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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of

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Speaker 1: today's best minds and the naacpieces. Florida's openly hostile and

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Speaker 1: travel advisory is slamming Desantas. Yale professor Jason Stanley, author

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Speaker 1: of How Propaganda Work, stops by to talk about.

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Speaker 2: Where he sees our politics heading.

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Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to the New Yorkers Adam Gopnik about

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Speaker 1: his latest book, The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery.

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Speaker 1: But first we have legendary campaign manager the Lincoln Project,

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Speaker 1: Stuart Stevens. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Stuart Stevens his

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Speaker 1: for asking the party. Why great to be you know,

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Speaker 1: I continue to be a fan and friend. I w

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Speaker 1: want to talk to you about at the Republican primary contest.

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Speaker 2: It's heating up.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I've done five of those. One was on the

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Speaker 3: winning side four times, lost one.

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Speaker 2: What was the winning one, Bob Dole?

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Speaker 4: Okay, that's right against our truly triumphant victory against Pat Buchanan.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a good one.

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Speaker 4: After losing New Hampshire to Pat Buchanan, we finally began

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Speaker 4: to beat him when he started holding large caliber weapons

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Speaker 4: over his head at photo lot in Arizona and wearing

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Speaker 4: a cowboy hat. If you can imagine any guy lived

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Speaker 4: his entire life in DC, you know, a classic Catholic family,

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Speaker 4: wearing cowboy hat and holding like a Winchester over his head.

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Speaker 3: It was sort of absurd. Then I worked for George Bush.

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Speaker 4: I moved down to Austin in ninety nine, where we

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Speaker 4: brilliantly managed to take a sixty five point lead into

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Speaker 4: New Hampshire and lose by nineteen Don McCain out spending

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Speaker 4: in three to one.

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Speaker 3: I have to say, you really have to get up

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Speaker 3: very early morning and work at that. It does not

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Speaker 3: happened by chance.

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Speaker 2: I went wrong.

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Speaker 4: McCain made the decision to only focus on New Hampshire

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Speaker 4: and basically run for governor of New Hampshire and the

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Speaker 4: way that all life imitates high school, when people like you,

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Speaker 4: you liked them, and he completely ignored Iowa. I predicted

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Speaker 4: at the time that by winning Iowa, whoever went Iowa,

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Speaker 4: you would get a bump, and that would compensate for

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Speaker 4: any sort of slingshot you above what was happening already

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Speaker 4: in New Hampshire.

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Speaker 3: That theory proved.

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Speaker 4: To be sort of like gravity is a regional phenomenon.

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Speaker 4: Bush won New Hampshire and went Iowa not very prettily nightmare.

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Speaker 3: We did the whole Iowa.

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Speaker 4: Caucusstant but we did the Iowa straw Pole thing the

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Speaker 4: year before, which is one of the great scams. And

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Speaker 4: then we went to New Hampshire and McCain this was

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Speaker 4: at its peak when he was doing the Straight Talk Express.

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Speaker 4: We would go, we would sneak away, like me and

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Speaker 4: mart McKinnon and our crowd, you know, we'd sneak away

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Speaker 4: and go to McCain rallies and then we go to

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Speaker 4: our Bush rallies and we're like, oh, they're having so

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Speaker 4: much more fun.

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Speaker 3: Actually, it's an interesting little moment there. You know.

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Speaker 4: For reasons that are complicated, we stopped polling at the

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Speaker 4: very end, in part.

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Speaker 3: Because we didn't know what we were going to do.

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Speaker 4: Differently, I got a call from the other side, as

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Speaker 4: you know, I have a lot of friends over there

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Speaker 4: working for McCain on the day of the election from

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Speaker 4: their poster good friends saying look, I'm you know, I'm

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Speaker 4: sorry about this. This is you know, I'm not going

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Speaker 4: to be easy. I said, well, I said, yeah, we're

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Speaker 4: going to lose, and then those kinds of a policy goes,

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Speaker 4: Oh you don't understand, do you? I said, what you're

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Speaker 4: going to get crushed? I said, well, like more than five,

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Speaker 4: there's another loan, polsy go is. The question is will

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Speaker 4: it be twenty?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? I was like, oh, okay, great.

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Speaker 4: So you know I went and told the governor and

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Speaker 4: our little crowd and Bush actually did it. You know,

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Speaker 4: I was going around Saint Ronald Reagan won New Hampshire

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Speaker 4: and fired everybody.

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Speaker 3: We're sucked.

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Speaker 4: And Busch got a little group together of us that afternoon,

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Speaker 4: and by then exupposed were coming in to confirm it,

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Speaker 4: and he said, look, and I screwed this up.

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Speaker 3: You guys screwed this up. It's gonna be a really

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Speaker 3: bad night.

