1
00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:01,240
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.

2
00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:05,280
Speaker 2: For earlier access to these episodes, access to Ask Me

3
00:00:05,360 --> 00:00:09,160
Speaker 2: Anything sessions, and extended breakdowns of historical and current events.

4
00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:14,160
Speaker 2: Please consider joining our Warning Premium community by clicking the

5
00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:22,119
Speaker 2: link in the description to this episode. Very very pleased

6
00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:26,640
Speaker 2: this afternoon to be joined by doctor Ian Marcus Corbin,

7
00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:31,880
Speaker 2: along with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, wrote a rather remarkable

8
00:00:32,120 --> 00:00:36,040
Speaker 2: essay in The Daily Beast, and I'm privileged this afternoon

9
00:00:36,080 --> 00:00:38,919
Speaker 2: to be able to spend some time with Ian and

10
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:41,680
Speaker 2: talk about it. And I'm just going to begin by

11
00:00:41,760 --> 00:00:48,080
Speaker 2: reading the opening paragraphs of it. The title is the

12
00:00:48,200 --> 00:00:56,280
Speaker 2: left needs a spiritual renaissance, so does America. As neoliberalism falters,

13
00:00:56,800 --> 00:01:00,800
Speaker 2: it's time to reclaim the legacy of Martin Luther, King, Gandhi,

14
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:06,400
Speaker 2: Caesar Chavez, Robert Kennedy and other leaders. Throw a rock

15
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:08,840
Speaker 2: down a busy street, and chances are you won't hit

16
00:01:08,880 --> 00:01:12,039
Speaker 2: a single American who feels good about the state of

17
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:16,400
Speaker 2: American political dialogue. Those of us on the left can

18
00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 2: choose to take comfort and a sense of relative innocence

19
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:25,160
Speaker 2: as the demagoguery and divisiveness on the right rise to

20
00:01:25,240 --> 00:01:28,640
Speaker 2: a fever pitch, but scratch the surface, and you will

21
00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:32,600
Speaker 2: find that nearly everyone of whatever party, feels an.

22
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:35,319
Speaker 1: Emptiness, a soullessness to.

23
00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:40,360
Speaker 2: Our shared political life as we brace ourselves for an

24
00:01:40,400 --> 00:01:45,040
Speaker 2: election season that threatens to be even more fractious, bombastic,

25
00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:49,480
Speaker 2: and incoherent in our last one. The left cannot and

26
00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:53,680
Speaker 2: should not simply count on the continued meltdown of the right.

27
00:01:55,240 --> 00:01:59,880
Speaker 2: The deep truth is that American life needs a radical reframe,

28
00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:05,320
Speaker 2: one that will require more than smart policy proposals, vague

29
00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:10,440
Speaker 2: promises of growth, or even thundering denunciations of our opponents.

30
00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:14,359
Speaker 2: If we're going to pull out of this national nosedive,

31
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:28,440
Speaker 2: Left politics needs a spiritual renaissance. Pretty remarkable paragraphs coming

32
00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:34,680
Speaker 2: from a Harvard philosophy professor and a United States Senator

33
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:38,600
Speaker 2: about the conditions of American politics.

34
00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:41,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it feels like our remarkable moment, doesn't.

35
00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:49,840
Speaker 2: It is the country in decline? I think the answer

36
00:02:49,880 --> 00:02:52,760
Speaker 2: to the question just soy to as you ponder it is.

37
00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:00,679
Speaker 2: I think beyond any question, it takes almost the suspension

38
00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:04,720
Speaker 2: of what's in front of you right in reality to

39
00:03:04,840 --> 00:03:06,040
Speaker 2: believe that it's that.

40
00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:12,160
Speaker 1: It's not. But so, I don't I have a firm

41
00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:13,800
Speaker 1: opinion on that, but I.

42
00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:20,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so I'm looking out right now on Cambridge, Massachusetts,

43
00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:24,320
Speaker 4: which is not particularly in decline, which is really quite

44
00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:26,920
Speaker 4: a lovely place and thriving in lots of ways.

45
00:03:27,639 --> 00:03:29,000
Speaker 3: And I think, you know.

46
00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:31,440
Speaker 4: America has a lot of parts to it, and not

47
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:33,720
Speaker 4: all of it's in decline. We're not We're not really

48
00:03:33,760 --> 00:03:38,240
Speaker 4: falling apart in any literal sense. I do think that

49
00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:42,200
Speaker 4: the sort of governing dispensation that we share as a

50
00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:45,480
Speaker 4: people and that we supposed to sort of structure are

51
00:03:45,520 --> 00:03:49,080
Speaker 4: common public life together. I think that is that's not

52
00:03:49,240 --> 00:03:51,280
Speaker 4: just in decline. I think that is sort of run

53
00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:54,000
Speaker 4: out of gas. And I think that's a lot of

54
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:57,360
Speaker 4: the sort of you know, confusion and panic you see

55
00:03:57,400 --> 00:03:59,720
Speaker 4: on lots of sides right now, is a sense that

56
00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:01,640
Speaker 4: the thing we're supposed to be able to agree on

57
00:04:01,680 --> 00:04:04,320
Speaker 4: that would sort of govern our you know, three hundred

58
00:04:04,320 --> 00:04:09,080
Speaker 4: odd million lives together, doesn't work anymore. And this isn't

59
00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:13,360
Speaker 4: the first time this has happened. You know, we go

60
00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:17,320
Speaker 4: through through different periods in our history. A lot of

61
00:04:17,360 --> 00:04:21,520
Speaker 4: the examples of the thinkers, and maybe all all the

62
00:04:21,560 --> 00:04:23,720
Speaker 4: examples of the thinkers that Chris and I sit in

63
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:27,200
Speaker 4: the piece they're coming at another moment of sort of

64
00:04:27,279 --> 00:04:30,760
Speaker 4: denumont and there's fighting in the streets, and there's a

65
00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:32,640
Speaker 4: sense that the center will not hold, and people are

66
00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:38,160
Speaker 4: quoting WB eights and you know, they're kind of kind

67
00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:41,400
Speaker 4: of grasping around to find some new framework that might

68
00:04:42,279 --> 00:04:45,840
Speaker 4: give us a structure to work with, the one that

69
00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:51,920
Speaker 4: was proposed by MLK, Robert F. Kennedy, Mohama Gandhi, says

70
00:04:51,920 --> 00:04:56,120
Speaker 4: our Javas. I think it wasn't really taken up ultimately,

71
00:04:56,680 --> 00:04:59,920
Speaker 4: not least because you know, a numerical majority of the

72
00:05:00,120 --> 00:05:04,240
Speaker 4: people were gunned down, and you know, what we ended

73
00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:07,320
Speaker 4: up with was a kind of, from what I understand,

74
00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:09,680
Speaker 4: I wasn't alive about. From what I understand from reading

75
00:05:09,839 --> 00:05:11,920
Speaker 4: is a sort of a decade of kind of wandering

76
00:05:11,960 --> 00:05:12,640
Speaker 4: and stagnation.

77
00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:13,840
Speaker 3: And then there was a.

78
00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:16,599
Speaker 4: New proposal in the late seventies early eighties that ended

79
00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:19,320
Speaker 4: up kind of working for a while, working well enough,

80
00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:23,680
Speaker 4: which Chris and I, you know, roughly labeled the new

81
00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:27,720
Speaker 4: Liberal consensus. And I think that in lots of ways

82
00:05:27,720 --> 00:05:29,520
Speaker 4: that we could talk about that's running out of gas

83
00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:34,080
Speaker 4: right now across the wealthy developed world, and people are

84
00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:37,800
Speaker 4: kind of desperately looking around and sort of desperately, you know,

85
00:05:37,839 --> 00:05:41,600
Speaker 4: circling the wagons and throwing up walls, you know, as

86
00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:44,120
Speaker 4: they try to figure out figure out what comes next.

87
00:05:45,480 --> 00:05:47,200
Speaker 2: One thing I want to talk to you about before

88
00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:49,960
Speaker 2: we move on to the to the heart of what

89
00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:56,760
Speaker 2: you're talking about, which is really a spiritual reawakening in

90
00:05:56,839 --> 00:06:00,279
Speaker 2: the in the country. And we'll we'll talk about those tames.

91
00:06:00,360 --> 00:06:04,840
Speaker 2: But one thing you said that I that I think

92
00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:10,400
Speaker 2: is is is opposite to a recent experience that that

93
00:06:10,400 --> 00:06:14,120
Speaker 2: that I've had in an emotional and visceral way in

94
00:06:14,200 --> 00:06:19,720
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. I grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey,

95
00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:25,440
Speaker 2: like Chris in the Tri state area. I distinctly remember,

96
00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:29,280
Speaker 2: you know, going to ballgames in New York City in

97
00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:33,839
Speaker 2: the late nineteen seventies, seventy seven, seventy eight, New York.

98
00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:40,040
Speaker 2: A trip to Penn Station Port Authority was an extraordinary

99
00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:42,760
Speaker 2: experience for a kid to see what was on the

100
00:06:42,800 --> 00:06:45,280
Speaker 2: other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Right, I mean, it was,

101
00:06:45,640 --> 00:06:47,560
Speaker 2: it was, it was, it was fundamentally it was. It

102
00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:51,200
Speaker 2: was lawless right in a in a in a in

103
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:55,960
Speaker 2: a way. But if you you go to San Francisco, right,

104
00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,560
Speaker 2: and I'm not talking about the caricature of that. Like

105
00:06:59,640 --> 00:07:03,360
Speaker 2: many of like my parents' friends, believe that Portland was

106
00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:06,720
Speaker 2: burned to the ground five years ago by the forces

107
00:07:06,760 --> 00:07:13,000
Speaker 2: of Antifa, But I'm talking about human misery at an

108
00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:21,520
Speaker 2: epic scale, the homelessness crisis, the open air drug markets.

109
00:07:22,280 --> 00:07:28,240
Speaker 2: That when you see it, and you experience it at

110
00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:34,600
Speaker 2: age fifty two, my reaction to it isn't a political reaction.

111
00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:42,440
Speaker 2: It's a wow. Is the society collapsing? Is it falling apart?

112
00:07:43,160 --> 00:07:51,880
Speaker 2: Because this did not exist like this ten years ago,

113
00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:59,800
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, seven, eight years ago? And I just wonder,

114
00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:03,280
Speaker 2: or when you look at some of these issues, the

115
00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:08,280
Speaker 2: state of some of the cities, the spiral that places

116
00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:13,000
Speaker 2: like San Francisco seem to be in, and you look

117
00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:17,840
Speaker 2: at the totality of our institutions, the collapse of trust,

118
00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:26,880
Speaker 2: the decay, the division, how do you assess all of

119
00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:33,120
Speaker 2: these things in a historical context. We're we're at we're

120
00:08:33,160 --> 00:08:38,920
Speaker 2: at what comparable moment in American history, or what comparable

121
00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:44,360
Speaker 2: moments in American history can offer us some guidance and

122
00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:52,040
Speaker 2: what qualities of leadership right or required right from that condition,

123
00:08:53,559 --> 00:08:55,960
Speaker 2: right to start heading out of it?

