WEBVTT - Part One: How Conservatism Won 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:04.439 Also media. 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:11.119 Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:16.439 is just disastrously hungover. Right now, I am. I am 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:21.639 not doing well everybody. It is the day after or 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.840 around my birthday. Happened at some point in the last 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.800 forty eight hours or perhaps right now. Hello Dave, how 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:29.480 are you doing? 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:30.840 Woo? 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:33.919 Could I read the text message you set me at 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:38.240 four or five of the morning. Yeah, I have alarms, 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.519 but if they don't wake me, you can call me. 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.000 You not spelled out like you normally do, which was 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:47.320 my favorite part. 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.839 Was like, ewe you call. 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.200 We did just have another U yesterday, so that would 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:55.760 make sense. 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:00.600 I can't believe it was your birthday. Happy birthday, lovely Dave. 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.400 It was a birthday until I had to wake up. 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.280 Well yeah, I mean that's yeah, it's life, man, you know, 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.520 just pummeling, just pummeling us. 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:11.040 But HiT's keep coming. 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:13.440 I don't know. I'm going to celebrate today, yeah. 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:15.360 Just to say I'm really glad you were born. 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.520 Good job, thank you. If anyone at home wants to 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:23.360 celebrate my birthday, just uh, I don't know, send me 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.320 some of your fingernails. Fingernails, I want as many fingers, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:29.760 No you're right. Someone will do that. Someone will do that. 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:31.240 We probably shouldn't, Dave. 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.480 Yeah it bell. Yeah. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:40.000 Oh yeah here hi co co host co impresario of 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:45.440 the Gamefully Unemployed network network, Mark my former co worker 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:50.800 at cracked dot com. Uh man about town at some 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.800 more news. How are you doing today, Dave? 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.080 I'm good. I'm living the dream. I'm wheeling and dealing. 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.920 I'm uh, I gotta figure out. I got to schedule colonoscopy. 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.040 Ooh, you're doting that just doing you. 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.040 Know, just doing the things, you know, just just live 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:08.120 in it, living life. 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:11.040 Yeah, that's good, that's good. You know, I uh do 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.919 you have? Is this a recreational colonoscopy or a necessary one? 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.160 It? Can it be both? Yeah? 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:20.200 Okay, that's fair ye fair enough. I know. 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:22.440 I mean I probably have nothing wrong with me. I 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.760 just uh, you know, I'm hitting forty. I I have 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.560 like a slight family history. And and I talked to 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:30.440 my my. I got a new I got a new doctor, 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.760 and I was like, what about them colonoscopies? And They're like, yeah, 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.240 let's do it. Let's fucking do it. And then we're 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:42.480 we're doing it, doing a colonoscopy. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, it's 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:43.600 exciting stuff. You know. 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:49.160 Well, I have not had a colonoscopy yet, although soon. 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.680 But you know, what is the the moral equivalent of 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:54.639 having a camera shoved up your ass? 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:55.560 Ooh what? 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.480 Living in the United States? Uh? In an election twenty 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.680 twenty four. And a big part of why it feels 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.160 that way is because of a little concept that you 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:13.560 might be aware of, Dave, the think tank? Ooh yeah, 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.639 what do you know about the think tank as a concept? 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:22.320 I mean I always picture like a SeaWorld style tank 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.920 filled with brine and just a giant floating brain that 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.280 a group of scientists sort of circle around, and that 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:32.960 brain is hooked up to computers and then the data 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:37.760 gets printed out, and they take that data and then 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:40.920 they use it or ignore it, and then they just 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:42.560 do whatever they want to do politically. 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.800 Wow, it's it's amazing. That's nearly the opposite of what 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:50.120 it really is. So what a think take really is 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.680 is a way in which to generate paper, and then 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:59.680 that paper convinces journalists that your policies are real policies, 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.000 and then you take over the Supreme Court. Right now, 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.320 I know this is going to sound convoluted. We're talking 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:10.360 about how the Republican Party kind of won and specifically 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:13.480 how they turned around the situation that existed in this 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.120 country in the United States, So we don't talk about much. 