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Speaker 4: All right, let's get to TikTok.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments about TikTok and its
Speaker 3: potential ban in the coming days. In the United States,
Speaker 3: TikTok has appealed this all the way up to the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court, the United States government arguing on the side
Speaker 3: of a TikTok ban and or a for sale TikTok,
Speaker 3: obviously making a case against that on First Amendment grounds.
Speaker 3: We heard a little bit from the lawyers and the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court justices themselves. Let's take a listen here, to
Speaker 3: the Solicitor General of the United States on the case
Speaker 3: for band.
Speaker 5: Mister Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, the
Speaker 5: Chinese government's control of TikTok poses a grave threat to
Speaker 5: national security. No one disputes that the PRC seeks to
Speaker 5: undermine US interests by amassing vast quantities of sensitive data
Speaker 5: about Americans and by engaging in covert influence operations, And
Speaker 5: no one disputes that the PRC pursues those goals by
Speaker 5: compelling companies like Bank Dance to secretly turnover data and
Speaker 5: carry out PRC directives. Those realities mean that the Chinese
Speaker 5: government could weaponize TikTok at any time to harm the
Speaker 5: United States. TikTok collects unprecedented amounts of personal data, and
Speaker 5: as just as Sotomayor noted, it's not just about the
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy million American users, but also about
Speaker 5: their non user contacts who might not even be engaging
Speaker 5: with the platform. That data would be incredibly valuable to
Speaker 5: the PRC. For years, the Chinese government has sought to
Speaker 5: build detailed profiles about Americans. Where we live, in work,
Speaker 5: who are friends co workers are, what our interests are,
Speaker 5: and what our vices are TikTok's immense data set would
Speaker 5: give the PRC a powerful tool for harassment, recruitment, and espionage.
Speaker 5: On top of that, the Chinese government's control over TikTok
Speaker 5: gives it a potent weapon for covert influence operations. And
Speaker 5: my friends are wrong to suggest that Congress was seeking
Speaker 5: to suppress specific types of content or specific types of viewpoints. Instead,
Speaker 5: the national security harm arises from the very fact of
Speaker 5: a foreign adversary's capacity to secretly manipulate the platform to
Speaker 5: advance its geopolitical goals, in whatever form that kind of
Speaker 5: covert operation might take.
Speaker 3: So that was the voice of the US Delictener General.
Speaker 3: We did have some questioning going back and forth on this,
Speaker 3: some of which was quite skeptical of the US government,
Speaker 3: some of which seem to be amenable.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 6: I guess what I would say.
Speaker 5: You began by saying, the cure for concerning speech is
Speaker 5: counter speech. Here I dispute the premise that Congress was
Speaker 5: specifically concerned about any particular subject or any particular viewpoint.
Speaker 5: I wanted to close off the capability of a foreign government,
Speaker 5: But in the event it's very hard to engage in
Speaker 5: counter speech when you don't know because someone is secretly
Speaker 5: manipulating the platform behind the scenes. And in particular, what
Speaker 5: the PRC has the capability to do is simply silence
Speaker 5: America Voice payer.
Speaker 7: Owned by a foreign company and a foreign government. You
Speaker 7: wouldn't know when it's exercising editorial discretion about this article
Speaker 7: or that article, or how it's doing it. So maybe
Speaker 7: we just need to shut down the Oxford University Press
Speaker 7: in America, or you pick it. Any other foreign owned
Speaker 7: politico I was told today is owned by Germany, So
Speaker 7: that would all be okay on your theory, so long
Speaker 7: as Congress designates that country a foreign adversary.
Speaker 5: We are not asking the court to articulate bright line
Speaker 5: rules to govern all kinds of sputs.
Speaker 7: That I am wasting and I am testing your argument.
Speaker 5: Yes, And what I want to acknowledge is that sometimes
Speaker 5: the court has recognized that a speaker based preference might
Speaker 5: reflect a content based preference. And in the context of
Speaker 5: ownership of a newspaper, for example, in part because newspaper
Speaker 5: is a one way channel of communication and is generally
Speaker 5: understood to represent to some extend its publisher's views, maybe
Speaker 5: the Court would more readily infer that a regulation targeting
Speaker 5: that is actually aiming to target content.
Speaker 1: But I don't think you're.
Speaker 7: Compelling interest or anything talking about the tailoring, and you're
Speaker 7: saying we have no alternative but to stop this speech altogether.
Speaker 3: So that was the counter questioning by Justice Gorsich. Let's
Speaker 3: go ahead and put this up there on the screen
Speaker 3: from Scotus Blog C two. Please they write quote the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court is skeptical of ban on t TikTok.
Speaker 1: Was it Tiktak like Dave Ramsey? Does they say?
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court on Friday was divided over the constitutionality
Speaker 3: of a federal law that would require social media giant
Speaker 3: shutdown TikTok to shut down unless this Chinese parent company
Speaker 3: can sell by January nineteenth, that's in six days. During
Speaker 3: the two hours of oral arguments, of justices raised question
Speaker 3: about the law at the center of the case, whether
Speaker 3: it restricts TikTok's freedom of speech, as well as a
Speaker 3: what will happen if there is no sale by the deadline.
Speaker 3: So this gets back to that law that was previously passed,
Speaker 3: the Foreign Controlled Applications Act. We talked about it quite
Speaker 3: a bit at the time it was actually attached to
Speaker 3: the Ukraine Israel package. Of course, the law identifies China
Speaker 3: and three other countries North Korea, Russia, and Iran as
Speaker 3: quote unquote foreign adversaries of the United States and bars
Speaker 3: the use of these apps controlled by those countries. Now,
Speaker 3: TikTok itself has resolved a question about potential for sale,
Speaker 3: saying that they would rather shut down the app in
Speaker 3: the United States unless the ban is lifted. Let's just
Speaker 3: put that up there on the screen. Cee three, please
Speaker 3: to bring this discussion.
Speaker 4: So we have got six days. We're staring down the barrel.
Speaker 3: And it seems very possible that TikTok is in fact
Speaker 3: banned the very day before Donald Trump becomes the President
Speaker 3: of the United States.
Speaker 4: And it is an interesting Supreme Court case.
Speaker 3: I have no idea which way they're going to rule
Speaker 3: because of people like Justice Gorsicic and Amy Cony Barrett
Speaker 3: to be a little bit more libertarian. It also is
Speaker 3: very possible that some of the other justices, liberal justices
Speaker 3: side with the government here because they're talking about the
Speaker 3: Protecting Americans Act. Foreign whatever controlled companies is an Act
Speaker 3: of Congress. It wasn't an executive order like Donald Trump
Speaker 3: tried in the past. Their question of constitutionality would come
Speaker 3: on First Amendment grounds, But the law itself has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with speech. It's purely about the controlling interest
Speaker 3: of any of these platforms over an x amount of
Speaker 3: money that hits influence for the amount of revenue and
Speaker 3: market cap that it has. In addition to the foreign
Speaker 3: tailoring and a number of other criteria.
Speaker 4: The name TikTok does not apply in the bill, by
Speaker 4: the way.
Speaker 3: It's obviously written about TikTok, but it's about any potential
Speaker 3: app that would rise to that. So constitutionality wise, I
Speaker 3: think they have a tough time, and TikTok itself does
Speaker 3: seem to be prepared to just shut down. The app
Speaker 3: entirely does raise some question as about that because the
Speaker 3: Chinese government itself would have to allow the sale of TikTok,
Speaker 3: and they have said that they would literally never do so,
Speaker 3: just so you know, it's not about TikTok's own thing.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it seems very possible.
