Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that
Speaker 2: is just disastrously hungover. Right now, I am. I am
Speaker 2: not doing well everybody. It is the day after or
Speaker 2: around my birthday. Happened at some point in the last
Speaker 2: forty eight hours or perhaps right now. Hello Dave, how
Speaker 2: are you doing?
Speaker 3: Woo?
Speaker 1: Could I read the text message you set me at
Speaker 1: four or five of the morning. Yeah, I have alarms,
Speaker 1: but if they don't wake me, you can call me.
Speaker 1: You not spelled out like you normally do, which was
Speaker 1: my favorite part.
Speaker 3: Was like, ewe you call.
Speaker 2: We did just have another U yesterday, so that would
Speaker 2: make sense.
Speaker 3: I can't believe it was your birthday. Happy birthday, lovely Dave.
Speaker 2: It was a birthday until I had to wake up.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean that's yeah, it's life, man, you know,
Speaker 3: just pummeling, just pummeling us.
Speaker 2: But HiT's keep coming.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm going to celebrate today, yeah.
Speaker 1: Just to say I'm really glad you were born.
Speaker 2: Good job, thank you. If anyone at home wants to
Speaker 2: celebrate my birthday, just uh, I don't know, send me
Speaker 2: some of your fingernails. Fingernails, I want as many fingers,
Speaker 2: No you're right. Someone will do that. Someone will do that.
Speaker 2: We probably shouldn't, Dave.
Speaker 3: Yeah it bell. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah here hi co co host co impresario of
Speaker 2: the Gamefully Unemployed network network, Mark my former co worker
Speaker 2: at cracked dot com. Uh man about town at some
Speaker 2: more news. How are you doing today, Dave?
Speaker 3: I'm good. I'm living the dream. I'm wheeling and dealing.
Speaker 3: I'm uh, I gotta figure out. I got to schedule colonoscopy.
Speaker 2: Ooh, you're doting that just doing you.
Speaker 3: Know, just doing the things, you know, just just live
Speaker 3: in it, living life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, that's good. You know, I uh do
Speaker 2: you have? Is this a recreational colonoscopy or a necessary one?
Speaker 3: It? Can it be both? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's fair ye fair enough. I know.
Speaker 3: I mean I probably have nothing wrong with me. I
Speaker 3: just uh, you know, I'm hitting forty. I I have
Speaker 3: like a slight family history. And and I talked to
Speaker 3: my my. I got a new I got a new doctor,
Speaker 3: and I was like, what about them colonoscopies? And They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do it. Let's fucking do it. And then we're
Speaker 3: we're doing it, doing a colonoscopy. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: exciting stuff. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, I have not had a colonoscopy yet, although soon.
Speaker 2: But you know, what is the the moral equivalent of
Speaker 2: having a camera shoved up your ass?
Speaker 3: Ooh what?
Speaker 2: Living in the United States? Uh? In an election twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. And a big part of why it feels
Speaker 2: that way is because of a little concept that you
Speaker 2: might be aware of, Dave, the think tank? Ooh yeah,
Speaker 2: what do you know about the think tank as a concept?
Speaker 3: I mean I always picture like a SeaWorld style tank
Speaker 3: filled with brine and just a giant floating brain that
Speaker 3: a group of scientists sort of circle around, and that
Speaker 3: brain is hooked up to computers and then the data
Speaker 3: gets printed out, and they take that data and then
Speaker 3: they use it or ignore it, and then they just
Speaker 3: do whatever they want to do politically.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's it's amazing. That's nearly the opposite of what
Speaker 2: it really is. So what a think take really is
Speaker 2: is a way in which to generate paper, and then
Speaker 2: that paper convinces journalists that your policies are real policies,
Speaker 2: and then you take over the Supreme Court. Right now,
Speaker 2: I know this is going to sound convoluted. We're talking
Speaker 2: about how the Republican Party kind of won and specifically
Speaker 2: how they turned around the situation that existed in this
Speaker 2: country in the United States, So we don't talk about much.
Speaker 2: It's very especially because on the right there's this need
Speaker 2: to believe that the fifties and sixties were this like
Speaker 2: era where everything was better and like the whole country
Speaker 2: was more conservative. And then there's this need among liberals
Speaker 2: on the left to believe that like they have kind
Speaker 2: of been ascendant lately and sort of the last couple
Speaker 2: of years of resurgent right wing stuff has been a
Speaker 2: severe disruption of the norm. And neither of this is
Speaker 2: really accurate because the reality of the situation is that
Speaker 2: in the fifties and sixties, basically any commentator who was
Speaker 2: looking at it honestly would have told you that, like, well,
Speaker 2: liberalism has clearly won, and we talk about liberalism, I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about, like what the way we kind of
Speaker 2: talk about liberals today, or the way liberals often like
Speaker 2: to see themselves as progressives. I'm talking about like an
Speaker 2: economic and kind of social set of political beliefs that
Speaker 2: was the dominant way in which people viewed politics by
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, liberal economic policy and social orthodoxy reigned
Speaker 2: supreme in the post war era, and it was it
Speaker 2: was like it had such a degree of capture of
Speaker 2: the system that literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty in the United States at this time liberalism is
Speaker 2: not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition.
Speaker 2: He claimed, there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in
Speaker 2: general circulation only And I love this term irritable mental
Speaker 2: gestures which seek to resemble ideas. Now a bunch of
Speaker 2: people are going to be like thinking about all the
Speaker 2: fucked up shit that they knew the government was doing
Speaker 2: in the fifties and sixties, like overthrowing governments in Latin
Speaker 2: America and getting it Vietnam, and being like, well, how
Speaker 2: can you say that liberalism was dominant in this period?
Speaker 2: And I can say that because, like what it was
Speaker 2: liberals doing a lot of that, right, Like it was
Speaker 2: JFK who got our asses into Vietnam, and LBJ the
Speaker 2: great society guy, who accelerated it.
Speaker 3: So I'm not, yeah, right, And like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's considered liberal or leftists, Yeah, you know, fifty.
Speaker 2: Years not leftist, Yeah yeah, But it's.
Speaker 3: Always going to be different, right, Like what you know,
Speaker 3: I I you look at Star Trek, which is considered
Speaker 3: pretty progressive, but then you go and look at TG
Speaker 3: and you're like, man, they're almost there, but they still
Speaker 3: don't quite you know, like I don't know.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't let Ryker kiss a dude, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly like he wanted to. Jonathan Frakes was in of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he he fucked everything and that My
Speaker 3: favorite is the non binary aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, where.
Speaker 3: He immediately like upon meeting them, is like, oh, I
Speaker 3: have to fuck one of these. I don't care which
Speaker 3: I got to check off this box.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, poor Reich. But yeah, so when we're talking
Speaker 2: about this, we're talking about the idea that like, and
Speaker 2: it makes some sense if you think about like what
Speaker 2: happened to the right is as a result of World
Speaker 2: War two. Both like in the pre war period, you
Speaker 2: have this kind of like isolationist, reactionary strain that really
Speaker 2: has to retreat because we go to war with the
Speaker 2: Nazis and they're like, oh shit, we have to we
Speaker 2: have to get very careful about how we talk about
Speaker 2: some of the things we believe. Suddenly so it's it's
Speaker 2: just this this very like fundamentally different period. And one
Speaker 2: of the few things that is kind of similar in
Speaker 2: sort of how we look at liberalism from then to
Speaker 2: now is that it was it was, and actually much
Speaker 2: more so back then, defined by this kind of embrace
Speaker 2: of public spending and huge public works projects, right, that
Speaker 2: was pretty universally accepted as what the government ought to
Speaker 2: be doing, to the point where I can look at
Speaker 2: like Dwight D. Eisenhower, famous Republican president, builds a massive
Speaker 2: interstate high system, right, which is not a thing that
Speaker 2: you would you would get a Republican supporting today, like
Speaker 2: a public's works project on that scale. It's it's kind
Speaker 2: of inconceivable now. But that's what I'm talking about when
Speaker 2: I'm talking about how like people, a lot of people
Speaker 2: in public policy at the time were like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: this kind of liberal trend towards what the role of
Speaker 2: the state should be in society has clearly won, and
Speaker 2: there's not really any other game in town.
Speaker 3: It's funny you should talk frame it this way because
Speaker 3: I've actually I've talked about this with friends and stuff before,
Speaker 3: and like people always frame it kind of not like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know how they used to be liberal. It's more
Speaker 3: of like, you know how what's considered quote unquote leftists
Speaker 3: or liberal used to just be the norm. Yeah. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, we used to fix our highways up and
Speaker 3: that wasn't seen as a political thing. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: just it was just a thing you have to do
Speaker 3: when you run a government. Like would you would you
Speaker 3: agree with that or would you say that they were
Speaker 3: they were? It was seen at the time as very
Speaker 3: liberal because I feel like these are things that other
Speaker 3: kind do too, Yeah, that aren't seen as political leaning
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And part of the story today and why we
Speaker 2: have think tanks is to make all that seem more
Speaker 2: political than it used to. But it's also just a
Speaker 2: matter of like when you're when you're looking back to
Speaker 2: that period of time, you're looking at a period of
Speaker 2: time in which, like the Republicans we had a very
Speaker 2: strong liberal arm of the party. There were like Rockefeller
Speaker 2: was a liberal Republican. There were like that was like
Speaker 2: a dominant part of the Republican party. There were liberal
Speaker 2: Republican presidential candidates who did pretty well, right, And that's
Speaker 2: a really different situation today like now, and again I'm
Speaker 2: not saying none of these people you would call like
Speaker 2: a leftist, although they are all people who, if they
Speaker 2: ran today, would be called leftists by Republicans.
Speaker 3: Right Like. That's the thing. It's so hard to like
Speaker 3: separate these words anymore.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And I know that's a frustrating part of this.
Speaker 3: I think I've I like, I don't even know what
Speaker 3: to call myself. I certainly I don't think I'm a liberal.
Speaker 3: I'm very left leaning and very progressive. But like, I
Speaker 3: think I've accidentally called myself just a liberal because they're
Speaker 3: all like like leftist, liberal, they're all l words that
Speaker 3: are just like, eh, I don't know, but it's just
Speaker 3: interesting because like the idea of a liberal Republican, I'm
Speaker 3: just like, I don't know how that works. But then
Speaker 3: I think about, like, you know, Nixon. I think it
Speaker 3: was Nixon created the EPA.
Speaker 2: That's a great example of how things have shifted. Were
Speaker 2: like a guy like and Nixon went to China and
Speaker 2: normalized relations with MAO, right Like, another thing that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't really I mean, Trump kind of tried to do
Speaker 2: his version of it with North Korea, but it was
Speaker 2: not really the same deal, you.
Speaker 3: Know, no, not at all, and like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff to me just seems like
Speaker 3: just things you have to do right where it's like
Speaker 3: we need to protect our like forest innational parts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like it needs to be political at all.
Speaker 3: But it's just funny when you start trying figuring that
Speaker 3: out those labels.
Speaker 2: When I'm when I quote these guys from the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties saying, were like, liberalism is clearly won. That's
Speaker 2: kind of what they're referring to, is right, So much
Speaker 2: stuff that is now seen as political. Spending any amount
Speaker 2: of public money on anything to help people is deeply political.
Speaker 3: Right. It sounds like to some people it was political then,
Speaker 3: So it was.