124
00:08:56,559 --> 00:09:03,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, gosh, but historically, I think I'll struggle to

125
00:09:03,240 --> 00:09:07,440
Speaker 4: find the right the right analogy as I say that

126
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:10,280
Speaker 4: the late sixties and through the seventies was a really

127
00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:13,160
Speaker 4: chaotic time. I mean, there was domestic terrorism on a

128
00:09:13,160 --> 00:09:15,800
Speaker 4: scale that we would you know, it would be horrifying

129
00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:19,760
Speaker 4: to us. So there was again definitely a feeling of

130
00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:22,880
Speaker 4: coming apart. And if you have a better historical comparison,

131
00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:26,959
Speaker 4: I'd love to hear about it in terms of what's

132
00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:34,360
Speaker 4: what's needed or what worked politically. You know, the kind

133
00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:37,520
Speaker 4: of tradition that Chris and I are pointing to in

134
00:09:37,559 --> 00:09:41,680
Speaker 4: the piece. You know it it tended to have roots

135
00:09:41,679 --> 00:09:46,760
Speaker 4: in Christianity, which makes sense for America historically. But it's funny.

136
00:09:46,760 --> 00:09:50,640
Speaker 4: You can you can listen to the speeches that Robert F.

137
00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:54,200
Speaker 4: Kennedy delivered, and as we mentioned in the piece, he

138
00:09:54,280 --> 00:09:58,080
Speaker 4: was he was cobbling together until he was killed, a

139
00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:00,280
Speaker 4: coalition that had been kind of unheard of. He he

140
00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:03,440
Speaker 4: was pulling in for disenfranchised blacks, he was pulling in

141
00:10:03,480 --> 00:10:06,280
Speaker 4: working class whites, and he was uniting this new sort

142
00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:08,400
Speaker 4: of coalition. And you know, you think, well, maybe this

143
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,720
Speaker 4: is some kind of political genius, Maybe this is you know,

144
00:10:10,760 --> 00:10:14,240
Speaker 4: some kind of great rhetortician, and he was okay, and

145
00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:19,000
Speaker 4: he's a pretty good speaker. What's striking to me when

146
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:21,439
Speaker 4: I look back at what he said and did that

147
00:10:21,440 --> 00:10:24,040
Speaker 4: that really some people found so deeply moving and compelling

148
00:10:24,160 --> 00:10:27,480
Speaker 4: was he was kind of basic decency. Actually, it was

149
00:10:27,559 --> 00:10:29,920
Speaker 4: like some deep moral conviction, Like he clearly meant this

150
00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:33,280
Speaker 4: stuff down to his bones, right. And I have the

151
00:10:33,320 --> 00:10:37,800
Speaker 4: impression from kind of reading about his interactions with potential voters,

152
00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:41,280
Speaker 4: with hostile voters. You know, he would get taken to

153
00:10:41,840 --> 00:10:45,760
Speaker 4: an inner city black community and they would hated him, right,

154
00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:48,040
Speaker 4: and his handlers would try to pull him out immediately,

155
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:49,360
Speaker 4: and he would be like, no, no, no, I'm staying. And

156
00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:51,760
Speaker 4: he would stay for three or four hours and like

157
00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:54,360
Speaker 4: take whatever abuse was going to come out him. And

158
00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:56,160
Speaker 4: eventually by the time he left, they would be like,

159
00:10:56,200 --> 00:10:58,240
Speaker 4: we'll do whatever we can for you, Boby, Like we'll

160
00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:01,120
Speaker 4: do whatever it takes. And and it really was just,

161
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:05,080
Speaker 4: I mean, on one level, just basic stuff like genuinely listening,

162
00:11:05,120 --> 00:11:09,840
Speaker 4: being like an actual human being who cares about making

163
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:12,560
Speaker 4: people's lives better, and it's not lying, and it's not

164
00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:16,120
Speaker 4: focused groups, and is just sort of genuine to the

165
00:11:16,160 --> 00:11:19,640
Speaker 4: point where I think, you know, he would lose like

166
00:11:19,679 --> 00:11:21,680
Speaker 4: he would he would be willing to lose in order

167
00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:25,400
Speaker 4: to defend what he thought was the right thing, right Like,

168
00:11:27,200 --> 00:11:30,840
Speaker 4: I don't see that many and certainly on this sort

169
00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:32,840
Speaker 4: of the national stage, on the sort of people ringing

170
00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:37,800
Speaker 4: for president level. I think Bernie Sanders is a guy

171
00:11:37,840 --> 00:11:40,240
Speaker 4: who strikes me as someone who would lose an election

172
00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:40,920
Speaker 4: in order.

173
00:11:40,760 --> 00:11:42,160
Speaker 3: To to to do anything.

174
00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:43,760
Speaker 1: Question, no question.

175
00:11:44,440 --> 00:11:48,360
Speaker 2: THEI is self evident that Bernie Sanders is a man

176
00:11:48,640 --> 00:11:57,040
Speaker 2: of tremendous, tremendous conviction, and people find that and character,

177
00:11:57,360 --> 00:12:01,839
Speaker 2: And for the life of me, I don't know why

178
00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:06,680
Speaker 2: it is that we have disintegrated the concept that it's

179
00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:13,640
Speaker 2: impossible to disagree with someone politically yet admire very very

180
00:12:13,679 --> 00:12:19,560
Speaker 2: deeply their character, their courage, and their and their convictions,

181
00:12:19,640 --> 00:12:24,200
Speaker 2: because and elemental to this entire enterprise.

182
00:12:23,840 --> 00:12:25,480
Speaker 1: Is the ability to.

183
00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:31,480
Speaker 2: Reach compromises with people that you have disagreement with.

184
00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:34,640
Speaker 4: Sure, yeap, So I mean, I think, I think speaking

185
00:12:34,679 --> 00:12:37,280
Speaker 4: from a place of deep conviction, where people can tell like,

186
00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:40,120
Speaker 4: this isn't focused group, this isn't what this person is saying.

187
00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:43,120
Speaker 4: I mean, contrasted with Mitt Romney, who has a lot

188
00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:44,880
Speaker 4: of virtues as a person, it seems.

189
00:12:44,880 --> 00:12:46,160
Speaker 3: But when he speaks, you don't.

190
00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:49,920
Speaker 4: Believe him because he seems like he's he's saying, you know,

191
00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:52,680
Speaker 4: what he's been told to say, right, what seems sort

192
00:12:52,679 --> 00:12:56,760
Speaker 4: of useful in this particular moment. So that's a lot

193
00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:58,719
Speaker 4: of it, I mean, just drawn from deep wells and

194
00:12:58,760 --> 00:13:01,560
Speaker 4: being willing to sort of take whatever consequences may come

195
00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:05,120
Speaker 4: in order to tell the truth. Yeah, it doesn't sound

196
00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:07,880
Speaker 4: like that fancy you know, a skill set, but that

197
00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:09,880
Speaker 4: seems to me to be to be a lot of it.

198
00:13:11,160 --> 00:13:11,839
Speaker 1: You talked for.

199
00:13:13,400 --> 00:13:16,760
Speaker 2: A bit about the violence, right that you know, all

200
00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:22,319
Speaker 2: of these people are gunned down in the nineteen sixties,

201
00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:30,800
Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties, and they're gunned down in this moment

202
00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:38,520
Speaker 2: of civil rights advancement, in this legacy of the gun

203
00:13:39,120 --> 00:13:43,800
Speaker 2: in this country so far as it pertains to civil rights.

204
00:13:44,559 --> 00:13:47,320
Speaker 2: And you know, this is forgotten right in the history

205
00:13:47,360 --> 00:13:53,200
Speaker 2: of the American character. But in eighteen sixty five, right,

206
00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:58,960
Speaker 2: we have America's greatest and most tragic assassination in terms

207
00:13:59,040 --> 00:14:04,480
Speaker 2: of the loss of a leader of spectacular dimensions, and

208
00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:09,559
Speaker 2: that was Abraham Lincoln. Right, So Abraham Lincoln was preceded

209
00:14:10,720 --> 00:14:14,840
Speaker 2: by before Trump, the worst history, the worst president in

210
00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:21,440
Speaker 2: American history, Buchanan, and he was followed by the second

211
00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:27,440
Speaker 2: worst president in American history until Trump. You had another person,

212
00:14:28,040 --> 00:14:31,880
Speaker 2: great champion of civil rights in eighteen eighty James Garfield.

213
00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:37,240
Speaker 2: Garfield's assassinated, and then you have another Republican president that's

214
00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:41,440
Speaker 2: killed and killed in nineteen hundred and all of these events, right,

215
00:14:41,600 --> 00:14:47,760
Speaker 2: alter the trajectory, the trajectories of history in a profound way.

216
00:14:48,840 --> 00:14:53,640
Speaker 2: The loss of these leaders in the late nineteen sixties,

217
00:14:53,720 --> 00:15:00,000
Speaker 2: we have not seen a style of leadership from any

218
00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:07,160
Speaker 2: right who approximates what they did. So those assassinations at

219
00:15:07,200 --> 00:15:13,840
Speaker 2: a fundamental level severed an era. Right. They ended, They

220
00:15:14,120 --> 00:15:19,880
Speaker 2: ended in a in a decisive manner possibility, right, And

221
00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:25,720
Speaker 2: that's why that's why assassination is a particularly terrible type

222
00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:30,440
Speaker 2: of murder. Right. There's the murder of the human life, right,

223
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:33,360
Speaker 2: there's the damage to the family. But when we talk

224
00:15:33,440 --> 00:15:41,040
Speaker 2: about these people, right, they murdered for a nation the possibilities,

225
00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:47,160
Speaker 2: right that I think in this remarkable essay, you and

226
00:15:47,320 --> 00:15:50,359
Speaker 2: the Senator are talking about reawakening.

227
00:15:53,600 --> 00:15:56,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope so, and I mean I really hope so,

228
00:15:57,520 --> 00:16:00,400
Speaker 4: and I like, I like how you're thinking about itascination.

229
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:01,680
Speaker 3: That's I think that's excellent.

230
00:16:01,840 --> 00:16:04,640
Speaker 4: There's this interesting stat So one of the things that

231
00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:07,040
Speaker 4: I study, and one of the reasons why I'm a

232
00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:11,000
Speaker 4: philosopher hanging out with neuroscientists and neurologists at Harvard Medical

233
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:14,640
Speaker 4: School is that we look in an interdisciplinary way a

234
00:16:14,760 --> 00:16:17,640
Speaker 4: sort of loneliness and isolation and belonging, which you know,

235
00:16:17,680 --> 00:16:19,240
Speaker 4: I know, we're kind of forefront on a lot of

236
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:22,160
Speaker 4: people's minds right now and in a conversation not at

237
00:16:22,160 --> 00:16:27,000
Speaker 4: all unrelated to the political one that we're having right now. Right, So,

238
00:16:27,040 --> 00:16:31,280
Speaker 4: there have been the two largest spikes in self reported

239
00:16:31,320 --> 00:16:35,240
Speaker 4: loneliness in the past seventy years in America. Happened in

240
00:16:35,400 --> 00:16:39,080
Speaker 4: the two weeks following the assassination of JFK and then

241
00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:40,520
Speaker 4: the two weeks following nine to eleven.