Speaker 3: Will be a big change, I think to American like,
Speaker 3: what is it, one hundred million Americans use TikTok every
Speaker 3: single day.
Speaker 1: I think it's one hundred.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My daughter Ella is that she's a sixteen year old.
Speaker 2: She was like, if Trump brings back TikTok, He's going
Speaker 2: to be so popular with my general.
Speaker 4: Well, TikTok. Trump is pro TikTok. Yeah, much to my
Speaker 4: own shape.
Speaker 2: I mean Trump was the original. I mean he was
Speaker 2: the original mover on trying to ban TikTok. Took actions
Speaker 2: at the end of his administration that didn't really pan out.
Speaker 2: Then you had growing bipartisan consensus under the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: And I do think and you know it's Mitt Romney
Speaker 2: admitt is as much. And I can read his quote
Speaker 2: here that a lot of that growing by partisan support
Speaker 2: for TikTok actually was about speech because they did not
Speaker 2: like the pro Palestinian advocacy that was going on there.
Speaker 6: So you have that, then you have Trump. Not only
Speaker 6: one of.
Speaker 2: His big donors is also a big TikTok investor.
Speaker 6: But in addition, Trump himself gets very popular in TikTok.
Speaker 1: He had fifteen I think.
Speaker 2: So suddenly he has a different feeling about TikTok, both
Speaker 2: because of the money and also because of his own ego.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of where we are. But just to
Speaker 2: get back to Mint Romney. And this is actually important
Speaker 2: I think for the case, because you heard there the
Speaker 2: Solicitor General multiple times being like, well, I reject that
Speaker 2: TikTok was banned because of what's being said on the platform. However,
Speaker 2: Senator of Mitt Romney at a forum said, some wonder
Speaker 2: why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut
Speaker 2: down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If
Speaker 2: you look at the postings on TikTok and the number
Speaker 2: of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites,
Speaker 2: it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I'd note that's
Speaker 2: of real interest, and the President will get the chance
Speaker 2: to make action in that regard, so making explicit that
Speaker 2: in his view, the reason why not just but other
Speaker 2: of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle decided,
Speaker 2: you know what, we are on ban with it, on
Speaker 2: board with this TikTok ban was because of pro Palestinian
Speaker 2: sentiment on the platform, in the sense that like, ah,
Speaker 2: we can't control this, and these kids are getting out
Speaker 2: of control. And remember the whole flap over like sharing
Speaker 2: the Osama bin laden letter that like fueled the whole
Speaker 2: conversation as well that was going on around TikTok. So
Speaker 2: that's part of why the Solicitor General is so insistent
Speaker 2: that like, no, no, no, it didn't have anything to
Speaker 2: do with that, because if it is about cracking down
Speaker 2: on certain speech that the government just doesn't like, then
Speaker 2: you could see the court ruling another direction. I mean,
Speaker 2: I genuinely don't know which way this is going to go.
Speaker 2: It seems fairly evenly divided. The ideological splits are kind
Speaker 2: of unpredictable and interesting as you were laying out. And
Speaker 2: then there's also just look, this was a bill that
Speaker 2: was passed with significant bipartisan support that was you know,
Speaker 2: was a project that was engaged in across the Trump
Speaker 2: and the Biden administrations and went through the legislative processes.
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is usually like relatively deferential to when you have,
Speaker 2: you know, a significant bipartisan legislation that gets passed.
Speaker 6: So there's that waging on it too.
Speaker 2: We'll see And I don't think like it's possible that
Speaker 2: TikTok and the Chinese government are in effectably saying no,
Speaker 2: we'll shut it down before we sell it. That that's
Speaker 2: kind of like a negotiating tactic and posturing. But I
Speaker 2: don't actually think it is because think of what precedent
Speaker 2: that sets, right, then any Chinese tech company could be
Speaker 2: shut down under the same Oh.
Speaker 3: The horror they force our companies to abide by.
Speaker 6: Actually it's not actually true.
Speaker 2: So I mean they have a series, Yeah, they have
Speaker 2: a series of restrictive laws in China that if you know,
Speaker 2: Twitter or whatever want to operating, yes, they have to
Speaker 2: deal with Chinese government censorship and whatever, but they didn't
Speaker 2: explicitly ban like you can't have you know, an American
Speaker 2: app in the country, and this this is a broader
Speaker 2: would actually be a broader and more directed ban. So
Speaker 2: it's not just about child like I obviously I think
Speaker 2: I think this is silly. I think the idea of
Speaker 2: the data, I think that's just a kind of it's
Speaker 2: not made up concern. They can the data that exists
Speaker 2: on TikTok about all of us exists out there in
Speaker 2: the world for acquisition anyway. The idea of like recruiting
Speaker 2: spies on there or whatever seems extremely far fetched to me.
Speaker 2: So in any case, it also isn't just about China.
Speaker 2: It's really any country that the Congress takes you know,
Speaker 2: unbridge at they could decide effectively like no one but
Speaker 2: US gets to have a tech company that performs and.
Speaker 6: What's wrong with the country.
Speaker 3: That's not bad, that's actually that's what the Chinese do.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Facebook is actually explicitly banned in China,
Speaker 3: and so is Twitter and Google.
Speaker 1: So why is that, Well, they have.
Speaker 3: Decided that they want total control over their Internet, which
Speaker 3: they use for propagandistic and censorship purposes. It is basic
Speaker 3: market fairness. United States has no obligation, nor should it,
Speaker 3: to allow companies who are wholly controlled by foreign companies
Speaker 3: to operate, especially here on vast scale and assume hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions of dollars social position or at market position,
Speaker 3: in addition to over one hundred million Americans using this
Speaker 3: product every day. Everyone should know what I've been against
Speaker 3: and for banning TikTok Now for what over since twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: long before any sort of Palestinian what concern over it?
Speaker 3: I won't deny it certainly had an impact, but the
Speaker 3: point being that at a basic level, we do not
Speaker 3: allow foreign companies to operate here when our companies cannot
Speaker 3: do business over there. It's a market fairness. It's the
Speaker 3: same principle of tariff and reciprocal trade. Now, the argument
Speaker 3: from TikTok is absurd, which is that they have a
Speaker 3: First Amendment right to operate in America.
Speaker 1: No, you don't.
Speaker 3: No foreign company has a First Amendment right to operate here.
Speaker 3: Americans have First Amendment rights to express their own speech. Unfortunately, actually,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, it doesn't even apply to First Amendment
Speaker 3: grounds on our tech companies, which I think is I
Speaker 3: think the First Amendment should apply to any technology company
Speaker 3: operating in the.
Speaker 1: US, but it doesn't.
Speaker 4: So it's a fast out ridiculous thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we think all the way back to
Speaker 3: early days during the Cold War, would you allow a
Speaker 3: Russian KGB operated company to achieve vast market position in
Speaker 3: the US?
Speaker 4: No? Never, And in Russia they would laugh at you.
Speaker 3: Same in China, they can't even believe that they have
Speaker 3: been blessed to allow a trillion dollar market cap company
Speaker 3: to basically grow and become one of the dominant social
Speaker 3: media platforms in the nation that they consider their greatest adversary.
