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Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. So one of the questions
Speaker 1: I get a lot from various people frustrated by the
Speaker 1: current political system, and this comes from folks throughout the
Speaker 1: spectrum is what do I do? What can I do?
Speaker 1: Versus I need to do more referring to me and
Speaker 1: or media, et cetera. And my answer is always the same. Well, ultimately,
Speaker 1: my vote is the same as your vote. You've got
Speaker 1: to just everybody has a role here, but he's got
Speaker 1: to do something well. The conversation I want to have
Speaker 1: today is about it's it's a new book that's out
Speaker 1: called How to Be a Dissident. It's by Gal Beckerman.
Speaker 1: That's my guest. Gal's here now. But the real point
Speaker 1: is it's sort of like, when you're living in a
Speaker 1: fairly free society and you feel as if you're not
Speaker 1: being represented, what do you do and what is it?
Speaker 1: What did others do? And are there is there inspiration
Speaker 1: to take from others who lived in less free societies.
Speaker 1: And obviously when you hear the words dissident, it immediately
Speaker 1: invokes people fighting less free societies. But the current situation
Speaker 1: we're all in, I think there's this feeling that we
Speaker 1: when you feel unrepresented or underrepresented, do you start? Is
Speaker 1: it good to start to think like a dissident? So
Speaker 1: this is a question that we're going to simply ask,
Speaker 1: and Gal's going to give us the answer. Gal, welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So let me start with the premise of the book,
Speaker 1: How to Be a Dissident. Is it intentionally written for
Speaker 1: an American audience in your head, like who were you
Speaker 1: talking to when you when you when you frame it. Look,
Speaker 1: the book's about it's a little bit history, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of communications, it's it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a lot of things. But you must have had a motivation.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, for sure, I was thinking about an American
Speaker 2: audience that needed to hear about the experience of people
Speaker 2: in other times historically, and needed to hear about the
Speaker 2: experience of people right now in other places in the world,
Speaker 2: like Iran, like China. Why did they need to hear
Speaker 2: about those experiences? Because to my mind, being a dissonant
Speaker 2: is saying no, experiencing a reality that somehow violates your
Speaker 2: sense of what is normal, what the normal conditions for
Speaker 2: a sort of free human life should be, and refusing
Speaker 2: to go along with it. Now, in authoritarian systems, that
Speaker 2: can take on a pretty extreme form. You know, you're
Speaker 2: not allowed to say whatever you want to say, You're
Speaker 2: not allowed to read whatever you want to read. You're
Speaker 2: not allowed to wear your hair in the way that
Speaker 2: you want to wear your hair or leave it covered
Speaker 2: or uncovered. You're not allowed to gather with other people.
Speaker 2: But there are ways that I began to feel that
Speaker 2: those sort of conditions for a quote unquote normal life
Speaker 2: were beginning to be impeded upon even here in the
Speaker 2: United States, and in ways that I had never really
Speaker 2: I had never really experienced them, certainly in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: And you know, to take an example that's just fairly recent,
Speaker 2: if you think about Minneapolis, when that happened, when people responded,
Speaker 2: when citizens in Minneapolis responded the way that they did,
Speaker 2: I saw dissidents.
Speaker 1: I saw, yeah, they even created these networks like you
Speaker 1: hear about in other countries that they had a code
Speaker 1: or they would honk ORNs or you know, you hear
Speaker 1: this stuff. But it was yeah, yeah, ID to hear
Speaker 1: stories like this in Cuba, for instance, if you thought
Speaker 1: somebody was watching the little things you do, right.
Speaker 2: But but I mean, even at the level of motivation,
Speaker 2: I think what happened in people's minds is I don't
Speaker 2: think this was political. I think people said, look at
Speaker 2: what's happening to my neighbor, look at what's having the
Speaker 2: people who live in my community who are afraid to
Speaker 2: send their kids to school, or hiding in their houses
Speaker 2: or are being harassed on the street. And those are
Speaker 2: those were pulses that Vak club Hubble, who is the
Speaker 2: great Czech dissident, playwright, check dissident who became the president
Speaker 2: of a free Czechoslovakia. He had a concept, he said
Speaker 2: that dissidents starts with the pre political It's not these
Speaker 2: aren't These aren't sort of motivations which say, oh, here's
Speaker 2: this one leader in charge. I want to put my
Speaker 2: guy in charge. It's about those conditions of life. It's
Speaker 2: about saying how do I think my neighbors should be treated,
Speaker 2: and then seeing that being violated and saying I have
Speaker 2: a choice. I have a moral choice. I can put
Speaker 2: my head down and do nothing, which is actually very
Speaker 2: hardwired in human beings right to do nothing in those circumstances,
Speaker 2: to just conform, or I can say no, I can
Speaker 2: refuse and do something about it. And I think that's
Speaker 2: it's out of that. It's at that crossroads that the
Speaker 2: dissident is born.
Speaker 1: So in your mind, what makes a dissident is somebody
Speaker 1: who's not looking for political power but is just looking
Speaker 1: for to write a moral wrong.
Speaker 2: It's it's less even about writing a moral wrong than
Speaker 2: than saying no in an instance where they feel that
Speaker 2: a certain value or a certain part of their conscience
Speaker 2: has been violated. I have a great sort of I
Speaker 2: love this particular quote in the book from Hanaharant. Hannah Rent,
Speaker 2: the German philosopher, was trying in the post war years
Speaker 2: to understand why certain Germans, very few of them refused
Speaker 2: to go along with the Nazis. They refused in every
Speaker 2: circumstance to just conform. And she came to an interesting conclusion.
Speaker 2: She said, these weren't people who just like you know,
Speaker 2: had a strong kind of set of moral precepts and
Speaker 2: and and those were the things that guided them. In fact,
Speaker 2: a lot of the people with moral precepts were able
Speaker 2: to switch from thou shalt kill to thou shalt not kill,
Speaker 2: you know, as soon as somebody sort of switched them
Speaker 2: from one side to the other. She said. The people
Speaker 2: who refused were the like perpetual sort of doubters and
Speaker 2: skeptics who took everything, everything that they experienced and it's
Speaker 2: at face value, and tried to answer it with one
Speaker 2: single question. Can I live with myself? Can I live
Speaker 2: with myself if I don't do anything in this situation?
Speaker 2: Can I live with myself if I go along with
Speaker 2: something that I may ask to go along with and
Speaker 2: she said those people. For them, it was quite quite simple.
Speaker 2: It's they didn't want to live with themselves because who
Speaker 2: they would be would be murderers. So they didn't want
Speaker 2: to live with a murderer. So it's it's this sort
Speaker 2: of very essential question of conscience, of kind of of
Speaker 2: your gut in a way. I know it can sound
Speaker 2: a little bit sort of vague when when you talk
Speaker 2: about it that way, but I think we all know
Speaker 2: like those moments where we have I call it in
Speaker 2: the book moral nausea, you know, where you open the
Speaker 2: newspaper and you see something and you just you just
Speaker 2: don't it doesn't feel right to you. But then you
Speaker 2: have this next moment where you think, well, I've got
Speaker 2: to go on with my day, like I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: you know, and so I I you know, and we
Speaker 2: can't all be dissidents, you know. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the takeaways that I have from this
Speaker 2: experience of spending time with Dissonance. It's in some ways
Speaker 2: it's a very extreme position, you know, to always be
Speaker 2: the one at the front line of that particular moral quandary.
