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Speaker 1: And so he ended up creating his own version of

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Speaker 1: the elite in his mind. And this gets for me

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Speaker 1: at least one of the big takeaways in understanding what

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Speaker 1: we mean when we talk about elites is almost never

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Speaker 1: are the critics of the elite trying to get rid

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Speaker 1: of it. They're just trying to replace it and become it.

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Speaker 2: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in

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Speaker 2: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover

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Speaker 2: all around the world.

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Speaker 3: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I

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Speaker 3: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

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Speaker 2: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we

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Speaker 2: created conspiracies.

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Speaker 3: In our operations. We got people to believe things that

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Speaker 3: work true.

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Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the

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Speaker 2: news almost every day.

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Speaker 3: Will break them down for you to determine whether they

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Speaker 3: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible. We're going to be speaking today

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Speaker 2: with Evan Asenos from The New Yorker, and what it

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Speaker 2: brings up is his level of expertise and talent makes

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Speaker 2: me question, Adam, did you really work for The New Yorker?

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Speaker 2: Like it's like the two different planets talking to Evan

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Speaker 2: Asenolsen and you.

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Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more. Evan is, I will say, Evan

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Speaker 4: is like a reporter's reporter. He works his butt off.

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Speaker 4: He could definitely get away with working a lot less,

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Speaker 4: and then he's the full package, which is annoying. Really

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Speaker 4: nice guy.

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Speaker 2: And I think we could speak to him about most anything.

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Speaker 2: But one of the things we spoke to him about

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Speaker 2: and we're going to be talking about is probably the

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Speaker 2: basis of so many conspiracy theories, the notion that there

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Speaker 2: is a person or a group that runs things, There

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Speaker 2: is an elite who is in charge of our lives

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Speaker 2: that we have no influence over. Personally, I would like

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Speaker 2: to be the person who's in charge.

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Speaker 4: I would so not want to be the person in charge.

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Speaker 4: I feel like my whole life I want power with

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Speaker 4: no responsibility. So I guess that is the person in charge.

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Speaker 2: I remember when I worked at CIA, if you came

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Speaker 2: in the back door, the main door for the new

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Speaker 2: part of CIA, to go from where you walked in

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Speaker 2: downstairs to the main lobby, there was a escalator, but

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Speaker 2: the escalator was only one person wide, And my thought

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Speaker 2: was if I was in charge, what I would do

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Speaker 2: is I would stand at the bottom of that escalator

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Speaker 2: and anyone who just stood on it all the way down,

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Speaker 2: I would fire them at the bottom of the because

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Speaker 2: you would get you were busy on your way to work,

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Speaker 2: and then some idiot would stand there and you couldn't

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Speaker 2: pass them. On this escalator. You have just to stand

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Speaker 2: and wait three floors down to like And I said, listen,

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Speaker 2: if you if you have so much time on your hands,

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Speaker 2: you can spend five minutes just going down this escalator

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Speaker 2: without just walking down the escalator, then you're out. So

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Speaker 2: that was my whole desire for power.

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Speaker 3: And the thing about the elites is whatever their agenda is,

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Speaker 3: it's not our agenda, right, So that means that things

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Speaker 3: that are going wrong in the world, it's their fault.

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Speaker 2: And if we wanted to be in power, I guess

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Speaker 2: we would have to then have an agenda. We're just

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Speaker 2: too lazy to an agenda.

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Speaker 4: Exactly what would the agenda be. But that is the

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Speaker 4: essence of conspiracy. Right at the end of the day.

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Speaker 4: Almost every single one we're talking about is there's a

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Speaker 4: secret group of people with obscure intentions, incredible power omnipotent,

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Speaker 4: and we can't quite understand them, and there's no evidence

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Speaker 4: that exists that can either prove or disprove their existence.

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Speaker 4: But for some reason, we're going to believe they exist.

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Speaker 2: Our guest today is Evan Osnos, an author and a

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Speaker 2: staff writer at The New Yorker. He covers politics, foreign affairs,

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Speaker 2: and spent a long time living in and covering China.

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Speaker 2: He's written several books, including a book and a numerous

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Speaker 2: articles on Joe Biden, infect interviewing him many times. He's

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Speaker 2: also one of the regular hosts of my go to podcast,

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Speaker 2: The New Yorker's Political Scene. So today, among other things,

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Speaker 2: we want to speak with Evan about an article he

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Speaker 2: wrote for The New Yorker in January called Rules for

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Speaker 2: the Ruling Class, about how politics has become a game

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Speaker 2: of elites disparaging other elites. Evan, you're part of the

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Speaker 2: media elite, and apparently Jerry and I are part of

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Speaker 2: the deep state elite. So my first question is does

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Speaker 2: the term elite have a distinct meaning anymore or is

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Speaker 2: it just a handy weapon to rail against enemies? Because

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Speaker 2: if I'm a bureaucrat in the deep state, making what

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Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars a year. How do those wealthy

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Speaker 2: and real elite, powerful people get to come and attack us.

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Speaker 1: I got onto this for almost exactly the question that

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Speaker 1: I think interests you, John, is this question of if

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Speaker 1: everybody is an elite, then who is left to be

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Speaker 1: doing the accusing. I mean, I'll give you a prime example,

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Speaker 1: Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri. This is not a partisan critique.

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Speaker 1: This is just an observation of reality that Josh Hawley

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Speaker 1: grew up the son of a bank president. He went

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Speaker 1: on to study at Stanford and then got his law

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Speaker 1: degree and met his wife while they were both clerking

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Speaker 1: for John Roberts, chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He's

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Speaker 1: now a sitting US Senator, But when he talks about

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Speaker 1: his political mission, he talks about going after elites, going after,

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Speaker 1: as he puts it, some of the most powerful people

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Speaker 1: in society, which left me honestly scratching my head, which is,

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Speaker 1: if he's not one of the most powerful people in society,

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Speaker 1: then who is.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the word elite is a weird one as well,

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Speaker 3: because it's like the silly putty of a word. Everybody

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Speaker 3: thinks it's really cool to be an elite Navy seal,

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Speaker 3: you know, or an elite diver, the elite Olympic team.