Speaker 3: So look, it should have been banned since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: It should never even been allowed to operate. It and
Speaker 3: actually I think if you go when you look at
Speaker 3: my original monologue is one of the things I warned
Speaker 3: about is this thing is going to get so popular
Speaker 3: that banning it will become politically untenable. So we should
Speaker 3: do it now, well before it takes off and becomes
Speaker 3: its own thing. But listen, you know, sorry teens and
Speaker 3: other phone addicts out there, I hope it gets banned.
Speaker 3: I've been wanting it for quite some time, long before
Speaker 3: Trump's sold out. Because jeff Yass, his billionaire mega donor
Speaker 3: decided who owns a large position in Byte Dance, in
Speaker 3: Chinese company. I think he's worth like twenty five billion
Speaker 3: something like that. Huge portion of his net worth is
Speaker 3: in Bye Dance, convinced Trump to do a total one
Speaker 3: eighty on it. By the way, this is the other
Speaker 3: thing I don't get. Instagram reels is fine. What's so
Speaker 3: wrong with that? And spin it off fine, making its
Speaker 3: own company. I'm totally fine with that. Why TikTok, Like
Speaker 3: the algorithm itself has been totally replicated across a variety
Speaker 3: of other social platform Why does it have to be
Speaker 3: on TikTok. It's not like all that unique of a technology.
Speaker 3: No one can ever answer that question either what's wrong
Speaker 3: with reels? What's wrong with any of these that you
Speaker 3: can mindlessly scrolled YouTube shorts?
Speaker 6: It's what developed, right, So.
Speaker 4: It's where every versus over advantage.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's where everybody is. But the technical plotform they're
Speaker 6: used to, etc.
Speaker 2: So in any case, I mean, I listen, I reject
Speaker 2: the new Cold warframing, and I think the national security
Speaker 2: they don't.
Speaker 6: They're silly and overblown. I don't think that's why they passed.
Speaker 2: I think they pass it because of like you know,
Speaker 2: not wanting to show is really atrocities, which is a
Speaker 2: crackdown on speech in the sense of like, oh, we
Speaker 2: don't get to be the ones that control it. The
Speaker 2: data concerns I think are overblown. But in any case,
Speaker 2: in terms of what's going to happen here, I really
Speaker 2: genuinely don't know how the Supreme Court is going to rule.
Speaker 2: And then I expect that probably even if the shutdown
Speaker 2: does go into effect, that Trump is going to find
Speaker 2: a way to try to make a deal to bring
Speaker 2: back is what I expect, because obviously he did a
Speaker 2: one to eighty on this is important to one of
Speaker 2: his major donors, et cetera, et cetera. And he likes
Speaker 2: TikTok because he you know, the genocide is basically complete,
Speaker 2: so that worry is now over.
Speaker 6: Don't worry.
Speaker 2: No one's coming to save the Palestinians, so that worry
Speaker 2: is dispatched.
Speaker 6: And Trump is super.
Speaker 2: Popular on TikTok, so I don't think he would want
Speaker 2: to let that platform go away in terms of its
Speaker 2: political benefit to him personally. So I think he's probably
Speaker 2: going to figure out a way to keep it alive.
Speaker 3: The only way it would work, though, is that he
Speaker 3: would have to convince China to allow them for a
Speaker 3: forced sale.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just don't see no.
Speaker 6: I mean no, they could. I mean, they could pass
Speaker 6: new legislation.
Speaker 3: Right, but you have to pass a brand new app
Speaker 3: in Congress. I mean, maybe it seems difficult to get
Speaker 3: through on this one. It passed with seventy nine YA votes,
Speaker 3: including Democrats and Republicans, was overwhelmingly popular in the House
Speaker 3: of Representative, So I'm not saying it's I mean, actually,
Speaker 3: I think that is a veto proof majority of Yeah,
Speaker 3: who did Would a number of people really switch just
Speaker 3: based on what Trump told me?
Speaker 6: Maybe?
Speaker 4: Do?
Speaker 2: I think I think a lot of would, and like
Speaker 2: I said, they're like Mitt Romney is admitting that for
Speaker 2: many of them, the Israeli genocide was like the impetus
Speaker 2: and that's gone, so that concern is lessened. And you
Speaker 2: got the the dear leader saying I want you to
Speaker 2: do X, Y and Z can give them some fig
Speaker 2: leaf of like, oh, we implemented some sort of whatever
Speaker 2: restriction blah blah blah that alleviates your concerns. So I
Speaker 2: think he will make a push in that direction. I
Speaker 2: guess there's no guarantee.
Speaker 1: Very possible. We all, all right, Let's get to MSNBC.
Speaker 2: Remarkable moment over on MSNBC's program Morning Joe, where Mika
Speaker 2: Perzinski still is holding onto the idea that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: would have beaten Trump this time around. Take a listen
Speaker 2: to how she makes the case.
Speaker 8: You give your theory that you think you could look
Speaker 8: everyone knows how I feel. I made it very clear
Speaker 8: after the debate that I thought he should continue, but
Speaker 8: that was not what most people wanted. So but Joe
Speaker 8: Biden is the kind of person who pulls himself up
Speaker 8: from rock bottom, and I think he could have stumbled
Speaker 8: into it. I really do people responded very badly when
Speaker 8: he beat Trump during that campaign, to Trump bullying him
Speaker 8: or going after his remaining son. People stood up for
Speaker 8: Joe Biden because.
Speaker 6: They knew who he was. They know who he is.
Speaker 8: I think an aging Joe Biden is very self aware
Speaker 8: about that, and so is his team around him. And
Speaker 8: he's still ten times more qualified than what we've got,
Speaker 8: and he's qualified to manage the world stage. I think
Speaker 8: after that disastrous debate, he did a news conference. Remind
Speaker 8: me Leamir was at the NATO summit couples at eight
Speaker 8: at night, and Yep, he got names wrong, Yep he
Speaker 8: had to correct himself a few times. But his knowledge
Speaker 8: of world affairs was in depth and clear and generated
Speaker 8: exactly what was the reality that this guy could manage
Speaker 8: the many different hotspots around the world.
Speaker 2: Probably the most incredible part about Timyzager is that she's
Speaker 2: still holding onto the idea that that NATO press conference
Speaker 2: was a masterful gambit.
Speaker 3: Visibly, I do not remember that press conference being that way.
Speaker 2: Just right, just to remind people, this is the press
Speaker 2: conference where he not only introduced Zelensky as Putin, but
Speaker 2: also introduced his own vice president as Trump. Yes, this
Speaker 2: is the press conference. It was at eight o'clock at night. Oh,
Speaker 2: bra Vos or wow, incredible performance. That's a press conference
Speaker 2: she's pointing to. And they did at the time. It
Speaker 2: was the most gaslighting thing ever the media at the time.
Speaker 2: And I think, wasn't it Joe specifically, who was like, no,
Speaker 2: he doesn't have a PhD in foreign policy, he's just.
Speaker 1: That he's just that good. And that's also that good press.
Speaker 6: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Andrew Bates used to often say that he'd be like,
Speaker 3: he's just that fucking good. Biden apparently is so delusional.
Speaker 3: He also believes it. He said it at a press conference.