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Speaker 4: But the only thing that's gonna pissed me off if

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Speaker 4: I hear anybody else in this room bad mouth to

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Speaker 4: anybody else in this room, it's just my fault. We're

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Speaker 4: gonna lose. We're gonna go down to South Carolina, we're

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Speaker 4: gonna win. And a year from today, all you guys

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Speaker 4: are gonna come to the White House and we're gonna

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Speaker 4: laugh about this, and you're gonna get drunk I don't

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Speaker 4: get drunk anymore. But we're gonna put this behind us,

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Speaker 4: so forget it. It's over. And it was, you know,

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Speaker 4: one of those moments when the campaign could have fallen apart.

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Speaker 4: You know, you walk out of that room just for

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Speaker 4: morning to like kill for the guy.

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Speaker 3: He was right.

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Speaker 4: We went down the South Caroline one and then I

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Speaker 4: did Bush when he ran it wasn't really much of

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Speaker 4: a race. Where running a race for re election in

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Speaker 4: the primary. And then I worked for Romney in two

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Speaker 4: thousand and eight. I got involved late in the campaign.

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Speaker 2: That was after Mark left because Mark had a deal.

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Speaker 2: Was meant he wasn't going to help him run against Obama.

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Speaker 3: That was only for McCain.

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Speaker 2: Oh, that was only for McCain.

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Speaker 3: He was learning for McCain.

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Speaker 4: And then we lost, and then to my surprise, Romney

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Speaker 4: decided to run again.

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Speaker 3: Romney was not planning to run.

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Speaker 4: People think, oh, you know, Mitt Ronney must have immediately

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Speaker 4: started planning to run. It's really not the case. You know,

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Speaker 4: the guy ran, he lost, he dealt with it. He

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Speaker 4: decided he wanted to write a book. And they've bought

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Speaker 4: this place out in California, sold a house where they

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Speaker 4: brought up the kids like a typical thing, you know,

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Speaker 4: the five kids.

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Speaker 3: That all graduate, all left the house. They're empty nesters.

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Speaker 3: And he was happy as a clam sitting there.

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Speaker 4: I used to go down and visit him there down

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Speaker 4: in La Jolla, and then his kitchen by the beach,

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Speaker 4: right in this book, and I never thought he'd run again.

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Speaker 3: He only ran again, really because the economy was so bad.

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Speaker 1: We're in this different time right now in American history

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Speaker 1: that seems very dark in a lot of ways.

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Speaker 4: Oh that is like saying in eighteen sixty, I don't know,

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Speaker 4: maybe bad things will happen.

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Speaker 2: Let's dig into that a little bit.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it seems so crazy that we were going

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Speaker 1: through normal political machinations when one side really doesn't believe

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Speaker 1: in democracy anymore.

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Speaker 4: I've been working on a new book. I've been thinking

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Speaker 4: about this a lot and reading a lot about this

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Speaker 4: a lot. And one of the keys when democracy slide

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Speaker 4: into autocracy is the ability for autocracy to use the

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Speaker 4: freedoms of a democracy to kill that democracy. And a

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Speaker 4: case in point would be the Trump town hall. They

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Speaker 4: want disappearance of normality. And to me, this is a

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Speaker 4: great challenge for journalists in the twenty and twenty four race.

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Speaker 4: It has the patina of being a normal political race.

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Speaker 4: You have both parties, yet they still call themselves the

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Speaker 4: same thing, whereas one has become an autocratic movement and

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Speaker 4: one has no basis in truth our system. And you

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Speaker 4: know this better that I of journalism always the greatest

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Speaker 4: good with objectivity, and it is not equipped to handle this.

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Speaker 4: All my journalist's friends and you have more and closer

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Speaker 4: than I are struggling with this. It's not a normal race.

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Speaker 4: And one of the challenges is how to talk about

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Speaker 4: it without sounding alarmist. And you know I always say

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Speaker 4: it's like a pandemic. Whatever you say at the beginning

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Speaker 4: of sound alarmist and in the end of be inadequate.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point.

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Speaker 4: It is the greatest danger we faced since eighteen sixty.

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Speaker 4: It's not a Trump phenomenon because the party has now

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Speaker 4: become trumpest. If this played out according to sort of

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Speaker 4: classic form, Trump wouldn't be the nominee and they would

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Speaker 4: probably going to DeSantis because it's typical autocratic movements to sort.

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Speaker 3: Of in their next stage, move to a more cleaned

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Speaker 3: up version.

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Speaker 1: Right exactly this week, I did a bulwark event with

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Speaker 1: those guys, and I am constantly having this same fight

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Speaker 1: with Sarah Longwell again and again, which is she says

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Speaker 1: that DeSantis is less dangerous than Trump, and my argument is,

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Speaker 1: actually he's ten times more dangerous because if you see

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Speaker 1: what he's done in Florida, Trump could never have done that,

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Speaker 1: could never have figured out how to do that kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I had a back and forth with David from about this,

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Speaker 4: because David wrote a piece basically saying the same thing

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Speaker 4: for The Atlantic. The plus side that I hear and

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Speaker 4: you talked to Sarah, you can tell what she said

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Speaker 4: is he's not crazy and he will function like a

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Speaker 4: normal politician.

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Speaker 3: I don't think not being crazy is really the standard.

