Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show. On iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: last episode, I talked about men cheating on their wives,
Speaker 1: throwing away their family, and how susceptible rich men are
Speaker 1: to the idea that they could get away with it.
Speaker 1: On this episode, I want to talk about divorce ideation
Speaker 1: I see from women. There was a story in New
Speaker 1: York Magazine by Emily Gould on how she had considered
Speaker 1: divorcing her husband. I mean she was also in the
Speaker 1: throes of a manic episode and ended up in a
Speaker 1: mental hospital. But the crux of the piece was that
Speaker 1: she became obsessed with divorce. The piece is called Should.
Speaker 2: I Leave My Husband? The Lore of Divorce.
Speaker 1: She writes that she read a bunch of books by
Speaker 1: divorced women. Here's a quote in Nora Efren's Heartburn. As
Speaker 1: an aftermath, I found an airtight case for divorce. The
Speaker 1: husband was the villain and the wife the wrongs party,
Speaker 1: and the inevitable result was splitting up. I felt an
Speaker 1: echo of this later on when I read Liz Len's
Speaker 1: polemic The American ex Wife out this month, marketed as
Speaker 1: a deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage.
Speaker 1: Bad and divorce actually pretty good. The book begins by
Speaker 1: detailing how Lens's husband rarely did household chores and hid
Speaker 1: belongings of hers that he didn't like, for example, a
Speaker 1: mug that said right like a motherfucker in a box
Speaker 1: in the basement. I didn't want to waste my one
Speaker 1: wild and precious life telling a grown man where to
Speaker 1: find the ketchup. Lens rights. What was compelling about my
Speaker 1: marriage wasn't its evils or its villains, but its commonplace
Speaker 1: horror end quote. I see this a lot, especially in
Speaker 1: the writing world, divorce as this amazing thing that women
Speaker 1: simply must do. I mean, how could you waste your
Speaker 1: one wild and precious life with a man?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, divorce happens, people fall out of love,
Speaker 1: people find they'd rather live alone. But this idea that
Speaker 1: divorce is exciting or divorce is freeing or whatever is
Speaker 1: a lie. And it's a lie aimed. I think more
Speaker 1: women than it meant. Gould writes, quote, I read more
Speaker 1: books about divorce. I received an early copy of Sarah
Speaker 1: Manguso's Liars, marketed as a searing novel about being a wife,
Speaker 1: a mother, and an artist and how marriage makes liars
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: All in it.
Speaker 1: John, a creative dilettante, and Jane, a writer, meet and
Speaker 1: soon decide to marry. Liars describes their marriage from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, a span of almost fifteen years, and is
Speaker 1: narrated by Jane. The beginning of their relationship is delirious.
Speaker 1: This is a quote inside the quote. I tried to
Speaker 1: explain that ferocious hunger and couldn't it came from somewhere
Speaker 1: beyond reasoned end quote. But the opening of that book
Speaker 1: also contains a warning. Then I married a man, as
Speaker 1: women do. My life became archtypical, a drag show of
Speaker 1: nuclear familyhood. I got en mesh to a story that
Speaker 1: had already been told ten billion times. I felt, perversely
Speaker 1: reassured that I was merely adding another story to the
Speaker 1: ten billion. It made it seem like it was less
Speaker 1: my fault. End quote. Marriage makes liars of us. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that. Marriage feels very truthful to me,
Speaker 1: like I get to be really, really myself. And look,
Speaker 1: if you're in a marriage where you feel like it's
Speaker 1: a lie, I'm not saying stay in it and that's
Speaker 1: it and just suffer. But I should note at the
Speaker 1: end of that Emily Gold piece. She realizes that she
Speaker 1: had been in a crazy place, and she does stay
Speaker 1: in her marriage. Maybe if you're feeling like you're living
Speaker 1: a lie, it's not the marriage that's necessarily the problem.
Speaker 1: Last episode, I talked about men making mistakes, cheating on
Speaker 1: their wives, leaving their families during time of change. I
Speaker 1: think for women, it's in times of extreme routine where
Speaker 1: nothing has changed for a long time, or maybe nothing
Speaker 1: exciting is going on, that they start to daydream of
Speaker 1: a single future where they're finally live their truth. My
Speaker 1: advice would be start now, start living truthfully now, and
Speaker 1: you'll find that marriage was not the problem. Coming up
Speaker 1: next and interview with Glenn Reynolds. Join us after the break. Hi,
Speaker 1: and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Guest today is Glenn Reynolds, Law professor, Instapundit, founder, fellow
Speaker 1: New York Post columnist and writer at instapundit dot subdeck
Speaker 1: dot com. Hi Glenn, so nice to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Hi, great to be here, Great to see you.