Speaker 2: There was a tiny number of those people who thought
Speaker 2: of it that way, and they were mostly very very
Speaker 2: wealthy business owners, primarily people who had inherited businesses and
Speaker 2: whatnot from their families. And they're going to be kind
Speaker 2: of the folks who actually wind up creating the network
Speaker 2: of think tanks like that is the story we're talking
Speaker 2: about today, because this was all started as a way
Speaker 2: to shift public consensus away from the idea that like,
Speaker 2: the government can do things to benefit people and towards
Speaker 2: the idea that like any public spending is communism, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's that's a big part of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: And there's a number of reasons why we went from
Speaker 2: like FDR being the most beloved president in American history
Speaker 2: to like, I think he's still broadly people have fond
Speaker 2: memories of him. But if anybody pushed policies today like this,
Speaker 2: you know, like FDR did, they would be called a dictator, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it would be like unimaginably controversial. And there's a number
Speaker 2: of reasons why the status quo he started to change.
Speaker 2: One of them was the Vietnam War, right, and how
Speaker 2: much fucking money it cost. And by the time you
Speaker 2: hit like the mid to late seventies, you've got, you know,
Speaker 2: the economy sort of grinding to a halt, inflation rising
Speaker 2: stuff that will never happen again. And there's there starts
Speaker 2: to be this awareness among like public policy people in
Speaker 2: the United States that like, oh, the unlimited money train
Speaker 2: from after World War Two isn't going to keep going
Speaker 2: on forever, right, And so yeah, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about that because like getting us from FDR to LBJA
Speaker 2: to Ronald Reagan and then the Trump was in part
Speaker 2: the result of a concerted effort to shift the culture
Speaker 2: by building a robust system for generating conservative thought and
Speaker 2: then pumping them into the culture at scale, so they
Speaker 2: looked like they had scholarly support and public support, and
Speaker 2: they kind of did that until they made it true.
Speaker 2: And I think a good place to start is with
Speaker 2: the development of the concept of the think tank. These
Speaker 2: are not a uniquely American institution, but they are uniquely
Speaker 2: influential and powerful in the United States. There's not any
Speaker 2: other nation on earth that has its public policy or
Speaker 2: political culture shaped so much by think tanks, which are
Speaker 2: basically dark money sinks. We're intellectuals who are bribed generate
Speaker 2: the illusion of consensus in exchange for money. Right, that's
Speaker 2: what they are there for people.
Speaker 3: Who don't like reality. Right, Like it's the idea of like,
Speaker 3: I have a thing, I want to get richer doing
Speaker 3: this thing, or I want to support these people, but
Speaker 3: like reality, like studies and facts are showing that, like
Speaker 3: it's bad to do this, so let's recreate studies and
Speaker 3: facts to look like they're pushing this thing.
Speaker 2: And one of the ways in which because you have
Speaker 2: think tanks, that are more intellectually rigorous, and they all
Speaker 2: charge for their shit, and a lot of the shitty
Speaker 2: think tanks that are like funded by the oil and
Speaker 2: gas industry give out their papers for free. So you'll
Speaker 2: have like journalists writing articles and they're like, wow, I
Speaker 2: need I need two different opinions on whether or not
Speaker 2: we should frack the oil fields in fucking Texas. And
Speaker 2: one you know think tank that actually does real research
Speaker 2: will say you have to pay us twelve hundred dollars
Speaker 2: for our papers on what will happen, And the Heritage
Speaker 2: Foundation says, here you go, here's a thousand pages of
Speaker 2: shit that you can cite in your articles and it's
Speaker 2: all free. That's like a simplified version of the game
Speaker 2: that's going on here.
Speaker 3: Right. It sounds a lot like studies, Like there's study
Speaker 3: studies where like you start looking into them and you're like, wait,
Speaker 3: this doesn't actually say the thing that the headlines are saying.
Speaker 3: And again sometimes it's done insidiously.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I think it's just people misinterpret things or like
Speaker 3: they're trying to like you're saying like actual, actual like
Speaker 3: work takes money because it takes people, and that's not
Speaker 3: very sexy no, I mean you can.
Speaker 2: You can have a fancy name for an organization and
Speaker 2: just put out papers that say whatever you want them
Speaker 2: to say. And if you do it with like a
Speaker 2: good letter ahead, people will trust that there's there's something
Speaker 2: to what you're saying.
Speaker 3: It's amazing how how far a good font will get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the idea that like we would
Speaker 2: have and it's kind of worth going back of it
Speaker 2: and talking about how like the field of public policy analysis,
Speaker 2: which is kind of where think tanks has a concept
Speaker 2: come out of, how recent it is because for most
Speaker 2: of the history of governments, you didn't have professional people
Speaker 2: who like analyzed policy and looked into how it was working, right,
Speaker 2: like progress was. Sometimes you'd get a king who was
Speaker 2: like reasonably smart, and sometimes you'd get an inbred royal
Speaker 2: king who would either like take things back a couple
Speaker 2: of decades or be weak enough that like a couple
Speaker 2: of smart guys can move things forward you get it
Speaker 2: dead or two you get a couple of world wars.
Speaker 2: And then in the twentieth century, after we finally invented cigarettes,
Speaker 2: people got smart and that's when we start doing actual
Speaker 2: policy analysis. It's really not until like the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: that we actually start in kind of a concerted way,
Speaker 2: like looking at a lot of where you have these
Speaker 2: guys who are like, I'm an expert in urban planning, right,
Speaker 2: I'm an expert in like energy policy. Right. You had
Speaker 2: like guys who were kind of doing that in the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, but it starts to actually become like systematized
Speaker 2: in the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, it's a bunch of people who is like,
Speaker 3: I'm a pervert for this one thing. Yes, oh, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I can exist that way. Yeah, it's like cool,
Speaker 3: you weird little freak. That's great. Well, we'll consult you
Speaker 3: when we need questions about that thing.
Speaker 2: M hm. And that's kind of like that is kind
Speaker 2: of a quietly revolutionary concept because it implied like, well,
Speaker 2: whatever our society is doing right now might not be
Speaker 2: the best way to do things, and so we should
Speaker 2: always be looking at doing them differently. And most that
Speaker 2: hasn't always been like a thing you could expect from
Speaker 2: a society, right. And there's a really fun nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one doctoral dissertation by doctor Susan Marie Willis I found
Speaker 2: that notes that in the period leading up to World
Speaker 2: War two, there was this kind of turning point in
Speaker 2: the federal government's willingness to solicit expert advice in solving
Speaker 2: the nation's problems, and as a result, quote, the country's
Speaker 2: intellectual magnet shifted from New York City to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: During that time. The shift is placed on reliance on
Speaker 2: policy experts earlier during World War One, when many businessmen
Speaker 2: and academicians played key roles in wartime management on the
Speaker 2: War Industry's board. It is certainly true that Roosevelt had
Speaker 2: the help of his famous Brains Trust in formulating some
Speaker 2: new Deal policy, and also that Woodrow Wilson took selected
Speaker 2: scholars with him to the Versailles peace Conference. In both cases,
Speaker 2: these were individual consulting scholars and economists, many drawn from Harvard,
Speaker 2: but not siated with any formal senses a group or
Speaker 2: policy research body. So this is kind of when you
Speaker 2: start to get the idea that, like, the president would
Speaker 2: not just bring in his own people specifically, but might
Speaker 2: like actually pick experts who were at least ostensibly independent,
Speaker 2: and they would advise him on stuff. Right. That's when
Speaker 2: this starts to become more common, right.
Speaker 3: And that just seems like good leadership.
Speaker 2: For the most it seems smart, right Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I Like I remember in film school talking about
Speaker 3: or like being a manager, right where it's like part
Speaker 3: of being a good manager or a director is to
Speaker 3: consult the people who are very ultra into specific things
Speaker 3: and hear what they have to say. I mean, now
Speaker 3: we got Wikipedia, so yeah, well, don't.
Speaker 2: Need any of that, but you can see how there
Speaker 2: could be a good and a bad side, right where
Speaker 2: if the president's trying to, like, I don't know, deal
Speaker 2: with the aftermap of World War One, yeah, you should
Speaker 2: probably bring an academic who knows something about like fucking
Speaker 2: Austrio Hungary, like, and it's different political factions and whatnot.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, seems like that guys should be there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they shouldn't necessarily. I mean, it's only as
Speaker 3: good as the person, right person. If your expert is, say,
Speaker 3: a racist, then everything they're going to do is tinted
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's why people look to like
Speaker 3: the idea of computers as being impartial. But then also
Speaker 3: you need someone who has instincts on something as well,
Speaker 3: like being an expert and something should also mean being
Speaker 3: able to interpret that information in a good way.
Speaker 2: And also kind of the problem with this is that
Speaker 2: when it's just seen as like, well, yeah, we elected
Speaker 2: this president and he and all the people in his
Speaker 2: administration are all like, you know, members of the same team,
Speaker 2: when you start to see like, well, no, some of
Speaker 2: the people giving him advice are like independent experts and
Speaker 2: they're just trying to do what's best based on the facts.
Speaker 2: Well are they right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Like, they won't always be. Sometimes they'll be just as
Speaker 2: political as anybody else the president might hire. But if
Speaker 2: you start thinking about them as like possessed of some
Speaker 2: sort of objective wisdom that's above the fray, you can
Speaker 2: also wind up not being critical enough of like what
Speaker 2: they're actually doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they also become it's that thing. It's we've seen
Speaker 3: it a million times where someone's really smart about one thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean they're smart about everything. And so like
Speaker 3: you have to know how to use that person and
Speaker 3: that information, yeah, and like know what to do with
Speaker 3: that information that the broader consequences of that because experts,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a reason why there's that weird stereotype
Speaker 3: of like, yeah, these snooty college type yeah, right, where
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, I sort of get it, like, you know,
Speaker 3: and we get to having a lot of authority in
Speaker 3: one thing, you start acting with that authority on everything sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm kind of on the other side of things.
Speaker 2: If you're like some scholar who's a weird wonky expert
Speaker 2: in different kind of obscure European political conflicts and shit,
Speaker 2: and the president comes to ask you to help him
Speaker 2: at a peace conference, you might just kind of try
Speaker 2: to figure out what the president wants to hear and
Speaker 2: tell him that, you know, because you know, it's noteworthy
Speaker 2: that Wilson took all of these scholars with him to Versailla.
Speaker 2: But like we all know that didn't go well. That
Speaker 2: wasn't a good peace treaty, right, Like that was It's
Speaker 2: like a famously bad peace treaty. So this is sort
Speaker 2: of the prehistoric era in think tanks, if you're thinking
Speaker 2: about like your evolutionary chart, this is when like the
Speaker 2: fish gets on to land, right, and the fish is
Speaker 2: eventually going to be named the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 3: It's a good fish name.
Speaker 2: But this period you start in, kind of the period
Speaker 2: after Wilson, you get this groundwork laid for what's going
Speaker 2: to come after it becomes the norm that private economists, lawyers,
Speaker 2: and experts will be brought in to advise presidents in
Speaker 2: Congress about like you know, just over time during like
Speaker 2: their entire periods in office, but also about specific issues. Right,
Speaker 2: it becomes more normal. And again this isn't like a
Speaker 2: clean break. You could find examples of this, you know,
Speaker 2: in earlier decades and centuries, but it becomes normalized that like, well,
Speaker 2: we're debating this bill on like setting up I don't know,
Speaker 2: fucking phone infrastructure for the country. Let's bring in an
Speaker 2: expert on that, right, like an actual like policy expert
Speaker 2: to like talk about how this should go or what
Speaker 2: they think will happen with this thing. And it becomes
Speaker 2: really desirous for experts to get positions like this, and organizations,
Speaker 2: specifically corporations who have a lot of vested interest in
Speaker 2: some of these like different bills being put for building
Speaker 2: infrastructure start to realize that like, well, if we fund experts,
Speaker 2: if we like have experts that we have paid to
Speaker 2: get to that position in society, that could really help
Speaker 2: us out when it comes time to like we want
Speaker 2: to make sure that these laws are written in such
Speaker 2: a way that we get some of these government contracts, right,
Speaker 2: you know, you get all of this happening at once.