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.039 It's very especially because on the right there's this need 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.520 to believe that the fifties and sixties were this like 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.159 era where everything was better and like the whole country 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.800 was more conservative. And then there's this need among liberals 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.320 on the left to believe that like they have kind 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.040 of been ascendant lately and sort of the last couple 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.680 of years of resurgent right wing stuff has been a 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.159 severe disruption of the norm. And neither of this is 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:47.120 really accurate because the reality of the situation is that 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.960 in the fifties and sixties, basically any commentator who was 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.840 looking at it honestly would have told you that, like, well, 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:59.760 liberalism has clearly won, and we talk about liberalism, I'm 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.560 not talking about, like what the way we kind of 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.240 talk about liberals today, or the way liberals often like 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.320 to see themselves as progressives. I'm talking about like an 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:12.599 economic and kind of social set of political beliefs that 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:18.040 was the dominant way in which people viewed politics by 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:22.640 the nineteen fifties, liberal economic policy and social orthodoxy reigned 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:26.000 supreme in the post war era, and it was it 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.960 was like it had such a degree of capture of 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.160 the system that literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote in nineteen 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.000 fifty in the United States at this time liberalism is 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.960 not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.080 He claimed, there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:46.080 general circulation only And I love this term irritable mental 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.520 gestures which seek to resemble ideas. Now a bunch of 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.800 people are going to be like thinking about all the 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.479 fucked up shit that they knew the government was doing 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.000 in the fifties and sixties, like overthrowing governments in Latin 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.080 America and getting it Vietnam, and being like, well, how 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.560 can you say that liberalism was dominant in this period? 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:06.120 And I can say that because, like what it was 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.200 liberals doing a lot of that, right, Like it was 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.120 JFK who got our asses into Vietnam, and LBJ the 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.000 great society guy, who accelerated it. 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.400 So I'm not, yeah, right, And like, I don't know 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.120 what's considered liberal or leftists, Yeah, you know, fifty. 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:22.599 Years not leftist, Yeah yeah, But it's. 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.120 Always going to be different, right, Like what you know, 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:27.840 I I you look at Star Trek, which is considered 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.400 pretty progressive, but then you go and look at TG 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:33.080 and you're like, man, they're almost there, but they still 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.159 don't quite you know, like I don't know. 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.560 They wouldn't let Ryker kiss a dude, right, yeah, yeah, 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.920 exactly like he wanted to. Jonathan Frakes was in of course. 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.000 Yeah, I mean he he fucked everything and that My 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.320 favorite is the non binary aliens. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:49.720 Yeah yeah, where. 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.440 He immediately like upon meeting them, is like, oh, I 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:55.960 have to fuck one of these. I don't care which 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:57.960 I got to check off this box. 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:02.599 Mm hmm, poor Reich. But yeah, so when we're talking 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:04.719 about this, we're talking about the idea that like, and 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.000 it makes some sense if you think about like what 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.920 happened to the right is as a result of World 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.400 War two. Both like in the pre war period, you 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:19.000 have this kind of like isolationist, reactionary strain that really 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.800 has to retreat because we go to war with the 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:23.880 Nazis and they're like, oh shit, we have to we 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.280 have to get very careful about how we talk about 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.280 some of the things we believe. Suddenly so it's it's 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:33.600 just this this very like fundamentally different period. And one 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:35.920 of the few things that is kind of similar in 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:37.920 sort of how we look at liberalism from then to 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.880 now is that it was it was, and actually much 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:43.920 more so back then, defined by this kind of embrace 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.960 of public spending and huge public works projects, right, that 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:53.200 was pretty universally accepted as what the government ought to 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.040 be doing, to the point where I can look at 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:59.280 like Dwight D. Eisenhower, famous Republican president, builds a massive 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.560 interstate high system, right, which is not a thing that 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.800 you would you would get a Republican supporting today, like 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.480 a public's works project on that scale. It's it's kind 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.800 of inconceivable now. But that's what I'm talking about when 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.840 I'm talking about how like people, a lot of people 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:17.760 in public policy at the time were like, well, yeah, 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.080 this kind of liberal trend towards what the role of 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.040 the state should be in society has clearly won, and 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:25.840 there's not really any other game in town. 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:28.720 It's funny you should talk frame it this way because 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:31.920 I've actually I've talked about this with friends and stuff before, 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.480 and like people always frame it kind of not like, oh, 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:37.839 you know how they used to be liberal. It's more 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.320 of like, you know how what's considered quote unquote leftists 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.440 or liberal used to just be the norm. Yeah. It's like, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.320 you know, we used to fix our highways up and 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.080 that wasn't seen as a political thing. Yeah, it was 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:51.080 just it was just a thing you have to do 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.640 when you run a government. Like would you would you 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:55.360 agree with that or would you say that they were 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.120 they were? It was seen at the time as very 0:08:58.160 --> 0:08:59.719 liberal because I feel like these are things that other 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.400 kind do too, Yeah, that aren't seen as political leaning 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:04.040 at all. 