Speaker 2: But what I learned is that like, I need to
Speaker 2: understand that I do have choices. There is moral choice.
Speaker 2: Even when I look in the newspaper and I see
Speaker 2: something that really bothers me, that gives me that kind
Speaker 2: of nausea, I can choose to do something about it.
Speaker 2: I can all so choose not to do something, which
Speaker 2: is also a choice. But it's the accepting the idea
Speaker 2: that there is a choice, that I have some agency
Speaker 2: as a human being in these circumstances.
Speaker 1: Let me let me get it something that you're an
Speaker 1: expert on because you've written another You've written a book
Speaker 1: on it. Right, You've written a book about the Soviet Jewelry.
Speaker 1: What made the dissidents in the Soviet Union successful that
Speaker 1: the dissidents in today's Russia are struggling with? It's same
Speaker 1: country in theory. Obviously it's a smaller version of it,
Speaker 1: but sort of similar ways, although it's slightly different how
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union operated versus how Putin operates.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it because the Soviet Jewelry is no longer there?
Speaker 1: Is that it? I mean, you know, and if if
Speaker 1: they were, you know, I mean, what's what's what's your
Speaker 1: explanation for why the Soviet jewelry was so successful and
Speaker 1: so far the dissidence in Putin's Russia had not been.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. It's not something that I really
Speaker 2: thought about. But you know, I I the thing about
Speaker 2: Soviet this jury movement, which for those who don't know
Speaker 2: about it, was a movement of Jews who were trapped
Speaker 2: inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not let
Speaker 2: them leave. They would not give them exit visus to leave.
Speaker 2: At the same time, their existence as Jews in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union was pretty terrible. They couldn't really like have
Speaker 2: any kind of Jewish identity, but they were also actually
Speaker 2: there was also actually a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: prejudice against them. Schools that they couldn't universities you couldn't
Speaker 2: go to, professions you couldn't go to. But at the
Speaker 2: same time they couldn't leave. So the Soviet Union had
Speaker 2: almost like this, you know, it was they were yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and and and so they made a cause out of
Speaker 2: this desire to leave. And here again just to point,
Speaker 2: you know, to go back to something earlier, I said,
Speaker 2: what made their cause powerful was that they were drawing
Speaker 2: on I think what is a very human impulse, which
Speaker 2: is that we want to be able to live where
Speaker 2: we want to live. So the idea that they were
Speaker 2: actually imprisoned in the Soviet Union once they were able
Speaker 2: to dramatize that to the world, and they did in
Speaker 2: all kinds of ways over a long period of time.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing we can talk about is dissidence
Speaker 2: takes time. It takes time to sort of incubate in
Speaker 2: a way. These were small communities of people. They built
Speaker 2: loyalty amongst themselves. They were outcasts within their own societies.
Speaker 2: As soon as they asked to leave, they were thrown
Speaker 2: out of their jobs, out of their sometimes out of
Speaker 2: the department buildings. So they really formed these tight communities
Speaker 2: of people and they appealed to the world, the United
Speaker 2: States in particular, which then put pressure back on the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, used it as a leverage in negotiations. You know.
Speaker 2: The benefit I think they had was that that was
Speaker 2: a world in which shame, the kind of shame that
Speaker 2: was being worked, it still worked. The idea of human
Speaker 2: rights was still had currency and not something that you know,
Speaker 2: an American president could sort of just like, you know,
Speaker 2: laugh off. So those are all powerful levers that they
Speaker 2: could use against the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: So you might make the argument then that take the
Speaker 1: navalney dissidents, okay, and just loosely that you know, it's
Speaker 1: in the same stages of where Soviet Jews were in
Speaker 1: the sixties, and it's going to take time and that eventu.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm with you. I mean, every dictatorship
Speaker 1: ends the same way. It takes forever and then it
Speaker 1: happens overnight, right like a sod in Syria. Just one night,
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, he's now in Russia. It's over, right,
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden. You don't think it's ever
Speaker 1: going to end, and then it ends immediately.
Speaker 2: Well for you, yeah, I'll give you an even more contemporary,
Speaker 2: very very contemporary example. I've been doing some reporting today
Speaker 2: on what happened in Yahan, Hungary, because we saw this
Speaker 2: the fall of Orbon, which people didn't think was going
Speaker 2: to happen, you know, or happened quite as dramatically and
Speaker 2: you know, as it did, and as totally as it did.
Speaker 2: You know, two thirds of the country voted against him.
Speaker 2: But I learned that there was something you know, incubating,
Speaker 2: percolating over the last two years in the Hungarian countryside,
Speaker 2: in rural areas which were strongholds of Orbon. This is
Speaker 2: where most of just where it came from, where for
Speaker 2: people who lived there, it seemed almost impossible to imagine
Speaker 2: that they would ever be a different leader than Orbon.
Speaker 2: There began to be these small groups they called them islands.
Speaker 2: Actually Tisa Tisa, which is the political party that won.
Speaker 2: They call them Tisa islands. And this was like civic organizations,
Speaker 2: you know, in places where civil society had really almost
Speaker 2: disappeared under Orbon. So you have like the local entrepreneur
Speaker 2: and the doctor and maybe like a you know, a farmer,
Speaker 2: and they start meeting to discuss things like a local
Speaker 2: factory that's causing pollution. They organized to do clean up,
Speaker 2: like cleaning up later in the village or having like
Speaker 2: a movie night or something. And these were happening in
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of rural areas. People weren't they were
Speaker 2: not directly connected to the party that but they were
Speaker 2: sort of affiliated with the idea of some kind of change.
Speaker 2: But what it did was it built up this kind
Speaker 2: of like citizen muscle, and it made people less scared.
Speaker 2: It made them I mean I heard today what people
Speaker 2: told me is that it got people out of this
Speaker 2: spiral of fear and of silence that there could ever
Speaker 2: be anybody but orbone, because otherwise people understood that things
Speaker 2: were not great and hungary. The economy was not good,
Speaker 2: you know, there was the education system is not good.
Speaker 2: There was all kinds of ways that they wanted to change,
Speaker 2: but they needed to take this kind of step of
Speaker 2: both recognizing there were other people who felt like they did,
Speaker 2: to do activities that were not at first risky, and
Speaker 2: have those sort of slowly ramb up to the then
Speaker 2: bigger task of voting against the man who they had
Speaker 2: voted for for the last sixteen years. So it's I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a kind of a perfect example of how dissonance
Speaker 2: needs to grow. I'll give you another example, if you
Speaker 2: want from here, is the No Kings Day rallies. You know,
Speaker 2: people witness those and they say, well, on one hand,
Speaker 2: like what's the immediate effect? We always want to know,
Speaker 2: like is this going to translate into midterm election wins?