Speaker 9: Say a listen, I think I would have beaten Trump,
Speaker 9: could have beaten Trump. And I think that Comin could
Speaker 9: have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about
Speaker 9: I thought it was important to unify the party, and
Speaker 9: when the party was worried about whether or not I
Speaker 9: was going to be able to move, I thought, even
Speaker 9: though I thought I could win again, I thought it
Speaker 9: was better to unify the party. And it was the
Speaker 9: greatest honor in my life to be President the United States.
Speaker 9: But I didn't want to be one who caused a
Speaker 9: party that wasn't unified to lose an election, and that's
Speaker 9: why I stepped aside. But I was confident she could win.
Speaker 4: There you go, he still thinks you could have won?
Speaker 6: What by Kamala could have won?
Speaker 4: Pamala could have won, she lost? So what how does
Speaker 4: that work?
Speaker 6: I know that was a weird one. Who the hell
Speaker 6: is the world?
Speaker 1: Are these people living there? I just don't understand.
Speaker 3: I mean, at a certain point for Mika and Joe,
Speaker 3: you know, one comforting thing to.
Speaker 1: Me is always wonder. I'm like, did they really believe
Speaker 1: this shit? And now I'm like, well, clearly they must
Speaker 1: believe it.
Speaker 3: Because I think how else could you still take to
Speaker 3: the airwaves today and that he could have won the election,
Speaker 3: and that the nate O press conference and all that
Speaker 3: was so mad, Like what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: You know, the people of people have seen through this
Speaker 1: and laugh. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was reading and like she still is, like wants
Speaker 2: to be friends with whoever his you know, him and
Speaker 2: his family and his owners.
Speaker 3: I gonna be around that long, okay, So I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be worried about being friends with him.
Speaker 6: I don't know. That's how I was reading.
Speaker 4: What do you want to be friends with?
Speaker 1: Hunter?
Speaker 2: I mean maybe maybe she really I think she's incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like the man did not give
Speaker 2: a single newspaper interview his entire term in office outside
Speaker 2: of this one that we just covered, right, that was
Speaker 2: it today US press conferences. Ever, we're all supposed to
Speaker 2: be amazed that he could even stand up and speak
Speaker 2: at a you know event that's at eight pm at night.
Speaker 2: He's been I mean, it's like we don't even have
Speaker 2: a president. It's like we haven't had a president for
Speaker 2: even Joe Biden himself said I'm not sure I could
Speaker 2: have made it another four years, But you still think
Speaker 2: that American people were like, yeah, let's roll that dice.
Speaker 6: Sure, why not? I don't know. Totally insane, totally delusional.
Speaker 2: You if you were holding on to any idea that
Speaker 2: you should listen to anything that these people say, like,
Speaker 2: just please please get rid of that notion, because if
Speaker 2: you are so politically stupid that you genuinely still think
Speaker 2: that Joe Biden might have been able to win this election,
Speaker 2: I just I can't help you.
Speaker 3: Yep, I totally agree, and maybe you should take it
Speaker 3: to heart Boomers and other liberals out there who look
Speaker 3: to these people for affirmation and for advice, and just
Speaker 3: keep that in mind next time they kill They are,
Speaker 3: I mean, I.
Speaker 2: Think they are, to be honest with you, if there
Speaker 2: has been some you know, there's been a reckoning.
Speaker 4: There has been some.
Speaker 3: I still see Morning Joe on my dog Walks six
Speaker 3: thirty am or whatever. I still see two or three
Speaker 3: televisions that are playing who was watching the Morning Joe
Speaker 3: with that? Or I want to knock on their door
Speaker 3: and tell me about yourself?
Speaker 1: Who are you?
Speaker 6: But that's also such a dc for us on Zoo.
Speaker 3: You know, absolutely all right, we've got to oh, Crystal,
Speaker 3: what do you take a look at?
Speaker 2: Well, Joe and Mika may have gone a little more
Speaker 2: than they bargained for recently with a guest appearance by
Speaker 2: Professor Scott Galloway, who unloaded on the ultra rich and
Speaker 2: warned that the current oligarchic path risked revolution.
Speaker 10: Once you get above a certain level of wealth, you
Speaker 10: get no incremental happiness. So why on earth would you
Speaker 10: not go back to a tax policy of the sixties,
Speaker 10: seventies and eighties where, say, above pick a big number
Speaker 10: ten million, you actually pay more than ten percent, maybe
Speaker 10: more than twenty percent, maybe more than fifty percent, because
Speaker 10: the difference between thirty thousand a year for a household
Speaker 10: and fifty thousand is enormous to the well being of
Speaker 10: that household. Low income kids and low income households have
Speaker 10: higher resting blood pressure, but the difference between making ten
Speaker 10: million a year and fifteen million a year offers you
Speaker 10: no happiness. But these individuals have weaponized government, and we
Speaker 10: risk revolution. Whether it's CEOs being murdered in the street,
Speaker 10: whether it's a me too movement that had righteous components
Speaker 10: of it, or black lives matter, what are these movements?
Speaker 10: They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst
Speaker 10: of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality.
Speaker 10: And the reason we put an insurrectionist in a rapist
Speaker 10: in office is because, for the first time in our
Speaker 10: nation's history, a thirty year old man or woman isn't
Speaker 10: doing as well as his or her parents were at thirty.
Speaker 10: Why Because the majority of households are having the oxygen
Speaker 10: stucked out of the room. Starts at a small number
Speaker 10: of individuals and a small number of companies can be
Speaker 10: worth more than nation states. Income inequality is out of control.
Speaker 10: Our tax policy has gone full oligarch.
Speaker 2: Full oligarch Yalloway here lays on some pretty undeniable truths
Speaker 2: that are seldom heard on mainstream airwaves. The results of
Speaker 2: unchecked capitalism colliding with unlimited money in politics are playing
Speaker 2: out in front of our eyes every single day. In
Speaker 2: the outcome, it's nothing less than annihilating catastrophe. We've rushed
Speaker 2: headlong into an era of full on zero sum dog
Speaker 2: eat dog politics, both between individuals and between nation states.
Speaker 2: The apocalyptic LA fires and the response to those fires
Speaker 2: are a perfect case endpoint.
Speaker 6: So firse, let's start with the basics here.
Speaker 2: Whatever legitimate criticisms there are of the political response from
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, the primary driver of this
Speaker 2: La catastrophe was extreme weather fueled by climate change, something
Speaker 2: that no state, even one as large as California, can
Speaker 2: possibly fight.
Speaker 6: On their own.
Speaker 2: In fact, the data from last year just dropped at
Speaker 2: the same time as the wildfires, confirming twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: was once again the hottest year on record that it
Speaker 2: was the first year to breach a one point five
Speaker 2: degrees celsius or two point seven degree fahrenheit increase from
Speaker 2: pre industrial times. What's more, the last ten years were
Speaker 2: all the hottest ten.
Speaker 6: Years on record.
Speaker 2: Lest you think that this jump was an anomaly, wildfires
Speaker 2: are but one of the catastrophes which have increased in
Speaker 2: frequency and severity thanks to human fueled climate change. Research
Speaker 2: have taken a look at these specific wildfires in LA
Speaker 2: and found that man made impacts are the predominant cause
Speaker 2: of this catastrophe. In other words, the Santa Ana winds,
Speaker 2: they aren't the anomaly. The hotter air and drought conditions
Speaker 2: driven by climate change are what really made this whore.