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Speaker 2: But also the fascistic attitudes are still there.

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Speaker 1: Now I'm going to pull back and ask you a

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Speaker 1: question because you know, yesterday had red fleece fested. Glenn

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Speaker 1: Youngkin burst onto the scene not having announced, but having

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Speaker 1: a video that certainly looks like he's about to announce.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I mean, Glenn Younkin is a parable of what happened

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Speaker 4: to the Republican Party. He's the kind of guy at

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Speaker 4: the time in my life I would have loved to

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Speaker 4: have as a client. Seems like a normal human being,

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Speaker 4: had a lot of money, nice to film. But look,

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Speaker 4: so what happens. What happens to Glenn Younkin. So here's

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Speaker 4: the guy you know, comes out of corporate world. Carl

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Speaker 4: ol come saying, guy, but to advance in this party

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Speaker 4: ends up in Arizona standing next to a total fucking lunatic,

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Speaker 4: Carrie Lake, knowing that Carry Lake is a lunatic, and

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Speaker 4: you have to do that. It's not that Youngkin changed

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Speaker 4: Terry Lake. Terry Lake changed Younkin. And this is what

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Speaker 4: the party demands. You cannot advance in this party. You

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Speaker 4: get a debate up there. First question I would ask

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Speaker 4: is is Joe Biden. Was he elected an a legal,

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Speaker 4: unfair election? And that will be interesting. Asa Hutchinson, another

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Speaker 4: former client of mine, will say yes. I think that

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Speaker 4: Trump will say no. And what will Youngkin say? Maybe

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Speaker 4: he never would have gotten too a competitive primary in Virginia.

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Speaker 4: He was able to get the nomination by this convention

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Speaker 4: system that they have, so he never had to go

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Speaker 4: in front of the general Republican electorate. He ran a

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Speaker 4: racist campaign while he was out there attacking Margaret Walker.

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Speaker 4: He's sending his son to Georgetown Prep, which has seminars

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Speaker 4: to Margaret Walker.

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Speaker 3: Right, he knew what he was doing. So you can't

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Speaker 3: do this halfway.

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Speaker 4: You can't be sort of for democracy while you're trying

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Speaker 4: to rise in an anti democratic party.

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Speaker 3: You have to just confront it.

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Speaker 4: The only person really who's there's really no one doing that,

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Speaker 4: and you know, they very cleverly have said that you

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Speaker 4: can't get in a debate unless you'll endorge the nominee.

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Speaker 3: And this is where the whole language of.

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Speaker 4: This Molly is is very same because saying I will

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Speaker 4: support the nominee of a party, it's like saying nice

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Speaker 4: to meet you when you're meeting someone you're really not

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Speaker 4: glad to meet. It's just it's just a social convention almost,

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Speaker 4: I'll support the nominee of the party, but now harmless whatever.

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Speaker 4: But it's not when that person wants you to story

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Speaker 4: a democracy.

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Speaker 3: How do you deal with this?

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Speaker 4: So Asa Hutchinson, who I think has run in Canadas,

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Speaker 4: he's run the most honest campaign. I don't know if

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Speaker 4: you've been following, but he's the one when Trump was

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Speaker 4: indicted in New York he said we have to respect

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Speaker 4: the jury system. He's a former US attorney. But I

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Speaker 4: heard an interview with him and he was saying that

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Speaker 4: he wants to be in the debate, and yes, he

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Speaker 4: will say that he will support the nominee of the party,

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Speaker 4: because you have to say that to be in the debates.

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Speaker 3: So what is Chris Christy going to do?

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Speaker 4: Another former client of mine, is he going to say

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Speaker 4: he'll support the nominee. The irony of this is the

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Speaker 4: party is being destroyed by abandoning the vagus that it

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Speaker 4: claimed to say that it was for. You know, this

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Speaker 4: will the party that was the Character Counts party. Peggy

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Speaker 4: Newman wrote a book when character was king, and had

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Speaker 4: it believed in that and stuck by it, it would

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Speaker 4: never have accept the Trump.

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Speaker 2: But once you go down that road, you can't go back,

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Speaker 2: you yeah know.

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Speaker 4: And that's why you know what I thought when I

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Speaker 4: was working in the party were values turned out to

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Speaker 4: be marketing slogans?

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Speaker 3: Right? You know?

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Speaker 4: I was the idiot that like when you know Chevrolet

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Speaker 4: runs and ed saying that they're the heartbeat of America.

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Speaker 4: I was taking my Chevy to like a cardiologist.

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Speaker 1: So let me ask you. In Florida, you have DeSantis

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Speaker 1: fighting with Disney. We're finding ourselves in this you know,

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Speaker 1: Republican v capitalism versus capitalism kind of debacle.

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Speaker 2: What do you think about that?

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Speaker 3: Well, it's insane.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 4: I heard an interview with Larry Hogan, another client of

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Speaker 4: my former client. You know, I was just a little

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Speaker 4: lavy about it, like is there a governor of America

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Speaker 4: that doesn't want Disney? It is the most anti conservative imaginable.