242
00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:43,760
Speaker 3: Right, So, like there's that.

243
00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:46,760
Speaker 4: I think this isn't a really interesting about that, right

244
00:16:46,760 --> 00:16:48,600
Speaker 4: because like, Okay, a leader was killed. Okay, that means

245
00:16:48,640 --> 00:16:50,560
Speaker 4: the vice president pops in and that he's in charge,

246
00:16:50,600 --> 00:16:52,640
Speaker 4: right or like you know, there was an attack on

247
00:16:53,280 --> 00:16:55,600
Speaker 4: several thousand people in New York City. Now we fight

248
00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:59,160
Speaker 4: back whatever, It's not sort of immediately clear why people

249
00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:02,360
Speaker 4: should feel deeply lonely after that. But I think that

250
00:17:02,880 --> 00:17:06,600
Speaker 4: there is something really important about sort of these symbolic acts.

251
00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:09,439
Speaker 3: Of violence, right to say, like no, no, no.

252
00:17:09,359 --> 00:17:12,560
Speaker 4: Like what you think is there sort of governing reality

253
00:17:12,680 --> 00:17:16,520
Speaker 4: in your society? I kill it right, like it's over right,

254
00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:18,800
Speaker 4: I put to dead. I put to death. That that

255
00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:22,720
Speaker 4: sort of picture of the world. And you know why,

256
00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:24,720
Speaker 4: why it is that the you know, the World Trade

257
00:17:24,720 --> 00:17:28,040
Speaker 4: Center seemed like that symbolic core in two thousand and

258
00:17:28,080 --> 00:17:31,040
Speaker 4: one is really interesting question. I think there's there's something

259
00:17:31,040 --> 00:17:34,439
Speaker 4: to get into there. But yeah, so so absolutely, like

260
00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:37,399
Speaker 4: people are left feeling kind of lonely and rudderless and

261
00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:43,560
Speaker 4: adrift in the wake of these these sort of these killings.

262
00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:46,080
Speaker 2: Talk about I'm curious what you mean by that with

263
00:17:46,160 --> 00:17:51,080
Speaker 2: the World Trade Center as a totem of American commercial power.

264
00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:55,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean rough very roughly speaking.

265
00:17:55,240 --> 00:17:59,399
Speaker 4: Now, you know, you have that sort of like the

266
00:17:59,520 --> 00:18:06,159
Speaker 4: MLK FK, you know, Shavez Gandhi moment or proposal that

267
00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:08,560
Speaker 4: gets just sort of gunned out of existence in the

268
00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:13,240
Speaker 4: late sixties and the seventies, and then finally Reagan and

269
00:18:13,280 --> 00:18:16,399
Speaker 4: Thatcher come along and they say there's no such thing

270
00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:19,159
Speaker 4: as society. What we have here is a sort of

271
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:22,920
Speaker 4: good natured competition, right, and if we all compete well

272
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:25,320
Speaker 4: and fairly, we start in the same starting line, we

273
00:18:25,359 --> 00:18:28,520
Speaker 4: play according to the same rules, it will ultimately turn

274
00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:31,000
Speaker 4: out to be good for all of us. But that's

275
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:32,840
Speaker 4: at least what we can agree on as with people. Right,

276
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,199
Speaker 4: Like that sort of more metaphysical stuff like that clearly

277
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:39,200
Speaker 4: didn't work, you know, this sort of American immune system

278
00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:43,200
Speaker 4: rejected it, right, But you know we can at least say,

279
00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 4: let's play fair, right, Let's have a level playing field

280
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:48,679
Speaker 4: of a society, and let's sort of get out there

281
00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:52,119
Speaker 4: and have the American dream together, Like, let's leave our

282
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:53,840
Speaker 4: kids with more money than we started with.

283
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:54,359
Speaker 3: Whatever.

284
00:18:55,119 --> 00:18:58,560
Speaker 4: And so the idea that if you want to strike

285
00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:00,320
Speaker 4: at the heart of America in two thousand and one,

286
00:19:00,359 --> 00:19:06,840
Speaker 4: after about twenty years, but a generation of that governing dispensation,

287
00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:09,000
Speaker 4: you hit at a financial center in New York. Like,

288
00:19:09,359 --> 00:19:12,320
Speaker 4: that's just an interesting symbolic choice, is what I'm saying.

289
00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:18,800
Speaker 2: I'm to keep reading reading from this because it segues

290
00:19:18,840 --> 00:19:23,359
Speaker 2: in for approximately forty years, Americans across the spectrum have

291
00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:26,560
Speaker 2: been working within a picture of society that is broadly

292
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:31,919
Speaker 2: known as neoliberalism. It is simplest formulation. Neoliberalism defines the

293
00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:35,399
Speaker 2: good society as a level playing field where everyone is

294
00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:39,280
Speaker 2: invited to compete for the scarce commodities of status and wealth,

295
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:45,280
Speaker 2: regardless of race, religion, sexual organization. The market, fetishized by

296
00:19:45,359 --> 00:19:49,480
Speaker 2: neoliberals as the just and ethical arbiter of all things,

297
00:19:49,520 --> 00:19:53,600
Speaker 2: decides the outcome, meaning the winners fully deserve their winnings

298
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,240
Speaker 2: and the losers their losses in the interest of basic

299
00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:01,600
Speaker 2: decency and stability. Society may be willing to subsidize the

300
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:04,919
Speaker 2: lives of the poor, but only grudgingly and with plenty

301
00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:09,119
Speaker 2: of strings attached. Near blind faith invested in innovators and

302
00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:12,919
Speaker 2: technocrats who we desperately hope can engineer us into a

303
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:17,800
Speaker 2: better reality. But it is becoming undeniable in twenty twenty

304
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:21,879
Speaker 2: three that a great deal of this clever engineering is

305
00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:25,800
Speaker 2: only serving to sew division, isolation.

306
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:26,480
Speaker 1: And anxiety.

307
00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:31,280
Speaker 2: The emptiness so many Americans feel is related to a

308
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:36,600
Speaker 2: public life stubbornly grounded in this failed neoliberal consensus, which

309
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:44,040
Speaker 2: tacitly instructs us that consumerism, wealth accumulation, and individual achievement

310
00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:45,040
Speaker 2: are the.

311
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:47,880
Speaker 1: Main paths to happiness.

312
00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:53,640
Speaker 2: That's a pretty incredible set of paragraphs continuing on from

313
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:59,760
Speaker 2: a United States senator and from a philosophy professor. And

314
00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:05,360
Speaker 2: they're they're extraordinary. I just like, just as you're writing them,

315
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,480
Speaker 2: I mean, they mean what they mean. But is there

316
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:09,680
Speaker 2: is you just hear me reading them to you?

317
00:21:10,320 --> 00:21:10,560
Speaker 1: Is there?

318
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:12,440
Speaker 2: Does it trigger you to say anything?

319
00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:14,120
Speaker 1: Yeah?

320
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:16,000
Speaker 3: I mean I think so.

321
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:19,560
Speaker 4: I'm a philosopher and so unfortunately, I'll probably quote Aristotle

322
00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:24,320
Speaker 4: a few times during our conversation. So he's very famous

323
00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:27,320
Speaker 4: for writing about friendship. And he says that there are

324
00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:31,360
Speaker 4: different kinds of friendship. There's one that's sort of based

325
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:33,840
Speaker 4: on practical utility. Right, so maybe you and I are

326
00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:36,680
Speaker 4: going to make some money together, Steve, and so you know,

327
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:38,479
Speaker 4: we're kind of bonded for a time. We share that

328
00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:41,600
Speaker 4: goal of growing this company and making it go public whatever.

329
00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,399
Speaker 4: He thinks that is a kind of friendship. But he

330
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:48,160
Speaker 4: thinks it's a kind of secondary kind, it's an inferior kind,

331
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:54,560
Speaker 4: and that you know, the deeper, lifelong, really sort of

332
00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:59,480
Speaker 4: generative kind of friendship is one that's based on sort

333
00:21:59,520 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 4: of a common understanding of what is truly good and

334
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:05,800
Speaker 4: valuable in life, what it means to be a good

335
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:08,159
Speaker 4: kind of human. You know what kind of actions are

336
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:12,480
Speaker 4: actions that I should aspire to and as sort of

337
00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 4: shared tendency to pursue those things together.

338
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:16,080
Speaker 3: Right, that's a.

339
00:22:16,040 --> 00:22:18,879
Speaker 4: Friendship that will run through lots of highs and lows

340
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:22,600
Speaker 4: and and and you know isn't dependent on well, you know,

341
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:24,679
Speaker 4: were we able to take a public like you know,

342
00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:26,720
Speaker 4: did did the company make a lot of money or not.

343
00:22:27,359 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 4: It's a sort of deeper, more persistent than and I think, yeah,

344
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 4: I think look in times of uh great and growing prosperity,

345
00:22:39,119 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 4: and then there were times in that period from from

346
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,680
Speaker 4: you know, the early eighties onward where it did seem

347
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:46,879
Speaker 4: like all both were rising and the sky was was

348
00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 4: the limit and that everyone could get a piece of

349
00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:53,520
Speaker 4: this pie. You know, during periods like that, you know,

350
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 4: maybe a shared shared monetary interest or a shared l

351
00:22:58,240 --> 00:23:00,879
Speaker 4: utilitarian interest is enough to bind people together for a

352
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 4: little bit. I think it works especially well if you

353
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 4: have a common existential foe. Right, So like the role

354
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:10,240
Speaker 4: played by the Soviet, the Soviet block through that period

355
00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 4: shouldn't be underestimated, right, And you know, the loss of

356
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 4: that common foe at the end of the of the

357
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 4: eighties was a massive, massive event, and I think in

358
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:24,399
Speaker 4: some ways, you know, we may be still kind of

359
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 4: living through what happens after we have a common enemy,

360
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:32,239
Speaker 4: what happens after you know, Islamic fundamentalism doesn't turn out

361
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:34,399
Speaker 4: to be quite the existential folks some people were hoping

362
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:40,720
Speaker 4: it would be. And yeah, I think that what would

363
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:46,960
Speaker 4: make a durable and deep and serious American common life,

364
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 4: a durable and deep sense of civic friendship among Americans

365
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 4: is this sort of like deeper picture of like, okay,

366
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:58,199
Speaker 4: what is fundamentally like what's going on on earth? Like

367
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 4: what we're here for eighty and that we disappear like

368
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,720
Speaker 4: you know, we have this rich inner life and like

369
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 4: you know, our sociality is so fraided with all of

370
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 4: this incredible nuance and depth and seriousness and like what

371
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 4: like what is this?

372
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 3: Right?

373
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 4: Like you know stories that try to say something about

374
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 4: that and say, well, here's what we think it is,

375
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 4: Like here's what we think it means to do this thing. Well, right,

376
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 4: here's what might matter. And here's what wouldn't matter so

377
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 4: much if you can find you share a lot about

378
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 4: with that, like that can that can carry you through anything?

