support

1258
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 2: for an insane escalation v Vietnam, and that means there's

1259
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:05,800
Speaker 2: a lot of power in having eggheads write policy papers, right,

1260
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:09,280
Speaker 2: and if you pay for those policy papers, maybe you

1261
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,120
Speaker 2: can get eggheads to support any insane policy you want

1262
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:17,040
Speaker 2: to push an American society, right, And this is deeply

1263
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 2: attractive to the oligarchs who had fought like hyenas against

1264
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,120
Speaker 2: the New Deal. These people had been infuriated by the

1265
01:03:24,120 --> 01:03:28,040
Speaker 2: Great Society as well. That's lbj's right. Alongside escalation of Vietnam,

1266
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:32,000
Speaker 2: LBJ is pushing some of the most like substantial social

1267
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,480
Speaker 2: welfare programs in the history of our country. And these

1268
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 2: people who had kind of who had fought against the

1269
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 2: New Deal but had given up, were like feeling kind

1270
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:42,760
Speaker 2: of hopeless at like we can't stop the anti war

1271
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:45,440
Speaker 2: movement from rising. That's continuing to frustrate them in like

1272
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 2: the mid sixties, and also we couldn't stop this raft

1273
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 2: of social reforms from going through. But what they sort

1274
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:57,320
Speaker 2: of start to realize is that because the liberal establishment

1275
01:03:57,400 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 2: has gotten so in bed in Vietnam and with this

1276
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:04,320
Speaker 2: kind of like cadre of experts who backed their stupid

1277
01:04:04,400 --> 01:04:07,800
Speaker 2: ideas for what to do, there there was an opportunity, right,

1278
01:04:07,880 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 2: an opportunity to actually reverse this kind of feeling that

1279
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 2: conservatism is always on the back foot and start taking

1280
01:04:15,240 --> 01:04:18,959
Speaker 2: strides forward to become the dominant ideology in the country. Right,

1281
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:21,840
Speaker 2: this is like the thing that's starting to happen in

1282
01:04:21,880 --> 01:04:24,640
Speaker 2: the mid sixties. You could be forgiven if you had

1283
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:29,800
Speaker 2: thought that like the ideological battle between conservatism and like

1284
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:32,520
Speaker 2: liberalism was still had still been won by liberals in

1285
01:04:32,560 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 2: the sixties, it would have looked that way, because nineteen

1286
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:37,080
Speaker 2: sixty four is when we get the candidacy of Barry Goldwater,

1287
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:41,080
Speaker 2: and Goldwater is he's like the craziest person anybody has

1288
01:04:41,080 --> 01:04:44,720
Speaker 2: ever seen in nineteen sixty four in politics I talk

1289
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 2: about people will always point out on the subreddit, well,

1290
01:04:47,160 --> 01:04:49,880
Speaker 2: actually he was like pretty pretty moderate on a lot

1291
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 2: of things. By the end of his life. He was

1292
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 2: like pro gay marriage and pro weed and stuff, and

1293
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:56,520
Speaker 2: like all of that's true. But in nineteen sixty four

1294
01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:58,360
Speaker 2: he is the guy who is He's coming up on

1295
01:04:58,480 --> 01:05:01,760
Speaker 2: stage and he's saying, like, extreamism and defensive liberty is

1296
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:04,880
Speaker 2: no vice. Let's lab a nuclear bomb into the men's

1297
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 2: room at the Kremlin. Lazy dole. Happy people want to

1298
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 2: feed on the fruits of somebody else's labor right. He

1299
01:05:10,880 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 2: comes up when he gives his speech at the RNC

1300
01:05:14,160 --> 01:05:17,800
Speaker 2: in sixty four. He talks about how like the Democratic

1301
01:05:17,880 --> 01:05:20,720
Speaker 2: Party and the network news programs are into the direction

1302
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 2: of Marxist ballet dancers, that like their god is Mammon, right,

1303
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:28,120
Speaker 2: like who is money? Like money is the god of

1304
01:05:28,160 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 2: the liberal establishment. He is kind of a maniac, right, Yeah,

1305
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:36,480
Speaker 2: he's very reasonable compared to like modern Republicans. But this

1306
01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:39,760
Speaker 2: is how people think about him at the time, and

1307
01:05:39,880 --> 01:05:43,040
Speaker 2: Goldwater like, this is a very scary moment for anyone

1308
01:05:43,080 --> 01:05:46,400
Speaker 2: paying attention because what they'll notice, people who are at

1309
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:48,200
Speaker 2: the Cow Palace, which is like the place in San

1310
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 2: Francisco where the RNC is happening, then will note that

1311
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:56,320
Speaker 2: like his followers are, they're proto trumpists, right, They are

1312
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 2: into him and excited about him in a way that

1313
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 2: nobody was for p Residence, right, Like it was like

1314
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 2: this weird hitlarian kind of cult of personality that he had,

1315
01:06:06,640 --> 01:06:10,040
Speaker 2: and it was small, but the extremism with which he

1316
01:06:10,200 --> 01:06:12,520
Speaker 2: was embraced by these kind of what will become known

1317
01:06:12,520 --> 01:06:15,320
Speaker 2: as the new Right was really concerning to a lot

1318
01:06:15,320 --> 01:06:18,360
Speaker 2: of people for good reason. And it might have looked

1319
01:06:18,360 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 2: because Goldwater loses badly. LBJ gets sixty one percent of

1320
01:06:22,360 --> 01:06:25,280
Speaker 2: the popular vote. So you can see how you some

1321
01:06:25,360 --> 01:06:28,440
Speaker 2: conservatives were like, well, this means we're fucked forever, right,

1322
01:06:28,480 --> 01:06:31,760
Speaker 2: this guy Goldwater has set us back generations. You know,

1323
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:35,280
Speaker 2: we we went too hard, too fast, and we lost badly,

1324
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:37,840
Speaker 2: and like we we have to go to the middle. Right.