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Speaker 3: So everybody wants to be an elite, but that's not

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Speaker 3: something you want to be called in politics.

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Speaker 1: I actually concluded that we love the adjective and we

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Speaker 1: hate the noun. So we love elite navy seals. But

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Speaker 1: if your child has made the elite swim team, you're

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Speaker 1: going to be telling everybody about it, including if you're

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Speaker 1: going out to hang out with fellow conspiratorial minded people

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Speaker 1: who worry about the elites. What do we mean when

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Speaker 1: we talk about elites. I've concluded that what we are

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Speaker 1: actually talking about is status. And when I say that

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Speaker 1: somebody is the elite, what I'm really saying is that

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Speaker 1: I think that they look down on me politically, culturally, morally, economically,

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Speaker 1: and that this really is about social rank and status

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Speaker 1: and everybody, even if you are Rupert Murdoch, there is

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Speaker 1: somebody who you look at and you say that person

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Speaker 1: looks down on me. Tucker Carlson wanted to be an

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Speaker 1: establishment elite. That's what he wanted. He desperately tried to remember.

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Speaker 1: He created a news organization that was intended to be

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Speaker 1: the conservative version of The New York Times. He had

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Speaker 1: joined the most establishment institutions he could. He had joined CNN,

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Speaker 1: he joined WMSNBC. He bombed out of those organizations.

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Speaker 3: He tried to get into one other elite organization, and

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Speaker 3: to quote Vladimir Putin, he failed to get into the CIA.

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Speaker 3: I've just yes thrown it out there.

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned it, because when I was

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Speaker 1: assembling his biography of Aspiration, every single thing that he

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Speaker 1: was trying to do was to join the elite. You know,

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Speaker 1: he tried to get into elite universities and he was

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Speaker 1: not able to as he acknowledges. He eventually got into

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Speaker 1: college because his girlfriend's father was an alum from Trinity

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Speaker 1: College who put in a phone call and got him in. Then,

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Speaker 1: by Tucker Carlson's own description, he got a string of

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Speaker 1: d's there. He really didn't didn't do well, got rejected

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Speaker 1: from his application the CIA. So one after another he's

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Speaker 1: being rejected by organizations, and ultimately he does this self

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Speaker 1: reinvention and decides that in fact, it was his time

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Speaker 1: on the inside, his time sort of in the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: of the ruling class that gives him credibility and He

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Speaker 1: turns that into the core of his new mission, which

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Speaker 1: is to say, we have an incompetent ruling class. And

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Speaker 1: it is I, dear listener, who who knows this, because,

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Speaker 1: as he says, I grew up in and among them,

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Speaker 1: there's a scholar who calls them frustrated elite aspirants fea

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Speaker 1: for the purposes of this conversation, but there it's a

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Speaker 1: really important cohort all the way back through history.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't Donald Trump play that as well? Didn't he want

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Speaker 2: to be part of the New York elite and is

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Speaker 2: upset that he wasn't treated that way. The things you

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Speaker 2: just said about Tucker Carlson could be said about Donald

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Speaker 2: Trump as well.

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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. At first, Donald Trump wanted to get

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Speaker 1: into Manhattan. That was going to be his innovation on

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Speaker 1: the Trump story, get us out of the boroughs, get

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Speaker 1: us into the city. Then he wanted to go to

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Speaker 1: Palm Beach. There's a whole fascinating little story about him

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Speaker 1: trying to get into the most exclusive country club in

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Speaker 1: Palm Beach, and he was, depending on who you believe,

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Speaker 1: he was rejected. He says, no, I wasn't rejected. But

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Speaker 1: then and this is the most sort of relevant part.

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Speaker 1: He turned this estate, Mara a Lago, which had been

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Speaker 1: a private home, he turned it into a club, and

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Speaker 1: as he said to his biographer later, he said, and

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Speaker 1: I have a better club than them anyway, which is

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Speaker 1: like the kind of spirit that you usually hear from

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Speaker 1: a ten year old. But he was him acknowledging that

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Speaker 1: this is about social rank, and so he ended up

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Speaker 1: creating his own version of the elite in his mind.

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Speaker 1: And this gets for me, at least, one of the

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Speaker 1: big takeaways in understanding what we mean when we talk

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Speaker 1: about elites is almost never are the critics of the

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Speaker 1: elite trying to get rid of it. They're just trying

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Speaker 1: to replace it and become it. They want to put

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Speaker 1: their own people on top. And Trump, in his own way,

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Speaker 1: is always it tends to be more blunt about this

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Speaker 1: than other frustrated elites. And he says at one point

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Speaker 1: he started saying right after he won the presidency. He

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Speaker 1: started saying in twenty seventeen and has said ever since

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Speaker 1: then to his crowds, he says, you know, they call

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Speaker 1: themselves the elite, but I think we're the elite. He says,

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Speaker 1: we have better boats, we have better this better that.

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Speaker 1: So that's his understanding of what it means.

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Speaker 2: I lived in Yugoslavia with Melosovich and the Serbs who

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Speaker 2: told his people were the victims even though they were

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Speaker 2: actually the majority, and then they could attack people they

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Speaker 2: want putin and Russia is doing the same too. We're

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Speaker 2: the victims. Therefore we can do whatever we want. There's

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Speaker 2: power in victimhood. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a huge insight because it's a binding agent.

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Speaker 1: It takes people of disparate issues, disparate geography. They may

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Speaker 1: have all these different things in common. But if you say,

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Speaker 1: we together are fighting this common foe, and even better

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Speaker 1: if it's like a faceless foe that doesn't really even

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Speaker 1: announce itself. I mean, the best possible foe is hidden, right,

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Speaker 1: it's the deep state, or it's these you know, it's

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Speaker 1: media editors who are pulling the puppet strings. You guys

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Speaker 1: have talked about this on the show. But the idea

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Speaker 1: that there might be some actual entity, some force, some

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Speaker 1: Masonic solution to like the things that we can't really

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Speaker 1: explain in our own lives, seems to be somehow hardwired

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Speaker 1: in what we want.