Speaker 2: But I think that's a really wrong way of thinking
Speaker 2: about it. I think these organizers have really been smart
Speaker 2: about how they've ramped up these rallies or these demonstrations,
Speaker 2: which have been totally decentralized. They have happened in I
Speaker 2: think the first one had like two thousand and the
Speaker 2: last one had like four thousand. They're local, people can
Speaker 2: come with whatever cause they care most about under the
Speaker 2: umbrella of creeping authoritarianism, and they are seeing each other.
Speaker 2: They're seeing each other in real life. They're saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not alone in this feeling right, doing things like
Speaker 2: being irreverent or jokey about the president, which you know,
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like it should be important, but it actually is.
Speaker 1: Like it's important to be able to spend a whole
Speaker 1: chapter in comedy.
Speaker 2: I do that. I think being able to sort of
Speaker 2: laugh at the King, to see him naked is the
Speaker 2: first step towards imagining him gone, you know, so that
Speaker 2: they are sort of sights where people can reinforce these
Speaker 2: feelings and one another and build towards something bigger.
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Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm hungry. And one of the things that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to digest is the fact that the leader of the
Speaker 1: movement that toppled Orbon was was once a member of
Speaker 1: Orbon's party. That it was not somebody who had been
Speaker 1: part of the loyal opposition for twenty years, but in
Speaker 1: fact had been You know, I and I wonder, how
Speaker 1: is that is that a model? Are the best dissidents
Speaker 1: the ones that used to be a part of the system,
Speaker 1: Are they the most effective dissidence? What's Is there a
Speaker 1: pattern that you feel like you've uncovered.
Speaker 2: I think in Hungary it certainly made a difference because
Speaker 2: it provided a kind of like permission structure. The permission yeah,
Speaker 2: people said it. And and this is of a piece
Speaker 2: with these islands I'm talking about, because it's like once
Speaker 2: you see your neighbors start to say, okay, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to vote for Fidez this time, then you think, okay,
Speaker 2: it's okay for me too. And the leader of the
Speaker 2: party is a guy who was once a loyalist and
Speaker 2: turned his you know, turned around. So it all sort
Speaker 2: of like trickles down.
Speaker 1: Unique to hungry or is it in any system like that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean I do think of somebody
Speaker 2: like Navalny, who was like, you know, very much a
Speaker 2: creature of the establishment in Russia. He wasn't like wild
Speaker 2: eyed you know outside No.
Speaker 1: In fact, some of the critics of him say, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not really this and he's not really that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what he is. He's a guy who stood
Speaker 1: up to Booten and that many people were willing to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: I know, he actually got a lot of heat for once, uh,
Speaker 2: sort of becoming too cozy with nationalists, you know, when
Speaker 2: he was trying to build.
Speaker 1: I think in his own way, he is a Russian nationalist,
Speaker 1: but he thought Luton wasn't a real nationalist, right, I mean, right, right.
Speaker 2: Right, But you know, I think people saw in Navalny
Speaker 2: also like he created it that creates the kind of
Speaker 2: safety to say, like, Okay, if this guy who is
Speaker 2: like comes from a sort of I mean, he was
Speaker 2: a lawyer, he kind of has a sort of you know,
Speaker 2: elite background, if he's the one who's willing to take
Speaker 2: on the dictator, like, we can't too.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Why didn't Liz Cheney serve
Speaker 1: that purpose for the for the opposition to Trump?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, she in some ways fits that definition, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean I look at it, it's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: she never really was part of the Trump movement. In
Speaker 1: fact that you could argue she was a member of
Speaker 1: the establishment that Trump overthrew inside the Republican Party too.
Speaker 1: So maybe maybe that isn't the right you know, maybe
Speaker 1: Mike Pence is the better is the better avatar? I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think in both instances, and this
Speaker 2: is true of Hungary and Trumanavalney, you have to build
Speaker 2: a base, right, you can't be you know, to have
Speaker 2: an individual who does a brave thing is helpful as
Speaker 2: an example, but it has to sort of create a
Speaker 2: culture of people each doing their brave things, you know.
Speaker 2: So for her to take on, for Pens to take
Speaker 2: on the sort of Maga world and the culture that
Speaker 2: is Maga would demand building an alternative, you know, an
Speaker 2: alternative that has its own distinct value system.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the archetypes you come through. You
Speaker 1: sort of the book is structured in a way where
Speaker 1: there's almost like a structure and a dissidence. You did
Speaker 1: this by studying various ones, so so hit me with it.
Speaker 1: You know, what would you say, why do you think
Speaker 1: qualities travel history? You know, like sometimes a certain quality
Speaker 1: might have made sense two hundred years ago but it
Speaker 1: doesn't now, but you sort of see it as it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter you're historic era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it was important for me to sort
Speaker 2: of understand what was universal about these qualities, which you know,
Speaker 2: I've some people have looked at the book and they go,
Speaker 2: oh wow, well, how amazing that you're you know, you
Speaker 2: have like a Chinese woman and a you know, ancient
Speaker 2: Greek philosopher in them. It's so u you know, you know,
Speaker 2: multi faceted in that way.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't right, like the benaton for dissidents, right exactly,
Speaker 1: that is not what you were going for, right, No.
Speaker 2: That wasn't my intent. I mean I think that I
Speaker 2: felt that the universality of these qualities had to be proven,
Speaker 2: and the only way to prove them was to be
Speaker 2: able to say, I'm going to show you how as tracks,
Speaker 2: you know, to talk about the qualities a little bit.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's sort of like three sets
Speaker 2: of you know, things that I was looking at. You know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to understand sort of like what, uh what
Speaker 2: makes a dissident in some ways? You know, like what
Speaker 2: what sort of what the essential aspects of a dissident
Speaker 2: has to be? You know, so something like a certain
Speaker 2: kind of aloneness, a certain ability to step away from conformity,
Speaker 2: which is such a strong I mean, in that chapter,
Speaker 2: I looked at what a strong human impulse that actually is.
Speaker 2: We we are hardwired to conform. Yeah, it's survival, It's
Speaker 2: it's allowed our species to exist. As long as that
Speaker 2: we have these sort of we can create social bonds
Speaker 2: and and we are loyal to one another in this
Speaker 2: way that you know, it's very hard to break away from.
Speaker 2: So uh so there is this sort of a weirdness
Speaker 2: around you know, the dissident who's willing to just say
Speaker 2: I'm going to just like you know, the world has
Speaker 2: to stop I can't go on, you know, living the
Speaker 2: way that I'm living as long as this thing is
Speaker 2: happening in the world. I looked at pessimism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an interesting one. You're just like really pessimist, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you you need to have pessimism in order
Speaker 1: to understand optimism. You know. I used to try to
Speaker 1: tell my kids that, you know, in order to have
Speaker 1: good days, you have to have bad days. That used
Speaker 1: to be how I explain to my you know, when
Speaker 1: they were in their single digits. You know, now they're
Speaker 1: young adults. But like, in order to understand what a
Speaker 1: good day is, you have to have bad days. That
Speaker 1: was the simple way to do it. Is that the
Speaker 1: thesis here.
Speaker 2: That's part of it. But it's also that well, first
Speaker 2: of all, I think people misunderstand pessimism as being you know,
Speaker 2: this as being fatalism, as being this notion that like
Speaker 2: things will always and forever you know, get worse.