379
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 4: And so what we'd hope in this time of denumont

380
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 4: and and sort of you know, relative disintegration, wouldn't it

381
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 4: be beautiful if we could get back to the work

382
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 4: of trying to think together in a serious way about

383
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 4: this stuff.

384
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 2: Near blind faith is vested in innovators and technocrats we

385
00:24:56,080 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 2: desperately hope can engineer us into a better reaction. And

386
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 2: the only thing I can think when I read that

387
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 2: is Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in the Octagon cage match,

388
00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 2: which a.

389
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:11,720
Speaker 1: Billion people are gonna around the world.

390
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:14,920
Speaker 2: And if you're thinking about two people, you know out

391
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:17,639
Speaker 2: of the eight billion, you know that you'd want to

392
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:21,440
Speaker 2: lead us right there towards the bottom of my list.

393
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 2: But it is extraordinary, right when you look at the

394
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,680
Speaker 2: situation at the top, and I think you you look

395
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 2: at people who have accumulations of wealth that are extraordinary

396
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:43,199
Speaker 2: against any standard in the history of human civilization of

397
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 2: the American Republican and literally they have enough money to

398
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 2: build their own space stations, and they're going to be

399
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 2: fighting in a ring.

400
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: To please the TikTok audience.

401
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 2: While forty of the country doesn't have four hundred dollars

402
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 2: cash available for an emergency tens and tens of millions

403
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 2: of people are unbanked and shut out of the financial industry.

404
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 2: What I would say to you with regard to the

405
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:25,680
Speaker 2: Reagan and Thatcher era, is this about pendulums, I suppose

406
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,920
Speaker 2: would be how I think about it. I have always

407
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 2: understood the New Deal and what FDR did, And there's

408
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 2: all manner of arguments that are made by economists, and

409
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 2: I'm not an economist. After all the years I've spent

410
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 2: in political campaigns, I finally have reached the amount of

411
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 2: honesty with myself. I don't understand necessarily what Larry Summers

412
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 2: is talking about, right, or this person is talking about,

413
00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 2: you know, at at the at the deepest level, and

414
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:02,239
Speaker 2: try to try to use some common sense. But what

415
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 2: I you know, So there's a debate about what the

416
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:10,480
Speaker 2: New Deal did and didn't do economically, but it sure

417
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 2: saved free market American capitalism. You know, there was there

418
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 2: was every reason of believe there could be a fascist

419
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 2: movement that took hold in nineteen thirties nineteen thirties America.

420
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 2: But what FDR did was through establishing a social safety

421
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 2: net and a retirement system, he restored faith and belief

422
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:47,240
Speaker 2: in the system and then that system was institutionalized by

423
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 2: a Republican president, Eisenhower. Eisenhower didn't seek to nullify the

424
00:27:53,040 --> 00:28:00,399
Speaker 2: New Deal. Eisenhower institutionalized the New Deal. By nineteen fifty

425
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:04,120
Speaker 2: two to nineteen sixty, these things weren't being debated. The

426
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 2: debate moves on. It's about the expansion in the same way,

427
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 2: it's really Bill Clinton, right, and the new Democrats that institutionalize, right,

428
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 2: a softer, more restrained version of the you know, free

429
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:25,679
Speaker 2: market principles of Reagan and Thatcher, which indisputably you know,

430
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 2: reinvigorate more bund economies in nineteen seventies Britain, in nineteen

431
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:44,000
Speaker 2: eighties United States, but along with the technological disruption caused

432
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 2: by the rise of the Internet. You know, I think

433
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 2: we're very much in this era that is reminiscent and

434
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 2: I couldn't think it's more appropriate, right, you know, and

435
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 2: this is we look at you know this, we're in

436
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 2: this era that's very reminiscent of the of the Edwardian

437
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 2: age before the Titanic sank. And it's it is it's

438
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 2: deep right that you have another vessel unprepared, you know,

439
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 2: human arrogance down to see you know, that now share

440
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 2: in the Titanic experience, this metaphor of great great wealth, right,

441
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 2: and this idea that wealth insulates you from risk. Right,

442
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 2: you can go anywhere see anything right without the lessons

443
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 2: right that the original Titanic or that age, that that

444
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 2: age tries to teach. But certainly the the inequalities right

445
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 2: that that you write about or fundamentally destabilizing to a

446
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 2: democratic society. And you and you're seeing that now. The

447
00:29:54,360 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 2: the way that politics works is that you look at

448
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: this and you hope for rationality. Right, the system is

449
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 2: broken because of A, B and C. And therefore right

450
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 2: that you hope the reaction will be to fix A,

451
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 2: B and C. But because A, B and C are broken,

452
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 2: what it can produce is a demagogue right of the

453
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 2: of the nature of Trump. But if I look at

454
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 2: the Democratic.

455
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: Party, and you steep your essay.

456
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 2: Right in a revival of the left, right, and I

457
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 2: understand a revival of the left, which prefaces right, I

458
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 2: suppose a revival of the Democratic Party in your essay. Right,

459
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 2: you're both very clear the purpose of this, right, the

460
00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 2: purpose of this revival is for America.

461
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: Right.

462
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 2: John Kennedy said, you know what what what is the

463
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 2: purpose of a political party unless it exists for the

464
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:02,960
Speaker 2: advancement of great national purpose.

465
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 3: Right.

466
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 2: So that's that's what your essay, in my mind is arguing. Right,

467
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 2: But how do you think about the fact when you

468
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 2: when you when you consider this autocratic movement that that

469
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 2: threatens the country, that is fascistic in character, that the

470
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 2: entity the institution that inarguably has not met the moment

471
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 2: in terms of being able to put.

472
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: It down.

473
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 2: Is the Democratic Party of this of this era, that exists,

474
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 2: as does the other party, for the purposes of sustaining, conserving,

475
00:31:56,680 --> 00:32:04,200
Speaker 2: and advancing the American revel and the freedoms as we

476
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 2: have expanded them in the Constitution of the United States.

477
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, I so, I'm you know, I'm in the heart

478
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,719
Speaker 4: of Blue America right here in our Burk squareht Cambridge,

479
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 4: and I have I've existed since about twenty sixteen in

480
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 4: a state of astonishment at the either inability or unwillingness

481
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:31,200
Speaker 4: of people in places like this to actually reckon with

482
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 4: what's going on.

483
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: You know.

484
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 3: There's see there generally.

485
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 4: Seems to be this sort of sense that ive we

486
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 4: could just sort of shout down the bad Orange man

487
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 4: or whichever of his cronies, you know, is kind of

488
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 4: stepping up, you know, get these particular bad and political

489
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:53,240
Speaker 4: actors out of office whatever, that that things would be fine,

490
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 4: America would be in good shape after that. And I mean,

491
00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 4: I guess it must be kind of easy, or at

492
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 4: least plot to believe that if you've kind of lived

493
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 4: your whole physical and spiritual life in a place like Cambridge,

494
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:11,320
Speaker 4: where you know, by lots of measures, the old dispensations

495
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 4: worked pretty well for you. But I mean, part of

496
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 4: the reason why when I when I got to know

497
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 4: Chris Murphy a little bit and started to see that

498
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 4: the things he was publishing and the things he's grappling with,

499
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 4: I was I was so excited because I again, I've

500
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:30,360
Speaker 4: been so disappointed with sort of establishment left and liberal

501
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 4: institutions and leaders over the past several years to even

502
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 4: try to think down to the roots of this, like

503
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 4: try to think, why would Americans be voting for this

504
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 4: psychotic television host, right, Like who thought before twenty sixteen

505
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump was like a human with redeeming characteristics,

506
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 4: Like he's not a good guy, And why in the world,

507
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 4: you know, is a serious qum of Americans voting firm like,

508
00:33:57,960 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 4: what's going on in their lives?

509
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 3: What is that like for them?

510
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 4: And I think so only Chris is really interested in that,

511
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 4: and I think it speaks very highly of him.

512
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 3: But yeah, are the failure of our.

513
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 4: Political class to take this seriously. I kind of don't

514
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 4: know what to say about it. It's it's it's been,

515
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 4: it's been a huge surprise.

516
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 2: Let me read these let me read these paragraphs, and

517
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 2: I have a conversation about the Bezos yacht with you.

518
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 2: It is impossible to be happy and fulfilled without a

519
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 2: certain degree of financial security. Inarguably true. Yeah, economic inequality

520
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 2: is a plague that undermines our social bonds and damages

521
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 2: our national psyche. Unquestionably true. Prosperity can allow us to

522
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 2: be more generous and creative social goods that are difficult

523
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 2: to contemplate when you're struggling for basic survival. Again, unquestionably true.

524
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 2: But pursuit of material gain simply for the sake of

525
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 2: material gain rarely brings fulfillment. Right all through history, right,

526
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 2: every religious every religion, every philosopher, every everyone's had a

527
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 2: lesson on that. Americans do want a firm economic floor

528
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 2: that guarantees everyone access to the basic necessities of life.

529
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 2: But they also want our politics to be organized around

530
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 2: the question of what makes a society good. This is

531
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 2: why we need spirituality at its core. It is an

532
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 2: attempt to ask and answer deep fundamental questions about the world,

533
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:42,760
Speaker 2: the self and society. Now you would agree, I think

534
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 2: that an application in a sentence that is this is

535
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 2: why we need spirit spirituality as core, there's an attempt

536
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 2: to ask and answer deep fundamental questions about the world

537
00:35:55,400 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 2: of selfish society. Right that when you see vast thousands

538
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 2: in a city like San Francisco laid out, helpless, living

539
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 2: in uncontained misery, with needles sticking out of their arms,

540
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 2: right that, whatever that is, that's not compassion.

541
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 3: So I don't know what to say about that.

542
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 4: I went to San Francisco pretty recently and I was appalled,

543
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 4: like everyone else, with my wife and I accidentally stayed

544
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 4: in the tenderloin because we didn't know what we were doing,

545
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 4: and it was you know, the how the healthcape you're describing,

546
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 4: and you know, there is this sort of very poetic

547
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:40,840
Speaker 4: druxtaposition where like that you know, sort of crowded with

548
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 4: tesla's and with you know, encampments on sidewalks, right, like

549
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 4: the two and the two big sides in contemporary America.

550
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 4: I've been told, and this is not something I've looked

551
00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 4: into deeply enough that it's a certain form of excessive

552
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 4: compassion that leads to that scene where San Francisco offers

553
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:06,720
Speaker 4: like way better benefits for the homeless than most other cities,

554
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 4: and so people kind of come to it as a

555
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 4: magnet and crowd in to have access to them. I

556
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 4: don't know whether that's true. I mean, yeah, so it

557
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 4: may be a certain kind of compassion.

558
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 2: When you when you think about this, like as a

559
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,880
Speaker 2: philosophical matter, right, you think about our politics.

560
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: Right.

561
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 2: You look at Jeff Bezos's yacht, right, five hundred, five

562
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars, right, so this is this a half

563
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 2: a billion dollar boat.

564
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: It has a chase boat that's two.

565
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 2: Hundred and sixty feet in length that services that boat.

566
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: Now, he built the company, Yeah, created it. It was

567
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: his idea.