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Speaker 3: But I was wondering if you could talk gal briefly

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Speaker 3: on politicians who channeled that sense of like they're against

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Speaker 3: us and I'm gonna because no program is complete without

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Speaker 3: going back to the Roman Empire. There were the patricians

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Speaker 3: and the plebeians. Everybody knew in that mobila volgas. That's

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Speaker 3: where the word mob comes from. You know, it's like

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Speaker 3: the how do the patricians take care of the underpaid

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Speaker 3: poor in the streets? And famously, the plebeians were getting

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Speaker 3: more and more power, and they finally reached out to

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Speaker 3: one guy who said it was going to give it

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Speaker 3: to them all, Julius Caesar, and he got rid of

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Speaker 3: the republic and get rid of it all. So what

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Speaker 3: is the business model for elites to basically gaslight people

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Speaker 3: into thinking that they're going to represent them and are

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Speaker 3: able to represent them. Because it works, It's worked for

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Speaker 3: the last two thousand years.

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Speaker 1: So there is this we could call it a sort

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Speaker 1: of populist opportunity, and it's cyclical. As you say that,

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Speaker 1: you get this kind of building of charge. I think

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Speaker 1: sociologically that as people get more frustrated, they see the

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Speaker 1: demonstrations of wealth and power that are concentrating into the

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Speaker 1: hands of a few. This is a reality.

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Speaker 3: It happens.

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Speaker 1: But there are two ways that you can get through it.

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Speaker 1: One way is you get through it by people at

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Speaker 1: the top saying we think this is unsustainable, we think

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Speaker 1: this can't last, and they almost willingly say, I will

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Speaker 1: make an adjustment to a void revolution. I mean the

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Speaker 1: example is this is not abstract. This is essentially what

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Speaker 1: the New Deal was. And there was a book that

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Speaker 1: I thought is really interesting on this subject by a

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Speaker 1: guy named Peter Turchin called End Times, where he looks

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Speaker 1: at the American experience and he says it was in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties we were reaching a point when a

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Speaker 1: demigogue could have emerged in the United States and said

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Speaker 1: I'm going to harness you workers and we're going to

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Speaker 1: overturn the system. Instead, what you had was Franklin Roosevelt,

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Speaker 1: a traitor to his class, as he would acknowledge, basically saying,

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at our current disposition of power in this country,

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Speaker 1: and if we continue down this track, we will not survive.

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Speaker 1: We will succumb to the kind of revolutions we've seen

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Speaker 1: in other countries. This was after the Bolshevik Revolution, and

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Speaker 1: so amazingly as a result of New Deal sort of

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Speaker 1: redistributive programs, but also efforts to try to help the

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Speaker 1: very poor. You actually saw the number of millionaires in

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Speaker 1: this country decline on an absolute basis between nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: five and nineteen fifty, which is an amazing thing considering

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Speaker 1: how much population growth there was at the time. That

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Speaker 1: was in a sense, Roosevelt was recognizing the patterns that

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Speaker 1: Jerry you're describing and saying, these are our options. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to take the non revolutionary route.

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Speaker 2: Let's take a break.

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Speaker 4: We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2: And Rebecca, let me turn a little bit here, because

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Speaker 2: I think no journalists to spend more time with Joe

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Speaker 2: Biden than you have. Are there beliefs that Joe Biden

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Speaker 2: seems to have that he sticks with even if they're

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Speaker 2: no longer true. Like, for example, I follow Russia and

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Speaker 2: there's a lot of us are frustrated with how the

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Speaker 2: administration has dealt with Putin of late in Ukraine. They

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Speaker 2: seem to tend to act as if Putin is Mikhail

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Speaker 2: Gorbachev and they're negotiating an arms control treaty and they

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Speaker 2: got to worry about the balance of power and saving

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Speaker 2: face and avoiding escalation when I'm frankly, you know, I

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Speaker 2: look at Putin as a gangster, and you have to

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Speaker 2: deal with them in a different way. So in your

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Speaker 2: dealings with Biden, what is his mindset around these kinds

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Speaker 2: of things?

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Speaker 1: So it's an interesting thing to describe as a conspiracy,

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Speaker 1: But I'll tell you one that he deeply believes in,

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Speaker 1: which is that he believes that there is still, in

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Speaker 1: fact a possibility for conspiratorial progress in American politics. Meaning

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Speaker 1: he believes that if he can get Mitch McConnell and

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Speaker 1: Joe Manchin to sit down with him, that they'll look

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Speaker 1: each other in the eye and they'll reach some half

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Speaker 1: a loaf solution. And the truth is he hasn't been

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Speaker 1: one hundred percent wrong. He's actually managed to do that,

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Speaker 1: particularly with Manchin. He was able to pick the lock

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Speaker 1: and find his way there. But he has run up

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Speaker 1: against the outer limits of what that theory allows when

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Speaker 1: it comes to dealing with people who are essentially combatants

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Speaker 1: rather than politicians. The Matt Gates is of the world,

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Speaker 1: the Marjorie Taylor Greens right now, particularly the House Republicans.

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Speaker 1: And I think you guys see this ten times better

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Speaker 1: than I do. There are some core operating systems with

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Speaker 1: how you imagine human affairs, And if you're from the

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Speaker 1: Putin playbook, let's say, or the Siegen Ping playbook, you

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Speaker 1: really are not all that interested in coming up with

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Speaker 1: a political solution to a problem where you get something

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Speaker 1: and I get something and we've come away a little

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Speaker 1: bit unhappy. No, they believe ultimately that power is the

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Speaker 1: bottom line, and that powerful people and countries and entities

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Speaker 1: should prevail over weaker people and entities. And Joe Biden

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Speaker 1: really doesn't believe that. Joe Biden believes in this other thing,

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Speaker 1: which I don't want to romanticize it, but like at

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Speaker 1: various points in our history, it has actually been very

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Speaker 1: possible that you can get a bunch of people into

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Speaker 1: a room with very different ideas, but you can find

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Speaker 1: that area of overlap, and that's been a powerful that's

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Speaker 1: been an asset for him, but there are limits to it.