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:06.760 Yeah, And part of the story today and why we 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:10.000 have think tanks is to make all that seem more 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.360 political than it used to. But it's also just a 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:16.200 matter of like when you're when you're looking back to 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.559 that period of time, you're looking at a period of 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:24.120 time in which, like the Republicans we had a very 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:28.319 strong liberal arm of the party. There were like Rockefeller 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:30.760 was a liberal Republican. There were like that was like 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:34.079 a dominant part of the Republican party. There were liberal 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:39.000 Republican presidential candidates who did pretty well, right, And that's 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.040 a really different situation today like now, and again I'm 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:44.080 not saying none of these people you would call like 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.839 a leftist, although they are all people who, if they 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:51.560 ran today, would be called leftists by Republicans. 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.360 Right Like. That's the thing. It's so hard to like 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:55.200 separate these words anymore. 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:58.160 Yes, yes, And I know that's a frustrating part of this. 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:00.600 I think I've I like, I don't even know what 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.160 to call myself. I certainly I don't think I'm a liberal. 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.920 I'm very left leaning and very progressive. But like, I 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.880 think I've accidentally called myself just a liberal because they're 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.080 all like like leftist, liberal, they're all l words that 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.560 are just like, eh, I don't know, but it's just 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.040 interesting because like the idea of a liberal Republican, I'm 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.280 just like, I don't know how that works. But then 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.560 I think about, like, you know, Nixon. I think it 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:26.400 was Nixon created the EPA. 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.120 That's a great example of how things have shifted. Were 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.280 like a guy like and Nixon went to China and 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:36.080 normalized relations with MAO, right Like, another thing that you 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.160 wouldn't really I mean, Trump kind of tried to do 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:41.240 his version of it with North Korea, but it was 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.120 not really the same deal, you. 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.600 Know, no, not at all, and like, I don't know, 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.280 a lot of this stuff to me just seems like 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.720 just things you have to do right where it's like 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.400 we need to protect our like forest innational parts. Yeah, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.480 it doesn't feel like it needs to be political at all. 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.200 But it's just funny when you start trying figuring that 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:02.280 out those labels. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.439 When I'm when I quote these guys from the fifties 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:08.040 and sixties saying, were like, liberalism is clearly won. That's 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.680 kind of what they're referring to, is right, So much 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.600 stuff that is now seen as political. Spending any amount 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.440 of public money on anything to help people is deeply political. 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.560 Right. It sounds like to some people it was political then, 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:21.360 So it was. 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:24.160 There was a tiny number of those people who thought 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.440 of it that way, and they were mostly very very 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.600 wealthy business owners, primarily people who had inherited businesses and 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.559 whatnot from their families. And they're going to be kind 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:36.520 of the folks who actually wind up creating the network 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.440 of think tanks like that is the story we're talking 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:41.439 about today, because this was all started as a way 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:45.400 to shift public consensus away from the idea that like, 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:49.520 the government can do things to benefit people and towards 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:53.240 the idea that like any public spending is communism, right, Like, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.319 that's that's a big part of what we're talking about today. 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.160 And there's a number of reasons why we went from 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:02.800 like FDR being the most beloved president in American history 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.199 to like, I think he's still broadly people have fond 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.199 memories of him. But if anybody pushed policies today like this, 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:13.240 you know, like FDR did, they would be called a dictator, right, Like, 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:18.240 it would be like unimaginably controversial. And there's a number 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:20.840 of reasons why the status quo he started to change. 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.400 One of them was the Vietnam War, right, and how 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.800 much fucking money it cost. And by the time you 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.720 hit like the mid to late seventies, you've got, you know, 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.000 the economy sort of grinding to a halt, inflation rising 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.720 stuff that will never happen again. And there's there starts 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.200 to be this awareness among like public policy people in 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.760 the United States that like, oh, the unlimited money train 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:43.440 from after World War Two isn't going to keep going 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.320 on forever, right, And so yeah, we're going to talk 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.720 about that because like getting us from FDR to LBJA 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.520 to Ronald Reagan and then the Trump was in part 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.360 the result of a concerted effort to shift the culture 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:00.480 by building a robust system for generating conservative thought and 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.160 then pumping them into the culture at scale, so they 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:07.520 looked like they had scholarly support and public support, and 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.720 they kind of did that until they made it true. 