Speaker 2: Both this positive benefit of like, yeah, we actually have
Speaker 2: people who know what they're doing being consulted about laws,
Speaker 2: and also these people are often deeply corrupted because they
Speaker 2: need money before they hit that point. And there's always
Speaker 2: corporations willing to pay for people to become experts as
Speaker 2: long as they know who buttered their bread.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean so money, money's a real problem.
Speaker 3: Like it involved it shouldn't be involved in everything we do. No,
Speaker 3: there should be things we do that don't have to
Speaker 3: be motivated by money.
Speaker 2: But you no, that's the that's the beautiful dream of
Speaker 2: Star Trek that sometimes we could just act purely based
Speaker 2: on whether or not Will Riker wants to fuck something.
Speaker 2: And Will Riker always wants to fuck something.
Speaker 3: His dick is its own currency, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, Speaking of Riker's dick, these ads, Oh, we're back now.
Speaker 2: Before you can have someone who's an expert in like
Speaker 2: any kind of policy field, you have to have I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you don't have to have this, but it
Speaker 2: really helps. You have to have like the ability to
Speaker 2: get degrees and stuff like economics and political science and
Speaker 2: that wasn't always specifically like graduate degrees, and that was
Speaker 2: not always a thing like it was kind of a
Speaker 2: process of consolidating these broad feelings of knowledge into discrete
Speaker 2: fields of studies, and it was sort of a thing
Speaker 2: that kind of happens along kind of the late eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds early nineteen hundreds where you actually start to get
Speaker 2: like graduate schools and a university system that looks like
Speaker 2: the one we have today. Right, and we'll be talking
Speaker 2: about like what happens to the university system because this
Speaker 2: is really going to piss off a lot of people.
Speaker 2: But you start to get the very first like kind
Speaker 2: of modern looking colleges that aren't just you know, among
Speaker 2: other things, aren't just a place for rich kids to go,
Speaker 2: right where it becomes more normal for like regular people
Speaker 2: to go and get degrees and then they can become
Speaker 2: experts in fields and influence public policy. And that is
Speaker 2: kind of a quietly radical change. It has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with why, around the time of the Great
Speaker 2: Depression and the New Deal you get all of these
Speaker 2: to us seemingly radical policies is because you have all
Speaker 2: of these people who were educated at a time in
Speaker 2: which like there wasn't really education wasn't politicized in the
Speaker 2: kind of way that it is now. It's still obviously
Speaker 2: had plenty of biases, right, it reflected the biases of
Speaker 2: the culture that it was in. But you did not
Speaker 2: have like right wing schools. You did not have like
Speaker 2: this kind of like culture warship over schools. And so
Speaker 2: as a result, educated experts tended to overwhelmingly be progressives.
Speaker 2: And again, these are people who, in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways we would consider deeply reactionary today, but they were
Speaker 2: all pretty supportive of, like widespread the idea that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you should use the government's money to help people, right
Speaker 2: to do things, to have a society. You know, that
Speaker 2: was the normal view of this kind of group of people.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's that feels like that's the point
Speaker 3: of a government. It's a group that basically has taken
Speaker 3: control of land and went like, all right, we're going
Speaker 3: to make it easy for everybody to live here, and
Speaker 3: you know, in exchange, you won't chop our heads off.
Speaker 2: Yeah we should have roads. Oh, everyone is starving. We
Speaker 2: should give people jobs and just have them build stuff
Speaker 2: for a while until this great depression thing shakes out.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be like and all of the
Speaker 2: experts were progressive, so the world was perfect because no,
Speaker 2: everybody was still racist as hell. We did all sorts
Speaker 2: of fucked up stuff back then. Progressive then did not
Speaker 2: entirely mean the same thing it does today. But there
Speaker 2: were certain things that just like weren't controversial back then, right.
Speaker 2: And among the first great think tanks of American society
Speaker 2: was the Russell Sage Foundation, which had been established in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven from a ten million dollar donation. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from and that was a lot
Speaker 2: of money back then. That's like in about twenty something
Speaker 2: a year. To me, it's a lot of money for
Speaker 2: a dude. Yeah, that's not a lot in think tank
Speaker 2: terms back then. But I'm going to quote from Willis again.
Speaker 2: It brought together amateur social investigators and charity volunteers with
Speaker 2: professional social scientists for the purpose of applying new research
Speaker 2: methods in the permanent improvement of social conditions. There was
Speaker 2: a particular concern with child labor laws, child and family
Speaker 2: and health services, and education. The staff of educators, sociologists,
Speaker 2: and settlement house veterans comprised few academicians, but they compiled
Speaker 2: statistics and other pertinent information on social problems and abuses.
Speaker 2: These data were made available to the general public as
Speaker 2: well as to state and local governments to guide them
Speaker 2: in practical policy formation. This pamphlet was the most typical
Speaker 2: publication of the Sage Foundation at the time, and traveling
Speaker 2: exhibitions which visited county fairs and schools were also sent out.
Speaker 2: So this is you can see some similarity in that
Speaker 2: a lot of these today, these kind of like particularly
Speaker 2: more political think tanks, will put out stuff that's meant
Speaker 2: to be widely consumed, information that like you know, is
Speaker 2: meant to be sort of disseminated via social media or whatnot,
Speaker 2: are be like widely quoted in the news. The Russell
Speaker 2: Sage Foundation is taking a more direct route because there's
Speaker 2: not as many organs for people to get that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff out, So they're just like handing out they're
Speaker 2: looking into like, hey, how should we actually like educate children?
Speaker 2: Is it bad for little kids to work? We put
Speaker 2: together a pamphlet on this, like let's all look into
Speaker 2: the And again, these people were extra And when I say,
Speaker 2: I said earlier it wasn't really controversial to be against
Speaker 2: child labor or be in favor of public spending. It
Speaker 2: was among like very wealthy people. Obviously the business owners
Speaker 2: in America are going to stage a coup against FDR
Speaker 2: in the early thirties, right, but not among these educate
Speaker 2: like these academics and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's controversial, like controversy, you know, it's is the implication
Speaker 3: that there are multiple competing views, and it's weird when
Speaker 3: we count the views of the people who directly stand
Speaker 3: to gain, you know, like it's weird to be like
Speaker 3: it's it's weird to say, like there's controversy amongst like
Speaker 3: the victims and the criminals that did this, Like like
Speaker 3: there's controversy amongst the bank robbers and the bank.
Speaker 2: Crime haters can't agree about on robbery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like, I mean, it's just a group
Speaker 3: of people doing something bad and then a group of
Speaker 3: people saying like, yeah, what you're doing is bad, and
Speaker 3: they're like, I just and oh, there's controversy.
Speaker 2: We'd like to keep doing it. When it comes to
Speaker 2: the term think tank, which again kind of the Russell
Speaker 2: Sage Foundation is one of the first organ like institutions
Speaker 2: you could call a think tank. They weren't using that
Speaker 2: term back then, and I wanted to look, like try
Speaker 2: to figure out like where the phrase comes from, because,
Speaker 2: as you noted when we started this, it sounds like
Speaker 2: it should be a big tank full of Brian with
Speaker 2: a brain in it, and that's actually pretty apropos to
Speaker 2: the history. One historian traces it back to the forties
Speaker 2: as a just a slang term for brain, like someone
Speaker 2: like my think tank's not ticking do well today.
Speaker 3: That's such a good slang for brain. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 3: kind of mad that they took that away from us.
Speaker 2: We can take it back, Dave, we can take it back.
Speaker 2: Pour some poor some knowledge into your think tank, folks
Speaker 2: with this podcast. I've heard another history and trace it
Speaker 2: to World War Two, where it referred to like a
Speaker 2: war room, right, like you get all of your military
Speaker 2: experts together into your think tank and they figure out
Speaker 2: how to do a normandy. It's like a tank for yeah,
Speaker 2: that too. Yeah, it makes sense. And it's also possible
Speaker 2: that it comes from a guy named Burton Pines who
Speaker 2: was a historian who wrote about the traditionalist movement in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen eighties, and he used the analogy gathering
Speaker 2: different fish into a tank and concentrating the brain power, Dave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say that's that's the dumbest, right,
Speaker 3: that the dumbest.
Speaker 2: I wanted to try it because whenever I hear like
Speaker 2: an insane analogy like that, like this is just a
Speaker 2: book about like traditionalists by this historian, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: why the fuck would you use that analogy. I haven't
Speaker 2: been able to get a copy of the book that
Speaker 2: he says this, and it's not like online in a
Speaker 2: way that I was able to find it. That's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the context meant here.
Speaker 3: Was this person a child? They were they? Because that's
Speaker 3: the sort of thing like when you're a child you
Speaker 3: hear about like earwigs, you assume it's a wig on
Speaker 3: an ear, Like that's that's what a child would think
Speaker 3: when they hear think tank, It's like, oh yeah, like
Speaker 3: a bunch of fish are thinking you need to track
Speaker 3: down this person, Robert I do.
Speaker 2: I kind of think maybe he was making fun of
Speaker 2: the traditionalists by being like they're as dumb as a
Speaker 2: bunch of fish in a tank. That's also an insane
Speaker 2: way to call someone dumb, Like what would you do
Speaker 2: it that way? Just say they're silly man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need to track this person down and find
Speaker 3: their family. Yeah, and have them on the show, and yeah,
Speaker 3: make them answer for themselves.
Speaker 2: See usually, Dave, when I suggest finding someone's family, someone
Speaker 2: then posits something that's a crime. You're the first person
Speaker 2: to just say we should have them on the show.
Speaker 3: I'm appraise you could do a crime while they're on
Speaker 3: the show. It doesn't be a crime against that, but
Speaker 3: like they'll be crimes, you know.
Speaker 2: See, this is why you're a pinch hitter, Dave. You're
Speaker 2: able to swing left and right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't know what the fuck, Why the fuck
Speaker 2: he used this phrase. It's baffling to me. But the
Speaker 2: development of what become known as think tanks, you know,
Speaker 2: really starting in the eighties, primarily happens before we have
Speaker 2: a name for them, and a big like a guy
Speaker 2: who's kind of influential in development of this concept is
Speaker 2: Frederick Taylor. If you've ever heard of Taylorism. It's this
Speaker 2: thing that in kind of the mid century is going
Speaker 2: to become increasingly common in every different field of endeavor.
Speaker 2: We tailorize police forces, which is we're like, well, what
Speaker 2: if we standardize police training and what if we try
Speaker 2: to have like metrics for police officers and see if
Speaker 2: we can make them, you know, work better and more.
Speaker 2: And we do the same thing with factories. We're going
Speaker 2: to tailorize this factory. It's it's scientific management, right. Frederick
Speaker 2: Taylor is that guy.
Speaker 3: You're talking about standardized?