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Speaker 1: I do remember flying with Biden at one point back

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Speaker 1: from Ukraine in twenty fourteen. He was over there in

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Speaker 1: his capacity as VP, and I was writing a piece

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Speaker 1: about him, and this was after the invasion of Crimea,

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Speaker 1: and his view at the time, not that anybody was

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Speaker 1: particularly listening. He was the vice president's not the most

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Speaker 1: coveted office in the land. And he was pretty brutal

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Speaker 1: about what he thought Vladimir Putin was. And he said

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Speaker 1: at one point he was describing this scenario. And people

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Speaker 1: can quibble with whether this anecdote happened exactly is described,

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Speaker 1: but as he remembers it, what he says is that

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Speaker 1: he looked into Putin's eyes and he says, I don't

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Speaker 1: think you have a soul, and Putin said, I'm glad

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Speaker 1: we understand one another. And when he told me that,

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Speaker 1: which is in marvelous ago. But when he told me that,

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Speaker 1: I say, that sounds like a movie line. Did it

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Speaker 1: happen exactly like that? He said, absolutely positively. So whatever,

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Speaker 1: let's bracket it and say that it was an expression

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Speaker 1: of what he thought. And what he said to me was,

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Speaker 1: that's who this guy Isvan.

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Speaker 3: Let's talk about us for a little bit, the US

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Speaker 3: being the deep state. This is another one of these

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Speaker 3: very elastic terms. It means everything and nothing, and maybe

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Speaker 3: it's a rorschat test as to how you view the world.

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Speaker 1: So this idea, of course, the deep state is a

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Speaker 1: concept's been around for a long time and it's been

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Speaker 1: really a t active I remember that. One fun detail

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Speaker 1: that always caught my attention was that, you know, Osama

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Speaker 1: bin Laden's final residence, one of the things that they found,

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Speaker 1: either in hard copy or on his computer was a

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Speaker 1: copy of a book about Bohemian Grove. Because he was

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how power works in America. And

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Speaker 1: give him time, I'm sure he would have been reading

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Speaker 1: about skull and Bones or these other imagined sort of

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Speaker 1: frameworks that we have. And it's so the current incarnation

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Speaker 1: of that is what has come to be known as

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Speaker 1: the deep state, but Steve Bannon called it the administrative state.

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Speaker 1: And what they were getting at was this idea that

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Speaker 1: there is this group of people that is and you know,

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Speaker 1: braided into that means a combination of they went to

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Speaker 1: fancy your schools than I meaning the person who believes

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Speaker 1: this theory went to So they.

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Speaker 2: Went to Harvard just exactly.

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Speaker 1: But that's part of this gets back to the frustrated

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Speaker 1: elite aspirint thing. Bannon not only went to Harvard and

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Speaker 1: then worked at Golden Seat, but in some ways he

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Speaker 1: was always had his nose pressed up against the glass.

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Speaker 1: Like Tucker Carlson. He was trying to get as in

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Speaker 1: as you can possibly get. And this is a pattern

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Speaker 1: that repeats all the way back to the War of

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Speaker 1: the Roses and this idea of people who wanted to

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Speaker 1: be the ruling class, and when they get a piece

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Speaker 1: of it, but they're kicked off the ladder at the

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Speaker 1: higher rungs, then it radicalizes them and they become Bannon

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Speaker 1: Carlson Trump. That is a very recognizable pattern. And in

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Speaker 1: fact Trump had enough, he could find enough of those

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Speaker 1: people around that he could fill a hole a good

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Speaker 1: chunk of his administration with some version of that. So

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Speaker 1: I think in that way, Jerry, I think that the

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Speaker 1: current version of the deep state is it's a cousin

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Speaker 1: of an imagination of power that is all the way

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Speaker 1: rooted back in the ancient tropes around anti Semitism too,

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Speaker 1: which is that it's impossible that I am rising or

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Speaker 1: falling on my own merits. Therefore somebody must be conspiring,

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Speaker 1: I guess.

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Speaker 3: And what does that look like? On the left? Growing up,

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Speaker 3: it was always those the power leads control everything. That

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Speaker 3: was something that traditionally was more on the left things

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Speaker 3: of things. It's the military industrial complex is running everything.

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Speaker 3: Is that cyclical as well? Who's in or who's out.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's notable too. It's fun to think about that.

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Speaker 1: The concept of the power elite, which is the current

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Speaker 1: incarnation of this theory, and that got rooted in the fifties.

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Speaker 1: Eisenhower is famous for having established the idea of the

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Speaker 1: military industrial complex. And one of the fun details is

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Speaker 1: that actually Eisenhower wanted to make it the military industrial

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Speaker 1: congressional complex. Yeah, and he thought about the military industrial

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Speaker 1: scientific complex, and in the final speech it came out

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Speaker 1: what it did. But he that's Eisenhower, not exactly a

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Speaker 1: left leaning progressive, and so in some ways it tends

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Speaker 1: to be that I think this exists in both forms.

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Speaker 1: I mean the current version on the left, and Bernie

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Speaker 1: Sanders is an eloquent exponent of this. But as often happens,

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Speaker 1: it's impossible to be far enough in one position forever

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Speaker 1: because there will always be somebody who outflanks you.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: So we've been talking about elites using the term elite

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Speaker 2: to attack other elites. Let's talk about the average people

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Speaker 2: out in the country.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 2: In your book Wildland, you travel around the country. Is

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Speaker 2: the fury that people have out in the country is

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Speaker 2: it based on lived realities or are people being manipulated

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Speaker 2: to believe these things and to be so angry.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, because I made a choice,

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Speaker 1: a really specific choice, which is the subtitle of my

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Speaker 1: book is deliberately the making of America's Fury, because making

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Speaker 1: is a process that both happens partly of natural causes

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Speaker 1: and partly it's artificial. It's generated, and there is a business,

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Speaker 1: as we know, a business in making people angry. And

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Speaker 1: you know, if we're being self aware, we see it

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Speaker 1: in ourselves. We're more inclined to click on that link

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Speaker 1: that seems to say something treacherous about somebody we don't like.

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Speaker 1: But out in the country, I found this constantly. My

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Speaker 1: first job out of college was in West Virginia, and

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Speaker 1: I've always been going back over the years to try

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Speaker 1: to understand how its politics have changed and moved. And

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Speaker 1: when I first lived in this town called Clarksburg, West Virginia,

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Speaker 1: it was overwhelmingly Democrats. This was in the late nineteen nineties,

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Speaker 1: and then over the course of the last twenty five years,

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Speaker 1: it's just transformed and it's now really squarely Republican territory.