Speaker 1: I mean, just talking to the blog father is very
Speaker 1: exciting for me. You know, you had a huge influence
Speaker 1: in me becoming a writer.
Speaker 3: And just your alarming news blog years ago or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I started it in two thousand and two. I
Speaker 1: think you when did you start instapundit.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and one, right, I a month before nine
Speaker 3: to eleven.
Speaker 1: Right, so I followed nine to eleven on your blog.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a TV. I mean, I just I
Speaker 1: didn't even have a desk. I was, you know, a
Speaker 1: to graduate school eventually, but I was just living a
Speaker 1: very meager existence. And I remember sitting on the floor
Speaker 1: of my apartment in New York and refreshing instapundit and
Speaker 1: you know, just getting all the news that way.
Speaker 2: Do you miss those blog days?
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly not nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: No, No.
Speaker 3: I just wrote a history. Actually, Michael Walsh has got
Speaker 3: a media book coming out, and I wrote a chapter
Speaker 3: on the early days of the blog is here for It?
Speaker 3: Which was fun because I really did sort of go
Speaker 3: back and revisit that and go back and read through
Speaker 3: my archives and read some of the articles people wrote
Speaker 3: about it back then. And you know, the first couple
Speaker 3: of years, from basically two thousand and one before nine
Speaker 3: eleven to around the summer at two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: it was a real innocent and pleasant time in the
Speaker 3: blogger sphere. It was so new and that was exciting,
Speaker 3: and there was a camaraderie that I mean, it's hard
Speaker 3: to image and now in these polarized times, but between
Speaker 3: the left and the right, bloggers like it was more
Speaker 3: important that we were all doing this cool new thing
Speaker 3: than that we disagreed about politics. And the remnants of
Speaker 3: nineties connecticuet were still around. So I remember Dave Copple
Speaker 3: and I actually were in the comments at the Daily
Speaker 3: Coast having a civil and intelligent discussion of assault weapons
Speaker 3: bands with Daily Coast readers, which you know, within a
Speaker 3: couple of years was unimaginable but was still a thing.
Speaker 1: Then I remember the moment that I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is all over, this camaraderie and all of that.
Speaker 2: Because it was the same.
Speaker 1: I mean in New York we'd have like blogger parties
Speaker 1: and it would be like cooking bloggers and travel bloggers
Speaker 1: and obviously all the political bloggers and whatever. But it
Speaker 1: was all like we were doing something together. But I
Speaker 1: remember that feminist site, Feminist Like.
Speaker 2: I used to.
Speaker 1: Comment there barely regularly, and then one time I commented
Speaker 1: that trans people should have to disclose at their trends,
Speaker 1: like they shouldn't trick you, and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: not just just be open about it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was barely pro trends, and I thought that that was
Speaker 1: a normal comment. I got blocked, and I was like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: something has changed here, Like, you know, I used to
Speaker 1: be like, you know, the quirky conservative in their comments section.
Speaker 1: That quickly became unacceptable. And I think that that's you know,
Speaker 1: has translated to so many other spaces in our world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really saw it. I mean, if I were
Speaker 3: going to pick a single dividing line for the blogsphere
Speaker 3: as a whole, it would probably be and again, summer
Speaker 3: of two thousand and three, about the time that Andrew
Speaker 3: Sullivan sort of took a few weeks off and then
Speaker 3: came back as a pro carry blogger. Careful not to
Speaker 3: just make a big deal about that until after he
Speaker 3: did his last big fundraising drive, but you know, I
Speaker 3: felt like that everybody suddenly was like, Okay, it's two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. We pretended to be patriotic for a
Speaker 3: couple of years, but we got a gear up for
Speaker 3: the election. The gloves have to come on, which didn't
Speaker 3: even work out for him, as it turned out, but
Speaker 3: it definitely changed the tone of everything, and it's only
Speaker 3: gotten worse for the I mean, actually it's gotten better
Speaker 3: in a way. I mean, you know, blogs are now
Speaker 3: so old, they're like five or six media generations of
Speaker 3: revolution behind. So uh, you know, I'm kind of like
Speaker 3: this quirky museum piece. Now I can do and what
Speaker 3: I want. The notion that anybody's going to get mad
Speaker 3: and go after a blogger, now I guess it could happen,
Speaker 3: but it just it's not like it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how did you escape being canceled?