Speaker 1: So what's the difference between pessimism and fatalism.
Speaker 2: So pessimism is just that things will probably get worse.
Speaker 1: So the word probably is doing a lot of work there.
Speaker 2: Well, no, not really, because like you know, maybe they won't,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe they won't get worse. But what that
Speaker 2: opened up for, what that opens up for the activeness
Speaker 2: is a space of action, right because like if if
Speaker 2: you think that things are going to get worse, but
Speaker 2: there is a possibility that they won't, then you're really
Speaker 2: motivated to act. If you think things are probably going
Speaker 2: to get better, then yeah, you could be passive. The
Speaker 2: arc of justice is going to bend in the direction.
Speaker 2: Why get off my ass to do something? You know,
Speaker 2: if I know that one way or another, climate change
Speaker 2: will be solved.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny you say, I'll use let me
Speaker 1: give you a dark version of how I yeah, talk
Speaker 1: about climate change and I ask people this question, and
Speaker 1: I'll ask it to you. Yeah, if in fifty years, well,
Speaker 1: let's say by the year twenty one hundred, the world's
Speaker 1: population is three and a half billion, did we survived
Speaker 1: climate change? Three and a half billion people did?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like we lost two thirds of the world's population, right, Right,
Speaker 1: So it is one of those like, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, do I think eventually we'll serve we'll survive it?
Speaker 1: But how much damage is done? How many people lose
Speaker 1: their lives? How many? Is that optimism or pessimism.
Speaker 2: Well, you're your your notion that we're surviving it is
Speaker 2: I mean that you have a very clique. You have
Speaker 2: a distinct idea of what it means to survive, which is.
Speaker 1: Well, the species survived, then we've survived.
Speaker 2: Yeah, species technically survived, but the amount of misery that
Speaker 2: was caused along the way, it's something to contend with. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you're a climate activist, you
Speaker 2: can say to yourself, look, I think that you know
Speaker 2: somebody is going to figure this thing out. You know,
Speaker 2: why should I You know, maybe I should, I should
Speaker 2: go out into the street, But like you know, eventually
Speaker 2: it's going to be okay, or maybe that it's the
Speaker 2: species will survive one way or the other. But if
Speaker 2: you are a pessimist, you think humanity is probably going
Speaker 2: to be wiped out. Uh, your motivation is a little
Speaker 2: bit higher. It doesn't mean that it will be wiped out.
Speaker 2: You're a pessimist.
Speaker 1: And that's why pessimism at least gives you the the
Speaker 1: ability to come up with a place.
Speaker 2: It's it's a sobering way of sort of understanding reality
Speaker 2: and change and how things happen. That's saying like there's
Speaker 2: actually a great Dutch philosopher, contemporary Dutch philosopher, nam Mara
Speaker 2: vander Lud, who has an expression that I kind of
Speaker 2: stole from her. She talks about hopeful pessimism, and hopeful
Speaker 2: is is this idea that things will probably get worse,
Speaker 2: but that you need to you need to find hope
Speaker 2: within that, within that sort of bubble that opens up,
Speaker 2: you know, in that word, probably you know that like
Speaker 2: he needs to do the good things.
Speaker 1: Like the old John McCain joke, it's always darkest before
Speaker 1: it goes completely black.
Speaker 2: A little bit. It's more than like you should do that.
Speaker 2: You should do the good that you can do right now,
Speaker 2: and maybe not worry about whether or not we're going
Speaker 2: to save humanity, because like that's a question that you
Speaker 2: can't answer in any case. But you know that, like
Speaker 2: right now there's something that you can do. And that
Speaker 2: to me is is that that's what hopeful passimism is.
Speaker 1: Now, we talked a little bit about satire and funny,
Speaker 1: but that I mean to me, you know, I've always
Speaker 1: viewed humor and satire as a way to talk to
Speaker 1: a larger audience. That that's ultimately, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the South Park guys are probably our best satirists, and
Speaker 1: satirists are different than comedians. Satirists sometimes don't make you
Speaker 1: laugh right right, you know, but they're going to point,
Speaker 1: they're going to do something so absurd that you're like,
Speaker 1: it takes it back, right, And the south Park boys,
Speaker 1: I've always thought, capture that spirit of satire that is uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Right. It's also it's also just like, I mean, I
Speaker 2: use the word reverence a lot. It's like it's just
Speaker 2: so over the top sometimes, right, I mean talk about
Speaker 2: South Park.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're very over the top, but it's intentional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're taking the like, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: just let's do the King naked, Like, let's do the
Speaker 2: King naked?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'll do one that's not even political. I think
Speaker 1: the remember the human iPad if they that, I don't
Speaker 1: know how much you watch it, but the idea was,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you didn't you just accepted without
Speaker 1: reading the terms and conditions. Well, now Apple can use
Speaker 1: you as the first iPad the absurdity, But that was
Speaker 1: the point if like, do you know what you're reading
Speaker 1: right right?
Speaker 2: Well, I think absurdity is the right word because there's
Speaker 2: also and this is actually very very old. This is
Speaker 2: a very old mode, is to flip things upside down
Speaker 2: to create like such absurd it's a carnivalesque. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the it's the one day a year you know
Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages where men with dress as women,
Speaker 2: women as men, poor people as rich feal richual as
Speaker 2: poor people, you know, throwing the world into disarray in
Speaker 2: a way that that makes you actually question the taken
Speaker 2: for granted, you say, well, would do things have to
Speaker 2: be this way? Do we have to have these crazy uh,
Speaker 2: you know contracts that we sign, Like what is that about?
Speaker 2: Like it's these things that you don't actually think about
Speaker 2: that you just assume our a natural part of our world.
Speaker 2: That what humor does, is it it defloes that it says,
Speaker 2: you know, it says, let's look at it from this
Speaker 2: totally other angle. And uh, I mean, you know, there
Speaker 2: was even I was reading in the in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 2: there were these like posters when when printing press became
Speaker 2: more popular, there were posters of like, you know, the
Speaker 2: world in which uh, you know, cats were chasing mice
Speaker 2: or like ox were butchering the butchers, and you know,
Speaker 2: the authorities would confiscate these because they saw it as
Speaker 2: threatening the idea that people would do, Yeah, that they
Speaker 2: would have this almost like revolutionary sense of things don't
Speaker 2: have to be in the current order, they can be different.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about your advice about being reckless, right,
Speaker 1: because reckless, I mean this is you know, recklessness can
Speaker 1: backfire if you do it wrong. Yeah, So why why
Speaker 1: is it? Why is it an attribute that you think
Speaker 1: is the mark of a successful dission? Maybe it is
Speaker 1: the better way?
Speaker 2: Well it was, I mean, you know, that chapter was
Speaker 2: actually the hardest for me to write because I just
Speaker 2: felt like I needed to wrestle with this idea of
Speaker 2: you know, if we're going to take we're going to
Speaker 2: take this to its ultimate conclusion, that dissonance often you know,
Speaker 2: put their bodies on the line, put their lives on
Speaker 2: the line in order to make in order to make
Speaker 2: the injustice that they're trying to illustrate perfectly clear.