Speaker 2: Absolutely that all is in that same tradition. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's optimizing organizations and workflow for efficiency. Taylorism is going
Speaker 2: to be a big deal every It's where we get
Speaker 2: Deloitte and McKenzie, these consulting firms, right, Like, they all
Speaker 2: have Taylorism in their DNA. And one of Robert Taylor's
Speaker 2: friends is this guy named Robert Brookings. And does the
Speaker 2: Brookings sound familiar to you, Dave, It does, Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: this is the Brookings Institute guy, right, And the Brookings
Speaker 2: Institute is from this earlier generation of think tanks that
Speaker 2: actually think about things right. They're not just going to
Speaker 2: put out stuff to like make one politician or the
Speaker 2: other happy, among other things. The Brookings Institute are the
Speaker 2: people who like help put out the Vietnam papers or
Speaker 2: the Pentagon papers. Like they're the guys Elsberg is working with.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't make anyone in the government very happy, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's just actually something that needed to get out.
Speaker 2: So we're talking kind of about like the pre evil
Speaker 2: days here, although they're also not purely good either. Robert
Speaker 2: Brookings had spent time in German colleges in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds, and like a lot of Americans who did this,
Speaker 2: he came back with a thought that those Germans are
Speaker 2: onto something, right. Surely their mechanistic obsession with pushing the
Speaker 2: limits of efficiency will only lead to good things for Germany.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen thirteen, and I'm very optimistic, like.
Speaker 3: Those Germans are doing something over there. Exactly.
Speaker 2: So Brookings, unlike most of Americans who come back from
Speaker 2: Germany with ideas, he just gets into the dry goods business,
Speaker 2: and he does well enough in dry goods that he's
Speaker 2: he becomes very rich, and he gets a position on
Speaker 2: the war industry's board in World War One, which ironically
Speaker 2: puts him directly opposite Germany. The whole process of having
Speaker 2: doing a world war and of advising the government through
Speaker 2: a world war because we had never had to mobilize
Speaker 2: the milidy. The closest thing was like the Civil War.
Speaker 2: But you know that had been quite a while before.
Speaker 2: So this is like a big deal, and it convinces
Speaker 2: him that like having the government bringing in experts like
Speaker 2: me really helped the process of doing World War One,
Speaker 2: So maybe we should make that normal across the board. Right,
Speaker 2: Maybe when the government wants to face when mean, when
Speaker 2: Congress is voting on what the national budget should look like,
Speaker 2: they should talk to experts, right, And so he decides,
Speaker 2: I'm going to put a bunch of my money, this
Speaker 2: wealth that I've got into building an institution that can
Speaker 2: provide the government with the best possible information so it
Speaker 2: can make at our choices.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's that's his dream. And that's where we get the
Speaker 2: Brookings Institute. And he gets a bunch of his rich
Speaker 2: friends together and he's like, put some money into this thing,
Speaker 2: and it's important. This is going to be basically the
Speaker 2: same way think tanks work in the modern era, where
Speaker 2: you get all of these think tanks that are paid
Speaker 2: by a company. Hey, we're exon Mobile. We want you
Speaker 2: to put out a bunch of research saying that gasoline
Speaker 2: is great for the environment. Right, The Brookings Institute looks
Speaker 2: like the same thing. It's not quite because at this
Speaker 2: point there is not really the expectation that by putting
Speaker 2: money into this thing, it will only publish information you
Speaker 2: want it to publish. That's not really the case yet,
Speaker 2: and people are going to get pissed about this as
Speaker 2: time goes on. But yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Seems like, sorry, this seems like a good idea on paper, right,
Speaker 3: and you can immediately kind of see like what if
Speaker 3: we do this like direct channel to the government through experts,
Speaker 3: like that won't get corrupt or like yeah go bad, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: accept the information we give them, even if the information
Speaker 3: is like let's not do a war, like they'll listen
Speaker 3: to us.
Speaker 2: We keep going back to star Trek. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like the borg, right where you shoot at them once
Speaker 2: and you can fuck them up, but the second time
Speaker 2: their shields will have modulated. So for a little while,
Speaker 2: the Brookings Institute actually works the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 2: Rich people fund it and it puts out information and
Speaker 2: it's usually just information based on like what these experts.
Speaker 2: They're not perfect, they make mistakes, but it's what they
Speaker 2: actually think is best in these different fields of endeavor. Right,
Speaker 2: it's actual like attempts at analyzing policy and impact, and
Speaker 2: it's not Again, this is not always good. For example,
Speaker 2: the Brooking is an institute is going to oppose much
Speaker 2: of the new Deal because they're really market driven, and
Speaker 2: Roosevelt is saying, we need more central planning.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but by the time Nixon's in office, you know,
Speaker 2: they are seen and derided a lot by Republicans as
Speaker 2: the liberal think tank. Right. And again, by the time
Speaker 2: Nixon's in office, these are the guys who published the
Speaker 2: Pentagon papers. So like they are this symbol of like
Speaker 2: liberal progressive like ethos by the seventies. And the fact
Speaker 2: that they switch like this is not because like there's
Speaker 2: much of an ideological capture. It's that they're they're actually
Speaker 2: the people here are actually generally trying to do what
Speaker 2: they think is right. Again, that doesn't mean they're always right,
Speaker 2: but like they are actually trying to analyze policy here.
Speaker 3: For sure, there's always that like I I mean when people,
Speaker 3: you know, there's been a big push about like you know,
Speaker 3: colleges and schools and being liberal and stuff where it's
Speaker 3: that weird situation where you're like defending this thing, but
Speaker 3: you're like, I'm not saying it doesn't have problems. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's that weird in between where it's like, yes, it's
Speaker 3: more just that the criticism goes so over the top
Speaker 3: that you're is like, no, they can be criticized, just
Speaker 3: not for this shit you're saying. Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like when we talk about like, oh, the
Speaker 2: good old days when progressives were a sin, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: people called Woodrow Wilson a progressive and he was like
Speaker 2: maybe our most racist president. Yeah, we had presidents who
Speaker 2: were slave owners, and Wilson might have been more racist,
Speaker 2: Like he was a terrible man.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of nuanced that gets lost in these conversations.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not trying to paper over like oh,
Speaker 2: to go back to the good old days of the
Speaker 2: progressive fifties. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, So in the UH, it's
Speaker 2: one of those things where like the partly like after
Speaker 2: World War Two in particular, like the Brookings Institute is
Speaker 2: kind of a little bit more what we might call
Speaker 2: conservative prior to World War Two. In the post war years,
Speaker 2: like half of the world's money, literally half of all
Speaker 2: of the wealth in the world is in the United States, right,
Speaker 2: And so for a period of time, debates over stuff
Speaker 2: like the budget and fiscal policy, like part of why
Speaker 2: Eisenhower is able to do these massive public works projects.
Speaker 2: Part of why there's not that much organized resistance to
Speaker 2: the idea of public funding is that we have all
Speaker 2: of the money there's ever been, right, and so stuff
Speaker 2: like you don't get a lot of people worrying over
Speaker 2: the budget so much in the fifties. You know, one
Speaker 2: article I found from The Atlantic in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: by Greg Easterbrook describes the economy in like the mid
Speaker 2: century as a dead issue and writes social justice in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: And this is by the sixties dominated the agenda. Brookings
Speaker 2: concentrated on those fields, emerging as a chief source of
Speaker 2: arguments in favor of the Great Society and opposed to
Speaker 2: US involvement in Vietnam. In the Washington swirl, where few
Speaker 2: people have the time to actually read the reports they debate,
Speaker 2: respectability is often proportional to tonnage. The more studies someone
Speaker 2: tosses on the table, the more likely he is to
Speaker 2: win his point. For years, Brookings held a monopoly on tonnage.
Speaker 2: It's paper supporting liberal positions went unchallenged by serious conservative rebuttals.
Speaker 2: And so that's part of why there's not much counter
Speaker 2: weight to like a lot of these liberal ideas about
Speaker 2: like how money should be spent, is that the only
Speaker 2: people researching them as the Brookings Institute. So if you're
Speaker 2: going to like look at, well, what's the evidence on
Speaker 2: whether or not we should you know, engage in this policy,
Speaker 2: where you've got like three hundred pages of shit from
Speaker 2: the Brookings Institute and nothing else, So I guess, I
Speaker 2: guess it's easier to make that case right right now.
Speaker 2: This is going to start to change by the period
Speaker 2: of the Nixon administration. And part of what changes it
Speaker 2: is that this first wave of think takes and expert advisors,
Speaker 2: a decent chunk of them, had been intimately involved in
Speaker 2: like convincing the government that it was the right time,
Speaker 2: that Vietnam was a good thing to get into, right,
Speaker 2: this was going to go well. And these are not
Speaker 2: Brookings Institute people again, they're they are pretty much pretty
Speaker 2: consistently like this is a dumb idea, we're like fucking
Speaker 2: ourselves over by sending troops to this war. But it's
Speaker 2: another think tank that's going to be heavily involved in
Speaker 2: US getting into Vietnam, and that thing tank is called
Speaker 2: the Rand Corporation. You hear these guys, these fund did
Speaker 2: these cool guys.
Speaker 3: Were they right? Were they right about Vietnam?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I just read Biden just signed a treaty
Speaker 2: with Vietnam, so it must have gone well, yeah, I
Speaker 2: haven't this is this is the last piece of history
Speaker 2: about Vietnam I read until a week ago. So it
Speaker 2: seems like it.
Speaker 3: All went well in the end, it all went well.
Speaker 2: Why would we be at peace with them otherwise?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So the RAND Corporation is founded right after the big
Speaker 2: dub dub dose, and they're like a defense industry think
Speaker 2: tank and their initial obsession. They come out of this period.
Speaker 2: We've just nuked Japan, the Russians shortly thereafter get their
Speaker 2: own nukes, and we're like, we should probably have some
Speaker 2: smart people figuring out what might happen as a result
Speaker 2: of the fact that we all now have these these weapons. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good idea. It's not it's not a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Right, we all have doomsday devices. Maybe get some of
Speaker 3: them brainiacs to.
Speaker 2: Same you think about this, Is this a good idea?
Speaker 3: And what's gonna happen is the brainy acts are gonna
Speaker 3: be like, no, everything's bad and they're like, cool, thanks.
Speaker 3: I mean we're not gonna do it, we're just gonna
Speaker 3: keep them, but thanks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is if they'd had This is kind of
Speaker 2: The RAND Corporation is kind of the first really influential
Speaker 2: think tank that is funded by a deep because they're
Speaker 2: they're funded by the US Air Force, so they are
Speaker 2: not in fact going to be like, perhaps we shouldn't
Speaker 2: have these things. You know.
Speaker 3: What this is all reminding me of is when you
Speaker 3: go out with like friends, I'm sure you can relate
Speaker 3: and you're making a series. You're like you're drinking or
Speaker 3: you're doing whatever, and you're tuned too your friend and
Speaker 3: go like, I can have more drinks, right, and the
Speaker 3: friend goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well you're like good, look, you're.
Speaker 3: Looking to someone to just justify the bad decision you
Speaker 3: know you're gonna make. Yeah, And that's what friends are for.
Speaker 3: And these things thinks are like they're they're good friends. Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They go to them and go like, it's fine that
Speaker 3: we're doing this right, and the thing too is like yeah,
Speaker 3: it's fine, man, the experts say it's fine.
Speaker 2: Escalating our involvement in Vietnam is like me saying last night, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can get up at ten am to do this podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah why not?
Speaker 2: And you did?
Speaker 3: You did it, So Vietnam was fine.
Speaker 2: I have felt like this is my Vietnam since about
Speaker 2: when I ran out of coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the initial obsession of the Rand Corporation is thinking
Speaker 2: the unthinkable. That's kind of like their unofficial tagline, right,
Speaker 2: which is planning for a nuclear war? Right, the idea here?