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Speaker 1: But I'll give you an interesting little demonstration of how

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Speaker 1: things have moved in interesting ways. In nineteen sixty, remember

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Speaker 1: the famous Democratic primary in which John Kennedy had to

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Speaker 1: prove that he was not captive to the elite of

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Speaker 1: the day, which was of course the Vatican, the Pope.

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Speaker 1: People said, John Kennedy is going to be controlled by

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Speaker 1: the deep state in the Vatican.

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Speaker 4: That was how it was.

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Speaker 1: And one of the ways that he proved that wasn't

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Speaker 1: true was by going to West Virginia where it was

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Speaker 1: an overwhelmingly Protestant state, and he could show that Protestants

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Speaker 1: would vote for a Catholic Democrat. And one of the

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Speaker 1: things that was notable to me when I looked at

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Speaker 1: that compared it to today, was in this town of Clarksburg,

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Speaker 1: West Virginia. In nineteen sixty, John Kennedy came to town twice.

436
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:17,280
Speaker 1: Robert Kennedy came to town, Hubert Humphrey came to town.

437
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,000
Speaker 1: All these figures came to town one after another, like

438
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:24,520
Speaker 1: really serious power brokers. John Kennedy went on television in

439
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:27,560
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty for half an hour and answered questions from

440
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:30,320
Speaker 1: people in Clarksburg, West Virginia. And I asked folks at

441
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:34,760
Speaker 1: the Historical Society, okay, since then, which big Democratic power

442
00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:36,639
Speaker 1: players have come to town? And they said, well, we

443
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:38,280
Speaker 1: went back and looked, and we, as far as we

444
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:41,520
Speaker 1: can tell, only one it was Jesse Jackson came in

445
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:44,160
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight and that was it. So in some ways,

446
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:46,959
Speaker 1: as the party became more focused on urban areas and

447
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:50,720
Speaker 1: moved away from places like West Virginia, West Virginians began

448
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:52,679
Speaker 1: to say, maybe the Democratic Party, but not only do

449
00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:55,639
Speaker 1: they not think about me? Are they actually maneuvering to

450
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,959
Speaker 1: make my life harder? And on some level they weren't wrong. Now,

451
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,080
Speaker 1: I could have a whole argument and about what Republicans

452
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:04,480
Speaker 1: were doing in that period to emserate West Virginia. But

453
00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 1: the practical effect is that at the moment it's a

454
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 1: place where the making of fury has been very possible.

455
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:11,080
Speaker 1: It's fertile territory for them.

456
00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 3: And yet you've got guys like Jeff Bezos. So two

457
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,760
Speaker 3: hundred billion dollars and I did some rough estimates for

458
00:23:17,880 --> 00:23:21,359
Speaker 3: an average worker at Amazon to ever get to where

459
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:24,280
Speaker 3: he is now, it would take them four point five

460
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 3: million years. It it'd be back to the Pleocene era.

461
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:32,719
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think that Americans have always had this

462
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:38,680
Speaker 1: slightly conflicted relationship to wealth and disparities of wealth. We are,

463
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 1: after all, a country that was founded as a rejection

464
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 1: of aristocracy. You know, we were supposed to be a

465
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:50,719
Speaker 1: place that was ideologically, spiritually opposed to things like inherited wealth.

466
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:53,800
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we were also always pioneering.

467
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: We were frontier oriented the idea that you could build

468
00:23:57,240 --> 00:23:59,000
Speaker 1: something out of nothing. It's one of the reasons why

469
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:02,760
Speaker 1: we're vulnerable to conmen, because we've always valorized the idea

470
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:04,680
Speaker 1: that you could go you could be Gatsby, you could

471
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: go from zero to wealth in one lifetime. When wealth

472
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: disparities have become when they have ballooned to radical levels,

473
00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:19,360
Speaker 1: that's when it trips a wire in the American psyche

474
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 1: and we begin to get angry. And we saw that

475
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,520
Speaker 1: in the Gilded Age, and I think it's a very

476
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 1: credible case to be made that we're living through some

477
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: of that now. I don't see how that can endure.

478
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: I don't think that a country with that level of

479
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 1: radical dissimilarity in lived experience can still hold together very well.

480
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:41,240
Speaker 1: Just to give you one prime example, if you're in

481
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: McDowell County, West Virginia, you're an adult male, your life

482
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 1: expectancy is eighteen years less than if you're over in Fairfax, Virginia.

483
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:55,960
Speaker 1: That's a very hard political solution to maintain. And so

484
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: one piece of good news that is really interesting is

485
00:24:59,880 --> 00:25:02,159
Speaker 1: that But actually, just in the last year or so,

486
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 1: under it's really been during the Biden presidency, we're beginning

487
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 1: to see levels of inequality narrow for the first time

488
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: in a very long time. There was this period known

489
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 1: as the Great Compression, when inequality did narrow from the

490
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties into the mid seventies, and it's been growing

491
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:20,919
Speaker 1: since then. But it's actually beginning to narrow to some degree.

492
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 3: But how do you push back on these things?

493
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,000
Speaker 1: So I think one of the things that the data

494
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:29,919
Speaker 1: tells us is that if you can get people to

495
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:35,679
Speaker 1: pull themselves out of this nationalized political conversation all the

496
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 1: time and get back to thinking about local issues, that

497
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: is a step in the right direction. Take West Virginia,

498
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:43,120
Speaker 1: which we were talking about a moment ago. West Virginia

499
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 1: historically had more little newspapers than anywhere else in the country.