Speaker 1: And this is the metaphor of handcuffing yourself to the
Speaker 1: tree that's going to get chopped down. Sure you have
Speaker 1: to chop me down with it, right, yeah?
Speaker 2: Or I mean, you know, you know I have in
Speaker 2: the chapter I talk about the children in Birmingham, Alabama,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three and the decision, you know, which was
Speaker 2: a very you know, we don't we see it now
Speaker 2: with such a successful campaign, actually that we don't know that.
Speaker 2: Behind the scenes, King was tormented about this. He said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean put six year olds in front
Speaker 2: of you know, dogs and water cannons, even though he
Speaker 2: knew that what it would do would illustrate, you know,
Speaker 2: his point, He would illustrate the brutality of segregation in
Speaker 2: that city in a way that nobody could dispute. Nobody
Speaker 2: with a heart who was watching it could dispute. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, I mean, they were lucky nobody got hurt,
Speaker 2: but somebody could have very well been hurt. So how
Speaker 2: do you what is the calculus there? How do you
Speaker 2: understand when it makes sense and when it doesn't make sense?
Speaker 1: Is it a strategy? Do you view reckless?
Speaker 2: And it?
Speaker 1: I mean you have to be strategic with it, because
Speaker 1: one would argue if it's strategic, it's no longer reckless.
Speaker 2: No, it can be a strategy. I mean it's certainly
Speaker 2: a strategy for King. But I think what you have
Speaker 2: to you have to know, you know, is that it's
Speaker 2: not about uh, it's not self destruction that you're not doing.
Speaker 2: It is kind of a martyrology, you know, as a
Speaker 2: way to that that it's sort of outward focused. Actually,
Speaker 2: the fact that there is a strategy is I would
Speaker 2: say a good aspect of recklessness, because you know, there
Speaker 2: aren't people who just become so enmeshed in the moral
Speaker 2: purpose that they feel that they're pursuing they lose they
Speaker 2: lose track of strategy and they actually just want to
Speaker 2: and they set themselves on fire. Right, they would do
Speaker 2: something like that to prove their point. I don't think
Speaker 2: that that's always the right thing to do, or maybe
Speaker 2: ever the right thing to do. But you know, another
Speaker 2: complicated example from that chapter one that I really actually
Speaker 2: touched me in a real way. It was Navalny, who
Speaker 2: he's mentioned before. You know, he had already been poisoned
Speaker 2: once by Putin, so nearly killed, was saved when to Germany,
Speaker 2: and then had to make a decision was he going
Speaker 2: to go back to Russia. Now, think about how hard
Speaker 2: that decision is. You know, he, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: if he's going to be true to his cause and
Speaker 2: actually if he's going to set the example that he
Speaker 2: wants to set for his people, for Russians. He kind
Speaker 2: of has to go back, but he knows that he's
Speaker 2: going to die to death. Yeah, Putin's not going to
Speaker 2: let him live. He'll let him you know, the best
Speaker 2: case scenario, he's in prison for the next for the
Speaker 2: rest of his you know, of Putin's reign. And uh.
Speaker 2: And this is a guy who has kids, he has
Speaker 2: young kids, he's got a wife. You know, he's a
Speaker 2: guy full of life. I don't know if you've.
Speaker 1: How would you have judged him if he chose not
Speaker 1: to go back. I mean, I mean, how much more
Speaker 1: I could argue how much more did he have to
Speaker 1: give to the cause? Right? But he did it anyway, right,
Speaker 1: he had already give it, you know, almost sacrificed himself.
Speaker 1: And and and he had every right to say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let somebody else take the next hit, or or
Speaker 1: do what.
Speaker 2: He was doing from exile, you know, I mean he was.
Speaker 2: I mean, social media was his tool he could have
Speaker 2: you know, kept it's quite effective, a thorn in the
Speaker 2: side of Putin. But I think that he really understood
Speaker 2: the need to go back as a kind of Actually,
Speaker 2: he wasn't even you know when you read his memoir,
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was like in his head,
Speaker 2: but when you read his memoir he talks about it
Speaker 2: is not even complicated. He said, what else could I do?
Speaker 2: Like I made a promise to the Russian people, and
Speaker 2: if I have convictions, then I have to follow through
Speaker 2: my convictions. Otherwise who am I now? I don't know.
Speaker 2: We can all sort of like dream that we could
Speaker 2: have such you know, these have such a moral core.
Speaker 2: But but I think for him, when you ask how
Speaker 2: I would judge him, it's the question is more how
Speaker 2: he would judge himself. And I think that he really
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to live with himself. To go back
Speaker 2: to that Hannah.
Speaker 1: R End question, Well, he in some ways fits better
Speaker 1: in the immortal than the idea of that be immortal.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, And I actually come back to him
Speaker 2: chapter because because he.
Speaker 1: For me, this is the Obi wan Kenobi piece brea
Speaker 1: me down. I become more powerful than you can imagine. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the great Star Wars line. And there is something
Speaker 1: to that, right, like you know you got to you
Speaker 1: you kill you kill one of these leaders, and you
Speaker 1: actually could end up elevating the cause. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: they couldn't do in life.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's sort of what he had accepted.
Speaker 2: I really do. I think he understood that, like he
Speaker 2: was probably going to die and that it would serve
Speaker 2: the purpose of his cause, you know. And uh, and
Speaker 2: I think it's because he you know, when you mentioned
Speaker 2: the immortal I think what I was trying to describe
Speaker 2: in that chapter is this sort of this this this
Speaker 2: duality that dissonants often have. I mean King had it too,
Speaker 2: which is that they they both are are are sort
Speaker 2: of operating at this at this higher level of principle
Speaker 2: and values you could call them. Sometimes those values are
Speaker 2: religious values. I mean they were for Navalney in some respect,
Speaker 2: they were for King as well. Sometimes it's just like
Speaker 2: a sense of justice, like a deep, deep sense of justice.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a sense of you know, life, death and
Speaker 2: the cycles of just how the world works. But they're
Speaker 2: they're tuned into that, they're tuned into it in a
Speaker 2: deep way at the same time that their feet are
Speaker 2: sort of firmly grounded. So they're trying to do their
Speaker 2: work here on earth. They're trying to actually I mean,
Speaker 2: if only you know, I had this great religious sort
Speaker 2: of virtuous feeling that he was he was being righteous
Speaker 2: and what he was doing, but he was also talking
Speaker 2: about the education system in Russia, the corruption. I mean,
Speaker 2: most of his work was about, you know, looking at
Speaker 2: how Putin and his circle were, you know, stealing money,
Speaker 2: enriching themselves. I mean, these are very earthly things he
Speaker 2: was he was focused on on on the on the
Speaker 2: reality that he wanted to change, but he was also
Speaker 2: tapping into the sort of greater righteousness of doing that work.
Speaker 2: So and you know, these aren't unique individuals. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I try to establish early on in the
Speaker 2: book that like I'm looking at them as almost like
Speaker 2: north stars. You know, these are people who live, but
Speaker 2: will you know, have these qualities. And I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not suggesting small significant person that I am that I
Speaker 2: could you know, wake up tomorrow and become a dissident
Speaker 2: and act like one. But it somehow felt like right
Speaker 2: to try to understand, like what are those qualities, like
Speaker 2: what actually what actually makes up that personality, because maybe
Speaker 2: that would give me and readers like a sense of,
Speaker 2: you know, things to strive for.