1325
01:06:38,040 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 2: That's certainly what like if this were reversed, if you

1326
01:06:40,360 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 2: had an actual like hardcore leftist presidential candidate get defeated

1327
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 2: that badly, the Democratic Party's lesson would be we can

1328
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:51,000
Speaker 2: never ever do anything again, right, Like.

1329
01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:54,400
Speaker 3: It's back to the future. I guess you guys aren't

1330
01:06:54,400 --> 01:06:55,160
Speaker 3: ready for that yet.

1331
01:06:55,240 --> 01:06:59,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that is what happens here. Yeah, exactly.

1332
01:06:59,520 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 3: I mean this this plays into like I've talked to

1333
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 3: like punks who were sentient in the eighties when Reagan

1334
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:08,480
Speaker 3: was elected, and they talk about this idea of like,

1335
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:11,040
Speaker 3: when Reagan got elected, I thought, oh, the world's gonna end,

1336
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:13,200
Speaker 3: and then it didn't. And this is kind of what

1337
01:07:13,240 --> 01:07:16,480
Speaker 3: they did that movie Oppenheimer, that idea of like, yeah,

1338
01:07:16,520 --> 01:07:18,800
Speaker 3: it kind of did. Like That's the thing we don't

1339
01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:21,440
Speaker 3: realize is when we say, like, oh, Trump's gonna fucking

1340
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 3: destroy the world or whatever. It's like, not immediately. It's

1341
01:07:25,000 --> 01:07:27,720
Speaker 3: more about the fact that these people are going to

1342
01:07:28,520 --> 01:07:31,520
Speaker 3: set us into this direction that's just going to keep

1343
01:07:31,760 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 3: snowballing where we've now said, oh, it's okay for this person, yeah,

1344
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:41,040
Speaker 3: to have to even run, even just running for president.

1345
01:07:41,240 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 3: We're basically saying like we're now entertaining this idea and

1346
01:07:44,840 --> 01:07:47,560
Speaker 3: maybe it wasn't maybe people didn't go for it this time,

1347
01:07:48,040 --> 01:07:50,640
Speaker 3: but okay, let's just slowly roll it out a little

1348
01:07:50,640 --> 01:07:51,520
Speaker 3: slower next time.

1349
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 2: You know, there's some people on the left who are

1350
01:07:53,800 --> 01:07:56,600
Speaker 2: like actual, like like Lewis Lapham of Harper's when we're

1351
01:07:56,680 --> 01:08:00,520
Speaker 2: to quote from seems to recognize what goldwater means. Yeah,

1352
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:02,000
Speaker 2: you know, you get a bit of that. Hunter S.

1353
01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 2: Thompson is kind of one of the people who sees

1354
01:08:04,080 --> 01:08:07,600
Speaker 2: Goldwater and is like oh fuck, oh fuck, because he's

1355
01:08:07,680 --> 01:08:10,680
Speaker 2: just got a pretty good understanding of like American culture

1356
01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:13,040
Speaker 2: and like, Okay, this is going to keep being a thing.

1357
01:08:13,080 --> 01:08:15,200
Speaker 2: It's only going to get bigger. A lot of the

1358
01:08:15,200 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 2: people who had been Goldwater backers, a lot of these

1359
01:08:17,600 --> 01:08:20,479
Speaker 2: these guys were talking about this cadra of like super

1360
01:08:20,479 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 2: conservative multi millionaires most of them who had inherited their money.

1361
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:28,639
Speaker 2: They are like they kind of have this brief flash

1362
01:08:28,640 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 2: of hope, a lot of them for Goldwater, but there's

1363
01:08:31,240 --> 01:08:35,960
Speaker 2: also like this deep crashing, like frustration when he fails

1364
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:38,280
Speaker 2: in this sense that like, well, we've lost forever. We

1365
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:40,840
Speaker 2: just can't We're not gonna be able to stop communism

1366
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,479
Speaker 2: for taking over the country. And in his article for

1367
01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:46,599
Speaker 2: Harper's Lewis Lapham describes a meeting of these guys at

1368
01:08:46,640 --> 01:08:50,519
Speaker 2: Bohemian Grove in nineteen sixty eight, which sets the mood

1369
01:08:50,600 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 2: of this particular cast well. In the hearts of the

1370
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:56,640
Speaker 2: corporate chieftains wandering around the redwood trees and the Bohemian

1371
01:08:56,680 --> 01:08:59,439
Speaker 2: Grove in July nineteen sixty eight, the fear was palpable

1372
01:08:59,479 --> 01:09:02,439
Speaker 2: and genuine. The croquet lawns seemed to be sliding away

1373
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:04,519
Speaker 2: beneath their feet, and although they knew they were in trouble,

1374
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:07,760
Speaker 2: they didn't know why. Ideas apparently mattered, and words were

1375
01:09:07,760 --> 01:09:10,920
Speaker 2: maybe more important than they had guessed. Unfortunately they didn't

1376
01:09:10,920 --> 01:09:13,880
Speaker 2: have any. The American property holding classes tended to be

1377
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:17,040
Speaker 2: embarrassingly ill at ease with concepts that don't translate promptly

1378
01:09:17,080 --> 01:09:19,960
Speaker 2: into money, and the beacons of conservative light shining through

1379
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 2: the liberal fog of the late nineteen sixties didn't come

1380
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 2: up to the number of clubs in Arnold Palmer's golf bag.