Speaker 3: I feel like people tried on a number of occasions,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, I'm pretty hard to cancel. I mean,
Speaker 3: I control my own platform, which is the most important thing,
Speaker 3: and I have a tenured job at a state school
Speaker 3: in a red state where I have a lot of
Speaker 3: friends on the legislature, so it's you know, I'm just
Speaker 3: pretty safe. But people have certainly tried on a number
Speaker 3: of occasions, and it generally hasn't worked out well for them.
Speaker 3: But uh, you know, know they there's just a class
Speaker 3: of people who just are offended by the idea that
Speaker 3: somebody's even allowed to say stuff they don't.
Speaker 2: How dare you? Yeah, so you don't use Twitter, which
Speaker 2: is interesting.
Speaker 3: No, I mean I'm not. I have a Twitter account.
Speaker 3: I actually have a couple of them. I have a
Speaker 3: personal account I started once in the very earliest days
Speaker 3: of Twitter because I was doing some media panel and
Speaker 3: I needed to tweet from it as part of the setup.
Speaker 3: And it still exists, and then I have the instantpund
Speaker 3: the account. I actually deleted it. I really just you know,
Speaker 3: it was just I was writing this book on social media,
Speaker 3: the social media upheaval, and I was just researching all
Speaker 3: the nasty stuff that Twitter does. Your mind, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so I just honestly, they pissed me off about something
Speaker 3: and I just said, screw it, I'm out of here,
Speaker 3: and deleted it. And then I forget who it was.
Speaker 3: Somebody maybe it's Charles Glasser. Somebody said you really shouldn't
Speaker 3: delete your account. You really should just reopen it and
Speaker 3: not is it so nobody can pretend to be you?
Speaker 3: That makes sense? So I have it. I think I
Speaker 3: may have tweeted three or four times in the last
Speaker 3: several years, but you.
Speaker 2: Just don't like it, or what's that.
Speaker 3: I was a late adopter of Twitter ideal set up
Speaker 3: for me was when somebody and I didn't know who
Speaker 3: it was, had set up an Incipendent Twitter account that
Speaker 3: did nothing but tweet stuff from the RSS feed on
Speaker 3: my blog and that was great. I was happy with that,
Speaker 3: and somebody's like, shouldn't you, you know, have it taken down?
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, I love this, And then
Speaker 3: it quit working. I just broke I don't know why.
Speaker 3: And I had to actually get lawyers to get the
Speaker 3: handle turned over to me since I had the trademark
Speaker 3: for Incipendent. And then once I got that, I started tweeting,
Speaker 3: which was a big mistake because it's just, I mean,
Speaker 3: it has its satisfaction. It's always fun to really administer
Speaker 3: a sick burden to somebody, but you can waste a
Speaker 3: lot of time administer burns. And it's the crystal math
Speaker 3: of social media and that it's the most addictive but
Speaker 3: the least satisfying, you know. And I was spending a
Speaker 3: lot of time on it. I was in a bad
Speaker 3: mood a lot, and ultimately, you know, uh, after I quit,
Speaker 3: everybody's like, you'll be back in a few months, and
Speaker 3: I could be who knows, you know, but I I've
Speaker 3: never missed it once. They didn't drive any traffic to
Speaker 3: my site to speak of here.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of like, it's a big negative
Speaker 1: for the site. I think people think that it's a
Speaker 1: driver of traffic, and it's just just not. I would
Speaker 1: rather go viral on Facebook any day of the week,
Speaker 1: like one of my columns, than on Twitter, because you know,
Speaker 1: I just don't I.