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:12.680 And I think a good place to start is with 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.360 the development of the concept of the think tank. These 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:18.760 are not a uniquely American institution, but they are uniquely 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.040 influential and powerful in the United States. There's not any 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.960 other nation on earth that has its public policy or 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.800 political culture shaped so much by think tanks, which are 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:33.720 basically dark money sinks. We're intellectuals who are bribed generate 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.840 the illusion of consensus in exchange for money. Right, that's 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:39.840 what they are there for people. 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:43.160 Who don't like reality. Right, Like it's the idea of like, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.320 I have a thing, I want to get richer doing 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.640 this thing, or I want to support these people, but 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.800 like reality, like studies and facts are showing that, like 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.800 it's bad to do this, so let's recreate studies and 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.800 facts to look like they're pushing this thing. 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:02.480 And one of the ways in which because you have 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.920 think tanks, that are more intellectually rigorous, and they all 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:08.320 charge for their shit, and a lot of the shitty 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:09.960 think tanks that are like funded by the oil and 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:12.960 gas industry give out their papers for free. So you'll 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.120 have like journalists writing articles and they're like, wow, I 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.040 need I need two different opinions on whether or not 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:23.240 we should frack the oil fields in fucking Texas. And 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.960 one you know think tank that actually does real research 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:28.760 will say you have to pay us twelve hundred dollars 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.280 for our papers on what will happen, And the Heritage 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:33.840 Foundation says, here you go, here's a thousand pages of 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.840 shit that you can cite in your articles and it's 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.400 all free. That's like a simplified version of the game 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:41.440 that's going on here. 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.880 Right. It sounds a lot like studies, Like there's study 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.120 studies where like you start looking into them and you're like, wait, 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:51.800 this doesn't actually say the thing that the headlines are saying. 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.600 And again sometimes it's done insidiously. 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:55.120 Yeah. 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:59.000 Sometimes I think it's just people misinterpret things or like 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:04.000 they're trying to like you're saying like actual, actual like 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.120 work takes money because it takes people, and that's not 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.680 very sexy no, I mean you can. 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.680 You can have a fancy name for an organization and 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:15.880 just put out papers that say whatever you want them 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:17.720 to say. And if you do it with like a 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.600 good letter ahead, people will trust that there's there's something 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:21.680 to what you're saying. 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.160 It's amazing how how far a good font will get. 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the idea that like we would 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.920 have and it's kind of worth going back of it 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.640 and talking about how like the field of public policy analysis, 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:38.720 which is kind of where think tanks has a concept 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.560 come out of, how recent it is because for most 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.160 of the history of governments, you didn't have professional people 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.960 who like analyzed policy and looked into how it was working, right, 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:52.760 like progress was. Sometimes you'd get a king who was 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:56.400 like reasonably smart, and sometimes you'd get an inbred royal 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.920 king who would either like take things back a couple 0:15:59.960 --> 0:16:02.600 of decades or be weak enough that like a couple 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:06.320 of smart guys can move things forward you get it 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.480 dead or two you get a couple of world wars. 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.239 And then in the twentieth century, after we finally invented cigarettes, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.560 people got smart and that's when we start doing actual 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:20.400 policy analysis. It's really not until like the nineteen hundreds, 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.680 that we actually start in kind of a concerted way, 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.520 like looking at a lot of where you have these 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.240 guys who are like, I'm an expert in urban planning, right, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:34.040 I'm an expert in like energy policy. Right. You had 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.080 like guys who were kind of doing that in the 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:39.280 eighteen hundreds, but it starts to actually become like systematized 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:40.440 in the nineteen hundreds. 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:42.520 Right. Yeah, it's a bunch of people who is like, 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:46.320 I'm a pervert for this one thing. Yes, oh, yes, yeah, 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.280 and I can exist that way. Yeah, it's like cool, 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:51.960 you weird little freak. That's great. Well, we'll consult you 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:53.560 when we need questions about that thing. 