1381
01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:28,559
Speaker 2: The Company of the Commercial Faithful, gathered on the banks

1382
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:31,760
Speaker 2: of California's Russian River could look for Sucker to Goldwater's

1383
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:35,400
Speaker 2: autobiography The Conscience of a Conservative, to William F. Buckley's

1384
01:09:35,479 --> 01:09:38,840
Speaker 2: editorials in National Review, to the novels of Iron Rand.

1385
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:41,400
Speaker 2: But that was kind of all they had, right, was

1386
01:09:41,720 --> 01:09:46,599
Speaker 2: this kind of like utopian conservative fiction, because it seemed

1387
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:50,720
Speaker 2: like the situation was so bleak, but salvation was not

1388
01:09:50,920 --> 01:09:56,160
Speaker 2: far away. Nixon is going to win, right, Sure, yeah,

1389
01:09:56,520 --> 01:09:59,680
Speaker 2: he's going to become the president, and that's going to

1390
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:02,960
Speaker 2: be like kind of a fucking disaster. But they couldn't

1391
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:06,160
Speaker 2: really see that coming. It didn't seem likely until a

1392
01:10:06,200 --> 01:10:08,639
Speaker 2: bunch of other shit falls into place later that year.

1393
01:10:09,000 --> 01:10:12,280
Speaker 2: So it's a desperate time for these guys, obviously, though

1394
01:10:12,360 --> 01:10:15,200
Speaker 2: shit starts to go their way pretty soon after this moment.

1395
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:18,280
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, a Richmond corporate lawyer named Lewis

1396
01:10:18,320 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 2: Powell wrote a confidential memorandum. He had been an intelligence

1397
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:24,679
Speaker 2: guy in World War two. His whole thing. In World

1398
01:10:24,680 --> 01:10:27,200
Speaker 2: War Two, Lewis Powell had been like he'd written loughingly

1399
01:10:27,240 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 2: about the bombing of Dresden, like this is we did

1400
01:10:29,400 --> 01:10:31,720
Speaker 2: a great job with Dresden. This is really like the

1401
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 2: finest hour of our air power, you know, really murdering

1402
01:10:35,240 --> 01:10:38,280
Speaker 2: all of these civilians and not getting the Germans to surrender.

1403
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:41,439
Speaker 2: After the war, he'd chaired the Richmond School Board where

1404
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:44,000
Speaker 2: he Richmond, Virginia, where he had fought like hell against

1405
01:10:44,080 --> 01:10:47,519
Speaker 2: the attempts to desegregate public schools. And then once he

1406
01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:50,479
Speaker 2: failed at stopping schools from desegregating, he took a job

1407
01:10:50,560 --> 01:10:53,639
Speaker 2: representing the Tobacco Institute during the height of its evil.

1408
01:10:53,680 --> 01:10:55,519
Speaker 2: So this is like a guy, this is a man

1409
01:10:55,560 --> 01:10:57,679
Speaker 2: whose business is being the devil, right.

1410
01:10:58,560 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 3: That's what do you do. And he's like, you know,

1411
01:10:59,840 --> 01:11:01,160
Speaker 3: like evil stuff, I mean.

1412
01:11:01,600 --> 01:11:06,519
Speaker 2: General evil, Yeah, yeah, sundry evil. So this is like

1413
01:11:06,840 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 2: a pretty pretty impressive bastard memorandum. And so after Nixon

1414
01:11:12,160 --> 01:11:14,280
Speaker 2: gets into office, you know, a couple of years in

1415
01:11:15,200 --> 01:11:18,760
Speaker 2: conservatives are like happy about some things, but there's also like,

1416
01:11:18,840 --> 01:11:22,280
Speaker 2: especially the hard right, the Goldwater right, doesn't really trust

1417
01:11:22,400 --> 01:11:24,840
Speaker 2: Nixon because even though he made his bones as an

1418
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:27,840
Speaker 2: anti communist, he's like going to be friends with Mao,

1419
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,240
Speaker 2: you know, he establishes the EPA. So there's still this

1420
01:11:31,320 --> 01:11:34,280
Speaker 2: feeling that like, even though this guy's a Republican, we're

1421
01:11:34,320 --> 01:11:37,439
Speaker 2: still losing the ideological war. If a Republican is doing

1422
01:11:37,439 --> 01:11:40,680
Speaker 2: all this stuff, right, we need to get a real dick.

1423
01:11:40,800 --> 01:11:43,120
Speaker 2: Nixon is too sane and even handed. We need a

1424
01:11:43,160 --> 01:11:44,400
Speaker 2: real maniac in there.

1425
01:11:44,479 --> 01:11:44,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.