568
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:58,280
Speaker 2: He's fundamentally changed the world commercially. He is one of

569
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:07,319
Speaker 2: the greatest entrepreneurs, innovators, business geniuses that has that has

570
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 2: ever been every bit as much as the Edison's and

571
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 2: the and the Evanderbilt of UH and and the Rockefellers

572
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 2: of a different age.

573
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: There there are scores and scores.

574
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 2: Of people who make good livings and put their kids

575
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 2: through school where that where that ship was built, scores

576
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 2: of craftsmen and plumbers.

577
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 1: Are you arguing for.

578
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 2: A society where Jeff Bezos can't build that company, can't

579
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 2: keep that company, can't do whatever it is that he

580
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 2: wants with the money that he, Jeff Bezos earned. At

581
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:59,320
Speaker 2: the same time, right as you think about the structures

582
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 2: of this, again, forty percent of the country doesn't have

583
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:10,440
Speaker 2: four hundred dollars cash available. Two other billionaires are at

584
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:14,560
Speaker 2: a cultural level occupying the space that fighting, and it

585
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:17,879
Speaker 2: will be the biggest fight in all of history. Right,

586
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 2: these people play an outsized role in society. That's that's

587
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 2: at an interesting space. I mean, how do you think

588
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 2: about that as an American, as a man of the left,

589
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 2: as a philosopher inside a free market American society that

590
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 2: rewards achievement defined by commercial success.

591
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:46,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you.

592
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: Want to limit it?

593
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 3: Oh? For sure?

594
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 4: I mean I think we could start with, you know,

595
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 4: having these companies pay a market rate. You know, if

596
00:39:57,960 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 4: we want to stick inside a market framework, paying a

597
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 4: market right in wages.

598
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 3: I didn't look it up. I didn't know what we

599
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:04,839
Speaker 3: were talking about. Bezos.

600
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 4: I know Walmart, and I believe Amazon as well, like

601
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 4: a very significant proportion of their workforce is dependent on

602
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:18,320
Speaker 4: public assistance to survive. So you have these big companies

603
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:20,800
Speaker 4: that have been made such success of amazing profit margins.

604
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 4: They couldn't have those margins if they had to pay

605
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,359
Speaker 4: people what it is to survive, right ry, But what.

606
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 2: Do you think prevents Democratic Party right from and its politicians,

607
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 2: as a general proposition, from saying, hey, mister taxpayer, that

608
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 2: guy is screwing all of you. Yeah, because his workers

609
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 2: aren't compensated by him. Yeah, he spends that money on

610
00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 2: the boat. You compensate the employees because those employees are

611
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 2: on public assistance, and those employees shouldn't be on public assistance.

612
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:12,280
Speaker 2: But doesn't that require you to make an argument that says,

613
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 2: as a general proposition, the society wants as few of

614
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 2: people as possible on public assistance of any type without

615
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 2: stigmatizing it.

616
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:27,280
Speaker 4: I think that society wants us few people as possible

617
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 4: on public assistance. Yeah, I think it's necessary at times.

618
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:33,920
Speaker 4: I grew up on welfare myself, and I don't know

619
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 4: what we would have done without it. But I think

620
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:42,959
Speaker 4: you want good and dignified work. I think you want

621
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 4: to be able to I mean, humans don't do well

622
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 4: when they're sitting around, right, Like, you want to have projects.

623
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 4: You want to feel like you're contributing to your community,

624
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 4: to your society. And so I think welfare is a

625
00:41:57,960 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 4: verily necessary safety in need. And it's good that we

626
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 4: often call it a safety net. But yeah, you want Frankly,

627
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 4: you're gonna need labor unions, and you're gonna need to

628
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 4: undo a lot of what Reagan and Factor did to

629
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 4: crush labor unions.

630
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 3: And and you know, look like I read this once.

631
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 4: Maybe your fact checkers can help me out, but I

632
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 4: read that a very high proportion of Congress people have

633
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 4: a better record of investing than Warren Buffett does. Right,

634
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 4: they come into Congress and then somehow by the time

635
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 4: they come out, they're a millionaires. They're deeply invested in

636
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 4: this system. And it's because it's not just bezos and

637
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 4: musk who get rich when you know workers are under compensated,

638
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 4: and when you know local operations are undercut by like

639
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 4: global conglomerates.

640
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 3: Right, like shareholders writ large get rich.

641
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 4: Right, So you have you have these really fantastical sort

642
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 4: of interludes in American life where it looks like the

643
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:54,760
Speaker 4: real world economy is doing horribly, but somehow the stock

644
00:42:54,800 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 4: market is soaring, right, And so yeah, I mean I

645
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:03,360
Speaker 4: I yeah, absolutely.

646
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 2: You know, I've always looked at, you know, the question

647
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 2: of labor unions in the nineteen seventies America, nineteen eighties America.

648
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 2: You know, management in the labor unions, for example, in

649
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 2: the audio industry like very nearly bankrupted each other. Right,

650
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 2: they were two scorpions in the in the bottle. And

651
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 2: I think every effective model all over the world is

652
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 2: a partnership, right, where labor has a seat at the

653
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 2: table management and they and they the practical realities is

654
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 2: that they operate the company where labor is it forced

655
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 2: to submit to the shareholder the basic dignities of life

656
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 2: for some type of reason.

657
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:50,479
Speaker 1: So I think that when you.

658
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,479
Speaker 2: Talk about the Reagan Thatcher era, right, there's this there's

659
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:57,120
Speaker 2: this kind of there's so many Americans right that admire

660
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:03,319
Speaker 2: Ronald Right, mean, Ronald Reagan was reelected with forty nine states, right,

661
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 2: you know a lot of people older people like Ronald

662
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:12,440
Speaker 2: Reagan admire Margaret Thatcher, but I think indisputably the hollowing

663
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 2: out of the labor movement on a forty year basis

664
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 2: has created a situation where the guy who has the

665
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 2: five hundred million dollar vote right has is highly regulating,

666
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:30,800
Speaker 2: you know, when his employees can stop for bathroom breaks,

667
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 2: right and to me, right, that's that's that's when the

668
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 2: pendulum has gone, you know, well passed. You know, it's

669
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 2: it's it's it's uh, it's its opposite swing, and it's

670
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 2: time to it's time to to bring it back.

671
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean, labor ings are not just about

672
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:55,320
Speaker 4: you know, winning higher wages. They are about that and

673
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 4: and absolute labor union it's you know, it's hard to

674
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,240
Speaker 4: see how you can, like I can't negotiate with Amazon

675
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 4: if I take a job there, like they I don't.

676
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 4: So it's hard to see how you can get around that.

677
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 4: But they're also not just about wages in a couple

678
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 4: of ways. So first of all, they you know, they're

679
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:12,960
Speaker 4: a lot of them, A lot of the unions call

680
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 4: themselves brotherhoods, right like, there is a deep sense of

681
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 4: solidarity in a more substantial sense than just like.

682
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 3: Let's get the money out of this guy.

683
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 4: Right, Like a lot of the historically successful labor unions

684
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 4: or labor movements had had a story about like we

685
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 4: are craftsmen, Like we're artisans. Like we're doing something that

686
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:34,320
Speaker 4: is beautiful and serious and difficult, and it's not for everyone,

687
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,000
Speaker 4: but we are a brotherhood and we do this.

688
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 3: That's the kind of thing.

689
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 4: That's the kind of work that can give meaning to

690
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 4: your like adult productive years. Right, I feel like you're

691
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:46,040
Speaker 4: part of something that's genuinely good. And so that's why

692
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 4: I've loved when when Senator Murphy has has talked about

693
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 4: like not just sort of getting workers more money, but

694
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 4: like what is dignified work that might give might might

695
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:57,280
Speaker 4: you know, contribute to a sense of meaning in your life.

696
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:00,160
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think we're on the same page. I

697
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 4: think it's and you know, it's funny because labry ings

698
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 4: are not unpopular among the American people, and in fact,

699
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 4: I think they're they're quite popular if you ask them

700
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:12,879
Speaker 4: about it. I mean there are certain sectors I think. Look,

701
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 4: I mean the labor union is not a fixed all right,

702
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 4: and like there are certain moments and situations where labour

703
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 4: uns have not been good. You need to do it well,

704
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 4: but on the whole, Americans are are quite supportive and

705
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 4: and there isn't a ton of reason outside I think

706
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 4: of our political discourse and our political class to not

707
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 4: really go hard on that. You know, I was starting

708
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 4: to stay before I lost my train of thought that

709
00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 4: you know a lot of the people who are pulling

710
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:46,280
Speaker 4: these levers, and that includes like, you know, smart smart guys,

711
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 4: smart professors here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That includes you know,

712
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 4: think tankers, that includes some political operatives and politicians like

713
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 4: they're deeply benefiting from the system right like they are shareholders,

714
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:03,319
Speaker 4: and and you know, from that vantage point, like it

715
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 4: might look like shareholder capitalism is actually doing quite well, right,

716
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:09,759
Speaker 4: might look like we don't. There's not a time we

717
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:11,760
Speaker 4: do need to sort of radically change.

718
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 2: I think that one of the things when you talked

719
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:19,360
Speaker 2: earlier about loneliness, that's so important to understand for people

720
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 2: analyzing this moment and how we got here. We got

721
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 2: here in large measure because of loneliness. And if you

722
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:37,480
Speaker 2: go back to two thousand and sixteen and you watch

723
00:47:37,520 --> 00:47:41,839
Speaker 2: a Hillary Clinton rally and turn the sound off, and

724
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 2: I did this at the time, I'd say, where are

725
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 2: the machine gun nests right, pointing the guns at these people.

726
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:50,279
Speaker 3: Right.

727
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:56,960
Speaker 2: What a joyless crowd. Right, No smiles, grim, lifeless.

728
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 3: Right.

729
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:05,400
Speaker 2: You watch a Trump rally. Right, It's a joyous, though menacing,

730
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:06,680
Speaker 2: fascistic affair.

731
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: But he gave lonely.

732
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 2: People belonging community and purpose. Right, Maga Right became the

733
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 2: island for a lot of misfit toys in our politics,

734
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 2: the extremists, the neo Nazis, the proud Boys, the oathkeepers,

735
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 2: but also a lot of very lonely people right who

736
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 2: are afraid, insecure, yeah, and deeply, deeply angry. Not a Republicans, though,

737
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 2: it's Republicans who support the hedge fund community and all

738
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 2: of the economic interest that are certainly unsympathetic to these people.

739
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 2: What they are mad at are the people at the top,

740
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 2: and the people at the top culturally are imposing all

741
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 2: manner of indignities upon them, including to some forty year

742
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 2: old guy that if you don't say you're a pronoun

743
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:31,720
Speaker 2: in the meeting, you're a racist, You're going to be fired.

744
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 2: You're a this for sure, or that every white male

745
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:41,280
Speaker 2: over fifty is responsible for all the faults of the world.

746
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 2: And if that's the message, that that person here is

747
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 2: at a two party system that person reacts to that.

748
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 2: You don't need a psychology degree or a philosophy degree, right, right,

749
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 2: if you know anything about the American about the American character,

750
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 2: that'll list it's the fuck your response always has. That's

751
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 2: why we're an independent country.