Speaker 2: And it's interesting, like they're sore. They're right in near
Speaker 2: where we used to work, Dave. They're kind of in
Speaker 2: between like Santa Monica and Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Oh, we should have went and seen them.
Speaker 2: We should have gone. I don't know if they're still there,
Speaker 2: but they were for a time. That the fact they
Speaker 2: were across the street from Mary Pickford's beach house. And
Speaker 2: one description I've read at the time said that they
Speaker 2: quote did little but sit, think, talk, right, pass around memos,
Speaker 2: and dream up new ideas about nuclear war, which sounds
Speaker 2: like a fun life.
Speaker 3: It kind of does.
Speaker 2: Yeah I could do that, yes, Jerwa, bring me on, guys,
Speaker 2: And again, like everything here, it's easy to see how
Speaker 2: it's like, well, yeah, that could be a good idea, right,
Speaker 2: you probably want someone thinking about this for a living.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, there's this romantic idea of like the quote
Speaker 3: unquote like scholars, right, this idea of like, Okay, there's
Speaker 3: so many humans and we have so much money, and
Speaker 3: we've built the civilization. People don't have to worry about
Speaker 3: just how to survive day to day. Yeah, what if
Speaker 3: we have a building where just a group of people
Speaker 3: get together and think about stuff and just like like
Speaker 3: read all the books and like then when we need
Speaker 3: an expert, we go to them and go, like, what
Speaker 3: do you think if.
Speaker 2: We put all of the smartest boys in a room?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Work.
Speaker 3: It's a romantic idea. It's just that people are always
Speaker 3: going to be people too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the problem day've number one, they're funded
Speaker 2: by the Air Force, and number two, the kind of
Speaker 2: guys who are both interested in and able to get
Speaker 2: a job thinking about nuclear war all day. They're the
Speaker 2: kind of people today we would cording these people off
Speaker 2: from the rest of society by getting them into Warhammer
Speaker 2: forty thousand right right.
Speaker 3: By the way. Instead of expert or enthusiasts. I often
Speaker 3: say pervert because I think really breaks it down, which
Speaker 3: is like they're a weird little sick freak who's into this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think of there's nothing wrong with that. You just
Speaker 3: have to remember that, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that idea, Dave, because think of how
Speaker 2: different decades of like nuclear weapons policy would be if
Speaker 2: instead of bringing like nuclear weapons expert, it was like
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons perverts on CNN.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, they would make a organization and thank you.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're all aware that you're a weird pervert
Speaker 3: about Yes, we're going to take it with a grain assault,
Speaker 3: but thank you for your advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the RAND guy wants to jack off
Speaker 2: on the MORI CBMs. Let's let's now talk to him
Speaker 2: not getting murdered experts.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, No, not getting murder and murdered pervert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, perfect pert. You're right here, right. We got to
Speaker 2: be we gotta be consistent, Dave, otherwise we have nothing.
Speaker 2: So the RAND guys are a bunch of their war gamers, right,
Speaker 2: like a lot of them literally are. But that that
Speaker 2: is the kind of guy that is drawn to this job.
Speaker 2: These are like game theory nerds, yeah exactly, And they
Speaker 2: didn't have anything better to do in the fifties and
Speaker 2: sixties because there weren't many good war games then give
Speaker 2: the president bad advice about Vietnam. Secretary of Defense and
Speaker 2: a list war criminal Robert mac namara got most of
Speaker 2: his top aids from the RAND Corporation, and they provided
Speaker 2: more recommendations on US policy in Vietnam than any other organization.
Speaker 2: In fact, RAND reports were critical in influencing every stage
Speaker 2: of the war in Vietnam. And this is where we
Speaker 2: really get into the think tank evil. By the mid sixties,
Speaker 2: LBJ was trying to decide should we escalate US involvement
Speaker 2: in the war or not At this point, like sixty
Speaker 2: four or something like that, the US could have backed
Speaker 2: out right, we could have left. We could have said like, sorry,
Speaker 2: this regime is bad, we made a mistake, let's go.
Speaker 2: And North Vietnam probably would have been like, hey, that's great.
Speaker 2: That's all we ever wanted, Like like we're good. No,
Speaker 2: no more conflict is necessary. This is not what happens.
Speaker 2: Because a researcher named Leon Gower, who was a project
Speaker 2: headed RAND, published several papers on morale among North Vietnamese
Speaker 2: soldiers and civilians. He spends months traveling around the country
Speaker 2: talking to captured North Vietnamese soldiers, Viet Cong militants who
Speaker 2: had been like captured and stuff during like actions, and
Speaker 2: also just a bunch of like villagers living in kind
Speaker 2: of around the line of contact at the time. And
Speaker 2: his conclusion based on these interviews is that Vietnamese morale
Speaker 2: is right around the corner from collapsing. If we just
Speaker 2: stick it out a couple more months, victory is inevitable.
Speaker 2: That we've got them on the ropes now, no, weal
Speaker 2: they talked.
Speaker 3: To prisoners and was like, I talked to all these
Speaker 3: people that were captured, and I predict their morale is low.
Speaker 2: They're really sad. I think we're winning.
Speaker 3: I talked to all the people who would be said
Speaker 3: that's ridiculous, of course not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you talk to the talk to the British
Speaker 2: people who were captured in nineteen forty, Yeah, they're probably
Speaker 2: pretty bummed about the way the war's going.
Speaker 3: And this is the thing about experts or sorry perverts,
Speaker 3: which is that like it's so tunnel vision right where
Speaker 3: it's like it's also academic that a lot of the
Speaker 3: time the big thing they're missing is like the big
Speaker 3: obvious thing or the human factor, and that that happens,
Speaker 3: you know, that's like I think a legit criticism of
Speaker 3: like colleges and shit like that off.
Speaker 2: Yes too, it's just a legit criticism of the way
Speaker 2: human beings analyze. Like there's a famous study of like
Speaker 2: World War Two. They're looking at like all of their
Speaker 2: planes that get damaged, like where are they getting damaged?
Speaker 2: Those are the parts of the planes we should reinforce.
Speaker 2: You can see that diagram that's got like here are
Speaker 2: all the areas that planes are most often damaged in.
Speaker 2: And then they like realized later like, well, but we're
Speaker 2: just counting the planes that actually made it back. So
Speaker 2: actually those aren't the damage. That's not the damage to
Speaker 2: focus on. It's the planes that went down we should
Speaker 2: be paying attention to.
Speaker 3: That's such a good example of me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's going to happen with all of Vietnam.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote from a report in Ramparts magazine,
Speaker 2: which is a thing that no longer exists, but was
Speaker 2: fucking dope for a very long time, And this is
Speaker 2: their report on the Rand Corporation in Vietnam. It was
Speaker 2: Gower's analyzes that provided the scientific underpinning for the light
Speaker 2: at the end of the tunnel mentality that were so
Speaker 2: crucial to the escalation of the war and the devastation
Speaker 2: that followed. In nineteen sixty six, his work was identified
Speaker 2: by Carl Rowan as the study which lies at the
Speaker 2: heart of President Johnson's strategy. The implications of the Gower
Speaker 2: study are profound, for they indicate yet another aspect of
Speaker 2: the erosion of democratic decision making process that has attended
Speaker 2: every phase of the present conflict. For both the Rand
Speaker 2: interviews of the nlf cadra the most complete portrait available
Speaker 2: of the other side in this war, and the reports
Speaker 2: from Leon Gower were classified and kept securely within the
Speaker 2: contact between the within the contract between the war bent
Speaker 2: executive and the private corporation, and thus and thereby unavailable
Speaker 2: to the American people. In fact, to this day, Gower's
Speaker 2: reports are unavailable to Congress and will have to be
Speaker 2: written and you will have to read them in ramparts.
Speaker 2: And it's like so this is the by far, like
Speaker 2: the best collection of information that we had at that
Speaker 2: point on North Vietnamese people's thoughts on how the war
Speaker 2: was going. And it was entirely filtered through the lens
Speaker 2: of this very biased man who was being paid effectively
Speaker 2: by the US Air force, but was in a private
Speaker 2: corporation and so none of his worker methodology was open
Speaker 2: to being scrutinized by the public, and his analysis that
Speaker 2: we were right around, right around the corner from winning
Speaker 2: in Vietnam had the biggest impact on Elbajay's decision to
Speaker 2: escalate of any like individual factor.
Speaker 3: That's bleak.
Speaker 2: It's really bad, right, and you probably shouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Like that, Right. It's like according to this expert who
Speaker 3: literally like it's asking an expert to look into whether
Speaker 3: or not they should continue to pay this person, and
Speaker 3: you should have the job too. Like it's that's like
Speaker 3: when when one of the possibilities of like your study
Speaker 3: means that you no longer get to do the thing
Speaker 3: you're doing, you shouldn't get to do that study, right, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing with like police departments like inspecting
Speaker 2: each other, investigating each other over crimes. Yeah, probably shouldn't
Speaker 2: let it because it is it is like as the
Speaker 2: as rampartson, it's really anti democratic, right, because you've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of people saying, I don't think we should
Speaker 2: be involved in Vietnam, because why in the fuck are
Speaker 2: we sending soldiers to Vietnam, and then you've got the
Speaker 2: president saying, well, look, you're all a bunch of casuals,
Speaker 2: a bunch of Yahoo's who don't know anything. I've talked
Speaker 2: to the experts and they say, we're about to win.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, this is it's such a tricky. This
Speaker 3: is where nuance comes into play, because there's this idea, like,
Speaker 3: you know, very recently we had something that happened in
Speaker 3: this country where a bunch of experts were saying everybody
Speaker 3: needs to do this thing, and people are like, ah,
Speaker 3: screw the experts. Yeah, and there was sort of this
Speaker 3: battle over it where it's like sometimes experts, like when
Speaker 3: it's very when it's very black and white, is just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you should probably just do what they say, right,
Speaker 3: Like you know, if someone says, you know.
Speaker 2: Don't lick toilet seats, wow, I probably won't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very tricky because I understand why over years
Speaker 3: and years there are people who are like, h fuck
Speaker 3: the experts, because then you get these cases where it's
Speaker 3: like you're saying undemocratic, where everybody's sort of saying like
Speaker 3: we should do these I should have the freedom to
Speaker 3: do these things, or I believe we should do this,
Speaker 3: and it's like, no, we're going to consult this handful
Speaker 3: of people to make the decision. Feels very undemocratic, And
Speaker 3: for the most part, it's just like it's there's no
Speaker 3: right answer across the board right where it's like I
Speaker 3: wish we were undemocratic about like climate change, Like I
Speaker 3: wish governments would just go listen, this is what we're doing,
Speaker 3: because otherwise we'll all die. But that's very dangerous thinking
Speaker 3: across the board. So it really is like a case
Speaker 3: by case situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the overwhelming lesson of history is that
Speaker 2: there's actually no good way to do things. Yes, but
Speaker 2: the right way certainly isn't the one we're doing. I
Speaker 2: think we can all agree on that. And you know
Speaker 2: what else we can all agree on, Dave what products
Speaker 2: and services? Oh, we're back Dave, the Rand Corporation. When
Speaker 2: we left them off, they had just told LBJ. Hey Man,
Speaker 2: just a few more guys, just a few more one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand US troops and it'll win us the war.
Speaker 2: We're right around the corner, like the Vietnam's on the ropes.
Speaker 2: Nor the Vietnam can't hold out much more. They're just
Speaker 2: about to give up, right.