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Speaker 4: And Desantas is a quintessentially sort of small damaged person.

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Speaker 4: Trump is sort of a quint essentially big damage person.

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Speaker 4: You're both damaged to go out and attack the Happiness company.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 4: It's almost like we were setting up a Saturday a joke,

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Speaker 4: like what if the governor Florida attacked Disney? You know,

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Speaker 4: you've got in a fight with Mickey Mouse and he's losing.

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Speaker 4: I mean it used to be so we go from

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Speaker 4: mister Gorbatrov, tear down this wall to I'm going to

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Speaker 4: fight with Mickey Mouse. It is the smallness of it.

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Speaker 4: It is the bathroom and bedrooms party.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 4: Ron Desanta spends more time talking about the bathrooms and

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Speaker 4: the genitalia of underaged girls and boys to anyone who

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Speaker 4: is not on a watch list or not a convicted pedophile.

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Speaker 3: It is just weird. Normal people don't do this.

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Speaker 2: But they think it's a winner for them.

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Speaker 1: I mean that they're responding to the someone has told

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Speaker 1: them this idea is a winner for them, right, I

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Speaker 1: mean they're not just coming up with this out of nowhere.

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Speaker 4: Well, someone has said it's a winner in a Republican primary.

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Speaker 3: I think they're wrong.

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Speaker 2: Is that Bannon?

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Speaker 3: You know, I'm not in that room.

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Speaker 4: I wouldn't be surprised if it is de Santus and

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Speaker 4: his wife. You know, the whole idea that ron to

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Speaker 4: Santas won Florida by nineteen points, so therefore he has

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Speaker 4: great skill as a national politician.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 4: I worked for Bill Well, Massachusetts Republican governor. He won

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Speaker 4: reelection by thirty three points in a blue state in Massachusetts.

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Speaker 4: That didn't mean that the Republican Party had changed and

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Speaker 4: he could take over the Republican Party. Rick Perry won

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Speaker 4: reelection by double digits in Texas.

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Speaker 3: And how did he do.

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Speaker 4: When he ran for president in two thousand and twelve

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Speaker 4: and he's running again.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, mcbromney took him apart in one debate.

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Speaker 4: DeSantis ran against Charlie crist Charlie crist was a client

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Speaker 4: of mine. I did all of Charlie's races when he

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Speaker 4: was a publican, and he won everyone. But in the

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Speaker 4: history of modern politics in America, no Switcher has won

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Speaker 4: a race for his former job, so Charlie law. So

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Speaker 4: they take that there is just a need to invent

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Speaker 4: DeSantis by the National Review crowd. He knows switch fork

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Speaker 4: to pick up. He is well educated. You know, he

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Speaker 4: won't embarrass you. He won't talk about having sex with

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Speaker 4: his daughter in public. But that's where the threshold sort

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Speaker 4: of is. But here's a guy talks about physically assaulting Falci.

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Speaker 4: I want to throw this little elf across the Potomac.

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Speaker 4: I mean, there was a time just saying that in

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Speaker 4: himself would be disqualifying. A governor talking about taking a

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Speaker 4: doctor who's saving millions of lives, who has saved millions

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Speaker 4: of lives and assaulting them, and he would say that space.

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Speaker 4: The essence of this whole trans thing is a way

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Speaker 4: to refight same sex marriage, and it never was accepted

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Speaker 4: by a lot of Republicans. They just got quiet about it,

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Speaker 4: and they're trying to relitigate that. It's very much a

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Speaker 4: party about going back to the past, afraid.

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Speaker 3: Of the future.

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Speaker 4: Iowa was a We're gonna have a whole conversation. I've

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Speaker 4: done all these Iowa primaries. It's like thirty three thousand

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Speaker 4: votes to win Iowa, right, It's like a little more

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Speaker 4: in the student body of the University of Texas. Jeff

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Speaker 4: row is running that campaign. He ran Ted Kruse's campaign.

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Speaker 4: He has a list of the people who voted for

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Speaker 4: Ted Cruz and nobody moves in Iowa. So and Mitt

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Speaker 4: Romney had run in two thousand and eight and coming

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Speaker 4: second in Iowa caucus in twenty twelve. Our plan initially

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Speaker 4: was to skip to Iowa caucus and used to call

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Speaker 4: it to Lebrea tar Pits of politics, it's.

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Speaker 3: So easy to go in, hard to get out.

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Speaker 4: But we had this list of everyone who voted for Mitt,

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Speaker 4: and we kept going back to this list, thinking that

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Speaker 4: they would drop off if Mid wasn't out there campaigning,

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Speaker 4: And by kind of the end of November, they were

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Speaker 4: still fer Mit.

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Speaker 3: So it was like, Okay, we'll do it.

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Speaker 4: So Mitt Romney campaign eight days in Iowa and want

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Speaker 4: it more or less, that's a path to victory potentially

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Speaker 4: for Trump. For the chances to take the cruise list

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Speaker 4: and run a very nuts and bolts campaign.

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Speaker 3: He could win Iowa.