Speaker 3: Don't know why Facebook drives traffic. I think it drives
Speaker 3: a lot less that it used to. Yeah, Facebook drive
Speaker 3: has always driven more traffic than Twitter, and everybody knows that,
Speaker 3: but I've never heard anybody explain why. My theory is
Speaker 3: just that people on Twitter are at such a superficial
Speaker 3: level they just don't ever click on a link, so right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They see the headline and that's it, Whereas on Facebook,
Speaker 1: I think, like, you know, your grandma share it with
Speaker 1: her friend, and like they're they're actually reading it and
Speaker 1: clicking it and sharing it and talking about it, which
Speaker 1: is you're right, it's not the same kind of reach
Speaker 1: on Facebook that it used to be. But I always
Speaker 1: just preferred sort of the real people on Facebook versus
Speaker 1: the media people on Twitter to like my stuff.
Speaker 2: It just meant so much more to me.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the appeal of Twitter is it was very
Speaker 3: useful for journalists who had time to kill, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean I remember somebody saying Twitter exists because people
Speaker 3: like me being or waiting in line for congressional hearings have
Speaker 3: nothing to do but play with our phone for five
Speaker 3: or ten minutes, you know. And I think there's something
Speaker 3: to that, but that doesn't waiting on any line really.
Speaker 1: But I also agree with you completely that it's the
Speaker 1: crystal meth. It's the one that I am absolutely most
Speaker 1: addicted to. It's the one that I take breaks from.
Speaker 1: It's the one that I like, I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to get clean from occasionally.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like that about Instagram.
Speaker 1: Like Instagram, I see like home to core tips and
Speaker 1: like fashion and like some Taylor Swift news, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I'm getting you know, the negative side of
Speaker 1: the world on.
Speaker 3: Instagram Instagram is how I keep up with Taylor too.
Speaker 1: That's my Tay sorts among us, you know.
Speaker 3: Right well, it is funny. And I don't do TikTok.
Speaker 3: I actually I have. I have a former student that
Speaker 3: I call my contributing TikTok editor. Because she sends me
Speaker 3: tiktoks and I post on the blog from time to time.
Speaker 3: But I don't want the app on my phone because
Speaker 3: I know what it's doing to me, right, and I
Speaker 3: really don't want to spend any more time on the
Speaker 3: Internet or on any screen. I'm kind of trying to.
Speaker 3: I mean, for me to talk about reducing my Internet exposure.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a joke, but I hear that, you
Speaker 1: know the whole what is it called the new Apple glasses,
Speaker 1: the Provision?
Speaker 2: Yet no, like that looks like a nightmare to me.
Speaker 2: Why would I want that?
Speaker 1: And it's you know, and the thinking that people are like,
Speaker 1: oh when I say that, like, oh, you know, in
Speaker 1: a few years, you'll see you're going to want that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm never going to want that.
Speaker 3: I was. It was the Foresight Vision conference. It was
Speaker 3: in the nineties. It was probably like ninety seven ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Jarre Lanier, who was with the original VR pioneers, had
Speaker 3: had his display with the same kind of goggles and
Speaker 3: you can look at it and the shark would swim
Speaker 3: by you and stuff, and everybody was like, this is
Speaker 3: going to be the next big thing in two or
Speaker 3: three years, and I was on it and I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, this just seems really lame to me. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I know they have those three D movies
Speaker 3: in the fifties where you wore the glasses, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of what it seems like to me. It's like
Speaker 3: a gimmick that. Yeah, I can see how for some
Speaker 3: stuff a truly immersive experience would really be worth it,
Speaker 3: but not that much. And I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: the first one to adopt it because I'm honestly, I
Speaker 3: am trying to spend more time outdoors, Yeah, and actually
Speaker 3: looking at the real world, not outdoors wearing goggles.
Speaker 2: Right, I think that's the way to go.
Speaker 1: Really, we're going to take a quick break and be
Speaker 1: right back on the car Marco Witch Show. So you're,
Speaker 1: you know, a very well known law professor. You're the
Speaker 1: father of many, many writer children on the internet, the
Speaker 1: blog father.
Speaker 3: That's my favorite thing is that I have all these
Speaker 3: blog children out there.
Speaker 2: You do, they're like scattered through the world. Do you
Speaker 2: feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3: Made it? You know? My ambitions were ever super huge?
Speaker 2: So yeah, just so, and you have a beautiful wife.