Speaker 3: Right, and then we won. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, As we all know, nineteen sixty four was the
Speaker 2: last year of the Vietnam War before our glorious victory,
Speaker 2: and we started air dropping McDonald's into the jungle. So
Speaker 2: when you look at like the kind of analyzes the
Speaker 2: RAND Corporation was providing the US government, the Johnson administration
Speaker 2: during Vietnam, they kind of dispassionately advised this kind of ladder,
Speaker 2: A ladder of escalation is how it's usually described, right,
Speaker 2: where like, if the enemy does this, then you add
Speaker 2: more troops. If the need of it is this, then
Speaker 2: you carry out an offensive. If the enemy does this,
Speaker 2: then we launched another bombing campaign. Right.
Speaker 3: This was the ladder of escalation.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, escalator, an escalator. I don't know if they
Speaker 2: had them back then. It was the sixties. It was
Speaker 2: the sixties. We hadn't invented science yet.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They were throwing spears out of planes. That's how the
Speaker 2: air force worked. Yeah, and all of this this like
Speaker 2: ladder of escalation that RAND advises, it's based off of
Speaker 2: their belief about what Vietnam would do in response to
Speaker 2: US ordering a bombing campaign right of the north through
Speaker 2: of like you know, of their capital, right, and it
Speaker 2: was based on their understanding that this is what an
Speaker 2: opposing government would do in this situation. So they're thinking,
Speaker 2: if our capital was bombed, how would we act, Right, Well,
Speaker 2: we would probably seek to super peace or whatever, because
Speaker 2: like Americans would not put up with the capital being bombed.
Speaker 2: You know, there would be a real issue for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'd freak out, we'd call French fries freedom fries.
Speaker 2: Yes, we would lose our minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things would get very yea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The I actually, I mean the idea was that
Speaker 2: I think you've actually you've actually predicted what happened here,
Speaker 2: which is that like, well, when they bombed our capital,
Speaker 2: we went insane. We didn't, we didn't seem to. We
Speaker 2: didn't go for negotiations. But the RAM Corporation is like, well,
Speaker 2: if we bomb the capital Vietna, North Vietnam will want
Speaker 2: to come to the negotiating table. They'll make concessions to us.
Speaker 3: Then, right, Yeah, it feels like we were we were
Speaker 3: riding high on nukes, which is that, like I get why, Like, well,
Speaker 3: I mean Japan had already surrendered, right, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 3: or like no, no.
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's that's a whole separate.
Speaker 3: But like it's all to say that, like nukes was
Speaker 3: a new thing, and so seeing a new and not
Speaker 3: knowing what it is, I can imagine the government being like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: we're done here, you know, like I don't know what
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it because like the nukes are such a you know,
Speaker 2: we dropped two nukes on Japan and the government sues
Speaker 2: for peace. Right, that's the reality of what was going
Speaker 2: on is a bit more complicated than that. But because
Speaker 2: that's like kind of the last thing that happens, you
Speaker 2: do get this attitude that like, well, we can bomb
Speaker 2: our problems away with enough bombs, and the reality is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: we bomb the shit out of Japan prior to that,
Speaker 2: and they didn't surrender until the nukes, And we bomb
Speaker 2: the shit out of Germany and they didn't surrender because
Speaker 2: of the bombing. Right, Bombing doesn't make people surrender usually,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't in the case of Vietnam. Right, the
Speaker 2: RAND Corporation has utterly misread North Vietnam, like they are
Speaker 2: not going to respond to the latter of escalation the
Speaker 2: way we expect they are. As David Landau wrote in ramparts.
Speaker 2: Underlying almost all of Rand's work on the war in
Speaker 2: the late sixties and early seventies was the unquestioned assumption
Speaker 2: that the enemy in Vietnam would behave just like any
Speaker 2: other sovereign power at war, that he could be lured
Speaker 2: by attractive negotiating offers which fell short of his stated position,
Speaker 2: or that refusing to negotiate, he could be brought to
Speaker 2: the peace table with the threat and use of force.
Speaker 2: It was a universal failure to grasp the unique nature
Speaker 2: of the insurgency Vietnam. In other words, the kind of
Speaker 2: guys who work at RAND, who are like war gamers,
Speaker 2: who were obsessed with their own careers and like rational thought,
Speaker 2: could not accept that, like, well, there's people over there
Speaker 2: that believe in things, right, The people running the war
Speaker 2: effort in North Vietnam might not just come to the
Speaker 2: table because they get scared because of a bombing. They
Speaker 2: might actually have principles that they're holding too, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems like an oversight that's common, which is
Speaker 3: like looking at them like NPCs, you know, where it's like,
Speaker 3: if we do this, then they'll get scared. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: dehumanizing the enemy, right, and the thing about doing that
Speaker 3: is it often screws yourself over where it's like if
Speaker 3: you're not thinking about them like human beings, yeah, then
Speaker 3: you don't actually know how to deal with them.
Speaker 2: That's exactly it. And it's the same thing you get
Speaker 2: with like we're seeing with the houthis right now right
Speaker 2: where it's like, Okay, well we sent we started bombing them.
Speaker 2: Oh that hasn't changed what they're doing. They're still still
Speaker 2: throwing cruise missiles at ships.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also as if yeah, yeah, no, you.
Speaker 3: Could even scale it down, Like I think like that
Speaker 3: that whole Libs of TikTok interview where she just froze
Speaker 3: up to me has that stinks of like, yeah, they
Speaker 3: have this idea in their head of like a liberal journalist,
Speaker 3: this straw man, and then when you actually sit down
Speaker 3: with these people or like Elon Muskin don Lemon, where
Speaker 3: it's like then you realize like, oh, they're completely unprepared
Speaker 3: for this situation because they had this straw man in
Speaker 3: their head that they thought like, oh, this will be easy.
Speaker 3: And then so like it's this, yeah, you can scale
Speaker 3: it up. It's a war too, where it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like the same psychological like the Rand
Speaker 2: Corporation in Vietnam are in the same position as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk in that interview, or the libs of TikTok
Speaker 2: lady when she get like this happens repeatedly. I mean
Speaker 2: it's the same. You could go back to like Nazi
Speaker 2: Germany right when they invade Russia, being like, because they're
Speaker 2: very much if you look at like the Rand Corporation
Speaker 2: is telling ob they're right around the corner from collapse.
Speaker 2: Just push a little harder and they'll fall apart. Hitler
Speaker 2: invades the USSR being like, yeah, if we just kick
Speaker 2: in the door, everything's going to collapse. It's like, now,
Speaker 2: it never quite works that way, does it, Guys.
Speaker 3: Russia?
Speaker 2: Anytime you're true And you should think about this when
Speaker 2: people talk about like, oh, you know, the Republicans, you know,
Speaker 2: don't have any real strip, Like we outnumber them by
Speaker 2: so much. You know, Trump is on the ropes, right,
Speaker 2: All we have to do is push a little harder
Speaker 2: and we'll beat them forever. Yeah, anytime anyone's telling you
Speaker 2: that about your enemy. No, people believe in things. It's
Speaker 2: hard to actually win a fight like this.
Speaker 3: It's wild how we keep doing it. Because like this
Speaker 3: not to deviate too far, but like the Oscars this year,
Speaker 3: they like read a Trump tweet on stage and everybody
Speaker 3: had a good laugh, and it's like a member like
Speaker 3: the static election, Like you guys gotta start like they're
Speaker 3: such humorous and it's like when does this ever worked
Speaker 3: out for you? Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Part of it this reveals something like fundamentally like kind
Speaker 2: of horrible at the center of a lot of the
Speaker 2: human experience, which is that a huge number of people
Speaker 2: don't want to think that there can be other people
Speaker 2: who believe wildly different things from them and really believe it.
Speaker 2: They're just like doing it to be like evil or
Speaker 2: like try to like get but like actually have are
Speaker 2: like that is the center of their being. Like the
Speaker 2: idea to a lot of these guys, the idea that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, there are actual committed communists nationalists who are
Speaker 2: willing to die, lots of them for a cause and
Speaker 2: are not willing to compromise on that cause. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you almost can't believe that because then you have to
Speaker 2: kind of accept that, like people can live in a
Speaker 2: way that is wildly different from how I do, and
Speaker 2: there's they're just as much people they're not like brainwashed
Speaker 2: or anything like. This is actually just a deeply held
Speaker 2: set of beliefs.
Speaker 3: Right right, And even if you think they're doing it,
Speaker 3: like they don't fully belie leave it or they're doing
Speaker 3: it in mouth. I mean, we have like what sunken cost
Speaker 3: fallony or a fallacy, or I call it being pot committed,
Speaker 3: which is like that idea that when you've put so
Speaker 3: much into it, you're not going to back out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that's really where we're headed here, because
Speaker 2: the Rand Corporation is very, very much integral in the
Speaker 2: US getting pot committed to Vietnam. Obviously, you can trace
Speaker 2: a lot of people's deaths back to the Rand Corporation's
Speaker 2: work there. And this has two major effects on domestic
Speaker 2: politics in the United States. One is that think tanks
Speaker 2: and experts, the concept of expertise you brought up sort
Speaker 2: of like the way in which everyone a lot of
Speaker 2: people reacted to experts talking about like what we should
Speaker 2: do with COVID. A big part of why there's such
Speaker 2: a rapid backlash to like very basic public health shit.
Speaker 2: It all kind of starts with the backlash to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: All of the experts say we're about to win, throw
Speaker 2: some more shit in here, right, throw some more money
Speaker 2: behind it, and they're horribly wrong. And that kind of
Speaker 2: that helps sort of fuel this anti expertise backlash in
Speaker 2: American popular culture, right, and it is you have to
Speaker 2: say that this is a big part of conservatism today.
Speaker 2: It's not wrong for there to be that backlash, right,
Speaker 2: You should be really skeptical about people who claim to
Speaker 2: expertise in this shit.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, yeah, but yeah, it's yeah, all about the
Speaker 3: nuance where it's like, yeah, being able to think critically
Speaker 3: about these things is a good idea. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: that that's not often what people do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Unfortunately, the response for some people is like, well,
Speaker 2: since all the experts are crooks, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: vote for the angriest man I've ever seen. You know, Well,
Speaker 2: that's not really a good idea either. The other equally
Speaker 2: important takeaway, though, and this is kind of it might
Speaker 2: seem like it's separate, but a lot of people recognize
Speaker 2: both these things is that think tanks have power. Right.