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Speaker 1: am a customer. So I want to bring this to
Speaker 1: sort of back to America. Yeah, please, because on one hand, look,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not anywhere in the situation that Russians
Speaker 1: are in. But we've had we've seen some co opting
Speaker 1: of institutions, right, whether it's media organizations, universities capitulating to
Speaker 1: the state. You know, maybe it's setting in a lawsuit,
Speaker 1: maybe it's trying to get government funding from being cut.
Speaker 1: That's obviously not behaving as a dissipance, right if you
Speaker 1: work at it, Right, if you work at one of
Speaker 1: those organizations. But are they arms of the state or
Speaker 1: are they just simply making compromises under pressure that many
Speaker 1: a good person might make under the similar circumstances. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is what do I do with those folks?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: They it goes to the people that didn't want to
Speaker 1: be Nazis but complied, Well.
Speaker 2: This book is for them. Yeah, because no, I mean
Speaker 2: that was a big reason why I felt impelled to
Speaker 2: write this, because I saw that capitulation, and I think,
Speaker 2: probably like you, I was sort of struck by how
Speaker 2: quick it happened and how widespread it was.
Speaker 1: I'm still so upset. A look, I obviously I care
Speaker 1: about the press first. That's where you know, the decision
Speaker 1: to settle the Stephanopolis lawsuit is the single biggest mistake
Speaker 1: I think that mister Iger has ever made. I fully
Speaker 1: understand that the CEO of Disney had to make a decision. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he made a decision that was in the best interests
Speaker 1: of Disney. Yeah, and it absolutely destroyed, I think, corporate
Speaker 1: ownership of media going forward for the foreseeable future. It
Speaker 1: put a stain on it that is going to be
Speaker 1: you know, it's look, it's turned into an opportunity for
Speaker 1: some of us that are now in the independent space,
Speaker 1: but it has made it where it's impossible to ever
Speaker 1: think about going back because you cannot find yourself being
Speaker 1: a journalist and feeling. And I wonder how many academics
Speaker 1: feel this way. If you don't believe the institution you
Speaker 1: work for will fight for your right to do the
Speaker 1: job from the best of your abilities, then you'd rather
Speaker 1: be on your own.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think that's absolutely true. I think you know,
Speaker 2: so many of those examples of universities and law firms,
Speaker 2: you know, and and people in the federal government who
Speaker 2: were forced into impossible positions but then decided to just
Speaker 2: keep their head down, you know, I I am.
Speaker 1: And there's good rationales for them to do it. There
Speaker 1: are people that need to get their funds. There are
Speaker 1: people that you know, of course, there's the road that
Speaker 1: hell is paved with good intentions, right, and you know
Speaker 1: that's gonna say.
Speaker 2: But I'm of course there are good reasons. But I'm
Speaker 2: telling you there are good reasons for people in you know,
Speaker 2: Stalin's Russia to know, you know, to look the other
Speaker 2: way when much worse things were happening, and and so
Speaker 2: you then you start to wonder, like where is the line,
Speaker 2: you know, like where is the line where people feel
Speaker 2: that it's not just uh something that they can you know,
Speaker 2: justify to themselves as okay, well, it's this one time thing,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's not gonna have a it's not
Speaker 2: gonna have a ripple effect. Everyone has to find that
Speaker 2: line in themselves. And I think that's everyone has to
Speaker 2: sort of. I think what made me want to think
Speaker 2: about this question is because I think those people weren't prepared.
Speaker 2: I think there's people weren't prepared to act in good
Speaker 2: conscience because We've never been faced with a situation like that.
Speaker 1: It's always another country that has this, we believe it. Wow,
Speaker 1: how did that happen? That happened really fast? How did
Speaker 1: that happen right?
Speaker 2: Right? And and I and I mean think about when
Speaker 2: the Ukraine War started and all those people left Russia,
Speaker 2: you know, overnight or some of them did, you know,
Speaker 2: because they said, I just can't be here anymore, you know.
Speaker 2: So I know those people. Maybe we're more prepared than Americans
Speaker 2: to be forced to make more of those kind of
Speaker 2: moral choices. And so I I think, you know, I
Speaker 2: feel sympathy to some extent because I don't think people
Speaker 2: were prepared, but I think we are now. I think
Speaker 2: we've learned something over the last year. I think when
Speaker 2: Ice entered Minneapolis, you know, Grants it a different context
Speaker 2: than being Bob Biger. But I think people were not
Speaker 2: political people, not lefties, not people. You know, we look
Speaker 2: at the people who sort of took a stand. They
Speaker 2: did feel like they had a choice they had to make,
Speaker 2: and I think that that is something, maybe something we've
Speaker 2: learned over the last year and a half, that that
Speaker 2: being a citizen in this country does sometimes demand a
Speaker 2: hard choice.
Speaker 1: You're getting at something that we went on and I'm
Speaker 1: going to you know, we're about the same age, our
Speaker 1: generation sort of everything kept you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: entered adulthood with the Berlin Wall falling. We won, we
Speaker 1: had won the argument, right, like, okay, so boy, this
Speaker 1: is going to be great. How quickly are we going
Speaker 1: to be spreading a version of democracy all over the world?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And it was really moving in Eastern Europe and it
Speaker 1: was really moving all over and shoot, you know, I
Speaker 1: I you know, up until about ten years ago, I'd
Speaker 1: have been convinced China was, you know, oh, welcome to
Speaker 1: having a middle class China. Just trust me. Democracy is
Speaker 1: coming whether you want it or not. You know, because
Speaker 1: the middle class has demands. You know, wherever you have
Speaker 1: a middle class, you're going to have Uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: going to almost have a forced democracy at some point. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then it didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I I think that's why. You know, And
Speaker 2: when I when I took about this book with dissidents
Speaker 2: in other countries or with people just people in other countries,
Speaker 2: they at laugh and they're like.
Speaker 1: I know I've had these Yeah, now you understands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's true. I had to go back to
Speaker 2: you know, I was thinking about an American context, you know,
Speaker 2: but of course there are differences.
Speaker 1: Look, there's King, there's Susan B. Anthony, there's certainly plenty.
Speaker 2: Of Macarthy era. You know. You know, you think about
Speaker 2: people on the you know, the blacklist, and you know,
Speaker 2: how do you respond? You know, if somebody comes to
Speaker 2: your to your office and starts asking you to name names,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? But that was before,
Speaker 2: long before us, you know, that was not the world
Speaker 2: that we grew up.
Speaker 1: That was our previous edit. We took care of that, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we we sort of wiped all that clean,
Speaker 1: you know, with with the whole you know, the bacle
Speaker 1: of Vietnam and Watergate. We realized, oh, you can't, can't
Speaker 1: do that anymore right and right yet Nope, And.