1426
01:11:46,360 --> 01:11:49,240
Speaker 2: And so Lewis Powell in nineteen seventy one writes what

1427
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:56,439
Speaker 2: becomes known as the Powell Memorandum. So this is to

1428
01:11:56,520 --> 01:11:59,920
Speaker 2: kind of provide some additional context. Powell is this He's

1429
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:02,960
Speaker 2: it's a very prominent lawyer. He gets asked by Nixon

1430
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:05,240
Speaker 2: in sixty nine to join the Supreme Court, and he's like,

1431
01:12:05,320 --> 01:12:07,320
Speaker 2: I don't really want to be in the Supreme Court, right,

1432
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:10,479
Speaker 2: And so a couple of years later Nixon asks again,

1433
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:13,559
Speaker 2: and in seventy one pala is like, yeah, I'll join

1434
01:12:13,600 --> 01:12:16,880
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. And in kind of the period before

1435
01:12:16,920 --> 01:12:19,880
Speaker 2: he actually takes that job, one of his friends, who's

1436
01:12:19,920 --> 01:12:22,559
Speaker 2: the education director of the Chamber of Commerce, is like, Hey,

1437
01:12:22,560 --> 01:12:25,559
Speaker 2: before you become a Supreme Court justice, I need you

1438
01:12:25,600 --> 01:12:28,439
Speaker 2: to like write a memorandum on how we can win

1439
01:12:28,479 --> 01:12:31,400
Speaker 2: the culture war in the United States. And so Powell

1440
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:34,879
Speaker 2: writes this thing titled attack on the American Free Enterprise

1441
01:12:34,920 --> 01:12:37,960
Speaker 2: System that gets distributed to the Chamber of Commerce is

1442
01:12:38,040 --> 01:12:41,080
Speaker 2: like the body and the government that interfaces with all

1443
01:12:41,120 --> 01:12:43,880
Speaker 2: of the corporations, Right, that's the basic idea of what

1444
01:12:43,920 --> 01:12:46,400
Speaker 2: the Chamber of Commerce is. So he writes this memo

1445
01:12:46,560 --> 01:12:48,719
Speaker 2: and it goes out to all of the people running

1446
01:12:48,840 --> 01:12:51,280
Speaker 2: the biggest companies in the United States. This memo from

1447
01:12:51,280 --> 01:12:53,519
Speaker 2: this guy who's going to become a Supreme Court justice,

1448
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:55,759
Speaker 2: and he is not going to disclose that he's written

1449
01:12:55,800 --> 01:12:58,599
Speaker 2: this mimo when he's being confirmed to Supreme Court justice

1450
01:12:58,760 --> 01:13:01,040
Speaker 2: because of as I just describe the memo, it will

1451
01:13:01,040 --> 01:13:03,080
Speaker 2: become obvious why he didn't want to talk about this.

1452
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:06,120
Speaker 3: Wait, so nobody knows he wrote it or he.

1453
01:13:06,080 --> 01:13:08,720
Speaker 2: Just the rich people know. He'd forget it.

1454
01:13:08,800 --> 01:13:12,840
Speaker 3: That's a public doesn't Jerry maguire all the rich people?

1455
01:13:12,920 --> 01:13:16,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the memo starts with him talking

1456
01:13:16,040 --> 01:13:18,920
Speaker 2: about like Ralph Nader, you know, as this like boogey man.

1457
01:13:18,960 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 2: He's like, we have a bunch of demons stalking the

1458
01:13:21,360 --> 01:13:23,840
Speaker 2: property in classes in America, and chief among them is

1459
01:13:23,960 --> 01:13:27,920
Speaker 2: Ralph Nader because in sixty five, Nator had published this

1460
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 2: book called Unsafe at Any Speed, which forced the automotive

1461
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:33,920
Speaker 2: industry to include seat belts and shit. Right, Like, he

1462
01:13:33,960 --> 01:13:37,000
Speaker 2: writes this book, everyone is dying in their cars. There

1463
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:39,960
Speaker 2: are no safety features, and everyone has one. We should

1464
01:13:40,000 --> 01:13:43,360
Speaker 2: probably make it mandatory that there be safety features in cars.

1465
01:13:43,640 --> 01:13:45,679
Speaker 3: This seems to be what he was known for, yes

1466
01:13:45,920 --> 01:13:48,200
Speaker 3: before he ran for presidente.

1467
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a great thing to do. And

1468
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:54,680
Speaker 2: it's this is part of this whole like sense of

1469
01:13:54,720 --> 01:13:58,519
Speaker 2: doom they have that there's no stopping progressivism because this

1470
01:13:58,680 --> 01:14:02,200
Speaker 2: book comes out in immediately, like there's not like this

1471
01:14:02,360 --> 01:14:05,080
Speaker 2: massive counter punch to it where people are like, we

1472
01:14:05,120 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 2: need to cancel Natter for being too woke. Everyone's like, oh, yeah,

1473
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:10,479
Speaker 2: we should have seat belts. That seems like a good idea,

1474
01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:13,640
Speaker 2: and automotive companies are like, but this is going to

1475
01:14:13,720 --> 01:14:16,559
Speaker 2: cost us a lot of money, right, And powell Is

1476
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:20,200
Speaker 2: describes himself as terrified about the reaction to Nator's work

1477
01:14:20,280 --> 01:14:22,720
Speaker 2: because he sees it as like evidence that socialism is

1478
01:14:22,760 --> 01:14:26,439
Speaker 2: inevitably taking over the country. Right. The first thing's corporate

1479
01:14:26,560 --> 01:14:30,800
Speaker 2: power is a pillar holding up American greatness, and they're

1480
01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:33,200
Speaker 2: eroding it. You know, that's how he describes it.