Speaker 2: Climate Change and its attendant catastrophes are best understood as
Speaker 2: a consequence of oligarchy, both in terms of the emissions
Speaker 2: which have led us to this era of routine catastrophe
Speaker 2: and in terms of the lack of sufficient response. Remember
Speaker 2: oil and gas executives at Exxon they knew that carbon
Speaker 2: based fuels with the primary driver of climate change nearly
Speaker 2: fifty years ago, back in nineteen seventy seven. Instead, though,
Speaker 2: of acknowledging and unprofitable truth, they engage in a web
Speaker 2: of lies and deceit, a massive cover up to keep
Speaker 2: the public from understanding the consequences of carbon emissions. They
Speaker 2: even enlisted in this cover up some of the very
Speaker 2: same consultants that the tobacco industry used to lie about
Speaker 2: the link between their product and cancer. While it is
Speaker 2: no longer tenable to out and out deny climate change,
Speaker 2: this cover up and obfuscation continues to this day, but
Speaker 2: with more sophisticated strategies. A couple of years back, lobbyists
Speaker 2: who thought he was being interviewed for a job was
Speaker 2: caught in a secret recording by Greenpeace UK explaining Exo
Speaker 2: mobiles tactics for blocking action, like for example, backing solutions
Speaker 2: they understand to be politically infeasible, like in across the
Speaker 2: board carbon tax. He also explained the way that they
Speaker 2: buy politicians and use those politicians as their pawns.
Speaker 11: A man boasting of a job interview or are never
Speaker 11: seen before. Look at how big oil tries to manipulate
Speaker 11: big power for both. First, the targets congressmen are fish.
Speaker 11: Exon is the fisherman.
Speaker 7: When you have an opportunity to talk to the mepros cribris,
Speaker 7: you know the the you know it's I like.
Speaker 12: It it to fishing, right, yeah, yeah, you know you have
Speaker 12: bait you throw.
Speaker 10: That bait out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all these opportunities that you use, and to.
Speaker 7: Use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel
Speaker 7: them in because there are a captive audience.
Speaker 1: They know they need you and I need them up.
Speaker 11: Senators pressed to do xons bidding behind closed doors.
Speaker 10: Do you want to be able one of the chief
Speaker 10: and so the chief knows you that you can go
Speaker 10: to the chief.
Speaker 1: And say, well, we've got this issue. We need crivatesment
Speaker 1: so and so to be able to introduce the.
Speaker 7: Still we need him to make a floor statement, We
Speaker 7: need him to send the letter, you name it.
Speaker 1: We have for everything.
Speaker 2: But it's not just the fossil fuel executives. You have
Speaker 2: an interest in the status quo. The new tech oligarchs
Speaker 2: are equally interested in downplaying the climate crisis. This even
Speaker 2: applies to Elon Musk, of course, found in an electric
Speaker 2: vehicle company. First of all, implementing an adequate climate response
Speaker 2: would require upfront federal government spending and a strong federal government,
Speaker 2: two things the ultra wealthy absolutely hate because they want
Speaker 2: to keep their taxes low and the government too weak
Speaker 2: to interfere in their business crimes and monopolies. That the
Speaker 2: tech oligarchs have another massive business interest. Essentially, every large
Speaker 2: tech company that you've heard of and plenty that you
Speaker 2: have and are engaged in an arms race to rapidly
Speaker 2: develop AI and put towards AGI, or artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 2: The amount of carbon emissions this race is fueling is
Speaker 2: quite vast. Few companies offer transparency about the energy required
Speaker 2: to train and run their tools, but research suggests it's
Speaker 2: extraordinarily energy intensive. In fact, Google blamed a forty eight
Speaker 2: percent increase in emissions on its AI development. Microsoft had
Speaker 2: a similar explanation for its twenty nine percent increase in emissions.
Speaker 2: As NPR rights quote, Goldman Sachs has researched the expected
Speaker 2: growth of data centers in the US and estimates they'll
Speaker 2: be using eight percent of total power in the country
Speaker 2: by twenty thirty. That's up from three percent in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. Company analysts say quote the proliferation of AI
Speaker 2: technology in the data centers necessary to feed it will
Speaker 2: drive a surge and power demand the likes of which
Speaker 2: has not been seen in a generation. But the oligarchscript
Speaker 2: on our government doesn't only block efforts to deal with
Speaker 2: climate change, as the ultra Wealthyes, taxes drop near zero,
Speaker 2: and a weak government allows their monopolies to flourish, fueling
Speaker 2: massive inequality. The need to forcibly keep the peasants from
Speaker 2: finding their pitchforks also increases that imperative, more than anything else,
Speaker 2: is what is driven an ever expanding surveillance and police state.
Speaker 2: That's why, even as our politicians insist we can't afford
Speaker 2: to deal with climate, or to provide healthcare or affordable childcare,
Speaker 2: or free college or world class infrastructure, there is a
Speaker 2: never ending spigot of money for any agency filled with
Speaker 2: people with guns used to discipline the population. That includes,
Speaker 2: of course, the military, Fbiicia, border patrol, and of.
Speaker 6: Course local police forces.
Speaker 2: So, returning to our Hollywood horror, LA spent one point
Speaker 2: seventy three billion dollars on the police department in the
Speaker 2: last fiscal year, and Mayor Karen Bass up that funding
Speaker 2: to one point ninety nine billion in the current fiscal year,
Speaker 2: for a roughly one hundred and thirty million dollar increase.
Speaker 2: Once state and federal moneys are included in that overall
Speaker 2: department budget is well over three billion dollars. Meanwhile, fire
Speaker 2: department budget was cut, something that turns out to be
Speaker 2: rather crucial in this moment, but never you mind. Since
Speaker 2: state prison inmates are being pressed into service as firefighters,
Speaker 2: risking their lives for ten dollars per day to save
Speaker 2: homes for billionaires who largely view them as animals, and
Speaker 2: while the police that predominantly criminalize the poor are kitted
Speaker 2: up with military gear and fat budgets in Democrat and
Speaker 2: Republican cities alike, the kind of police which could curb
Speaker 2: oligarch financial crimes, they are under constant attack. It is
Speaker 2: no accident that both Mark Zuckerberg and Andresen went on
Speaker 2: Rogan's podcast to trash the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which
Speaker 2: has been inconvenient for both of their bottom lines. Musk
Speaker 2: and others have also taken aim at the Securities Exchange Commission,
Speaker 2: which has dared to regulate crypto and to investigate Musk
Speaker 2: for market manipulation, and Musk, the oligarch king himself, has
Speaker 2: been given a direct commission to shape and slash the
Speaker 2: government in areas where it might theoretically check his power.
Speaker 2: You can bet any agencies involved in suppression of what
Speaker 2: Galloway described as many revolutions will continue to be well funded,
Speaker 2: even as other agencies like the EPA and the National
Speaker 2: Labor Relations Board, which Musk believes is unconstitutional, are starved.
Speaker 2: Elon is one of the Pentagon's top contractors, So you're
Speaker 2: a fool if you think that budget is going to
Speaker 2: face any real cuts underham Instead, his wealth and those
Speaker 2: of the other favored oligarchs will continue to escalate, reaching
Speaker 2: new heights never before seen in human history. AI will
Speaker 2: revolutionize wealth extraction and consolidate even more wealth and power
Speaker 2: at the very top. And that's to say nothing of
Speaker 2: the giant tax cut Trump has already promised these billionaires.