Speaker 2: A bunch of eggheads writing policy papers helped provide support
Speaker 2: for an insane escalation v Vietnam, and that means there's
Speaker 2: a lot of power in having eggheads write policy papers, right,
Speaker 2: and if you pay for those policy papers, maybe you
Speaker 2: can get eggheads to support any insane policy you want
Speaker 2: to push an American society, right, And this is deeply
Speaker 2: attractive to the oligarchs who had fought like hyenas against
Speaker 2: the New Deal. These people had been infuriated by the
Speaker 2: Great Society as well. That's lbj's right. Alongside escalation of Vietnam,
Speaker 2: LBJ is pushing some of the most like substantial social
Speaker 2: welfare programs in the history of our country. And these
Speaker 2: people who had kind of who had fought against the
Speaker 2: New Deal but had given up, were like feeling kind
Speaker 2: of hopeless at like we can't stop the anti war
Speaker 2: movement from rising. That's continuing to frustrate them in like
Speaker 2: the mid sixties, and also we couldn't stop this raft
Speaker 2: of social reforms from going through. But what they sort
Speaker 2: of start to realize is that because the liberal establishment
Speaker 2: has gotten so in bed in Vietnam and with this
Speaker 2: kind of like cadre of experts who backed their stupid
Speaker 2: ideas for what to do, there there was an opportunity, right,
Speaker 2: an opportunity to actually reverse this kind of feeling that
Speaker 2: conservatism is always on the back foot and start taking
Speaker 2: strides forward to become the dominant ideology in the country. Right,
Speaker 2: this is like the thing that's starting to happen in
Speaker 2: the mid sixties. You could be forgiven if you had
Speaker 2: thought that like the ideological battle between conservatism and like
Speaker 2: liberalism was still had still been won by liberals in
Speaker 2: the sixties, it would have looked that way, because nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four is when we get the candidacy of Barry Goldwater,
Speaker 2: and Goldwater is he's like the craziest person anybody has
Speaker 2: ever seen in nineteen sixty four in politics I talk
Speaker 2: about people will always point out on the subreddit, well,
Speaker 2: actually he was like pretty pretty moderate on a lot
Speaker 2: of things. By the end of his life. He was
Speaker 2: like pro gay marriage and pro weed and stuff, and
Speaker 2: like all of that's true. But in nineteen sixty four
Speaker 2: he is the guy who is He's coming up on
Speaker 2: stage and he's saying, like, extreamism and defensive liberty is
Speaker 2: no vice. Let's lab a nuclear bomb into the men's
Speaker 2: room at the Kremlin. Lazy dole. Happy people want to
Speaker 2: feed on the fruits of somebody else's labor right. He
Speaker 2: comes up when he gives his speech at the RNC
Speaker 2: in sixty four. He talks about how like the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party and the network news programs are into the direction
Speaker 2: of Marxist ballet dancers, that like their god is Mammon, right,
Speaker 2: like who is money? Like money is the god of
Speaker 2: the liberal establishment. He is kind of a maniac, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's very reasonable compared to like modern Republicans. But this
Speaker 2: is how people think about him at the time, and
Speaker 2: Goldwater like, this is a very scary moment for anyone
Speaker 2: paying attention because what they'll notice, people who are at
Speaker 2: the Cow Palace, which is like the place in San
Speaker 2: Francisco where the RNC is happening, then will note that
Speaker 2: like his followers are, they're proto trumpists, right, They are
Speaker 2: into him and excited about him in a way that
Speaker 2: nobody was for p Residence, right, Like it was like
Speaker 2: this weird hitlarian kind of cult of personality that he had,
Speaker 2: and it was small, but the extremism with which he
Speaker 2: was embraced by these kind of what will become known
Speaker 2: as the new Right was really concerning to a lot
Speaker 2: of people for good reason. And it might have looked
Speaker 2: because Goldwater loses badly. LBJ gets sixty one percent of
Speaker 2: the popular vote. So you can see how you some
Speaker 2: conservatives were like, well, this means we're fucked forever, right,
Speaker 2: this guy Goldwater has set us back generations. You know,
Speaker 2: we we went too hard, too fast, and we lost badly,
Speaker 2: and like we we have to go to the middle. Right.
Speaker 2: That's certainly what like if this were reversed, if you
Speaker 2: had an actual like hardcore leftist presidential candidate get defeated
Speaker 2: that badly, the Democratic Party's lesson would be we can
Speaker 2: never ever do anything again, right, Like.
Speaker 3: It's back to the future. I guess you guys aren't
Speaker 3: ready for that yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that is what happens here. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean this this plays into like I've talked to
Speaker 3: like punks who were sentient in the eighties when Reagan
Speaker 3: was elected, and they talk about this idea of like,
Speaker 3: when Reagan got elected, I thought, oh, the world's gonna end,
Speaker 3: and then it didn't. And this is kind of what
Speaker 3: they did that movie Oppenheimer, that idea of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it kind of did. Like That's the thing we don't
Speaker 3: realize is when we say, like, oh, Trump's gonna fucking
Speaker 3: destroy the world or whatever. It's like, not immediately. It's
Speaker 3: more about the fact that these people are going to
Speaker 3: set us into this direction that's just going to keep
Speaker 3: snowballing where we've now said, oh, it's okay for this person, yeah,
Speaker 3: to have to even run, even just running for president.
Speaker 3: We're basically saying like we're now entertaining this idea and
Speaker 3: maybe it wasn't maybe people didn't go for it this time,
Speaker 3: but okay, let's just slowly roll it out a little
Speaker 3: slower next time.
Speaker 2: You know, there's some people on the left who are
Speaker 2: like actual, like like Lewis Lapham of Harper's when we're
Speaker 2: to quote from seems to recognize what goldwater means. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, you get a bit of that. Hunter S.
Speaker 2: Thompson is kind of one of the people who sees
Speaker 2: Goldwater and is like oh fuck, oh fuck, because he's
Speaker 2: just got a pretty good understanding of like American culture
Speaker 2: and like, Okay, this is going to keep being a thing.
Speaker 2: It's only going to get bigger. A lot of the
Speaker 2: people who had been Goldwater backers, a lot of these
Speaker 2: these guys were talking about this cadra of like super
Speaker 2: conservative multi millionaires most of them who had inherited their money.
Speaker 2: They are like they kind of have this brief flash
Speaker 2: of hope, a lot of them for Goldwater, but there's
Speaker 2: also like this deep crashing, like frustration when he fails
Speaker 2: in this sense that like, well, we've lost forever. We
Speaker 2: just can't We're not gonna be able to stop communism
Speaker 2: for taking over the country. And in his article for
Speaker 2: Harper's Lewis Lapham describes a meeting of these guys at
Speaker 2: Bohemian Grove in nineteen sixty eight, which sets the mood
Speaker 2: of this particular cast well. In the hearts of the
Speaker 2: corporate chieftains wandering around the redwood trees and the Bohemian
Speaker 2: Grove in July nineteen sixty eight, the fear was palpable
Speaker 2: and genuine. The croquet lawns seemed to be sliding away
Speaker 2: beneath their feet, and although they knew they were in trouble,
Speaker 2: they didn't know why. Ideas apparently mattered, and words were
Speaker 2: maybe more important than they had guessed. Unfortunately they didn't
Speaker 2: have any. The American property holding classes tended to be
Speaker 2: embarrassingly ill at ease with concepts that don't translate promptly
Speaker 2: into money, and the beacons of conservative light shining through
Speaker 2: the liberal fog of the late nineteen sixties didn't come
Speaker 2: up to the number of clubs in Arnold Palmer's golf bag.
Speaker 2: The Company of the Commercial Faithful, gathered on the banks
Speaker 2: of California's Russian River could look for Sucker to Goldwater's
Speaker 2: autobiography The Conscience of a Conservative, to William F. Buckley's
Speaker 2: editorials in National Review, to the novels of Iron Rand.
Speaker 2: But that was kind of all they had, right, was
Speaker 2: this kind of like utopian conservative fiction, because it seemed
Speaker 2: like the situation was so bleak, but salvation was not
Speaker 2: far away. Nixon is going to win, right, Sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's going to become the president, and that's going to
Speaker 2: be like kind of a fucking disaster. But they couldn't
Speaker 2: really see that coming. It didn't seem likely until a
Speaker 2: bunch of other shit falls into place later that year.
Speaker 2: So it's a desperate time for these guys, obviously, though
Speaker 2: shit starts to go their way pretty soon after this moment.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, a Richmond corporate lawyer named Lewis
Speaker 2: Powell wrote a confidential memorandum. He had been an intelligence
Speaker 2: guy in World War two. His whole thing. In World
Speaker 2: War Two, Lewis Powell had been like he'd written loughingly
Speaker 2: about the bombing of Dresden, like this is we did
Speaker 2: a great job with Dresden. This is really like the
Speaker 2: finest hour of our air power, you know, really murdering
Speaker 2: all of these civilians and not getting the Germans to surrender.
Speaker 2: After the war, he'd chaired the Richmond School Board where
Speaker 2: he Richmond, Virginia, where he had fought like hell against
Speaker 2: the attempts to desegregate public schools. And then once he
Speaker 2: failed at stopping schools from desegregating, he took a job
Speaker 2: representing the Tobacco Institute during the height of its evil.
Speaker 2: So this is like a guy, this is a man
Speaker 2: whose business is being the devil, right.
Speaker 3: That's what do you do. And he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: like evil stuff, I mean.
Speaker 2: General evil, Yeah, yeah, sundry evil. So this is like
Speaker 2: a pretty pretty impressive bastard memorandum. And so after Nixon
Speaker 2: gets into office, you know, a couple of years in
Speaker 2: conservatives are like happy about some things, but there's also like,
Speaker 2: especially the hard right, the Goldwater right, doesn't really trust
Speaker 2: Nixon because even though he made his bones as an
Speaker 2: anti communist, he's like going to be friends with Mao,
Speaker 2: you know, he establishes the EPA. So there's still this
Speaker 2: feeling that like, even though this guy's a Republican, we're
Speaker 2: still losing the ideological war. If a Republican is doing
Speaker 2: all this stuff, right, we need to get a real dick.
Speaker 2: Nixon is too sane and even handed. We need a
Speaker 2: real maniac in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And so Lewis Powell in nineteen seventy one writes what
Speaker 2: becomes known as the Powell Memorandum. So this is to
Speaker 2: kind of provide some additional context. Powell is this He's
Speaker 2: it's a very prominent lawyer. He gets asked by Nixon
Speaker 2: in sixty nine to join the Supreme Court, and he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't really want to be in the Supreme Court, right,
Speaker 2: And so a couple of years later Nixon asks again,
Speaker 2: and in seventy one pala is like, yeah, I'll join
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court. And in kind of the period before
Speaker 2: he actually takes that job, one of his friends, who's
Speaker 2: the education director of the Chamber of Commerce, is like, Hey,
Speaker 2: before you become a Supreme Court justice, I need you
Speaker 2: to like write a memorandum on how we can win
Speaker 2: the culture war in the United States. And so Powell
Speaker 2: writes this thing titled attack on the American Free Enterprise
Speaker 2: System that gets distributed to the Chamber of Commerce is
Speaker 2: like the body and the government that interfaces with all
Speaker 2: of the corporations, Right, that's the basic idea of what
Speaker 2: the Chamber of Commerce is. So he writes this memo
Speaker 2: and it goes out to all of the people running
Speaker 2: the biggest companies in the United States. This memo from
Speaker 2: this guy who's going to become a Supreme Court justice,
Speaker 2: and he is not going to disclose that he's written
Speaker 2: this mimo when he's being confirmed to Supreme Court justice
Speaker 2: because of as I just describe the memo, it will
Speaker 2: become obvious why he didn't want to talk about this.
Speaker 3: Wait, so nobody knows he wrote it or he.
Speaker 2: Just the rich people know. He'd forget it.
Speaker 3: That's a public doesn't Jerry maguire all the rich people?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the memo starts with him talking
Speaker 2: about like Ralph Nader, you know, as this like boogey man.
Speaker 2: He's like, we have a bunch of demons stalking the
Speaker 2: property in classes in America, and chief among them is
Speaker 2: Ralph Nader because in sixty five, Nator had published this
Speaker 2: book called Unsafe at Any Speed, which forced the automotive
Speaker 2: industry to include seat belts and shit. Right, Like, he
Speaker 2: writes this book, everyone is dying in their cars. There
Speaker 2: are no safety features, and everyone has one. We should
Speaker 2: probably make it mandatory that there be safety features in cars.