1481
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:38,360
Speaker 3: It's wild this attitude we have about corporations that we

1482
01:14:38,479 --> 01:14:41,960
Speaker 3: see them as like a deity, because this idea of saying,

1483
01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:44,800
Speaker 3: you've made something that's unsafe, we need you to make

1484
01:14:44,840 --> 01:14:47,760
Speaker 3: it more safe, and then corporations go, but that's going

1485
01:14:47,840 --> 01:14:50,240
Speaker 3: to cost us a lot of money. The proper reply

1486
01:14:50,400 --> 01:14:52,520
Speaker 3: to that is okay.

1487
01:14:52,840 --> 01:14:55,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Vine would still have to.

1488
01:14:55,560 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 3: Do it, Like we're still gonna make you do it.

1489
01:14:59,360 --> 01:15:03,519
Speaker 3: You know, you don't really have a choice. You're making

1490
01:15:03,520 --> 01:15:06,000
Speaker 3: a product that's going out into the public. It needs

1491
01:15:06,040 --> 01:15:08,559
Speaker 3: to be it has to meet these standards that we've

1492
01:15:08,560 --> 01:15:11,720
Speaker 3: deemed safe. That's it, end of discussion. And so it's

1493
01:15:11,720 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 3: wild that there's an entire political party who's like, no,

1494
01:15:14,840 --> 01:15:16,960
Speaker 3: we can't do that to corporations.

1495
01:15:17,360 --> 01:15:20,160
Speaker 2: Well, and that's a And these guys up to this point,

1496
01:15:20,240 --> 01:15:22,519
Speaker 2: they still they had felt that way the whole time.

1497
01:15:22,640 --> 01:15:24,519
Speaker 2: Is the New Deal and Great Society and all this

1498
01:15:24,560 --> 01:15:26,960
Speaker 2: shit is going on, they had felt like, we shouldn't

1499
01:15:27,000 --> 01:15:29,599
Speaker 2: let them do this to us in our sweet, sweet money.

1500
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:33,519
Speaker 2: But they didn't have a concerted way to counterattack, right.

1501
01:15:33,560 --> 01:15:36,200
Speaker 2: And what Powell says in this memo is like, we

1502
01:15:36,479 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 2: the corporate class in America, the people with money who

1503
01:15:40,840 --> 01:15:44,720
Speaker 2: run our businesses, need to be attacking people like nat

1504
01:15:44,920 --> 01:15:47,599
Speaker 2: We need to build a mechanism to go to war

1505
01:15:47,920 --> 01:15:52,519
Speaker 2: with Ralph Nader, right, otherwise they're going to inevitably bring

1506
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:55,720
Speaker 2: this country to communism, right right. Another guy that he

1507
01:15:55,840 --> 01:15:59,320
Speaker 2: rails against is William Kunzler, who's a civil rights lawyer.

1508
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 2: He had a hand in everything from the Freedom Writers

1509
01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:05,400
Speaker 2: to Wounded Knee, very influential guy. And guys like Kunsler

1510
01:16:05,520 --> 01:16:09,080
Speaker 2: and Nator are the enemy, right, They're these sinister forces

1511
01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:11,040
Speaker 2: aligned to create a world in which people have access

1512
01:16:11,080 --> 01:16:14,479
Speaker 2: to food and medicine against such foul enemies. The only

1513
01:16:14,600 --> 01:16:18,120
Speaker 2: response Powell wrote was the ideological equivalent to war. And

1514
01:16:18,160 --> 01:16:20,640
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a summary of his memorandum from

1515
01:16:20,680 --> 01:16:23,559
Speaker 2: a speech in the Senate by Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

1516
01:16:24,160 --> 01:16:27,160
Speaker 2: The language in the Powell report is the language of battle, attack,

1517
01:16:27,280 --> 01:16:31,800
Speaker 2: frontal assault, rifle shots, warfare. The recommendations are to endcompromise

1518
01:16:31,840 --> 01:16:35,439
Speaker 2: and appeasement. His words compromise and appeasement to understand that,

1519
01:16:35,560 --> 01:16:38,040
Speaker 2: as he said, the ultimate issue may be survival, and

1520
01:16:38,080 --> 01:16:40,640
Speaker 2: he underline the word survival in his report and to

1521
01:16:40,720 --> 01:16:44,160
Speaker 2: call for the wisdom, ingenuity, and resources of American business

1522
01:16:44,200 --> 01:16:46,760
Speaker 2: to be marshaled against those who would destroy it.

1523
01:16:47,680 --> 01:16:51,559
Speaker 3: Man, there's something about when we talk about all these

1524
01:16:51,560 --> 01:16:54,680
Speaker 3: think takes and experts and stuff, I really think for

1525
01:16:55,080 --> 01:17:00,400
Speaker 3: the average person, the best metric really is like who's

1526
01:17:00,400 --> 01:17:03,719
Speaker 3: always wrong or who's always right? What is actually the result?

1527
01:17:04,000 --> 01:17:04,200
Speaker 2: You know?