752
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 4: I think across every I mean, you see it all

753
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 4: over the world right now. Like I think the combination

754
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 4: of an economic system that you know it offers you

755
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:18,480
Speaker 4: in exchange, it's like, okay, well, the dignified work that

756
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,719
Speaker 4: might leave, right, we're gonna automate, we're gonna out you know, offshore,

757
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 4: We're going to lower the cost of consumer good. You're

758
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 4: gonna be able to buy cheap shit. But like, you know,

759
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 4: you're gonna be a you know, working some job that

760
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 4: sort of menial and robotic. Like that's the trade that's

761
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 4: been offered, and it's turned out to be a pretty

762
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 4: bad trade, right, And like the idea that this this

763
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 4: would you know, the compensation would be adequate and this

764
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:43,799
Speaker 4: would be actually a good sort of society we'd be

765
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:47,839
Speaker 4: building has turned out I think to just be flatly wrong. Right,

766
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 4: Like all boats don't rise in the way that people

767
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:52,799
Speaker 4: were promised they would and then at the same time

768
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 4: to explain the stagnation of certain regions in America just

769
00:50:56,080 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 4: via these cultural categories, these repudiations, like these are from

770
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 4: desperate gun clingers, these are like deplorables, like these are

771
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 4: all racists, Like, oh, it's too bad you don't you know,

772
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 4: like you know, happy modern economic life, Like if you

773
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 4: weren't a racist between great, Like it's astonishing's infuriating, Like

774
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 4: they're not excusing me personally, but I could, I would

775
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:20,359
Speaker 4: be that be incredibly angry.

776
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: I think.

777
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 2: I think one of the most astonishing aspects of the

778
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 2: covid era is that you have a million people thus

779
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 2: far that have been killed by opioids. All right, so

780
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 2: you you have taking this back, right, you want to

781
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 2: talk about corporate greed. You literally have an American family

782
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 2: company that's killed a million people and whatever the number is,

783
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 2: right that by the time you get to the end, right,

784
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:05,880
Speaker 2: because the fentanyl crisis, everything is derivative, you have millions

785
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 2: of people. And then you have the millions of people

786
00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 2: compounding after that, who are the survivors, the spouses, the

787
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 2: family right, whose families have been devastated. The opio eight

788
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:30,279
Speaker 2: epidemic was brought to America by the Sackler family, but

789
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 2: also the FDA, And so you had people coming out

790
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 2: of government going to the pharmaceutical and vice versa. In

791
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:48,319
Speaker 2: a revolving door where the pharmaceutical lawyers were writing the

792
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:56,240
Speaker 2: REGs alongside the FDA regulators who went in and got jobs.

793
00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 2: So all of this happens. All of it is indisputable.

794
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 2: Nobody knows about this, No one talks about this in

795
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 2: national politics until twenty and sixteen. Really, the opio eight epidemic,

796
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 2: this is a very very minor issue, right, there's no awareness.

797
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:20,320
Speaker 2: And then a few years later you have the government mandating, hey,

798
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:24,359
Speaker 2: take this vaccine, it's good for you, and you see

799
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 2: a reaction in the black community, and you see a

800
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 2: reaction in a now political republican community. We view everything politically,

801
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:40,719
Speaker 2: but really, right, it's a socioeconomic group that's been ravaged

802
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 2: by opioids that says, go fuck yourself, right and then

803
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 2: and then right, they're condemned, called stupid.

804
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:53,480
Speaker 3: Oh, and worse and worse and worse.

805
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:59,360
Speaker 2: Right, and so, what was what was it about Bobby

806
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:04,799
Speaker 2: Kennedy by nineteen sixty eight in his evolution, because he

807
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 2: was a clearly use a very, very different person by

808
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:15,399
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight. He was a different person in the

809
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen sixty eight than he was in the

810
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 2: autumn of nineteen sixty seven. He was we were watching

811
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 2: someone become something in real time. The country was was

812
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 2: before my birth and then it was taken.

813
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:42,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, are you asking about how that transition

814
00:54:42,680 --> 00:54:43,920
Speaker 4: took place or what's that?

815
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:56,200
Speaker 2: I'm asking you about the astonishing evolution of a human

816
00:54:56,400 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 2: playing out during a political campaign and over the course

817
00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:03,919
Speaker 2: of a decade. He was He was a ruthless guy.

818
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:08,279
Speaker 2: He was he was he was hard. He was hardcore

819
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:13,280
Speaker 2: and in a hardcore, hardcore business.

820
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 3: That's right.

821
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I've read some stuff about him. I

822
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,839
Speaker 4: don't couldn't claim to know his sort of deep psychology.

823
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:27,760
Speaker 4: I mean, he he was hit, I think, by all accounts,

824
00:55:27,800 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 4: extremely hard by the death of his brother and felt

825
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:36,200
Speaker 4: a sort of like I felt that they're extremely high stakes.

826
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 4: There's something like a sort of generational importance going on

827
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 4: here that you know, you know, he had been kind

828
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 4: of broken by the you know, I think there's a

829
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 4: lot of hope around JFK. And I think, you know,

830
00:55:48,680 --> 00:55:52,880
Speaker 4: Bobby had felt particularly broken by his brother's assassination and

831
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,839
Speaker 4: and maybe came with a special kind of you know,

832
00:55:56,320 --> 00:56:00,640
Speaker 4: mephianic fire into into his candidacy. But then I think

833
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 4: very importantly, he like got off the got off the

834
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 4: bus and you know, went to rural Appalachia, went to

835
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:13,279
Speaker 4: the deep South, like, spent a lot of time on

836
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:17,480
Speaker 4: Indian reservations. And again, in all these situations, his staff

837
00:56:17,520 --> 00:56:19,680
Speaker 4: would be like, Bobby, let's go, let's get out of here,

838
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:21,439
Speaker 4: like we have you know, we're missing our next stop

839
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:24,480
Speaker 4: or whatever. And he would stay in these these really

840
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:27,440
Speaker 4: impoverished places and he would like look people in the

841
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:30,360
Speaker 4: eye and and and have this deep connection and and

842
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 4: was like beloved by these communities. It still is in

843
00:56:33,480 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 4: lots of cases. And I think he was just sort

844
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 4: of radicalized by the suffering and had a sort of

845
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:43,480
Speaker 4: deeply human confrontation with it and it and I think

846
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 4: it changed him.

847
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:47,239
Speaker 3: And yeah, I don't know.

848
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:48,880
Speaker 4: There may be a lot more to it than that,

849
00:56:48,960 --> 00:56:53,080
Speaker 4: but that's that's what I can see. Is is something

850
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 4: special about that kind of raw, naked in person.

851
00:56:57,400 --> 00:56:59,880
Speaker 3: Sort of sort of confrontation.

852
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 2: When you when you when you think about when you

853
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 2: think about this moment in American life, the divisions in it. Yeah,

854
00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 2: you co authored this with the United States Senator. Do

855
00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 2: you think there's anybody else who's really talking about these

856
00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 2: issues the way that he is talking about them.

857
00:57:37,160 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 3: Not from the left.

858
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 4: Honestly, That's part of why it's been so exciting to

859
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 4: you know, to see what he's been up to. You know,

860
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 4: I think by by way of a little bit of

861
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 4: good biography, I I you know, I came up on

862
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 4: the right in a lot of ways. My first article

863
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 4: I ever published was was for first things, and in

864
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:01,840
Speaker 4: lots of ways, I you know, as my life gone on,

865
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 4: I've I've moved away from from that, and certainly very

866
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:11,440
Speaker 4: much on economic issues, I've moved away from from, you know,

867
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:15,600
Speaker 4: the kind of fusionism of of my of my adolescence.

868
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 4: One thing that I've not grown away from is, you know,

869
00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:26,280
Speaker 4: the willingness of people. Conservatives are different kinds, so probably

870
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,720
Speaker 4: not you know, Republican congressmen, but like conservatives of various

871
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 4: kinds to to want to ponder these deep issues and

872
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:37,600
Speaker 4: to be friendly towards religion. And I think, you know,

873
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 4: for reasons that the Senator and I addressed quickly in

874
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:45,920
Speaker 4: the piece. You know, liberals and the and the left

875
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:50,280
Speaker 4: in America have known very uncomfortable with this sort of stuff,

876
00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 4: and you know, they think, oh, are you are you

877
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 4: reading Aristotle on trying to think about what a good

878
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 4: human society looks like?

879
00:58:57,640 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 3: You know, that's sort of.

880
00:59:01,440 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 4: You know that that sounds a little bit crusty and

881
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:07,120
Speaker 4: conservative and maybe like you're trying to tell everyone how

882
00:59:07,160 --> 00:59:11,600
Speaker 4: they need to live. And so I think like it's

883
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:16,960
Speaker 4: a massive problem on the left, massive and like you know,

884
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:20,520
Speaker 4: could potentially leave us gridlocked or much worse for a

885
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 4: long time, if you know, people of goodwill and sort

886
00:59:26,240 --> 00:59:31,360
Speaker 4: of can't break out of this sort of like the

887
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:33,919
Speaker 4: sort of the box that we've we've put ourselves in.

888
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 4: So anyway, sorry that the short answers.

889
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:37,400
Speaker 3: I don't see a.

890
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 4: Ton of it, at least not on the institutional level.

891
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 4: I could point to, you know, a handful of thinkers,

892
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 4: maybe a couple of politicians who are thinking really well

893
00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:48,960
Speaker 4: about this kind of stuff. But now I think, you know,

894
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 4: Chris is getting some attention for taking up this line

895
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 4: of inquiry for a reason because it's weird and exciting

896
00:59:55,920 --> 00:59:59,760
Speaker 4: for a Democratic senator to be talking about meaning and

897
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:04,440
Speaker 4: onliness and to be to be talking about belonging, and spirituality.

898
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:09,440
Speaker 2: Well, these are these are all fundamental things, right that

899
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:11,960
Speaker 2: a that a leader talks about. So let me give

900
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 2: a practical, a practical application of this. Yesterday or on Saturday,

901
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 2: in Georgia, there are a handful of white supremacists holding

902
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:33,560
Speaker 2: Nazi flags outside of a synagogue while people are at worship. Now,

903
01:00:35,080 --> 01:00:41,640
Speaker 2: to me, what a political leader does is, let's start

904
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 2: with Senator osof right. He calls up, he calls up

905
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:55,400
Speaker 2: his he calls up, he calls up the Republican governor,

906
01:00:56,320 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 2: calls up the Democratic senator, calls up the Jewish governor

907
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:05,240
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania, the state that is the center of religious

908
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 2: tolerance in this country, and he invites Americans of all

909
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:13,600
Speaker 2: faith to come to Georgia to link arms around that synagogue.

910
01:01:14,160 --> 01:01:16,919
Speaker 2: In America, the Nazi can be there, but they will

911
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 2: always be outnumbered. Right to bring people together to create

912
01:01:22,280 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 2: a community around the broadest conceivable aperture that has any meaning,

913
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 2: and that's the American aperture. It doesn't mean anything to

914
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:35,800
Speaker 2: be a North American, it doesn't mean anything to be

915
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 2: a Western Hemispherian, but it means something to be an American.