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Speaker 2: Stuart Stevens, thank you so much.

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Speaker 3: Great to smalk.

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Speaker 1: Jason Stanley is a Yale professor and author of How

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Speaker 1: Fascism Works.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics. Jason Stanley, Thank you so much.

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Speaker 6: It's really great to be in conversation with you.

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Speaker 1: Well, very excited and you have two books.

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Speaker 2: But you know you're a brilliant academic.

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Speaker 1: But how fascism works and how propaganda works?

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Speaker 2: Why are you the person of the hour?

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Speaker 6: Was my first piece for The New York Times in

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Speaker 6: twenty eleven, I think, was on birtherism, Trump's conspiracy theory

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Speaker 6: about Obama. So I've been tracking this kind of rise

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Speaker 6: and disturbing propaganda means like conspiracy theories that unify figures

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Speaker 6: against the enemies and are sort of problematic in liberal

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Speaker 6: politics and liberal democratic politics. And I had always been

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Speaker 6: studying fascist propaganda. That sort of my interests have been

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Speaker 6: in My training is in philosophy, language and linguistics, and

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Speaker 6: I really got interested in the structure of propaganda, how

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Speaker 6: lots of different versions of propaganda work, and fascism was

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Speaker 6: of course part of that background. And it's something familiar

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Speaker 6: both from being a US citizen and.

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Speaker 2: Parents' background.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to me a little bit about your parents' background,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, I certainly, as a Nepo baby, have

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Speaker 1: found myself very affected by my parents' stories.

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Speaker 2: But your story is pretty interesting, Litosa.

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Speaker 6: That I'll begin with my mother. My mother was through

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Speaker 6: both my parents survived arts of the Holocaust. My mother

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Speaker 6: was in the Gulag in Siberia from nineteen nineteen forty

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Speaker 6: five and then, which she always talked.

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Speaker 2: Up as well she should, I mean, yeah, go ahead.

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Speaker 6: So because she wasn't being murdered along with her cousins

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Speaker 6: and aunts and uncles in.

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Speaker 2: Poland, how did she end up in the Gulag and.

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Speaker 6: Not shot over ditches? After the Multi Ribbon Trope packed,

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Speaker 6: they split Poland and the Nazis took half, Salin took

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Speaker 6: the other half.

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Speaker 3: And Stalin took one hundred.

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Speaker 6: And thirty thousand Polish Jews into the Gulag in Siberia

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Speaker 6: and eighty thousand survived. And it is the largest group

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Speaker 6: of Polish survivors of the Holocaust once who survived in Siberia.

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Speaker 6: So they were repatriated back to Poland in nineteen forty

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Speaker 6: five where they encountered a tremendous amount of anti Semitism, hatred, beatings,

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Speaker 6: and killings. And then nineteen forty eight many of them left.

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Speaker 6: My mother left it eight years old to New York City,

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Speaker 6: and my father is German Jewish from Berlin, and he

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Speaker 6: was seven when he left Berlin in July nineteen thirty

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Speaker 6: nine and arrived in New York City August third, nineteen

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Speaker 6: thirty nine, so just in the nick of time. But

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Speaker 6: he experienced castalinofft Both of them experienced very difficult childhoods,

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Speaker 6: which is always bad when you're complaining to your parents

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Speaker 6: about violence, that's right.

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Speaker 2: But it did, but it obviously made an impression on you. Yes,

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 6: I think a key moment, a key sort of lynchpin,

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Speaker 6: is that my mother worked for forty four years in

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Speaker 6: Manhattan criminal court. She was a Red Center Street during

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Speaker 6: the Central Park five case, and so through her I

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Speaker 6: learned about racial fascism in the United States. I think

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Speaker 6: that was one of my key I learned. She would

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Speaker 6: always talk about the parallels she saw with how the

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Speaker 6: criminal justice system treated Black Americans and her own experience

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Speaker 6: as a child. So that was something you know she

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Speaker 6: was the first to tell me the Central Mark five

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Speaker 6: were completely innocent. For instance.

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Speaker 1: Oh interesting, even during that time when people thought they

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Speaker 1: weren't right.

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Speaker 6: Like as you and I know, at the time, very

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Speaker 6: few people thought they were innocent, but everyone one hundred

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Speaker 6: center Street knew they were innocent.

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Speaker 2: Oh, so interesting. How you know.

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Speaker 6: My mom was disgusted with me when I didn't realize that.

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Speaker 6: She's like, it was a horrible crime, and their sentences

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Speaker 6: were so low. How could you not figure out that

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Speaker 6: we all knew they were innocent?

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Speaker 3: Oh?

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Speaker 2: Interesting?

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Speaker 6: Because there was no physical evidence, right, no evidence at all.

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Speaker 1: We had one of the exonerated five on this podcast

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Speaker 1: because he's running for office in.

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Speaker 5: The district I'm sitting here right now.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's incredible, and it has so much forgiveness

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Speaker 1: in his heart.

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Speaker 2: I don't know how you have that kind of forgiveness

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Speaker 2: in your heart.