Speaker 2: That and I think the thing that I hadn't really
Speaker 2: fully contended with in terms of what that meant for us,
Speaker 2: for our generation and for people who kind of come
Speaker 2: came up when we did, is the individual aspect of
Speaker 2: like the choice that it would sort of impose. And
Speaker 2: I keep using this for choice, but I think that's
Speaker 2: what felt new to me, was like, Oh, I have
Speaker 2: to actually decide what my relationship is to this government,
Speaker 2: uh and to this and to this society and to
Speaker 2: the people around me. Am I going to care when
Speaker 2: something happens to my to my neighbors? Am I going
Speaker 2: to do something about it? I haven't actually ever been
Speaker 2: forced into that position before, you know, So I think
Speaker 2: I think understanding it at the individual level is important
Speaker 2: for people to well.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things I remember. My first trip
Speaker 1: to Israel was in the early two thousands, two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, two thousand and five, and my immediate takeaway
Speaker 1: was everybody here understands its citizenship is active, it's work.
Speaker 1: And it was the bit and I realized, and this
Speaker 1: was on had piggybacked. I'd done a trip to Cuba
Speaker 1: about the year or two earlier and where I understood
Speaker 1: how how the government oppression works. When I saw kids
Speaker 1: coming home with bread to bring to mom and dad,
Speaker 1: to reinforce the nature that the state provided mom and
Speaker 1: dad doesn't provide, right, So you started to see and
Speaker 1: it was just sometimes you have to just as you know.
Speaker 1: It made me a better reporter to be around and
Speaker 1: visually you understand these things. And I realized in our
Speaker 1: country we had become passive citizens. Yeah, right now, there
Speaker 1: is an upside to the Trump era. It's been the
Speaker 1: highest voter turnout we've had one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I attributed to when you when you when the
Speaker 1: stakes are higher, we more people get engaged. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's a net positive in the medium.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's it's funnier. The thing that's
Speaker 2: reminding me of is a is the day after Trump's
Speaker 2: first win, I had I have two little girls who
Speaker 2: were you know, like six and nine then or somewhere
Speaker 2: around those ages, you know, and they, like a lot
Speaker 2: of us, they went to bed thinking that they were
Speaker 2: going to wake up and see the first woman.
Speaker 1: First girl president. That was my daughter. My daughter was well,
Speaker 1: I thank you, and she was in tears. What do
Speaker 1: you mean we don't have a woman president?
Speaker 2: And they said, well, I said, well, don't worry, I'll
Speaker 2: wake you up nights. You could see, you know, it's enough.
Speaker 2: And in the morning they came to me and and
Speaker 2: they were like in tears, and they were and and
Speaker 2: and I think the only thing that I could pull
Speaker 2: out of that was also because like you know, we'd
Speaker 2: come to think of Trump as this completely unanged character
Speaker 2: who you know, and for them, in their young minds,
Speaker 2: what would it mean to have somebody, you know, who
Speaker 2: was president who acted like the way that they had,
Speaker 2: you know, come to understand he was acted? And I said,
Speaker 2: the metaphor, the only metaphor I could grab, although it's
Speaker 2: kind of a horrible metaphors, I said, you know, think
Speaker 2: of it. We were like we were sitting in the
Speaker 2: backseat of a car and there was the president who
Speaker 2: was driving the car, and we kind of trusted that,
Speaker 2: like you know, maybe we didn't agree with him always,
Speaker 2: but that he would basically, you know, you know, do
Speaker 2: you know, keep keep keep his eyes on the road,
Speaker 2: you know, and get us there and get us to
Speaker 2: where we need to go. And we could kind of
Speaker 2: relax in the back seat and have conversations amongst ourselves.
Speaker 2: I was like, well, that's not the case. Now we
Speaker 2: have to sit up in our seats. We have to
Speaker 2: watch the driver, we have to make sure that he's
Speaker 2: not hitting the potholes, and we have to I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a terrifying metaphor.
Speaker 1: No, often's funny. I have used that metaphour of saying,
Speaker 1: if America were a vehicle, we'd be led by a
Speaker 1: drunk driver, right, which is like he kind of knows
Speaker 1: the direction to go, but he might swerve into crazy
Speaker 1: places or fall asleep, fall asleep at the wheel, you
Speaker 1: have no idea where we're headed. And it's sort of no,
Speaker 1: I've I've butchered that metaphor myself or analogy or whatever
Speaker 1: whatever is the correct form of that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but I agree that I think I think
Speaker 2: that I've seen it in my own sort of social world,
Speaker 2: and and I do think, you know, to come back
Speaker 2: to things like No King's Day or Minneapolis, I think
Speaker 2: we've actually become more sophisticated as a country when it
Speaker 2: comes to protest. I think that you know, we've something
Speaker 2: I've seen in Trump two point zero is that you know,
Speaker 2: we don't believe that we should just have like the
Speaker 2: one big massive demonstration, you know, in Washington, and then
Speaker 2: it's over. It's this notion that we need to build
Speaker 2: networks of of people who are engaged, involved doing like
Speaker 2: what those folks are doing in Hungary, you know, finding
Speaker 2: ways to connect and care about local issues. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying this is happening perfectly, but I think
Speaker 2: that that is the path towards that more engaged citizenship.
Speaker 2: It's to sort of understand that it's a slow process
Speaker 2: of connecting way.
Speaker 1: This is the most important lesson to take away from
Speaker 1: your book, I believe. And it happens to dovetail with
Speaker 1: a project that I'm involved in. It it's about some
Speaker 1: boring electoral reform. When I say boring, right, it's not
Speaker 1: the sexiest thing. But you know, there's sort of there
Speaker 1: are things you can deal with now, and then there's
Speaker 1: things you've got to deal with that will make things
Speaker 1: better in the next thirty years. But it's going to
Speaker 1: take time, and it maybe you have to start one
Speaker 1: state here, then maybe you get to hear and then
Speaker 1: maybe a party adopts it, or maybe there's this yeah,
Speaker 1: and is that how do you and there isn't a
Speaker 1: straight line to success. It is. It's plotting along. It's
Speaker 1: plotting along. It seems hopeless until it isn't right. And
Speaker 1: in fact, you may not live for when it happens.
Speaker 1: You may die before it happened.
Speaker 2: That's pessimism, Chuck.
Speaker 1: But you still believe it. It's going to happen. I
Speaker 1: just may not be here to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, got it.
Speaker 1: I think the hardest thing because Americans want change yesterday
Speaker 1: right right, and in fact we want change so badly
Speaker 1: we keep voting for it. We vote this century. Whichever
Speaker 1: party is the new is running on Hey, we're not
Speaker 1: them in power. We're different. They won't they're winning, right.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it's a bit, you know, and at
Speaker 1: some point the voter is going to say, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, we're now windshield wipers and neither one of
Speaker 1: you get it, and maybe we have to wear ourselves out.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's what happened in the mid nineteen century,
Speaker 1: and finally a third party came along named the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: and Lincoln and Loan behold here we are. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what I did. I don't know, but one
Speaker 1: of the things you preach in this book, but more
Speaker 1: so in your previous book, is that it takes time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but all I'm and and and that's hard
Speaker 2: in our world today because you know, there is this
Speaker 2: unfortunate constant speeding up and a constant search for you know,
Speaker 2: immediate gratification and metrics, and you know, there is there
Speaker 2: is a countervailing force to this, to the to this quiet,
Speaker 2: slow process that is so hard to challenge. You have
Speaker 2: to do it deliberatively. You have to do it, you know, consciously,
Speaker 2: and it's but it's the the only thing that works,
Speaker 2: you know, otherwise you do get exactly what you're describing.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like sea sawing that appeals to our
Speaker 2: basest instincts. You know that we want the thing that
Speaker 2: we want right now, and then okay, we want the
Speaker 2: opposite thing. And then you know, and what I see,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not saying anything that's that new, you know,
Speaker 2: but when when I see social media and the sort
Speaker 2: of what social media sort of biases us towards in
Speaker 2: terms of the way we communicate, that's the thing that
Speaker 2: worries me the most because I feel like it robs
Speaker 2: us of that slow, deliberate process, which which we need
Speaker 2: to all get on the same page to figure out
Speaker 2: how to meet the bigger challenges. But yeah, that is
Speaker 2: I think that is the thing.