916
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 2: And being an American should have dominance in my view

917
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 2: over any other identity.

918
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: In the in the in the country.

919
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 2: And and to be an American, you know, in this,

920
01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 2: in this moment of times, is to is to be

921
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 2: called on to believe in certain things and certain ideals

922
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 2: and certain principles.

923
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,000
Speaker 1: If you have a society.

924
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:16,360
Speaker 2: Where one of the political parties is uncomfortable arguing in

925
01:02:16,440 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 2: favor of the concept of the public good for whatever reason, right,

926
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 2: you're almost at an irrecoverable stage.

927
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 1: Right.

928
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:32,720
Speaker 2: So I grew up in New Jersey, and so not

929
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:37,640
Speaker 2: an ideological Republican, not a conservative Republican. This was the

930
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 2: Republican Party of Christy Whitman and Tom Cain. It was

931
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:47,800
Speaker 2: the moderate good government party right against against democratic machines.

932
01:02:48,080 --> 01:02:56,160
Speaker 2: Every person, without exception, almost right, can count the numbers

933
01:02:56,640 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 2: on my hands and toes. Every person that I ever

934
01:03:00,680 --> 01:03:03,120
Speaker 2: worked with in politics sold.

935
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:04,200
Speaker 1: Out on everything.

936
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:07,200
Speaker 2: Not what I thought that they believed in, but what

937
01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:10,680
Speaker 2: they said they believed in. Hey, they sold it out right,

938
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 2: they walked away, right, they walked away from it utterly completely.

939
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 1: And abandoned it. And so.

940
01:03:24,120 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 2: A politics that does not permit an argumentation that we

941
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:44,120
Speaker 2: are connected in a community through our Americanism puts us

942
01:03:44,160 --> 01:03:48,200
Speaker 2: in a lot of trouble because the only way that

943
01:03:48,360 --> 01:03:54,640
Speaker 2: you can deal with factionalism is by giving something broader

944
01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 2: and bigger for people to belong to. And what could

945
01:03:58,920 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 2: possibly be more glorious than belonging to the American family

946
01:04:07,200 --> 01:04:09,880
Speaker 2: that you'd rather trade that into the Maga family. And

947
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:14,920
Speaker 2: this is the fundamental deficiency right with the with the

948
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,240
Speaker 2: quote unquote such as they are the never Trump leaders

949
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:21,280
Speaker 2: in the Republican Party, like Larry Hogan, who's a great guy.

950
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:26,280
Speaker 2: Larry Hogan is in my view right Larry Hogan wants

951
01:04:26,280 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 2: to be the governor of your stay tremendous. He's completely competent.

952
01:04:29,880 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 2: Something terrible happens, He's going to be on the job.

953
01:04:33,120 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 2: He's a pragmatic guy or you gonna agree with everything

954
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 2: he does, no but totally responsible, functioning adult. And he

955
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:46,280
Speaker 2: says I'm not going to run for president. And he

956
01:04:46,400 --> 01:04:49,280
Speaker 2: talks about Trump and the Maga movement, but there's not

957
01:04:49,360 --> 01:04:52,960
Speaker 2: a word about the country right, just about the health

958
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:57,760
Speaker 2: of the Republican Party, as in, we need to fight

959
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:00,640
Speaker 2: and deal with this Maga movement because it's bad for

960
01:05:00,680 --> 01:05:03,560
Speaker 2: the Republican Party after five years, does it may cause

961
01:05:03,640 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 2: us to lose the next election as opposed to more broadly,

962
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 2: the societal cancer, right, that's that's been unleash by it,

963
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:13,440
Speaker 2: that needs treatment.

964
01:05:13,840 --> 01:05:16,720
Speaker 1: And so I guess, like my question for you, as we.

965
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 2: Kind of kind of run up on the end, is

966
01:05:18,720 --> 01:05:22,560
Speaker 2: why isn't Chris Murphy running for president? Because the person

967
01:05:23,280 --> 01:05:27,600
Speaker 2: who wrote this and understands this.

968
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:31,880
Speaker 1: Is a person.

969
01:05:33,280 --> 01:05:36,760
Speaker 2: Who should be running to lead this country.

970
01:05:37,440 --> 01:05:39,360
Speaker 4: You got to you gotta get him on and ask him.

971
01:05:40,280 --> 01:05:43,840
Speaker 4: I I, yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I mean,

972
01:05:43,880 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 4: I I think it's an interesting prospect from my perspective.

973
01:05:48,480 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 4: You have to talk to him about what he thinks

974
01:05:50,600 --> 01:05:51,240
Speaker 4: about diet.

975
01:05:52,200 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 1: I know that's an unfair question to you, but but

976
01:05:54,640 --> 01:05:57,440
Speaker 1: it is. But it is a but it is a.

977
01:05:57,280 --> 01:06:00,000
Speaker 2: Fair question because it's not fair to It's not fair

978
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,880
Speaker 2: to Chris Murphy, right, you know, philosophically, because I mean,

979
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:06,400
Speaker 2: first off, if you know this about Chris Murphy, right,

980
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:11,760
Speaker 2: the fact that his level of political fame is such

981
01:06:12,760 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 2: that it is, denotes a level of maturity, seriousness, decency,

982
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:19,840
Speaker 2: and normalcy.

983
01:06:20,880 --> 01:06:21,080
Speaker 1: Right.

984
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 2: The reason you don't know about him, you know, mister

985
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,320
Speaker 2: and missus Joe Q public like you might know about

986
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:30,560
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Green is because Chris Murphy is doing what

987
01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:31,680
Speaker 2: he's supposed to be doing.

988
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:32,560
Speaker 1: Right.

989
01:06:32,600 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 2: He's a very very effective advocate, right, he's doing hard work,

990
01:06:37,240 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 2: he's doing good things. He's thinking very deeply right about

991
01:06:42,400 --> 01:06:47,600
Speaker 2: like society, about the country, right about about the about

992
01:06:47,640 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 2: the about the family. But I think one of the

993
01:06:50,360 --> 01:06:55,360
Speaker 2: great crises philosophically is a crisis of cowardice in the

994
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 2: Republican Party.

995
01:06:57,360 --> 01:06:57,560
Speaker 1: Right.

996
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:01,800
Speaker 2: And so the thing that's always been true about the

997
01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:05,760
Speaker 2: country is it's produced the right leaders at the right

998
01:07:05,840 --> 01:07:12,160
Speaker 2: moment of time. Many of them have had terribly fatalistic endings.

999
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:18,880
Speaker 2: Many of them were reluctant to be called, but called

1000
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:31,600
Speaker 2: they were, and improbably they rendered profound service to the

1001
01:07:32,360 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 2: nation in terms of making it better. And it just

1002
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:38,440
Speaker 2: seems to me the country would be a lot better

1003
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 2: off in a better direction, you know, with more Chris

1004
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:49,120
Speaker 2: Murphy's in the Senate. Someday Chris Murphy's in the House,

1005
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:53,400
Speaker 2: and more Senator Murphy's into a presidential race, if not

1006
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:55,880
Speaker 2: this one or the next, because we're gonna have to

1007
01:07:55,920 --> 01:07:58,400
Speaker 2: start talking about some of this stuff at the end

1008
01:07:58,480 --> 01:08:00,400
Speaker 2: of the day.

1009
01:08:01,040 --> 01:08:07,720
Speaker 4: I think you're right, Yeah, I think I don't know exactly,

1010
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:11,800
Speaker 4: you know, how long we muddle along in a state

1011
01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:15,320
Speaker 4: of kind of relative functionality but a kind of like

1012
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 4: deep soulssness and like feeling of disconnection and disintegration. It

1013
01:08:21,160 --> 01:08:25,720
Speaker 4: doesn't seem like can go on forever. And yeah, I

1014
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:31,960
Speaker 4: think it's just just so deeply imperative that people just

1015
01:08:32,000 --> 01:08:32,800
Speaker 4: snap out of it.

1016
01:08:32,880 --> 01:08:34,400
Speaker 3: And people with power, like.

1017
01:08:34,360 --> 01:08:37,200
Speaker 4: People who have the luxury of thinking on a large

1018
01:08:37,200 --> 01:08:41,280
Speaker 4: scale about how are we to you know, run this

1019
01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:44,640
Speaker 4: the society we have together, you know, really need to

1020
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:48,839
Speaker 4: start thinking seriously about about where we are and and it's.

1021
01:08:49,160 --> 01:08:50,839
Speaker 3: You know, why are we doing? Why are we a country?

1022
01:08:51,200 --> 01:08:56,720
Speaker 2: Like almost without exception, every billionaire that I've ever met,

1023
01:08:56,880 --> 01:09:03,480
Speaker 2: and I've met a lot. There are a few exceptions

1024
01:09:03,520 --> 01:09:09,200
Speaker 2: to this. Oprah is an exception to this, But generally speaking,

1025
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:17,599
Speaker 2: your average billionaire has this exceptional talent at a thing.

1026
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:23,400
Speaker 1: Or did a thing. But most of.

1027
01:09:23,280 --> 01:09:28,839
Speaker 2: Them, through my experience, if you were to measure common

1028
01:09:28,960 --> 01:09:33,120
Speaker 2: sense on the one to ten scale, right, or you know,

1029
01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:37,400
Speaker 2: barely register above being able to cross the street by themselves, right,

1030
01:09:37,600 --> 01:09:42,440
Speaker 2: let let alone being involved in the politics of the country,

1031
01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:47,840
Speaker 2: or being perceived by the citizenrys having particular wisdom because

1032
01:09:47,880 --> 01:09:50,960
Speaker 2: they're wealth because most of them, in the language of

1033
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:54,280
Speaker 2: your ordinary guy out there, right, you know, would register

1034
01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:57,760
Speaker 2: when that ordinary guy meets them total fucking morons.

1035
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:03,480
Speaker 4: Look, and like we've so this Hungarian economist Carl Polanyi

1036
01:10:03,800 --> 01:10:08,880
Speaker 4: had this book early twentieth century where we talked about

1037
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:12,439
Speaker 4: the disembedding of modern economics, where we take economics out

1038
01:10:12,520 --> 01:10:15,400
Speaker 4: of any any sort of framework of understanding, like what

1039
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:17,719
Speaker 4: a society for, what are our goals as a people,

1040
01:10:18,040 --> 01:10:19,800
Speaker 4: and we sort of say, like, you know, we let

1041
01:10:19,840 --> 01:10:22,200
Speaker 4: the economy run on its own standards, right, And so

1042
01:10:22,920 --> 01:10:25,720
Speaker 4: that leads to a situation of something like shareholder capitalism,

1043
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:28,719
Speaker 4: where like if you're if you are increasing the value

1044
01:10:29,160 --> 01:10:31,479
Speaker 4: of the shares in the company, you are running a

1045
01:10:31,520 --> 01:10:35,040
Speaker 4: successful company by definition, right, And so you can get

1046
01:10:35,040 --> 01:10:38,679
Speaker 4: a Zuckerberg who's running a very successful company in Facebook

1047
01:10:38,760 --> 01:10:42,160
Speaker 4: or in Meta. I guess it's called because why because

1048
01:10:42,200 --> 01:10:45,560
Speaker 4: it's it's winning lots of users, it's keeping them engaged,

1049
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:49,000
Speaker 4: and it's turning lots of profits. Right, Like we we

1050
01:10:49,400 --> 01:10:52,439
Speaker 4: subtracted the question of like, okay, is it making good things?