Speaker 1: I have to also say, Helen is like every time
Speaker 1: you post a picture of her, I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: she's brilliant too, but she is stunning, Like she is
Speaker 1: literally one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: She's very beautiful. And that we have a lovely daughter
Speaker 3: who is now married. We have a lovely, delightful son
Speaker 3: in law who's a great guy. So yeah, in that's sense,
Speaker 3: I've definitely made it. And career wise, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: my law professor's standards. I'm successful, and that's all I
Speaker 3: really ever aim for. So I mean, I it's not
Speaker 3: quite When I was in college, I wanted to be
Speaker 3: a pundit and write newspaper columns, and I do that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: What you wanted to do. Well, But what's the like
Speaker 2: if that wasn't your career?
Speaker 1: If this, if you weren't a law professor and you
Speaker 1: weren't a pundit, what would be plan B.
Speaker 3: I'd probably be a lawyer. I like practicing law fine.
Speaker 3: I don't miss it except on payday. But honestly, I
Speaker 3: didn't mind practicing law at all. I like what I
Speaker 3: do now a lot better. Which are there some people
Speaker 3: who become law professors because they hate practicing law. I didn't.
Speaker 3: It was interesting. I liked my clients for the most part.
Speaker 2: What kind of law did you practice?
Speaker 3: So I was in DC and we had what was
Speaker 3: called a Washington policy practice, which basically means lobbying and
Speaker 3: administrative law. And I did work telecommunications in aerospace, mostly
Speaker 3: a little bit of food and drugs. Sometimes represented McDonald's
Speaker 3: on a few things. Wow, So you know it was
Speaker 3: it was fine. I liked it fine, And you know,
Speaker 3: I could have stayed and done that. And the nice
Speaker 3: thing about the firm I work at is the DC
Speaker 3: Office had a big international trade practice. They had economists
Speaker 3: on staff. They actually encourage people to write and publish,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of how I started writing lot of
Speaker 3: ther articles and books even before I became the law professor.
Speaker 3: How long have you been in Tennessee thirty plus years? Now?
Speaker 2: Oh wow?
Speaker 1: How the last few years of all the new people
Speaker 1: moving in, how has that been mostly great?
Speaker 3: I was really concerned that it was going to be
Speaker 3: like Colorado or something and bringing a bunch of people
Speaker 3: who turned the state blue, and the local Democrats still
Speaker 3: hope for that. But everybody we meet who's moving here
Speaker 3: is in some ways I think more conservative than people
Speaker 3: here are, or at least more aware they've been in
Speaker 3: a state that went down, whereas people here, I think
Speaker 3: are kind of complacent. So I've noticed that some of
Speaker 3: them are becoming more politically active than most of the locals.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the last few years that this
Speaker 1: recent migration has been, you know, people with a purpose moving.
Speaker 1: It's like nobody's moving to Florida now for the low
Speaker 1: taxes or the weather. I mean, look, those are all
Speaker 1: side benefits obviously, but it's.
Speaker 2: For a reason.
Speaker 1: You're you're wanting something different, You're wanting something better, and
Speaker 1: I think Tennessee and Florida and Texas are obviously at
Speaker 1: the forefront of that. I don't I don't I see
Speaker 1: the same thing. I don't think that this is a
Speaker 1: blue migration.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: The concern is that once this wave of people comes
Speaker 1: in and kind of settles down, that the next wave
Speaker 1: will be like, wait, they've built something really good there,
Speaker 1: let's go there and change it.
Speaker 2: And yeah, well we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 3: But when I think somebody said, which is a good observation,
Speaker 3: is the people who move from a blue state to
Speaker 3: a red state because they were employed warrior moves typically
Speaker 3: bring their blue state attitudes with them. The people who
Speaker 3: pick up stakes and do it themselves typically don't. And
Speaker 3: so I think that's right. The one thing I do
Speaker 3: think sort of funny is, you know, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like everybody who moves here immediately like learns to
Speaker 3: shoot if they don't already know how.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's definitely true. For us, we you know,
Speaker 1: had never shot a gun or even touched a gun
Speaker 1: or anything, and now we enjoy the shooting very very much.
Speaker 2: It's benefit.
Speaker 1: It's like, why wouldn't you take advantage of your rights
Speaker 1: and why wouldn't you learn how to do something like
Speaker 1: that when you can?
Speaker 3: I love it. Now. Do you know Hadas Levy who's
Speaker 3: down there in your neck of the woods. She does
Speaker 3: a lot of tactical training for women.