1528
01:17:04,360 --> 01:17:06,400
Speaker 3: Like this thing take with the Vietnam stuff, It's like,

1529
01:17:06,439 --> 01:17:09,760
Speaker 3: how did that work out? Does someone consistently and so

1530
01:17:09,840 --> 01:17:13,160
Speaker 3: with this stuff, it's just like we did we slide

1531
01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:17,280
Speaker 3: into communism to have seatbelts? Did this cause? Like? What

1532
01:17:17,760 --> 01:17:20,439
Speaker 3: is actually going on right now? Do you think do

1533
01:17:20,479 --> 01:17:26,000
Speaker 3: you think you know, deregulating everything and making corporations get

1534
01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:28,200
Speaker 3: to do whatever they want? Has that made things better?

1535
01:17:28,439 --> 01:17:31,880
Speaker 3: Are products better? Do things cost? Perhaps a lot?

1536
01:17:32,200 --> 01:17:32,360
Speaker 2: Is it?

1537
01:17:33,200 --> 01:17:36,080
Speaker 3: You know? Like look at today and be like what

1538
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:39,200
Speaker 3: is the problems today? What do you think caused that?

1539
01:17:39,600 --> 01:17:42,560
Speaker 3: And then perhaps should we listen to the people or

1540
01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:47,000
Speaker 3: the institutions that caused that problem and continue to cause problems?

1541
01:17:47,720 --> 01:17:50,559
Speaker 3: It's just so obvious, that's all. Yes, it's very silly.

1542
01:17:50,760 --> 01:17:54,000
Speaker 2: It ought to be but you know the thing is,

1543
01:17:53,640 --> 01:17:56,479
Speaker 2: it's silly to like pretend that this is good for

1544
01:17:56,520 --> 01:17:59,240
Speaker 2: anyone but the people with money. But power isn't doing that.

1545
01:17:59,280 --> 01:18:03,000
Speaker 2: Power is saying, hey, people with money, you are a

1546
01:18:03,160 --> 01:18:06,680
Speaker 2: threatened class in America and we have to organize to

1547
01:18:06,760 --> 01:18:10,120
Speaker 2: destroy the majority of the country who wants your money

1548
01:18:10,120 --> 01:18:11,720
Speaker 2: to buy medicine, which we.

1549
01:18:11,680 --> 01:18:15,880
Speaker 3: Still we see this today, right that the billionaires is

1550
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:16,600
Speaker 3: a slur.

1551
01:18:16,479 --> 01:18:19,320
Speaker 2: Or something like that, exactly exactly.

1552
01:18:19,200 --> 01:18:21,519
Speaker 3: Or it's just weird that there is. It's not just

1553
01:18:21,560 --> 01:18:23,760
Speaker 3: a class, but it's like a weird culture right where

1554
01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:27,479
Speaker 3: we're rooting for corporations, we're rooting for rich people, where

1555
01:18:27,520 --> 01:18:30,880
Speaker 3: like Elon Musk is a figurehead, or like people go

1556
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:34,839
Speaker 3: like Yo Disney versus Sony, and it's like, fuck all.

1557
01:18:34,680 --> 01:18:39,519
Speaker 2: Of that you're talking about, Dave, is the result, like

1558
01:18:39,560 --> 01:18:41,719
Speaker 2: that state of affairs is the result of the Powell

1559
01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:45,439
Speaker 2: memorandums success because he is laying out a battle plan

1560
01:18:45,840 --> 01:18:48,200
Speaker 2: for these guys, for these rich fail suns and the

1561
01:18:48,240 --> 01:18:51,880
Speaker 2: companies that they run. And Palell's vision here is nothing

1562
01:18:51,960 --> 01:18:54,360
Speaker 2: less than a plot to take over the US government

1563
01:18:54,360 --> 01:18:57,640
Speaker 2: from the inside, to damage its institutions so severely that

1564
01:18:57,720 --> 01:18:59,400
Speaker 2: no one would ever be able to take them back.

1565
01:19:00,000 --> 01:19:03,320
Speaker 2: He directed this letter at the oligarchs in American society,

1566
01:19:03,320 --> 01:19:05,400
Speaker 2: people who are frightened of any limit to their wealth

1567
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:08,720
Speaker 2: and power. He wrote to them, strength lies in organization

1568
01:19:09,120 --> 01:19:12,840
Speaker 2: and careful long range planning and implementation, and consistency of

1569
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:15,799
Speaker 2: action over an indefinite period of years, and the scale

1570
01:19:15,800 --> 01:19:18,720
Speaker 2: of financing available only through joint effort, and in the

1571
01:19:18,760 --> 01:19:24,000
Speaker 2: political power available only through united action and national organizations. Right.