500
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: Just as a practical matter, the roads were poor and

501
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: you couldn't deliver a newspaper very far and get it

502
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: there by breakfast time, so every twenty miles there'd be

503
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 1: a different newspaper. And so you had this intensely localized

504
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: awareness of what was happening. You knew if so and

505
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 1: so down the street had just opened a store or

506
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: closed a story. You knew if the water treatment plan

507
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,920
Speaker 1: in your town was working or not working. And as

508
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: everybody who listens to this podcast knows, local news is

509
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,720
Speaker 1: in real crisis. It is collapsing across the country because

510
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: the economic model doesn't work. But one of the reasons

511
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: why this matters is that the less people are getting

512
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:25,439
Speaker 1: from their local news environment, the easier it is for

513
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: me to imagine the worst about my neighbor, because all

514
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: I know about my neighbor is that he flies a

515
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: Biden flag or a Trump flag. He is Team A

516
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: or Team B. And I don't know that he and

517
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 1: I both care about quality of education in the schools

518
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: because we both have kids, or I don't know that

519
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 1: he and I are both thinking about running for office.

520
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: There's a way in which, when you lose that local

521
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: connective tissue, people upload their political mind to the cloud,

522
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: in effect, to the Fox News, to whatever Facebook is delivering.

523
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: And so I do think one of the ways days

524
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: of beginning to arrest that slide is by reinvigorating these

525
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: instruments and these the sort of what some people call

526
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 1: civic infrastructure, the spaces, the places, the institutions that really

527
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: do give you a sense of place.

528
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 3: Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just for

529
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 3: a minute or two.

530
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 2: And we're back. Hey, One thing I like about your

531
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,159
Speaker 2: article is you brought up Paul Fussell his book Class,

532
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 2: and I remember years ago, I don't know even I

533
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 2: was in graduate school reading that book. It was such

534
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 2: a hoot and he enjoyed reading us So. Jerry brought

535
00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 2: up about the plebs, but Fusso talks about the polls.

536
00:27:39,320 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: Fussel got something big about how societies work, which is

537
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: classes are everywhere. You put two people in an elevator

538
00:27:45,320 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 1: and they'll find a way to make one of them

539
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: feel like they are outranking the other. You know, during

540
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 1: the Culture Revolution, they got rid of any insignia on

541
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: the uniforms, and that was part of this kind of

542
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: radical spasm of classlessness. They discovered was that just doesn't

543
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: work in practical terms, and so they needed to be

544
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: able to figure out who's an officer and who is

545
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,200
Speaker 1: a plead to use Jerry's term. And what they discovered

546
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 1: was that they had to come up with a new

547
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,640
Speaker 1: way of identifying themselves. So depending on if you had

548
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: a pen or not, that signified if you were in

549
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: the officer class, and the more pens you had, the

550
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: higher up you were. So we can't just pretend it

551
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. But it's about managing it so that we

552
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 1: understand that it doesn't become a source of this kind

553
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:31,359
Speaker 1: of nuclear powered dysfunction that has been so helpful to

554
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 1: people like Steve Bannon who want to harness it.

555
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:35,639
Speaker 2: And Steve Bannon you can argue as a Leninist or

556
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 2: a Molist.

557
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: Essentially he is he really is. That's an analytical judgment,

558
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: that's not a criticism. The man is a Mouist and

559
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: he acknowledges it actually on some level. Maybe he'll write

560
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: into the pod and say he's not. But he is

561
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: somebody who believes in the nature of revolution as an

562
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 1: organizing principle.

563
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 2: Where did the concept of elites come from?

564
00:28:55,040 --> 00:29:00,440
Speaker 1: The term came into our use from somebody vil Fredo Peretto,

565
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: who is this kind of interesting, slightly eccentric economist, at

566
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: the beginning of the twentieth century who was observing exactly

567
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 1: the phenomenon you're talking about. Jerry. He was looking at

568
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: societies and he was seeing everywhere he went that he said,

569
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: it tends to be that there are always going to

570
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: be elite. He didn't have the term yet, he coined

571
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: it later. If you're talking about shoeshiners, there will always

572
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: be elite shoeshiners, there will be some who lead the rest,

573
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 1: same thing with thieves. There will be elite scholars, there

574
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: will be elite political figures. And he needed a term

575
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 1: for it, and that's where he brought in this French word.

576
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: He was half French, half Italian, and he brought in

577
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: this word elite, and that was derived from the Latin

578
00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: to choose, to select. And so you had this idea

579
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: of this group of people, and that idea just seemed

580
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: to satisfy something that we needed. But I think that

581
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 1: concept turns out to be an instrument. That is, it's

582
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: everywhere in Chinese jingying. Elite is something that people talk

583
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: about and they will rail against the elites until they

584
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 1: become elites, and it happens over and over again. Historically.

585
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:00,960
Speaker 1: One of the things that you do find is that

586
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: people who are students of power tend to be very suspicious,

587
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: like Saddam Hussein. They are suspicious of anybody who poses

588
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: a threat to them because they know that in Sinsevilfredo

589
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: Pereto was right. There is a circulation of elites. That's

590
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: the term that Parretto had, which is elites never die,

591
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: They're just replaced. There is always going to be a

592
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: new generation that comes up and replaces you. And in

593
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: some ways Parreto said, that's healthy. That's how societies get

594
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: new leaders. And he used this metaphor of a river

595
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 1: that if you damn the river, and so the elites

596
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 1: refuse to give up power, then the water backs up

597
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: and eventually bursts the banks. Look, I think there is

598
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,960
Speaker 1: an art we're dealing with a garrintocratic moment in American politics.

599
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: We do have too many people who have stayed too

600
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: long at the top of power across the board, and

601
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: I think part one of the effects is that you

602
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 1: get produces some strange effects in our politics.

603
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 2: Is Joe Biden elite.

604
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: One of the things you would assume President of the

605
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 1: United States as a person at the height of American

606
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: politics for now, half a century, you would think, how

607
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: could you be any more elite than that? And yet

608
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 1: anybody who really knows the texture of this community will

609
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: tell you Joe Biden's kind of never really been at

610
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: the pinnacle because it's about social status. It was because

611
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: Biden didn't go He's a first president not to have

612
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: gone to an Ivy League school in a long time,

613
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: because he was going home to Delaware in the evening. Remember,

614
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 1: of course, because of the death of his first wife.

615
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: He would go home because to take care of these kids.

616
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 1: But as a result, he wasn't part of the Washington

617
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: social scene. There was also just an element of his

618
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: personality that he was always a little too obviously ambitious.