1051
01:10:52,800 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 3: Right?

1052
01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:55,360
Speaker 4: Like, is it making things that are good for people?

1053
01:10:55,400 --> 01:10:57,960
Speaker 4: It's making things that are good for society. It's just

1054
01:10:58,160 --> 01:11:02,120
Speaker 4: it's been made a separate set of questions, right, So, like, yeah,

1055
01:11:02,120 --> 01:11:05,040
Speaker 4: you can become a billionaire with no deep sense of reality.

1056
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:08,240
Speaker 4: Like no, I mean there's a little sliver of reality

1057
01:11:08,240 --> 01:11:13,120
Speaker 4: you have to attend too well and perceptibly. But like, yeah,

1058
01:11:13,160 --> 01:11:16,760
Speaker 4: these aren't leaders in any robust sense for sure, right,

1059
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:18,599
Speaker 4: But but we have a system where you can get

1060
01:11:18,600 --> 01:11:21,920
Speaker 4: on this one track of like can you maximize shareholder value?

1061
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:22,320
Speaker 1: Oh?

1062
01:11:22,600 --> 01:11:22,920
Speaker 3: Can you?

1063
01:11:22,960 --> 01:11:25,040
Speaker 4: If so, then you are a success. You are in

1064
01:11:25,160 --> 01:11:28,680
Speaker 4: fact a great man or woman. It is despicable and

1065
01:11:28,720 --> 01:11:33,320
Speaker 4: like it's a crazy unsustainable way to to think about society,

1066
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:36,120
Speaker 4: to think about power, creativity, all this stuff.

1067
01:11:37,040 --> 01:11:40,759
Speaker 2: I think it's an incredibly small number of people who

1068
01:11:40,840 --> 01:11:51,760
Speaker 2: have any real chance and the necessary vision to get

1069
01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:55,719
Speaker 2: this country on the on the on the right path

1070
01:11:55,840 --> 01:12:00,559
Speaker 2: that are that are engaged within the current political system.

1071
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:05,080
Speaker 2: I think Gretchen Webmers and it is an extremely impressive

1072
01:12:05,160 --> 01:12:10,760
Speaker 2: leader in Michigan. I like Avin Newsom and uh and

1073
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:12,840
Speaker 2: I'm a I'm a big Chris Murphy fan.

1074
01:12:13,760 --> 01:12:17,720
Speaker 1: But when you when you look out ahead.

1075
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:21,479
Speaker 2: In these years ahead, we're gonna need to have an

1076
01:12:21,600 --> 01:12:28,800
Speaker 2: argument that evolves beyond the staleness of its present constitution

1077
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:30,800
Speaker 2: for sure, but you.

1078
01:12:30,680 --> 01:12:35,000
Speaker 4: Know, on a hopeful note, like I don't know that

1079
01:12:35,120 --> 01:12:39,479
Speaker 4: it's that hard. Like we talked about Bernie Sanders earlier today.

1080
01:12:40,360 --> 01:12:44,320
Speaker 4: He was electrifying to young people, electrifying, right, and.

1081
01:12:44,240 --> 01:12:45,920
Speaker 3: Like what was his message?

1082
01:12:46,040 --> 01:12:48,280
Speaker 4: It's messed with the billionaires for screwing people over, like

1083
01:12:48,320 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 4: we need to give working people a chance. Like it

1084
01:12:51,120 --> 01:12:56,080
Speaker 4: was no great active political genius. He's Look, he's an

1085
01:12:56,080 --> 01:12:58,920
Speaker 4: old guy, like he's from Vermont, like.

1086
01:12:59,320 --> 01:13:01,400
Speaker 1: He may have been, and he may have been the

1087
01:13:01,439 --> 01:13:02,800
Speaker 1: first person.

1088
01:13:04,040 --> 01:13:12,920
Speaker 2: Who just unquestionably undebatably in their lifetime. Uh. Well, first off,

1089
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:17,519
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders is an idealist, all right.

1090
01:13:18,320 --> 01:13:19,200
Speaker 1: He's an idealist.

1091
01:13:19,520 --> 01:13:21,840
Speaker 2: And you know, I have lots of things I don't

1092
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:24,519
Speaker 2: agree with them on, but he's an idealist, and people

1093
01:13:24,560 --> 01:13:30,280
Speaker 2: respond to idealism, right. And you know, inherent in the

1094
01:13:30,360 --> 01:13:36,840
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders message was an indictment but also a solution, right,

1095
01:13:36,920 --> 01:13:40,880
Speaker 2: And this is where some commentators have kind of confused

1096
01:13:40,880 --> 01:13:44,240
Speaker 2: the divergences in the message between a Sanders and a Trump.

1097
01:13:44,360 --> 01:13:44,479
Speaker 4: Right.

1098
01:13:44,600 --> 01:13:47,600
Speaker 2: You know, Bernie Sanders said we'll make it better. You know,

1099
01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:54,360
Speaker 2: Donald Trump said put me in power. You know, do

1100
01:13:54,520 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 2: different different things.

1101
01:13:57,040 --> 01:13:58,680
Speaker 4: No, he was going to make America great again. He

1102
01:13:58,720 --> 01:14:01,839
Speaker 4: didn't get around to them. Was that was the idea?

1103
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:06,519
Speaker 4: And I mean, Bernie, look like this is why I say, like,

1104
01:14:06,560 --> 01:14:09,519
Speaker 4: I don't like, I don't think we're miles and miles

1105
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:11,640
Speaker 4: away from being able to like produce these kind of

1106
01:14:11,640 --> 01:14:16,400
Speaker 4: individuals as a society. Like Bernie didn't necessarily have like

1107
01:14:16,720 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 4: a deep, beautiful, rich, multifaceted picture of what kind of

1108
01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:23,720
Speaker 4: society we're trying to produce, right, Like, he's not a

1109
01:14:23,720 --> 01:14:27,840
Speaker 4: great cultural thinker. Like what he understands is mostly like

1110
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:31,599
Speaker 4: material stuff is economics, Like are people being screwed? Yes,

1111
01:14:31,640 --> 01:14:33,559
Speaker 4: they are, Like we got to stop that. That's not fair,

1112
01:14:35,520 --> 01:14:37,760
Speaker 4: you know. And he resonated so much, and he electrified

1113
01:14:37,800 --> 01:14:42,599
Speaker 4: people so much, so I you know, I I think

1114
01:14:42,840 --> 01:14:44,760
Speaker 4: I don't know exactly what the mechanism is for sort

1115
01:14:44,800 --> 01:14:47,439
Speaker 4: of recruiting people like that to run for offices or whatever.

1116
01:14:47,479 --> 01:14:50,280
Speaker 3: But in the country this large.

1117
01:14:50,400 --> 01:14:52,680
Speaker 4: With these kind of resources, you got to believe that

1118
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:54,640
Speaker 4: we can produce people who, you know, who will have

1119
01:14:54,680 --> 01:14:58,160
Speaker 4: integrity and tell the truth. I don't know, you know, again,

1120
01:14:58,200 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 4: I don't know where to get him or how to

1121
01:14:59,280 --> 01:14:59,880
Speaker 4: get him running.

1122
01:14:59,880 --> 01:15:03,519
Speaker 1: But you gotta get them, We gotta get them.

1123
01:15:03,720 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 2: Well, I enjoyed the conversation today, Thank you very much

1124
01:15:07,240 --> 01:15:11,080
Speaker 2: for taking it, and I encourage everybody to read this

1125
01:15:11,280 --> 01:15:21,439
Speaker 2: remarkable op ed column that is so important for the country.

1126
01:15:21,520 --> 01:15:26,920
Speaker 2: It is the foundation of what can become a platform.

1127
01:15:27,360 --> 01:15:30,880
Speaker 2: It is the seeds of what can become a great

1128
01:15:30,960 --> 01:15:37,320
Speaker 2: political vision for reform. All of the stardust is in

1129
01:15:37,360 --> 01:15:43,519
Speaker 2: that essay, and you wrote it along with the United

1130
01:15:43,560 --> 01:15:47,519
Speaker 2: States Senator, and I think it's significant. Politics is a

1131
01:15:47,560 --> 01:15:53,640
Speaker 2: business of ideas, and you have called for something, not

1132
01:15:53,760 --> 01:15:59,200
Speaker 2: a policy, but for a reformation of the American spirit

1133
01:15:59,640 --> 01:16:07,040
Speaker 2: and a rehabilitation of the American character. Through it, we

1134
01:16:07,120 --> 01:16:11,840
Speaker 2: have a great crisis of character in America. We have

1135
01:16:12,000 --> 01:16:17,919
Speaker 2: a great crisis of cowardice. We have a political party

1136
01:16:18,600 --> 01:16:23,920
Speaker 2: that has betrayed itself, its traditions, its charter, and become

1137
01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:28,080
Speaker 2: faithless to the constitution that it exists to promote, preserve

1138
01:16:28,200 --> 01:16:32,559
Speaker 2: and defend. And thus the country is in an hour

1139
01:16:32,640 --> 01:16:40,080
Speaker 2: of crisis. And the defeat of this movement cannot simply

1140
01:16:40,200 --> 01:16:47,559
Speaker 2: be an electoral transaction, because at the end of the day,

1141
01:16:49,240 --> 01:16:54,479
Speaker 2: there will be an election when that ball, that fascist ball,

1142
01:16:55,000 --> 01:16:59,040
Speaker 2: is kicked through the goal and it gets in there

1143
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:02,360
Speaker 2: and a closely divided countries, so the only way out

1144
01:17:02,360 --> 01:17:06,720
Speaker 2: of this mess is to appeal to something better. And

1145
01:17:07,280 --> 01:17:10,640
Speaker 2: the better is what you guys wrote about, and you

1146
01:17:10,800 --> 01:17:13,360
Speaker 2: really deserve a tremendous amount of credit for it, and

1147
01:17:13,439 --> 01:17:17,880
Speaker 2: I appreciate your generosity with your time to be able

1148
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 2: to talk about these things and to talk about them

1149
01:17:21,120 --> 01:17:23,640
Speaker 2: a little bit abstractly, which I think is important to

1150
01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:24,440
Speaker 2: do sometimes.

1151
01:17:25,080 --> 01:17:27,519
Speaker 4: Well, amen, man, thank you, Amen to all of that,

1152
01:17:27,680 --> 01:17:29,439
Speaker 4: and thanks thanks for having me on.

1153
01:17:29,479 --> 01:17:30,799
Speaker 3: This is a lot of fun.

1154
01:17:30,960 --> 01:17:32,400
Speaker 1: You got it. Thank you.

1155
01:17:32,760 --> 01:17:33,400
Speaker 3: Important