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:57.200 M hm. And that's kind of like that is kind 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:00.560 of a quietly revolutionary concept because it implied like, well, 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.560 whatever our society is doing right now might not be 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:05.560 the best way to do things, and so we should 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.639 always be looking at doing them differently. And most that 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.520 hasn't always been like a thing you could expect from 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.879 a society, right. And there's a really fun nineteen ninety 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.800 one doctoral dissertation by doctor Susan Marie Willis I found 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:21.840 that notes that in the period leading up to World 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.200 War two, there was this kind of turning point in 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.679 the federal government's willingness to solicit expert advice in solving 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:30.880 the nation's problems, and as a result, quote, the country's 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:34.040 intellectual magnet shifted from New York City to Washington, d C. 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.240 During that time. The shift is placed on reliance on 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.720 policy experts earlier during World War One, when many businessmen 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.359 and academicians played key roles in wartime management on the 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.280 War Industry's board. It is certainly true that Roosevelt had 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:49.560 the help of his famous Brains Trust in formulating some 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.480 new Deal policy, and also that Woodrow Wilson took selected 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.800 scholars with him to the Versailles peace Conference. In both cases, 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.439 these were individual consulting scholars and economists, many drawn from Harvard, 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.840 but not siated with any formal senses a group or 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.080 policy research body. So this is kind of when you 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:07.600 start to get the idea that, like, the president would 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.120 not just bring in his own people specifically, but might 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:15.040 like actually pick experts who were at least ostensibly independent, 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.120 and they would advise him on stuff. Right. That's when 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:20.520 this starts to become more common, right. 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:23.119 And that just seems like good leadership. 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.560 For the most it seems smart, right Yeah. 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.280 Yeah, I Like I remember in film school talking about 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.720 or like being a manager, right where it's like part 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:34.159 of being a good manager or a director is to 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.159 consult the people who are very ultra into specific things 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.800 and hear what they have to say. I mean, now 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:42.960 we got Wikipedia, so yeah, well, don't. 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:44.639 Need any of that, but you can see how there 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.320 could be a good and a bad side, right where 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.720 if the president's trying to, like, I don't know, deal 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:50.960 with the aftermap of World War One, yeah, you should 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.080 probably bring an academic who knows something about like fucking 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:58.360 Austrio Hungary, like, and it's different political factions and whatnot. 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.640 That makes sense, seems like that guys should be there. 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.240 Yeah, but they shouldn't necessarily. I mean, it's only as 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.560 good as the person, right person. If your expert is, say, 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.560 a racist, then everything they're going to do is tinted 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:10.960 that way. 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:11.400 Yeah. 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.320 I mean, I think that's why people look to like 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.080 the idea of computers as being impartial. But then also 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.640 you need someone who has instincts on something as well, 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:24.720 like being an expert and something should also mean being 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.359 able to interpret that information in a good way. 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:30.640 And also kind of the problem with this is that 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.200 when it's just seen as like, well, yeah, we elected 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:35.199 this president and he and all the people in his 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.879 administration are all like, you know, members of the same team, 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:40.760 when you start to see like, well, no, some of 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.720 the people giving him advice are like independent experts and 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:45.960 they're just trying to do what's best based on the facts. 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:47.679 Well are they right? 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:47.960 Right? 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:50.399 Like, they won't always be. Sometimes they'll be just as 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:52.840 political as anybody else the president might hire. But if 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:55.520 you start thinking about them as like possessed of some 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.760 sort of objective wisdom that's above the fray, you can 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.240 also wind up not being critical enough of like what 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:02.399 they're actually doing. 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.800 Yeah, they also become it's that thing. It's we've seen 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.280 it a million times where someone's really smart about one thing. Yeah, 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:14.119 that doesn't mean they're smart about everything. And so like 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.280 you have to know how to use that person and 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:19.080 that information, yeah, and like know what to do with 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:24.840 that information that the broader consequences of that because experts, 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.040 I mean, there's a reason why there's that weird stereotype 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.400 of like, yeah, these snooty college type yeah, right, where 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.600 it's like, yeah, I sort of get it, like, you know, 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:36.119