619
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: He was not the cool, calm, professorial type who could

620
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: play it off. And so for a long time, the

621
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: real elites in democratic politics, there was the Obama world

622
00:31:56,720 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: and there was the Clinton world that says, I'm described

623
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:00,440
Speaker 1: this is not my analysis. I'm just I mean how

624
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: it's actually felt by the players. And Biden was always

625
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:05,200
Speaker 1: a little bit on the outside. And it's one of

626
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 1: the tensions has always been between the Obama world and

627
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 1: the Biden world, and that has always been a source

628
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 1: of energy for Biden actually and has been. I think

629
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: one could argue a source of the reason why he

630
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: eventually was able to make it to the presidency.

631
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 3: So elite is a social construct as well. Right, it's

632
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 3: not for the audience. It's not like you get your

633
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 3: Elite card and dental plan, so you may be elite.

634
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 3: I would consider Joe Biden elite, but he may not consider,

635
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 3: which is a weird thing. My wife is British and

636
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 3: there's a huge difference in there British culture between social

637
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 3: status and money. I think money is often seen as

638
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 3: being dirty, right, whereas in the US you've got status

639
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 3: if you're rich, and in Britain it's not that way.

640
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 3: You can be very rich, but you can still be

641
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 3: like lower class.

642
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: But like Donald Trump's a walking example of you can

643
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: have the money and not be elite. Because he was

644
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: not a part of that commune. He was not in

645
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: the country club he wanted to be in. He would

646
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: did not have the art collection that that would demonstrate

647
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: cultural knowledge. He didn't use the right utensils at the

648
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: right time, that kind of thing. This is why I

649
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: think it's so fun about Paul Fussell's analysis is that

650
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: he gets to the idea of the difference between an

651
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 1: oriental rug in your living room versus a worn oriental rug.

652
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 1: One of them is high prole, as he would put it,

653
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: and one of them is elite.

654
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 2: The used one is higher class. Right always, what's the

655
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 2: deal with JD. Vance speaking of West Virginia and Ohio

656
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 2: and issues.

657
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an interesting case because, as people will remember

658
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: his self narrative is that he came out of Appalachia,

659
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: and his whole memoir is about him distinguishing himself from

660
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: the people around him, the people who would call in

661
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: sick to the job, the people who didn't show up

662
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 1: or didn't work hard. And he has a remarkable story,

663
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 1: goes on becomes a marine, and then eventually goes to

664
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: Yale Law School. And then interestingly, one thing that I

665
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: have encountered over and over again is that his description

666
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 1: of his own experience really bothers people in Appalachia. It

667
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 1: is not a book that people like in that part

668
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: of the world, because it feels as if he is saying,

669
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: I did this through my own sheer, grit and smarts

670
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: and discipline, and you guys are failing. And it gets

671
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: to this underlying question that is at the core of

672
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 1: any discussion of elites is about how much do I

673
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 1: both deserve what I have and how much am I

674
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,319
Speaker 1: the author of my own destiny? And Jade Vance sort

675
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: of wants to be this portrait of the rugged individualist

676
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:53,239
Speaker 1: who made it on his own. But a lot of

677
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:55,359
Speaker 1: people in the part of the country where he's from

678
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: say that portrait does not ring true to me.

679
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 3: So what are some of the current conspiracies about elites?

680
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:04,720
Speaker 1: I think one of the big ones is the idea

681
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,240
Speaker 1: that the government is going to take away everybody's guns.

682
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: I encountered this before even Trump was on the scene,

683
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 1: but it's a super theory. It encompasses a lot it

684
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: requires for this theory to be true. And one of

685
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: the great terms I've learned about conspiracy theories that I

686
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: love is that they are self sealing. If they get punctured,

687
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: they will figure out a way to seal themselves. So

688
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: they still make sense. And one of the things that

689
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:34,320
Speaker 1: taking away guns requires is knowing where the guns are,

690
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: so that means registering them. And anytime you start talking

691
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:40,799
Speaker 1: about registering people, that starts to ring a lot of

692
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: conspiratorial bells. The idea that some faceless government entity will

693
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:47,719
Speaker 1: come and take you someday and tell you where to

694
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 1: live and how to live. That's the thing that freaks

695
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:52,720
Speaker 1: people out. Thank you my pleasure.

696
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 3: This is fun. I really enjoyed it. It was great meeting. Yeah.

697
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 3: I hope to actually genuinely drink a beer with you

698
00:35:57,719 --> 00:35:58,520
Speaker 3: sometime before.

699
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 1: I'd love that. I'd love that. Help me in please,

700
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 1: I'll book a flight to Hawaii and my family will

701
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:04,439
Speaker 1: just be there for a month.

702
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:05,839
Speaker 3: You'll barely know where that's all right.

703
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was fun, guys. It's a treat to join

704
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: you on here. Thanks for the invitation.

705
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 3: So let's now welcome Adam Davidson, a super numerary in

706
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 3: all things conspiratorial. Adam, good to have you back.

707
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 4: Good to be here, guys. Did you have fun with

708
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:25,439
Speaker 4: my pal avan?

709
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 2: We did an impressive guy.

710
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

711
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 2: I try to read everything he writes because you're going

712
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:32,799
Speaker 2: to get insights and he's done the legwork, so he's

713
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:33,960
Speaker 2: an inssive dude.

714
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 3: So, Adam, I got a question for it. After talking

715
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 3: to Adam, he is like the poster child of mainstream media.

716
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 3: What's your take on mainstream media now becoming like a

717
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 3: pejorative and sort of Evan's place in that.

718
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 4: The reason the New Yorker is so trusted and respected

719
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 4: is obviously there's some great individuals, but there really is

720
00:36:56,560 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 4: a system, Like there's this legendary fact checking system. There's

721
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 4: these amazing fact checkers who really kill you as a reporter.

722
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,320
Speaker 4: They're really going I feel like every human being should

723
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 4: go through a New Yorker fact checking once in your

724
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 4: life because you realize.

725
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've gone through it.

726
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:15,879
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not the stuff that you were worried about.