Speaker 2: And as these billionaires become increasingly untouchable even by nation stage,
Speaker 2: each one individually too big to fail, they will go
Speaker 2: to greater and greater lengths to insulate themselves from the
Speaker 2: consequences of the globe being run exclusively for their benefit. This, too,
Speaker 2: we see playing out in La Hamilton Nolan wrote an
Speaker 2: excellent piece on this dynamic titled quote lifeboat capitalism. Some burn,
Speaker 2: some drown, and some make money either way. In the piece,
Speaker 2: he writes that we have a choice to either confront
Speaker 2: the impacts from climate change together or separately. Together as
Speaker 2: a nation helping each other in as egalitary in a
Speaker 2: way as possible, or in a Darwinian dog eat dog
Speaker 2: scramble for resources where the rich and the well connected
Speaker 2: always come out on top of the pile of the
Speaker 2: LFE option. He says, quote we know what that will
Speaker 2: look like, don't we. It will look like rich people
Speaker 2: paying any price for private firefighters to save their mansions
Speaker 2: as all around them burn. It will look like rich
Speaker 2: people wrangling government balance for their washed away beach houses
Speaker 2: as poor people inland languish in the monk. It looks
Speaker 2: like large swaths of America becoming unensurable and then being
Speaker 2: left to only the very rich who are willing to
Speaker 2: take the risk, and the very poor who can't afford
Speaker 2: to do anything else. It looks like climate refugees crowding
Speaker 2: our streets, refugees from poorer countries, and then also refugees
Speaker 2: from our own country. Looks like wealthier people building walls
Speaker 2: around their safe land and then writing checks to politicians
Speaker 2: who will tell the Panics middle class people that the
Speaker 2: poor people are coming to take their place. We can
Speaker 2: either work to build more lifeboats and to make humane
Speaker 2: rules about who gets on them, or we can just
Speaker 2: let the strong people toss the weaker people into the
Speaker 2: water and sail away. Either by action or by inaction,
Speaker 2: our government is going to effectively choose one or the other.
Speaker 2: I don't have to tell you which choice is being
Speaker 2: made in the current political dynamic. Look around, billionaires building bunkers,
Speaker 2: learning to fight, buying properties in New Zealand, building literal
Speaker 2: spaceships in case they need to flee this doomed civilization,
Speaker 2: altogether buying entire social media platforms to spread a warped
Speaker 2: version of reality which always happens to align with their
Speaker 2: own interests. They've decided to roll the dice that they'll
Speaker 2: be able to personally escape the consequences of the world
Speaker 2: that they themselves set up, using their wealth and power
Speaker 2: as a shield to return. Briefly to Scott galloway is
Speaker 2: video we started this monologue with. While he can apparently
Speaker 2: see these dynamics pretty clearly when it comes to the
Speaker 2: US context, he is completely blind when it comes to
Speaker 2: the same dog eat dog dynamics which are presently ascended
Speaker 2: on the global stage. He celebrated Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.
Speaker 2: Their unrestrained barbarity, backed by the global superpower, has helped
Speaker 2: to cement a global order that mirrors the zero sum
Speaker 2: Darwinian scramble that increasingly characterizes our domestic life.
Speaker 6: Miight makes right.
Speaker 2: The strong will brazenly and brutally gobble up whatever resources
Speaker 2: they possibly can, with military budget ever expanding to try
Speaker 2: to make sure that no other nations might.
Speaker 6: Get to have a say.
Speaker 2: These wars for resources are frequently also driven by the
Speaker 2: insatiable appetites and needs of the oligarch class, whose children
Speaker 2: are never the ones sent to fight and die. In
Speaker 2: other words, oligarchy is the issue that connects all other
Speaker 2: issues war, climate, poverty, censorship, democracy.
Speaker 6: It's no accident that is.
Speaker 2: The ultra wealthy have pulled away into a superclass of
Speaker 2: global masters. We become unable to solve a single problem
Speaker 2: that really requires collective action. Instead we left to watch
Speaker 2: the fires burn and pray our loved ones are not
Speaker 2: in the disaster zone this time. And Sagar, this is
Speaker 2: a more complain.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 3: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. Joining
Speaker 3: us now is Derek Thompson. He is a writer at
Speaker 3: the Atlantic, host of the Plain English podcast and friend
Speaker 3: of the show.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you, sir, Thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us to be here. Thank you so much so.
Speaker 3: Derek, you put together a cover story for The Atlantic
Speaker 3: which has really hit home for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen, and it
Speaker 3: is called the Anti Social Century, and in it you
Speaker 3: really weigh you really weigh the costs of a lot
Speaker 3: of decisions during COVID. But I think more importantly, you
Speaker 3: just lay out really a lot of important data which
Speaker 3: highlights how much time Americans are spending by themselves and
Speaker 3: specifically just alone, and what the social ramifications are of that.
Speaker 3: So why don't you just highlight some of this for
Speaker 3: the audience and give them a top line overview of
Speaker 3: what you discussed.
Speaker 12: The jutline overview is that we have records going back
Speaker 12: at least the nineteen sixties that ask Americans how much
Speaker 12: time do you spend face to face socializing?
Speaker 1: How much time do you spend alone?
Speaker 12: And Americans have never on record spent more time alone
Speaker 12: and less time in.
Speaker 1: Face to face socializing.
Speaker 12: You know a lot of people are going to hear
Speaker 12: this and say, oh, this is mostly about COVID, no
Speaker 12: socializing declined in the back half the twentieth century. Between
Speaker 12: the nineteen sixties and nineteen nineties, Robert Putnam wrote a
Speaker 12: famous book called Bowling Alone, where he said, look, Americans
Speaker 12: are joining clubs, lest they're joining associations. Less they're bowling together.
Speaker 12: Less they are bowling alone. A lot of people in
Speaker 12: two thousand when that book came out said Robert Putnam
Speaker 12: is full of crap.
Speaker 9: He does.
Speaker 12: Nobody's talking about Americans are hanging out. They're going to
Speaker 12: hang out more than ever. But in fact, alone time
Speaker 12: just increased between two thousand and COVID.
Speaker 1: Of course it's shot.
Speaker 12: Up during the lockdowns, but according to one study by
Speaker 12: the Federal Reserve, we spent more time alone in twenty
Speaker 12: twenty three than we did in twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 12: year that all those people got vaccinated left their house
Speaker 12: resumed life as well. So this is a sixty year problem.
Speaker 12: This is not a pandemic issue. This is a century
Speaker 12: long issue that was briefly accelerated by the pandemic.
Speaker 6: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Sagar and I of course talked at length about the
Speaker 2: vivik Ramaswami, you know, inductment of American culture and how
Speaker 2: he was like, fewer sleepovers, more math tutoring, fewer mall hangouts,
Speaker 2: and I was like, mall hangouts, like that doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 2: And it was better when it did because it may
Speaker 2: have been a sort of like shallow consumers culture, but
Speaker 2: at least there was some form of community there and
Speaker 2: some people being together in real life. But as you track,
Speaker 2: this isn't just about young people, This isn't just about
Speaker 2: men or just about when. This is truly across all
Speaker 2: ages and demographics. So is the you know, the source
Speaker 2: of the problem, so to speak, the smartphone is that
Speaker 2: what we're dealing with here is just like the fallout
Speaker 2: from these things.
Speaker 12: Right here, you say something so important, which is that
Speaker 12: this isn't a phenomenon about rich or poor.
Speaker 1: It's not men versus women, it's not black versus white.