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Speaker 1: After Yeah, but that speaks to this idea that you

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Speaker 1: write about, this way in which Trump was able to

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Speaker 1: capture a hard mentality the same way.

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Speaker 2: So talk us through sort of how that happened.

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Speaker 6: First of all, we have this history of racial fascism here. Yeah,

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Speaker 6: we sort of got rid of it in our national

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Speaker 6: politics in the nineteen sixties around the civil rights movement,

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Speaker 6: and Trump has always been leaning into this past and

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Speaker 6: the vilification of supposed black crime and black corruption Frump

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Speaker 6: CNN town Hall, he again reiterated the lies that in

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Speaker 6: black in cities with large black populations, there was massive

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Speaker 6: corrupt voter fraud, so, which is just straightforward racist trope

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Speaker 6: dating back to Reconstruction when they said black politicians were

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Speaker 6: too corrupt right democracy. Now we're getting a much more

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Speaker 6: sort of explicitly fascist structure. The highlighting of Ashley Babbitt's

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Speaker 6: killing January sixth, he's representing her as the Nazis represented

444
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 6: a forced vessel. Yes, the stormtrooper who was valorized as

445
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:15,359
Speaker 6: a martyr, and the person he shot, Ashley Babbitt, was

446
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 6: block so if you noticed, Trump called him a thug,

447
00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:24,360
Speaker 6: of course, the accepted code word for black people. So

448
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 6: Trump has continuously leaned into this kind of familiar white

449
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:35,840
Speaker 6: supremacy that is part of American history, but also combines

450
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:39,119
Speaker 6: it with a kind of patriarchal machismo that is going

451
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:42,800
Speaker 6: to bring in a multi racial coalition as we're seeing

452
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 6: behind the kind of macho sprouting authoritarian and now we

453
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:52,360
Speaker 6: have this kind of valorization of January sixth, Instead of

454
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:56,280
Speaker 6: being a coup against democracy, it's being presented as a

455
00:23:56,320 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 6: great patriotic moment in American history. All that is credibly dangerous.

456
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think, explain to me how multi racial

457
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:10,680
Speaker 1: fascism works, because it runs so counterintuitive, but it's clearly

458
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: something you talk about.

459
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:12,639
Speaker 2: Go on.

460
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 6: First of all, patriarchy, right, lots of groups have macho

461
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 6: men threatened by feminism, LGBT, et cetera. Patriarchy has always

462
00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 6: been central to fascism. It's it's you know, Ruth ben

463
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 6: Guillot's book Strong Men isn't about fast, but she emphasizes

464
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 6: the sort of macho, strutting male figure that's so appealing

465
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:41,679
Speaker 6: for authoritarian minded voters. Secondly, when you think about American fascism,

466
00:24:41,920 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 6: you have to think about what is the underlying group ideology,

467
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 6: social identity. That is, as it's basist in Germany and

468
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 6: Nazi Germany, it was at the Aryan rings here it's

469
00:24:55,200 --> 00:25:00,479
Speaker 6: Christian nationalism. So the way white Christian nationalism works is,

470
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 6: you know, you're told about the great achievements of the founders,

471
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 6: and you're told the founders were white Christian men, and

472
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,919
Speaker 6: then you're given a list of white Christian men and

473
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 6: great achievements. Then you think, oh wow, it's the white

474
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 6: Christian men who made this country what it is, and

475
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 6: that's the structure of what we see. But white Christian

476
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:26,119
Speaker 6: nationalism is also going to be Christian nationalism, and so

477
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 6: Christianity is going to draw a lot of people in.

478
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:34,680
Speaker 6: Certain fascist movements succeed when they can gather different groups

479
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 6: together in an electoral coalition. The different groups often of

480
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 6: conflicting agendas. Group of white supremacists, another group anti semites,

481
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 6: another group billionaires who want to use all that stuff

482
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 6: to get their taxes cut. So fascism succeeds at the

483
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 6: ballot box when a fascist leader can convince multiple groups

484
00:25:57,359 --> 00:26:00,719
Speaker 6: that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy.

485
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: Say you're black, I mean you just identify with the

486
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 1: misogyny more than the racism.

487
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 6: Yeah, you identify more of the misogyny than the race.

488
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:17,560
Speaker 6: And it's not just patriarchy, it's also anti socialism. It's

489
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 6: sort of libertarian capitalism. We're going to protect private property.

490
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:26,400
Speaker 6: The Nazis were obviously anti capitalists because capitalism was a

491
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 6: global system, but they were very strongly protective of private property.

492
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 6: They didn't believe Jews deserve private property. They constantly attacked

493
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:42,440
Speaker 6: institutions as Marxists and represented the Weimar Republic and government

494
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 6: institutions as threats to private the private property of Arians.

495
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 6: And so we find that dynamic here where it's also

496
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 6: anti socialism. That's part of it, and that's going to

497
00:26:55,280 --> 00:27:00,119
Speaker 6: attract libertarians. It's going to attract libertarian minded people of

498
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 6: all races.