Speaker 2: I know the name.
Speaker 1: I feel like somebody might have mentioned her to me
Speaker 1: and maybe I'll look her up after this, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe interview her. I'll bet she'd be a good interview.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, I'll have her on.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we've talked about on this
Speaker 1: show is, you know, cultural problems and society problems.
Speaker 2: And so's the what's your take.
Speaker 1: On what our biggest cultural problem is and whether it's solvable.
Speaker 3: The biggest cultural problem we face is that the people
Speaker 3: running our society, the ruling class, if you want to
Speaker 3: call them that, don't like the society or the people
Speaker 3: they rule very much. And that's true throughout most of
Speaker 3: the West. It's certainly true in the United States and
Speaker 3: Canada and the UK, and in most of Europe especially,
Speaker 3: but not exclusively, in the anglophone countries, which seem to
Speaker 3: have the worst dose of it for some reason. And
Speaker 3: you know, you can't be a very good ruling class
Speaker 3: of a country you don't like. And it's much more divisive.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at things like the collapse
Speaker 3: in military recruitment. Now, the collapse of military recruitment comes
Speaker 3: because the pool of potential recruits looks at the people
Speaker 3: running things and says, I can't trust these people. You know,
Speaker 3: they'd screw me over in a heartbeat, not even for
Speaker 3: their little gain, just to look good for their friends
Speaker 3: for fifteen minutes. And why should I go and take
Speaker 3: a bullet for that? And I don't believe him. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've got a nephew who's in the army now and
Speaker 3: it's been good for him, but you know, he'll be
Speaker 3: out in the year and he has no intention to stay.
Speaker 3: And honestly, it's been good for him in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways, but not because they've treated him especially well,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. There's all these stories of you know,
Speaker 3: you go to a base and there's no food and
Speaker 3: no toilet paper, and I mean, yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just like they're they're not spending all that money on
Speaker 3: taking care of their people, right, So.
Speaker 2: How do we solve that? What's the I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you.
Speaker 2: Have to know you're the blog father.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. Sometimes to get angry, I'm just like,
Speaker 3: let the purges begin. But you know, you really, sweeping
Speaker 3: out your ruling class and sweeping in a new one
Speaker 3: is something that never works very well and usually is worse.
Speaker 3: The good news about our ruling class, honestly, is because
Speaker 3: they're very shallow and driven by fads. If you just
Speaker 3: get a fad that involved them being patriotic and trying
Speaker 3: to do the job, they do it. So I think
Speaker 3: that's got to be where we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild to me that like American flags have
Speaker 1: become right wing. I just I try to imagine the opposite, like, oh,
Speaker 1: the left wing has now decided that every house that
Speaker 1: is a left wing person, they would put an American
Speaker 1: flag outside. And would I be like, oh, well that
Speaker 1: I'm not putting the American flag outside because that's a
Speaker 1: left wing thing. I would never surrender it. I would
Speaker 1: never let them just have it. And the idea of
Speaker 1: that that patriotism has become something only one side of
Speaker 1: the political aisle is into is it's just really crazy
Speaker 1: to me, especially again looking back at those early blog days.
Speaker 2: It was sort of everybody realized.
Speaker 1: That America was worth fighting for and worth salvaging, and
Speaker 1: those post nine to eleven days were really something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you saw American flags everywhere there for a while, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then and then not yeah, I mean I mean
Speaker 3: going to fans again, Rainbow flags everywhere. Now. I was
Speaker 3: just I was at a political lunch and and we're
Speaker 3: coming out in sort of a hipster area of Nxville,
Speaker 3: and that, you know, some flower shop with a huge
Speaker 3: rainbow flag that said, hey, does not abide here. And
Speaker 3: my wife was like, I bet if I would ever
Speaker 3: mentioned Donald Trump or something, there'd be plenty of hate
Speaker 3: that would abide there, so, you know, but that's a fad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know we've seen those in this house signs
Speaker 3: in people's yards and stuff and so, but it literally
Speaker 3: is a fad, mostly shallowly held by shallow people. So
Speaker 3: the good news for us is it's not like you
Speaker 3: have to change the mind of the vaffen s s
Speaker 3: or something like that. Mostly people don't even know why
Speaker 3: they believe what they believe half the time. It's just
Speaker 3: because that's what has status in their community at the moment, right.