727
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 4: Like if you're writing an article about a country you've

728
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 4: never been to, you actually end up getting a lot

729
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 4: of those details right because you know you don't know

730
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:23,799
Speaker 4: them in yours, but it's all the stuff you knew

731
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:24,760
Speaker 4: for sure was true.

732
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 3: Whatever. It is so unlike this podcast.

733
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 4: Unlike this podcast where we have like the opposite of

734
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 4: fact checking. So there's that, there's amazing editors, there's not

735
00:37:33,920 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 4: to mention the lawyers and et cetera, et cetera. By

736
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,959
Speaker 4: some by the time you are reading something, it's gone

737
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 4: through an incredible process. The thing is it's totally non economical.

738
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 4: And I will say a dark secret, which is The

739
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,719
Speaker 4: New Yorker doesn't pay very well in fact, journalism is

740
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 4: a profession where the more prestigious you get, very often,

741
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 4: the less money you make. I went from NPR to

742
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 4: being economics writer at the New York Times magazine to

743
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 4: the New Yorker. I would that are each a step

744
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 4: up in prestige, and I made about fifty thousand dollars

745
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 4: less a year with each move.

746
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:08,800
Speaker 2: I hate to tell you about working at the CIA

747
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 2: doesn't make you much money either.

748
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:13,160
Speaker 4: It doesn't either, and we thought this podcast game would

749
00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 4: do it.

750
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 3: When you go to the senior ranks at CIA, you

751
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 3: actually take a pay cut, right because you don't get

752
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 3: over time anymore.

753
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:21,799
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you see a lot of people on social media,

754
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,399
Speaker 2: in other words, if they disagree with your point of view,

755
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 2: if you're a journalist or someone who worked in the

756
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 2: government the deep state, if you will they tell you about, oh,

757
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 2: how much money they're paying you, how much money you're

758
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 2: making money? Because the things that I care about, good

759
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 2: journalism and credibility and people who actually know what they're

760
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 2: talking about and working in government actually don't make much money,

761
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 2: if any.

762
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 4: I'm not going to name anyone at The New Yorker

763
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 4: or elsewhere, but I will say within journalism, we really

764
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 4: respect the ones who do the legwork and respect the

765
00:38:51,160 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 4: other ones less. Now, Evan's also a really good stylist,

766
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 4: which is, you know, being a great reporter and a

767
00:38:57,160 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 4: good stylist and a hard worker. You know, we if

768
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 4: we had a thousand more Evans, this would be a

769
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 4: different country.

770
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:07,439
Speaker 3: So, and the thing that's thrown out often is that

771
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:10,879
Speaker 3: in mainstream media there's a slant. And I think that's

772
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,319
Speaker 3: fine to have a right or left slant as long

773
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,919
Speaker 3: as you know what it is, as long as the

774
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 3: facts you report and what you're saying is accurate and correct. Right,

775
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 3: the facts are right.

776
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the New Yorker approach. The New Yorker is

777
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 4: clearly it's from a point of view, but then we

778
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:28,919
Speaker 4: have to check our facts and make sure right true.

779
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:31,399
Speaker 3: But Tucker Carlson goes out and says things that are

780
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 3: demonstrably not true, and arguably I don't think even he

781
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:37,879
Speaker 3: describes himself officially as a journalist, right, I think he's

782
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:39,719
Speaker 3: an entertainer or I'm not even sure.

783
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:42,279
Speaker 4: That's what his lawyer said in a lawsuit. They said

784
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 4: this is entertainment. It would be absurd to imagine anyone

785
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 4: would believe a word he said.

786
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 2: But cable TV rewards that in a certain sense. They

787
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 2: make their money off people coming on, filling up the

788
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 2: time with people talking. I remember I never had spoken

789
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 2: to a journalist or did anything, but when the twenty

790
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 2: sixteen election came on, there was all the issue about

791
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 2: Russian intelligence and what they might be up to. I

792
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:03,840
Speaker 2: found myself speaking to a variety of television stations and

793
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 2: radio stations and things, and it's interesting. So I would

794
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 2: go on to speak about something that I knew very

795
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 2: well because I was directly involved with Russian intelligence in

796
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 2: Russia and working the issues from here. But then they

797
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 2: would call you literally every day to come on and

798
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 2: talk about everything, and I just be like, no, I

799
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 2: don't want to just get out there and blab about anything.

800
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 2: But that's their model. They want people to come on

801
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 2: there and just start throwing out opinions. And it's one

802
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 2: thing to have an opinion that's backed up. It's another

803
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,440
Speaker 2: one to have an opinion just because you're mildly paying attention.

804
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was never good at that. I had a

805
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:34,879
Speaker 4: phase of my life where I was on cable TV

806
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,799
Speaker 4: a lot, like a lot, and I just found I

807
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 4: couldn't like the people who really thrived were not the

808
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 4: ones who knew more. They were the ones who were

809
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 4: better at bullshitting, interjecting something that sounded like an opinion

810
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:52,880
Speaker 4: about something I knew for a fact they knew nothing about.

811
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 4: And I struggled with that, although my wife and some

812
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 4: of my friends would say, I do not struggle with that.

813
00:40:57,520 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 4: I am very capable at bullshitting.

814
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 3: Makes sense that when people said, you can have your

815
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 3: own opinion, but you can't have your own set of facts, right,

816
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,840
Speaker 3: And I think with Alternate Fix that's changed. Now.

817
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, you really sound like, what did he just.

818
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 2: Say, Adam? Can you tell me what he does?

819
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 4: He was doing that boomer thing about how facts are

820
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 4: like factual or something and not relative.

821
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 3: Alternate Fix, great.

822
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:25,319
Speaker 4: Show, guys, As always, we really blowhearted our way through

823
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 4: another one.

824
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 3: Adam, I would vote to put you in the Elite

825
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 3: even if no one else. You may be the last

826
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,799
Speaker 3: guy picked for the Elite team, but I still think

827
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 3: you're on it.

828
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 4: Thank you. Jerry, coming from another low life, you're the rut.

829
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 3: Of the leader.

830
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 4: Yes, that means so much.

831
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,

832
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:57,359
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission implausible.

833
00:41:57,360 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 5: It's a production of honorable mention and a bottle of

834
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 5: all pictures for iHeart Podcasts.