1572
01:19:24,680 --> 01:19:27,760
Speaker 2: And his attitude is it's the job of men like him,

1573
01:19:27,800 --> 01:19:30,439
Speaker 2: like me as as the thinker here, My job is

1574
01:19:30,439 --> 01:19:32,719
Speaker 2: to be like the Rand Corporation in Vietnam, to plot

1575
01:19:32,760 --> 01:19:36,719
Speaker 2: out a path to victory. Right, it's the job of you, guys,

1576
01:19:36,760 --> 01:19:39,200
Speaker 2: the people with money. All you need to do is

1577
01:19:39,320 --> 01:19:42,040
Speaker 2: put money in my pocket and the pocket of other

1578
01:19:42,120 --> 01:19:46,320
Speaker 2: people like us. Right, and we will finance. Like if

1579
01:19:46,360 --> 01:19:49,200
Speaker 2: you finance think tanks and like pay for intellectuals for

1580
01:19:49,280 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 2: lawyers like us, we will put out public policy and

1581
01:19:52,400 --> 01:19:55,000
Speaker 2: will get judges in place. And what of Powell's big

1582
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:56,960
Speaker 2: insights is like, because again he's about to become a

1583
01:19:56,960 --> 01:20:00,560
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice, his attitude is like, conservative need to

1584
01:20:00,600 --> 01:20:03,840
Speaker 2: take over the courts. Right, that's the best way to

1585
01:20:03,880 --> 01:20:07,920
Speaker 2: shift policy because these are lifetime appointments. The more conservatives

1586
01:20:07,920 --> 01:20:10,280
Speaker 2: we get in the courts, we can actually take the

1587
01:20:10,320 --> 01:20:11,920
Speaker 2: reins of culture and steer them.

1588
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:13,240
Speaker 3: Right, it's not wrong.

1589
01:20:13,560 --> 01:20:16,240
Speaker 2: He is not at all wrong. He's very smart.

1590
01:20:16,479 --> 01:20:18,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost as if we designed it badly.

1591
01:20:19,280 --> 01:20:21,320
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it is where it's weird that.

1592
01:20:21,280 --> 01:20:23,519
Speaker 3: We were like, Okay, we'll have this branch to government,

1593
01:20:23,560 --> 01:20:25,160
Speaker 3: this branch and they get you know, it's like every

1594
01:20:25,200 --> 01:20:28,400
Speaker 3: few years, and then we'll have these like lifetime kings.

1595
01:20:28,439 --> 01:20:30,840
Speaker 2: We should have some god kings. Probably some godkings. Yeah,

1596
01:20:30,880 --> 01:20:32,800
Speaker 2: definitely want a couple of god kings in there.

1597
01:20:32,960 --> 01:20:34,240
Speaker 3: Would we do that?

1598
01:20:34,240 --> 01:20:38,599
Speaker 2: That's so I don't think we need godkings. Pal's attitude

1599
01:20:38,600 --> 01:20:41,080
Speaker 2: is that every American business should donate ten percent of

1600
01:20:41,120 --> 01:20:45,799
Speaker 2: their advertising budget towards propaganda, towards think tanks, towards funding

1601
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:49,720
Speaker 2: this stuff. Right, Like every corporation, Exxon and whatnot, they

1602
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:53,160
Speaker 2: should all be putting money into think tanks and consider

1603
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:57,040
Speaker 2: that advertising right to lobby the government and publish papers

1604
01:20:57,040 --> 01:21:00,519
Speaker 2: that push their agenda right, right, which is you know

1605
01:21:01,280 --> 01:21:04,920
Speaker 2: what happened. A big central part of his obsession is textbooks.

1606
01:21:05,080 --> 01:21:07,360
Speaker 2: One thing he wanted is he wanted oligarchs to pay

1607
01:21:07,439 --> 01:21:10,679
Speaker 2: right wing pundits to critique and attack textbooks for being

1608
01:21:10,680 --> 01:21:14,280
Speaker 2: insufficiently pro capitalist. He wanted to pay for there to

1609
01:21:14,320 --> 01:21:17,640
Speaker 2: be organizations to monitor TV networks. He believed that like

1610
01:21:17,720 --> 01:21:20,080
Speaker 2: television should quote be monitored in the same way that

1611
01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:23,439
Speaker 2: textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. The goal of

1612
01:21:23,479 --> 01:21:25,679
Speaker 2: all this was to make sure that corporate America got

1613
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:28,960
Speaker 2: equal time with like, you know, the interests of human beings.

1614
01:21:29,680 --> 01:21:31,600
Speaker 2: He's basically saying, the next time a guy that like

1615
01:21:31,680 --> 01:21:34,280
Speaker 2: Ralph Nader publishes a book about how cars are killing people,

1616
01:21:34,680 --> 01:21:37,360
Speaker 2: we need to make sure every news agency gives equal

1617
01:21:37,360 --> 01:21:39,559
Speaker 2: time to the car companies, saying, but we don't want

1618
01:21:39,560 --> 01:21:42,880
Speaker 2: to put seat belts in cars, it'll make them too expensive.

1619
01:21:43,600 --> 01:21:45,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, both sides.

1620
01:21:45,920 --> 01:21:50,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good stuff here. And it's like, there's

1621
01:21:50,920 --> 01:21:53,439
Speaker 2: a lot of very modern stuff here, right Like. Powell

1622
01:21:53,439 --> 01:21:56,280
Speaker 2: writes that like business owners should use political influence and

1623
01:21:56,360 --> 01:21:59,679
Speaker 2: money to stem quote the stampedes by politicians to support

1624
01:21:59,720 --> 01:22:03,920
Speaker 2: any legislation related to consumerism or to the environment, and

1625
01:22:03,960 --> 01:22:08,920
Speaker 2: he puts the environment in quotation marks political power is necessary,

1626
01:22:08,960 --> 01:22:12,519
Speaker 2: it must be assiduously cultivated, and when necessary, must be

1627
01:22:12,640 --> 01:22:16,400
Speaker 2: used aggressively and with determination. It is essential to be

1628
01:22:16,479 --> 01:22:19,360
Speaker 2: far more aggressive than in the past, with no hesitation

1629
01:22:19,439 --> 01:22:22,439
Speaker 2: to attack, not the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in

1630
01:22:22,479 --> 01:22:26,840
Speaker 2: all political arenas, and no reluctance to penalize politically those

1631
01:22:26,840 --> 01:22:33,559
Speaker 2: who oppose corporate efforts. So you know, not great, not great,

1632
01:22:33,840 --> 01:22:34,919
Speaker 2: but it all happens.