Speaker 1: So that just concerns me that if we do have
Speaker 1: another tragedy, if we do have something bad happen, I
Speaker 1: just I can't see us uniting in quite the same ways.
Speaker 1: It's it was sort of the great example of that
Speaker 1: we completely did not unite. You know, my neighbors tell
Speaker 1: each other in for having too many people over.
Speaker 3: COVID was a good example of how bad our ruling
Speaker 3: class is and how much of what went on during
Speaker 3: COVID seemed to be mostly just sort of kicking around
Speaker 3: the public because you could, you know, from the privilege
Speaker 3: of feeling like a powerful big shop. And of course
Speaker 3: the emails and stuff that have come out since the
Speaker 3: show that the people who are telling us to follow
Speaker 3: the science, even the scientists didn't believe it themselves, indicate
Speaker 3: that it was just a shocking breach of faith with
Speaker 3: the public. And you can't have a cohesive, united, patriotic
Speaker 3: country where the leading leadership has broken faith with the
Speaker 3: public and the public knows it. And that's definitely where
Speaker 3: we are right now. Yeah, how's that for cheerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not very optimistic, Glenn. I you know, I
Speaker 2: was hoping for more. Uh.
Speaker 3: I mean honestly, you know, there's a school of thought
Speaker 3: of which you say, everything's really terrible now and the
Speaker 3: government is much more illegitimate and dishonest. If you actually
Speaker 3: look at the history of say the fifties and the sixties,
Speaker 3: it's not at all clear that's true. But the difference
Speaker 3: is the public didn't know it, so the country felt
Speaker 3: more united and more patriotic because people just didn't know
Speaker 3: what was being done to them in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Now they do, And you know, I'm in favor of that.
Speaker 3: I like transparency. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's better off
Speaker 3: of everybody's but whatever word has gotten out, and all
Speaker 3: the efforts to censor things and keep it in only
Speaker 3: make it look worse. I think people are just gonna
Speaker 3: have to do it. I mean, I hate to just say,
Speaker 3: you know, the solution is for the people running things
Speaker 3: to do a better job. But we do actually really
Speaker 3: need that.
Speaker 1: Right, So societally we might be in trouble. But a
Speaker 1: question that I ask all of my guests is end
Speaker 1: here with your best tip for my listeners on how
Speaker 1: they can improve their individual lives.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, that's actually easier. It's a amazing Actually, there's
Speaker 3: a very funny little video that's bouncing around on social
Speaker 3: media and some of you may have seen it where
Speaker 3: this woman is saying I just feel sort of down now.
Speaker 3: I really don't know why, and her friend says, well,
Speaker 3: you're getting enough sleep? No, have you exercised? No? Have
Speaker 3: you been outside? No? You know, it's just like, honestly,
Speaker 3: do all that stuff and you'll feel a lot better. Exercise,
Speaker 3: get outside, stay away from the computer and the news,
Speaker 3: and drink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eat and drink. The part of her thing was like,
Speaker 1: did you eat today? Did you drink enough water?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Exactly? Yeah. I mean all of that honestly makes an
Speaker 3: amazing difference to me. People talk about how I seem
Speaker 3: pretty cheerful, and I mean, you do, but I do it.
Speaker 3: And part of the reason is I, you know, I
Speaker 3: left weights, and I do yoga several times a week,
Speaker 3: and I eat a reasonably healthy diet, and I get
Speaker 3: out and move around, and you know, I read a
Speaker 3: novel or two every week, and that keeps me pretty cheerful.
Speaker 3: Although I'm reading Kurg Schlickter's new novel The Attack, which
Speaker 3: is basically like the October seventh attacks, if they happened
Speaker 3: on a big scale in the United States. That sounds
Speaker 3: super cheerful.
Speaker 1: I'm planning to read that next. It's on my list.
Speaker 3: It's depressingly realistic and believable. And in fact, I was
Speaker 3: at this political luncheon and the Speaker of the House
Speaker 3: was there and there was just a lot of security
Speaker 3: around it, and I was really good.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for coming on, Glenn. This
Speaker 2: has been great. Really love talking to you. I love
Speaker 2: reliving the blogger days.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 1: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.