Speaker 12: For literally every single demographic that the Peer of Labor
Speaker 12: Statistics or the American Time You Survey, which is run
Speaker 12: by the Peer of Labor Statistic Studies, for every single demographic,
Speaker 12: face to face socializing declined and alone time increased. And
Speaker 12: if you want to know my answer for why this
Speaker 12: is happening, look, you can point to any number of
Speaker 12: phenomena that have happened over the last sixty years. You know,
Speaker 12: Robert Putnam talks a lot about moral revolutions have happened
Speaker 12: in America. It's a worthy topic of conversation. I would
Speaker 12: look at three technologies. I think the car allowed us
Speaker 12: to privatize our lives. I think the television allowed us
Speaker 12: to privatize our leisure. And I think the smartphone allows
Speaker 12: us to privatize our attention, so that now even when
Speaker 12: we're in a crowd, we can be alone and also someone. Ironically,
Speaker 12: when we're alone, we feel like we're part of a crowd.
Speaker 12: So we actually think that people are having a hard
Speaker 12: time recharging alone, which is one reason why they're selecting
Speaker 12: to not hang out with friends so often. But I
Speaker 12: would look at this fundamentally as a universal story that
Speaker 12: relates to universal technologies. And it's hard to think of
Speaker 12: three technologies more universal than cars, televisions, and smartphones. And
Speaker 12: I want to emphasize I'm not so much saying everyone
Speaker 12: give up your car, everyone give up your television.
Speaker 1: No one watched Netflix anymore.
Speaker 12: I'm saying that we need to account for the negative externalities,
Speaker 12: the accidental side effects of our day to day choices.
Speaker 12: If we choose over and over again to order food
Speaker 12: in rather than go out with friends, and we choose
Speaker 12: over and over again to watch a movie on Netflix
Speaker 12: rather than go out to dinner with friends, those choices
Speaker 12: scale over our lives, and those choices scale across the country.
Speaker 12: And that's why everybody seems to be spending more and
Speaker 12: more time by themselves.
Speaker 3: So then provocative question here, why is this bad? You
Speaker 3: just mentioned negative externalities. What are the negative externalities of
Speaker 3: being alone?
Speaker 1: I would put it in two buckets.
Speaker 12: First off, we have a lot of really interesting research
Speaker 12: that shows that people are simply less happy when they're
Speaker 12: by themselves. Their life satisfaction is much lower. Not when
Speaker 12: they spend one night alone, you know, one night at
Speaker 12: a hotel bar. When I'm a father of a young child,
Speaker 12: sometimes I think, like my God, a night alone, it's
Speaker 12: a blessing from God. Okay, sometimes spending some time alone
Speaker 12: is really lovely. But people who spend more time alone
Speaker 12: are by and large less happy with their lives.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing. The second thing is that I
Speaker 1: think our.
Speaker 12: Alone time interacts with society in some strange ways. You know,
Speaker 12: I talk, for example, to Arley Hawk's child who's a
Speaker 12: sociologist at Burn and she mentioned that there's lots of communities,
Speaker 12: say in rural Kentucky, where Republicans were incredibly vexed about
Speaker 12: the fact that there were all of these illegal immigrants
Speaker 12: in America. And look, legal immigrants caused a lot of
Speaker 12: problems in a lot of different cities. But she pointed
Speaker 12: out that in rural Kentucky, which has a lot of
Speaker 12: economic problems, you have almost no immigrants whatsoever. And so
Speaker 12: one thing that happens, I think with politics when people
Speaker 12: spend more time alone is that the issues of their
Speaker 12: villages way less and the issues of the country way more.
Speaker 12: And there used to be the saying of all politics
Speaker 12: as local. This didn't make it in the peace, but now
Speaker 12: I feel like all politics is focal. All politics is
Speaker 12: about what national news tells you to focus on, even
Speaker 12: if that story has nothing to do with your community.
Speaker 12: And I think that's a strange and alienating place for
Speaker 12: our politics to go. So I'd look at both the
Speaker 12: personal for the costs and.
Speaker 6: The national author you also talk about.
Speaker 2: I'll read a quote from piece you say, the village
Speaker 2: is our best arena for practicing productive disagreement. And compromise,
Speaker 2: in other words, democracy. So it's no surprise that the
Speaker 2: erosion of the village has coincided with the emergient of
Speaker 2: a grotesque style of politics in which every election feels
Speaker 2: like an existential quest to vanquish an intramural enemy. And
Speaker 2: you imagine two people who live in a community together
Speaker 2: who may have, you know, polar opposite views. They're tasked
Speaker 2: with working together to collaborate on some like diversity statement
Speaker 2: for the school, and because they're forced to deal with
Speaker 2: each other face to face, they're actually able to realize, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this isn't some cartoon character villain, this isn't my enemy.
Speaker 2: This is just Susie. She lives down the street. She
Speaker 2: thinks about this stuff a little different than I. But
Speaker 2: we can actually come up with something that we can
Speaker 2: all agree on. This is also why I've always thought
Speaker 2: the Union Hall was very important, because this is one
Speaker 2: of the only places where this type of politics still really.
Speaker 6: Occurs in America.
Speaker 2: And when you lose that, all you're left with is,
Speaker 2: you know, this very tribal, very one dimensional sort of
Speaker 2: existential battle that's playing out in these almost imagined spaces online.
Speaker 12: Truly well said you know, sometimes people ask, you know,
Speaker 12: what's the difference between talking to someone in the real world,
Speaker 12: so called physical world, and talking to them on your phone.
Speaker 1: Well, there's this researcher at.
Speaker 12: NYU named Jay van Babel who looks at how exactly
Speaker 12: online conversation is different than offline conversation, and he's found
Speaker 12: that it's more extreme, it's more negative, and there's a
Speaker 12: ton more out group hatred. So if you're at a
Speaker 12: dinner party with people who you might disagree with a
Speaker 12: little bit, you tend not to be incredibly extreme in
Speaker 12: your views or incredibly hateful of their views, or you know,
Speaker 12: throwing the butter at them or something and telling them
Speaker 12: that their entire world vie sucks. You're drinking the same
Speaker 12: bottle of wine, you're eating the same chicken, you're passing
Speaker 12: the same salt, and so in a way, this simple
Speaker 12: need to co exist with them in a space leads
Speaker 12: to a kind of sharing of values. But we don't
Speaker 12: have anything like that on the Internet, and so our
Speaker 12: conversations go berserve, you know, to blow a little bit
Speaker 12: of smoke up of you guys. For you guys like
Speaker 12: I think this show does a wonderful job of talking
Speaker 12: to people that you disagree with and that you agree with,
Speaker 12: and modeling how to have conversations with people that you
Speaker 12: disagree with in a way that doesn't simply hate on
Speaker 12: them for the fact of their disagreement. You disagree, Okay,
Speaker 12: we're people, We disagree about stuff. That's what living in
Speaker 12: a democracy is. Now, let's have a conversation. And as
Speaker 12: you both know, you're active on social media. It's very
Speaker 12: difficult to have those conversations on Twitter because it's so
Speaker 12: easy to just quote tweet something that Crystal says and say, oh,
Speaker 12: let me take this out of context and show you
Speaker 12: how absolutely absurd this point of view. Is Harder to
Speaker 12: do that at a dinner table, harder to do that
Speaker 12: in any kind of conversation because the other person can
Speaker 12: respond and say.