499
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:01,880
Speaker 2: If you were to.

500
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,679
Speaker 1: Game this out in your head and you were to think, like,

501
00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,919
Speaker 1: what would in your mind the smartest thing for Biden

502
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 1: to be doing right now? Because remember it's like he's

503
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: running against Trump. This Republican Party has embraced all of

504
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:16,919
Speaker 1: these tenants now, so this is no longer right, Like,

505
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 1: is Trump more fascist than DeSantis?

506
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 2: I mean, they seem the same to me.

507
00:27:21,440 --> 00:27:24,959
Speaker 6: Correct. What we have is a fascist social and political movement.

508
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 6: In the literature, you divide the social and political movement

509
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 6: phase from the regime phase. We don't have a fascist regime. However,

510
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 6: we've allowed many of the states in this country to

511
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,360
Speaker 6: become little hungaries.

512
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 2: Right, Florida is the best example, but Texas too.

513
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 6: Florida, Texas, North Carolina. What you know, the Florida voters

514
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 6: voted to give former felons back their rights voting rights,

515
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 6: which would have enfranchised over a million Floridians. Desantas simply

516
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:58,919
Speaker 6: overruled that. All the voter suppression. You have super legislators

517
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 6: of Republicans in fifty to fifty Republican Democrat states like

518
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 6: North Carolina, so you have authoritarianism. None of that is democrodict.

519
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 6: I had allowed that to happen. So then the question

520
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 6: is why is Republicans are quite frankly reasonably saying why

521
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 6: can't we do that at the national level. So that's

522
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:18,880
Speaker 6: what's going on, So what can be done against it?

523
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:22,480
Speaker 6: So a lot of us, in communication with the various

524
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 6: people in the Biden administration, I think there was a

525
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 6: strong urge to sort of go new dealersh in response,

526
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 6: what when's the last time the United States faced a

527
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 6: sort of concerned explicit fascist movement? I mean, I think

528
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 6: Jim Crow is a fascist regime if that lasted very long,

529
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 6: to some extent still lasts. But in the thirties we

530
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 6: faced explicit fascism and we beat it because of the

531
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 6: supposedly that's the sort of commonly held belief. We beat

532
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 6: it because of the New Deal, which was oune of

533
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 6: money going to the white working class, the poor white

534
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 6: said du Boyce's sense. And so I think they administration

535
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 6: has taken that tactic as the Inflation Reduction Act wards

536
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 6: and all is an enormous expenditure on green jobs. It

537
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 6: spent a ton of money to working class Americans. That's

538
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 6: been the tactic of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, we're in

539
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 6: what I've called fascism's legal phase, where they've taken over courts,

540
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 6: they've taken their changing the laws to make minority rule

541
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 6: a permanent thing.

542
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm watching it happen in real time.

543
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 2: How do we stop this?

544
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 6: Welly, Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on how do we

545
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 6: stop it? Really good at describing what's happening, what will

546
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 6: happen if we don't. If you look at the literature

547
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 6: and look at you know, fighting racial fascism in the

548
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 6: United States, fighting fascism abroad in Europe, Latin America, labor

549
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 6: unions turned out to be key. It's something that sort

550
00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 6: of I spent a lot of years grappling with in

551
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:01,800
Speaker 6: the literature. But then you see it in real time

552
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:05,000
Speaker 6: right now, you see the labor unions fighting the attack,

553
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 6: the teachers' union fighting the attack on education. You see

554
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 6: labor movements across the country gaining more popularity for labor,

555
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 6: and fascism is always intensely anti labor union. So we

556
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 6: see that in the South. We see in the South

557
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 6: all these states are anti harshly anti labor. It goes

558
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 6: with the racism. So the labor movement has to be

559
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 6: central in the response here.

560
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: So interesting, So talk to me about propaganda, how propaganda works,

561
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: and a little bit about how you got there and

562
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: how we're seeing propaganda right now.

563
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 6: So earlier I talked about how my mother, who's a

564
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 6: Holocaust survivor, recognized parallels between the criminal justice system and

565
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 6: what was happening to Black Americans the criminal justice system

566
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 6: and what she experienced as a child. James Baldwin says

567
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 6: this at one point in his essay, Negroes are anti

568
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 6: Semitic because they're anti white. But brilliant where he says

569
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 6: he's talking about Jewish people, He's like, we know you're

570
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 6: glad not to be us. So I grew up and

571
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 6: in like twenty ten, once I started to realize the

572
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 6: scope of my mass incarceration and that many of us

573
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 6: white Americans had lived through the nineties thinking it was

574
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 6: a great decade, when when it goes, it was like

575
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 6: a horrific decade for our fellow black citizens. And you know,

576
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety one, the crime rate starts dropping precipitously. And

577
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 6: then we had super predator theory. We had the Clintons

578
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 6: leaning into qulification black Americans to win votes at the ballots.

579
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 6: And I realized I had been subject to propaganda, like

580
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 6: I had completely missed a human rights disaster.

581
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 2: It was happening in front of you.