Speaker 3: This seems to be what he was known for, yes
Speaker 3: before he ran for presidente.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was a great thing to do. And
Speaker 2: it's this is part of this whole like sense of
Speaker 2: doom they have that there's no stopping progressivism because this
Speaker 2: book comes out in immediately, like there's not like this
Speaker 2: massive counter punch to it where people are like, we
Speaker 2: need to cancel Natter for being too woke. Everyone's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we should have seat belts. That seems like a good idea,
Speaker 2: and automotive companies are like, but this is going to
Speaker 2: cost us a lot of money, right, And powell Is
Speaker 2: describes himself as terrified about the reaction to Nator's work
Speaker 2: because he sees it as like evidence that socialism is
Speaker 2: inevitably taking over the country. Right. The first thing's corporate
Speaker 2: power is a pillar holding up American greatness, and they're
Speaker 2: eroding it. You know, that's how he describes it.
Speaker 3: It's wild this attitude we have about corporations that we
Speaker 3: see them as like a deity, because this idea of saying,
Speaker 3: you've made something that's unsafe, we need you to make
Speaker 3: it more safe, and then corporations go, but that's going
Speaker 3: to cost us a lot of money. The proper reply
Speaker 3: to that is okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Vine would still have to.
Speaker 3: Do it, Like we're still gonna make you do it.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't really have a choice. You're making
Speaker 3: a product that's going out into the public. It needs
Speaker 3: to be it has to meet these standards that we've
Speaker 3: deemed safe. That's it, end of discussion. And so it's
Speaker 3: wild that there's an entire political party who's like, no,
Speaker 3: we can't do that to corporations.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's a And these guys up to this point,
Speaker 2: they still they had felt that way the whole time.
Speaker 2: Is the New Deal and Great Society and all this
Speaker 2: shit is going on, they had felt like, we shouldn't
Speaker 2: let them do this to us in our sweet, sweet money.
Speaker 2: But they didn't have a concerted way to counterattack, right.
Speaker 2: And what Powell says in this memo is like, we
Speaker 2: the corporate class in America, the people with money who
Speaker 2: run our businesses, need to be attacking people like nat
Speaker 2: We need to build a mechanism to go to war
Speaker 2: with Ralph Nader, right, otherwise they're going to inevitably bring
Speaker 2: this country to communism, right right. Another guy that he
Speaker 2: rails against is William Kunzler, who's a civil rights lawyer.
Speaker 2: He had a hand in everything from the Freedom Writers
Speaker 2: to Wounded Knee, very influential guy. And guys like Kunsler
Speaker 2: and Nator are the enemy, right, They're these sinister forces
Speaker 2: aligned to create a world in which people have access
Speaker 2: to food and medicine against such foul enemies. The only
Speaker 2: response Powell wrote was the ideological equivalent to war. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a summary of his memorandum from
Speaker 2: a speech in the Senate by Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: The language in the Powell report is the language of battle, attack,
Speaker 2: frontal assault, rifle shots, warfare. The recommendations are to endcompromise
Speaker 2: and appeasement. His words compromise and appeasement to understand that,
Speaker 2: as he said, the ultimate issue may be survival, and
Speaker 2: he underline the word survival in his report and to
Speaker 2: call for the wisdom, ingenuity, and resources of American business
Speaker 2: to be marshaled against those who would destroy it.
Speaker 3: Man, there's something about when we talk about all these
Speaker 3: think takes and experts and stuff, I really think for
Speaker 3: the average person, the best metric really is like who's
Speaker 3: always wrong or who's always right? What is actually the result?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Like this thing take with the Vietnam stuff, It's like,
Speaker 3: how did that work out? Does someone consistently and so
Speaker 3: with this stuff, it's just like we did we slide
Speaker 3: into communism to have seatbelts? Did this cause? Like? What
Speaker 3: is actually going on right now? Do you think do
Speaker 3: you think you know, deregulating everything and making corporations get
Speaker 3: to do whatever they want? Has that made things better?
Speaker 3: Are products better? Do things cost? Perhaps a lot?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 3: You know? Like look at today and be like what
Speaker 3: is the problems today? What do you think caused that?
Speaker 3: And then perhaps should we listen to the people or
Speaker 3: the institutions that caused that problem and continue to cause problems?
Speaker 3: It's just so obvious, that's all. Yes, it's very silly.
Speaker 2: It ought to be but you know the thing is,
Speaker 2: it's silly to like pretend that this is good for
Speaker 2: anyone but the people with money. But power isn't doing that.
Speaker 2: Power is saying, hey, people with money, you are a
Speaker 2: threatened class in America and we have to organize to
Speaker 2: destroy the majority of the country who wants your money
Speaker 2: to buy medicine, which we.
Speaker 3: Still we see this today, right that the billionaires is
Speaker 3: a slur.
Speaker 2: Or something like that, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Or it's just weird that there is. It's not just
Speaker 3: a class, but it's like a weird culture right where
Speaker 3: we're rooting for corporations, we're rooting for rich people, where
Speaker 3: like Elon Musk is a figurehead, or like people go
Speaker 3: like Yo Disney versus Sony, and it's like, fuck all.
Speaker 2: Of that you're talking about, Dave, is the result, like
Speaker 2: that state of affairs is the result of the Powell
Speaker 2: memorandums success because he is laying out a battle plan
Speaker 2: for these guys, for these rich fail suns and the
Speaker 2: companies that they run. And Palell's vision here is nothing
Speaker 2: less than a plot to take over the US government
Speaker 2: from the inside, to damage its institutions so severely that
Speaker 2: no one would ever be able to take them back.
Speaker 2: He directed this letter at the oligarchs in American society,
Speaker 2: people who are frightened of any limit to their wealth
Speaker 2: and power. He wrote to them, strength lies in organization
Speaker 2: and careful long range planning and implementation, and consistency of
Speaker 2: action over an indefinite period of years, and the scale
Speaker 2: of financing available only through joint effort, and in the
Speaker 2: political power available only through united action and national organizations. Right.
Speaker 2: And his attitude is it's the job of men like him,
Speaker 2: like me as as the thinker here, My job is
Speaker 2: to be like the Rand Corporation in Vietnam, to plot
Speaker 2: out a path to victory. Right, it's the job of you, guys,
Speaker 2: the people with money. All you need to do is
Speaker 2: put money in my pocket and the pocket of other
Speaker 2: people like us. Right, and we will finance. Like if
Speaker 2: you finance think tanks and like pay for intellectuals for
Speaker 2: lawyers like us, we will put out public policy and
Speaker 2: will get judges in place. And what of Powell's big
Speaker 2: insights is like, because again he's about to become a
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice, his attitude is like, conservative need to
Speaker 2: take over the courts. Right, that's the best way to
Speaker 2: shift policy because these are lifetime appointments. The more conservatives
Speaker 2: we get in the courts, we can actually take the
Speaker 2: reins of culture and steer them.
Speaker 3: Right, it's not wrong.
Speaker 2: He is not at all wrong. He's very smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost as if we designed it badly.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it is where it's weird that.
Speaker 3: We were like, Okay, we'll have this branch to government,
Speaker 3: this branch and they get you know, it's like every
Speaker 3: few years, and then we'll have these like lifetime kings.
Speaker 2: We should have some god kings. Probably some godkings. Yeah,
Speaker 2: definitely want a couple of god kings in there.
Speaker 3: Would we do that?
Speaker 2: That's so I don't think we need godkings. Pal's attitude
Speaker 2: is that every American business should donate ten percent of
Speaker 2: their advertising budget towards propaganda, towards think tanks, towards funding
Speaker 2: this stuff. Right, Like every corporation, Exxon and whatnot, they
Speaker 2: should all be putting money into think tanks and consider
Speaker 2: that advertising right to lobby the government and publish papers
Speaker 2: that push their agenda right, right, which is you know
Speaker 2: what happened. A big central part of his obsession is textbooks.
Speaker 2: One thing he wanted is he wanted oligarchs to pay
Speaker 2: right wing pundits to critique and attack textbooks for being
Speaker 2: insufficiently pro capitalist. He wanted to pay for there to
Speaker 2: be organizations to monitor TV networks. He believed that like
Speaker 2: television should quote be monitored in the same way that
Speaker 2: textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. The goal of
Speaker 2: all this was to make sure that corporate America got
Speaker 2: equal time with like, you know, the interests of human beings.
Speaker 2: He's basically saying, the next time a guy that like
Speaker 2: Ralph Nader publishes a book about how cars are killing people,
Speaker 2: we need to make sure every news agency gives equal
Speaker 2: time to the car companies, saying, but we don't want
Speaker 2: to put seat belts in cars, it'll make them too expensive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both sides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good stuff here. And it's like, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of very modern stuff here, right Like. Powell
Speaker 2: writes that like business owners should use political influence and
Speaker 2: money to stem quote the stampedes by politicians to support
Speaker 2: any legislation related to consumerism or to the environment, and
Speaker 2: he puts the environment in quotation marks political power is necessary,
Speaker 2: it must be assiduously cultivated, and when necessary, must be
Speaker 2: used aggressively and with determination. It is essential to be
Speaker 2: far more aggressive than in the past, with no hesitation
Speaker 2: to attack, not the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in
Speaker 2: all political arenas, and no reluctance to penalize politically those
Speaker 2: who oppose corporate efforts. So you know, not great, not great,
Speaker 2: but it all happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, no, they get it. You're right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're now in a situation where it's not even like abnormal.
Speaker 3: We don't think of it as weird like it it's
Speaker 3: it's it's weird that like these things have to be
Speaker 3: debated or explained. They have divulged the conversation successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know where like they follow Powell's march, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right where we're we're getting people who are saying, like
Speaker 3: you know, who are who are just publicly like this
Speaker 3: is gonna hurt corporations and that's gonna hurt you the worker,
Speaker 3: and people are just believing it. Uh, it's kind of wild,
Speaker 3: Like it's wild that trickle down is a thing that's like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, it'll get to you. And why would anybody
Speaker 3: vote for that, Why would anybody an average person go like,
Speaker 3: you know, we should we should totally. Just let it
Speaker 3: go to the rich people and then it'll get around
Speaker 3: to us. It'll trickle down to us like piss Like.
Speaker 3: It's just like, that's so weird that we that people
Speaker 3: were able to sell this idea that the upper class,
Speaker 3: that the corporate owners are people that need to be
Speaker 3: protected or need to be represented politically.
Speaker 2: Dave, I love so much that you brought up trickle
Speaker 2: down economics, because that's where we're heading in part two
Speaker 2: right now, let's trickle down your plug aubles to our audience.
Speaker 3: Mmmmm I can? I mean you mentioned Gamefully Unemployed g
Speaker 3: A M E f U l O Y Unemployed. That's
Speaker 3: a podcast network I do with Tom Ryman where we
Speaker 3: talk about movies. Mostly we do reviews and we talk
Speaker 3: about movie news, so and and so forth. We have
Speaker 3: a Patreon you can check out, and then I am
Speaker 3: the head writer for Some More News, which is a
Speaker 3: political show that I'm sure a lot of people are
Speaker 3: aware of if they're listening to this, but if you're not,
Speaker 3: you should google it. I don't know when this is
Speaker 3: coming out, but we just did a two parter on
Speaker 3: Lady Ballers. You know, the important stuff.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well everybody this has been a podcast I
Speaker 2: have been Robert Evans. Lady Ballers has been a bad movie,
Speaker 2: but listen to what Dave thinks about it and go
Speaker 2: to hell. I love you.
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