Speaker 1: I share your values, but I disagree.
Speaker 12: So I do think the migration of our political conversations
Speaker 12: from the physical world, where all politics is local, to
Speaker 12: the digital world, where all politics is focal, absolutely changes
Speaker 12: the nature of our politics.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you, Derek whenever. So in it
Speaker 3: you note a few actually good trends. Independent bookstores are booming,
Speaker 3: board game cafes are becoming a thing, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's a band aid, I think to a much bigger problem.
Speaker 4: What are some solutions.
Speaker 3: Is it just to be aware of the problem, Is
Speaker 3: it to actively seek things out?
Speaker 1: What are researchers of.
Speaker 3: Looking at for activities that seem to at least address
Speaker 3: these negative externalities.
Speaker 12: What I would say in the big picture is that
Speaker 12: science and technology tend to move linearly and culture moves
Speaker 12: in a cycle. So like medicine tends to just get
Speaker 12: better and better and better, and computers just tend to
Speaker 12: get faster and faster and faster.
Speaker 1: That's the story that exists. Along the line.
Speaker 12: Culture tends to go back and forth and back and forth,
Speaker 12: like what's the style of genes these days? Skinny Mummy's rumy?
Speaker 12: Who knows culture can change? It does change, That's what
Speaker 12: makes it culture. In the first half the twentieth century,
Speaker 12: we had an enormously social century. Union marriage went up,
Speaker 12: fertility went up, the number of people who joined all
Speaker 12: kinds of associations went up. There was a kind of
Speaker 12: moral revolution in togetherness, and it changed the nineteen sixties
Speaker 12: and nineteen seventies for a variety of reasons, including perhaps
Speaker 12: just the rise of a certain kind of American individualism,
Speaker 12: or the resurgence of a certain kind of American individualism.
Speaker 1: But culture can change.
Speaker 12: And one thing that I want to do with this
Speaker 12: piece is just to hold up a mirror to America
Speaker 12: and say, this is what we've done to ourselves. A
Speaker 12: handful of decisions that, bit by bit, you know, one
Speaker 12: night at home, one night at home, have collectively created
Speaker 12: a world where everybody is spending a record amount of
Speaker 12: time alone.
Speaker 1: Do you want that? Do you like the reflection in
Speaker 1: the mirror?
Speaker 12: And I'm hoping that people say, no, I don't, And
Speaker 12: so they become a little more likely to hang out
Speaker 12: on Thursday, and that makes their friends a little more
Speaker 12: likely to invite them out the next Thursday for dinner.
Speaker 12: And that makes the friend of the friend a little
Speaker 12: bit more likely to start a book club because they
Speaker 12: see more people leaving their house. Right, little actions create norms,
Speaker 12: and cascading great behaviors, and behaviors cascading create movements.
Speaker 1: And my hope is that the piece at the beginning
Speaker 1: of just that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also suggest though an overt sort of
Speaker 2: policy direction, which.
Speaker 6: Is if you invest in areas.
Speaker 2: Where there would be a communal expert, where it's like amazing.
Speaker 2: I've been to some of these, like amazing sports centers,
Speaker 2: or you've got all kinds of leagues and kids playing
Speaker 2: and adults playing, or you know, beautiful libraries. Whatever it
Speaker 2: is that might capture people's interests, that would help to
Speaker 2: get people out of their homes, off their phones and
Speaker 2: into these communal spaces, and unfortunately, what we've really seen
Speaker 2: is a lot of budget cuts for that type of
Speaker 2: community investment. Derek, I had one more question for you
Speaker 2: on the political piece, because I thought this was an
Speaker 2: interesting insight and different than what the post Trump re
Speaker 2: elect conversation has been. You describe Trump's style as a
Speaker 2: triumph of this all tribe, no village form of confrontation politics.
Speaker 2: A lot of the democratic life essens have been more
Speaker 2: like and maybe this is like, you know, a positive
Speaker 2: direction to go in, but not really response to the
Speaker 2: moment we live in has been more like, we need
Speaker 2: to do more outreach, we need to be nicer to
Speaker 2: people that disagree, when actually, I mean Trump isn't nice
Speaker 2: to people who disagree with him. He calls them the enemy.
Speaker 2: He says he's gonna, you know, sick the national security
Speaker 2: state on send off the military against them, he uses
Speaker 2: every name of the book to describe his enemies, and
Speaker 2: we're not just talking about at least, we're talking about
Speaker 2: anyone who disagrees with him and his movement.
Speaker 6: And you say, you know.
Speaker 2: Actually, that form of politics was very successful, successful enough
Speaker 2: to put him back in the White House, successful enough
Speaker 2: to really sort of like, you know, touch on the
Speaker 2: moment culturally that we're living in. So you know, what
Speaker 2: does that mean for Democrats in terms of how they
Speaker 2: should respond to this moment?
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a really good question, and I don't have
Speaker 1: the answer.
Speaker 12: Not every story is the same story, right, I mean,
Speaker 12: I wrote this eight thousand and nine thousand Red piece
Speaker 12: about the phenomenon that Americans spend an historic amount of
Speaker 12: time alone, and then I think it's making them sadder
Speaker 12: individually and our society sicker because because of it. I
Speaker 12: don't want to represent this article as being a kind
Speaker 12: of Rosetta stone for the future of democratic party politics
Speaker 12: or democratic party messaging. It might be the case that
Speaker 12: a meaner style of politics in the twenty twenties and
Speaker 12: maybe even going forward in the age of the Internet,
Speaker 12: might be more successful because people spend more time alone.
Speaker 12: And if my job were to be a political consultant.
Speaker 12: I would say, meet people where they are. They're alone,
Speaker 12: they're angry, they're spending all of their time on the internet,
Speaker 12: where they feel extreme and an enormous amount of outgroup animosity.
Speaker 12: Meet them where they are and feed that outgrome animosity.
Speaker 12: That might be a totally reasonable strategy for winning that election.
Speaker 12: But there's a lovely concept of the difference between infinite
Speaker 12: and finite games, and finite games are made to be won,
Speaker 12: and infinite games are made to keep playing. Election is
Speaker 12: a finite game. One side wins and one side loses.
Speaker 12: But life is a kind of infinite game. You want
Speaker 12: to keep living, you want to keep winning. And it's
Speaker 12: conceivable that the best strategies for being happy in the
Speaker 12: world might not be the best strategies for how to
Speaker 12: win political contests, like in the next midterm. Not every
Speaker 12: story is the same story, and so you want to
Speaker 12: be sure you know what question you're asking. Is the
Speaker 12: question how to win in rural Pennsylvania or is the
Speaker 12: question how to live the.
Speaker 1: Happiest life in the next few years?
Speaker 12: Right, this piece is focused squarely on the second question,
Speaker 12: But the first question is it's damn important and we
Speaker 12: need answers there too.
Speaker 1: That's a really I love that response, I really do.
Speaker 3: So we encourage everybody to go read it or listen
Speaker 3: to your podcasts as well.
Speaker 1: Derek, thank you so much for joining us, man, We
Speaker 1: appreciate you.
Speaker 6: Great to see Derek, thank you, thanks to both of you.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you.
Speaker 3: The show is going to be late today. Sorry we
Speaker 3: talked too much, we had technical difficulties, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It is what it is and we will see you
Speaker 1: all tomorrow.
Speaker 5: P