Speaker 1: Somebody reading your book, let me get you out of
Speaker 1: here in this Somebody reading your book or listening to
Speaker 1: this interview. Yeah, they're a mid level staffer. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: in a government agency. Maybe they maybe they serve in
Speaker 1: the military, Maybe they work at a university, maybe they
Speaker 1: work at a major news organization. What should they learn
Speaker 1: from your book? If they want to do something but
Speaker 1: they're not sure what to do.
Speaker 2: I think. I think first, if they're putt in a
Speaker 2: position that they feel gives them that moral nausea, sit
Speaker 2: with the moral nausea, don't you know, sort of swipe
Speaker 2: it away or pretend that it's not something that's actually
Speaker 2: bossed doing it. Yes. Second, I would say, understand that
Speaker 2: you have a choice that you know you don't have
Speaker 2: to conform, and and really ask yourself the question that
Speaker 2: essential question, can I live with myself if I'm forced
Speaker 2: to do something that violates some sort of core principle
Speaker 2: that I have. There's something that's going to hurt other people,
Speaker 2: or something that you know that that is going to
Speaker 2: make me feel like I have given up some essential
Speaker 2: agency that I think that I should have as a
Speaker 2: human being in this world. So live with that choice,
Speaker 2: still with the uncomfortableness, live with the choice, and then
Speaker 2: make a choice. And I say this, even if the
Speaker 2: choice is that you've decided not to do anything, understand
Speaker 2: it as a choice. You understand way out. Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: on the one end, I have my family and my
Speaker 2: kids and my livelihood, and I really can't sacrifice that
Speaker 2: because it's going to be hurting them, and hurting them
Speaker 2: is you know I would I would rather not hurt them,
Speaker 2: you know, as opposed to sort of take a stand
Speaker 2: you know that I need to take.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean it goes to the Navaalney exercise
Speaker 1: that we just did, right, which is which is he'd
Speaker 1: have gotten a zero criticism for making the choice of that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd already given a lot. So and then I guess
Speaker 1: there's no shame. There's no shame in that, but you
Speaker 1: do have to live with it.
Speaker 2: And the third thing, and this is the hardest actually
Speaker 2: to sort of wrap my own head around, is like
Speaker 2: the notion that you need to act for its own
Speaker 2: sake because you think it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: and not because of the result that it will bring.
Speaker 2: That's hard, Like it's hard to say I'm going to
Speaker 2: act on behalf of let's say, climate change because it
Speaker 2: brought it up earlier, even though I think that probably
Speaker 2: the world is going to warm by two degrees and
Speaker 2: we're all gonna, you know, die, Like, I still need
Speaker 2: to do the thing that I think is the right
Speaker 2: thing to do. So that that not being able, that
Speaker 2: that ability to tell yourself that you're acting because you
Speaker 2: know that it's the right thing to do and not
Speaker 2: because of the of you know what it will Tangibly,
Speaker 2: the tangible metrics is is something that's important to sort
Speaker 2: of accept, but to just be positive about it. I
Speaker 2: also want to say that when I talk about those
Speaker 2: moral choices, they're burdens obviously, Like it's a burden to
Speaker 2: open the newspaper and to see a dying child and
Speaker 2: to say, oh shit, now I have to actually do
Speaker 2: something thing about it. Right. But and this I kind
Speaker 2: of took from Jean Paul sart Or, the French philosopher.
Speaker 2: He talks about moral choices as being creative acts. This
Speaker 2: is the substance from which our lives are made. Are
Speaker 2: these acts? Are these choices, these decisions that we make
Speaker 2: about how we're going to live our life. You know,
Speaker 2: that mid level person who you're talking about, he's going
Speaker 2: to be you know, he's going to look back at
Speaker 2: his life in his eighties and he's going to remember.
Speaker 2: He's going to remember that moment where he was asked to,
Speaker 2: you know, to do a thing that just violated every
Speaker 2: sense of sort of conscience that he has, and it's
Speaker 2: not going to make him feel good about the kind
Speaker 2: of life that he lived.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say that I said this to others.
Speaker 1: Any every dying person I've ever been around, never talks
Speaker 1: about the things they did, Yeah, always talk about the
Speaker 1: things they didn't do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So gaal, Look man, it's a no. One's saying
Speaker 1: this was easy reading, but it was is. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean that like it wasn't well written. It's not that,
Speaker 1: but please no, what I mean is it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good read.
Speaker 2: But it it may it.
Speaker 1: It forced, It forces your own reckoning as you read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all because I think that's the and that's the point.
Speaker 1: Put yourself understand. Here's some here's some people in similar situations,
Speaker 1: or here's people that and here's how they handled it,
Speaker 1: and here's where they're and and look you have the
Speaker 1: everybody you profiled in some ways were successful. The question
Speaker 1: is did they know they were successful in the moment.
Speaker 1: That's true, that they were a choice. And I think
Speaker 1: the answer is no, none of them.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, they still did it.
Speaker 1: And they still did it. Well, congrats. The book came
Speaker 1: out this month.
Speaker 2: Right, it's coming out on the twenty twenty. First.
Speaker 1: Yes, people will be hearing this just before it comes out,
Speaker 1: so it'll be perfect, excellent how to be a dissident
Speaker 1: in an election year. But is it one of the
Speaker 1: rules for radicals? Is this an updated version? I mean
Speaker 1: you like the comparison or do you not like the comparison?
Speaker 2: No, No, I like the comparison. I thought that. I
Speaker 2: think that book is a fantastic look radical sort of
Speaker 2: gives it a I remember I always remember Nut gang
Speaker 2: Rich used to throw around Sawlolensky's name with this.
Speaker 1: Color the right loves. I think the right used more
Speaker 1: Sololensky advice than the left ever did.
Speaker 2: Right, that's all right, right, No, I mean that that
Speaker 2: book is all about preparing the ground it's about uh,
Speaker 2: not looking for easy victories. I mean he was. Solinsky
Speaker 2: was responding to Vietnam War protests, and he thought, you've
Speaker 2: gotten You're at the last act. You gotta do Act
Speaker 2: one and two. You got to like, you got to
Speaker 2: lead up to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, well congrats and look now your voice will
Speaker 1: get better for the rest of it. Thank you, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Ga