1633
01:22:35,080 --> 01:22:38,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, no, they get it. You're right. Yeah,

1634
01:22:38,120 --> 01:22:43,440
Speaker 3: we're now in a situation where it's not even like abnormal.

1635
01:22:43,520 --> 01:22:46,280
Speaker 3: We don't think of it as weird like it it's

1636
01:22:46,520 --> 01:22:50,320
Speaker 3: it's it's weird that like these things have to be

1637
01:22:50,360 --> 01:22:56,200
Speaker 3: debated or explained. They have divulged the conversation successful.

1638
01:22:55,800 --> 01:23:01,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know where like they follow Powell's march, Yeah.

1639
01:23:01,080 --> 01:23:03,880
Speaker 3: Right where we're we're getting people who are saying, like

1640
01:23:05,200 --> 01:23:08,080
Speaker 3: you know, who are who are just publicly like this

1641
01:23:08,120 --> 01:23:11,879
Speaker 3: is gonna hurt corporations and that's gonna hurt you the worker,

1642
01:23:12,360 --> 01:23:17,040
Speaker 3: and people are just believing it. Uh, it's kind of wild,

1643
01:23:17,280 --> 01:23:20,280
Speaker 3: Like it's wild that trickle down is a thing that's like,

1644
01:23:20,360 --> 01:23:23,679
Speaker 3: oh yeah, it'll get to you. And why would anybody

1645
01:23:23,760 --> 01:23:26,760
Speaker 3: vote for that, Why would anybody an average person go like,

1646
01:23:26,840 --> 01:23:29,720
Speaker 3: you know, we should we should totally. Just let it

1647
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:31,679
Speaker 3: go to the rich people and then it'll get around

1648
01:23:31,680 --> 01:23:35,559
Speaker 3: to us. It'll trickle down to us like piss Like.

1649
01:23:35,640 --> 01:23:39,120
Speaker 3: It's just like, that's so weird that we that people

1650
01:23:39,120 --> 01:23:43,000
Speaker 3: were able to sell this idea that the upper class,

1651
01:23:43,000 --> 01:23:46,800
Speaker 3: that the corporate owners are people that need to be

1652
01:23:46,840 --> 01:23:49,320
Speaker 3: protected or need to be represented politically.

1653
01:23:50,200 --> 01:23:53,040
Speaker 2: Dave, I love so much that you brought up trickle

1654
01:23:53,040 --> 01:23:56,040
Speaker 2: down economics, because that's where we're heading in part two

1655
01:23:58,960 --> 01:24:03,719
Speaker 2: right now, let's trickle down your plug aubles to our audience.

1656
01:24:04,280 --> 01:24:09,000
Speaker 3: Mmmmm I can? I mean you mentioned Gamefully Unemployed g

1657
01:24:09,120 --> 01:24:11,960
Speaker 3: A M E f U l O Y Unemployed. That's

1658
01:24:11,960 --> 01:24:14,960
Speaker 3: a podcast network I do with Tom Ryman where we

1659
01:24:15,000 --> 01:24:20,680
Speaker 3: talk about movies. Mostly we do reviews and we talk

1660
01:24:20,720 --> 01:24:23,479
Speaker 3: about movie news, so and and so forth. We have

1661
01:24:23,520 --> 01:24:25,680
Speaker 3: a Patreon you can check out, and then I am

1662
01:24:25,720 --> 01:24:28,599
Speaker 3: the head writer for Some More News, which is a

1663
01:24:28,640 --> 01:24:30,920
Speaker 3: political show that I'm sure a lot of people are

1664
01:24:30,960 --> 01:24:34,080
Speaker 3: aware of if they're listening to this, but if you're not,

1665
01:24:34,479 --> 01:24:36,559
Speaker 3: you should google it. I don't know when this is

1666
01:24:36,560 --> 01:24:38,439
Speaker 3: coming out, but we just did a two parter on

1667
01:24:38,600 --> 01:24:41,320
Speaker 3: Lady Ballers. You know, the important stuff.

1668
01:24:42,439 --> 01:24:46,720
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well everybody this has been a podcast I

1669
01:24:46,800 --> 01:24:50,840
Speaker 2: have been Robert Evans. Lady Ballers has been a bad movie,

1670
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:54,880
Speaker 2: but listen to what Dave thinks about it and go

1671
01:24:55,000 --> 01:24:56,120
Speaker 2: to hell. I love you.

1672
01:25:00,240 --> 01:25:02,680
Speaker 1: Through. This is a production of cool Zone Media. For

1673
01:25:02,800 --> 01:25:06,839
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com,

1674
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:10,200
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1675
01:25:10,280 --> 01:25:11,800
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.