582
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 6: Happening in front of me. Tim Snyder and I teach

583
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 6: a course mass incarceration in the United States and the

584
00:31:57,880 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 6: Soviet Union.

585
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I wanted to take that class. That sounds amazing.

586
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 6: It is, it is great. So trying to figure out

587
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 6: how my country, my home country, the United States, became

588
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 6: the world's largest incarcerator, how the formerly in twenty fourteen,

589
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 6: the formerly enslaved population of the United States was ten

590
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 6: percent of the world's prison population. And wondering how you

591
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 6: could sort of wander around to the streets of America

592
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 6: thinking this is a free country when it's a giant

593
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 6: prison state. Was what got me into the topic of propaganda,

594
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 6: and it led me to think about the nineteen thirties

595
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 6: in Germany, which was a happy time for many Germans

596
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 6: who saw on out of the corner of their eye

597
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 6: what was happening to my family and others, But you know,

598
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 6: it was a great time for most Germans. I started

599
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 6: to think about how propaganda can mask for us what's

600
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 6: going on right before our eyes. A lot of people

601
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 6: when Trump happened, they were surprised, but I wasn't surprised

602
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 6: because I was working on this history of the United States.

603
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 6: And when you're kind of brutalizing one portion of the

604
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 6: population with militarized police and prison, massive prison, why wouldn't

605
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 6: you that move to sort of general authoritarianism. You already

606
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 6: kind of lawlessness for part of the population. And Trump

607
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 6: is leaning into the American tradition that justify that sort

608
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 6: of raises hysteria about you know, cities engulfed in crime,

609
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 6: which Trump, of course has been doing his whole life,

610
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 6: supposed black crime, and raises the ancient fears that white

611
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 6: people need to protect themselves.

612
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: So where does this go? We're out of time, but

613
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: just give me a quick where this goes?

614
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 6: Well, one thing that's optimistic is these are old forces.

615
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 6: We shouldn't think that we're facing something new, because when

616
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 6: aism comes, it repeats the practices of the past. So

617
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 6: we see ron dessentism, foringly, going back to sort of

618
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 6: scrubbed up versions of Jim pro tactics, voter suppression, massive

619
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 6: policing of the schools, so you have a white education

620
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 6: that places white Christian nationalism center stage. So we face

621
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 6: this before, so we have historical.

622
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 3: Understanding of what to do.

623
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 5: We will need.

624
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 6: Mass protests, possibly at a certain point, and you'll need

625
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 6: to raise alarms something like the Civil Rights movement, where

626
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 6: you raise alarms about the loss of democracy, where ultimately

627
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 6: I think we have to make sure that all the

628
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 6: states in the United States are actual democracies. We've let

629
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:39,759
Speaker 6: the authoritarianism go too far.

630
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: Those mass protests actually work, I mean they've worked in Israel.

631
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: But we're at a time. Please, Jason, I hope you

632
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: will come back.

633
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'd love to anytime.

634
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 6: Hi.

635
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: It's Molly, and I am wildly excited that for the

636
00:34:54,719 --> 00:35:00,240
Speaker 1: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now,

637
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: is going to have merch for sale over at Shop

638
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 1: dot fastpoliticspod dot com.

639
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 2: You can now buy shirts.

640
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 1: Hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs.

641
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:18,319
Speaker 2: We've heard your cries to spread the word.

642
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: About our podcast and get a tow bag with my

643
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 1: adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it, and now you

644
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.

645
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 2: Thanks for your support.

646
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,920
Speaker 1: Adam Gopnik is a writer at The New Yorker and

647
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: author of the Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery.

648
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Adam Gottnik.

649
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 5: It's wonderful to be with you, Molly. It's been a joy,

650
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 5: you know, having known you so long, to have watched

651
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,320
Speaker 5: your evolution and to be listening to you all the

652
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,279
Speaker 5: time doing this and now to be a discipline is

653
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 5: a special pleasure.

654
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:04,879
Speaker 1: Well, I am very excited to have you here, and

655
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: I feel like you have also had many iterations. You

656
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:11,359
Speaker 1: have been doing this a long time, and you have

657
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: an incredible breath of knowledge, and you have also more

658
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: importantly a new book out. But first let us talk

659
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: about what the hell happened last night?

660
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 2: Would that see in town Hall?

661
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 5: You know, I was out actually seeing this new production

662
00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 5: of Oliver with Rola Sparza, and I was on a

663
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 5: real high because it's wonderful, and then came back and

664
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 5: idly did what none of us should ever do, which

665
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 5: is see but how did that go? And then became

666
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:43,360
Speaker 5: aware of it. A million people can itemize all of

667
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 5: the vile absurdities of the thing. What I will say is,

668
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,359
Speaker 5: and I say this not in self congratulation, but in

669
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 5: perpetual warning that back in twenty sixteen, when people were

670
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 5: so Trump, I was writing urgently, desperately in the New

671
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:02,560
Speaker 5: Yorker where I work, in a note of political excitation,

672
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 5: that it was not typical for me about how dangerous

673
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 5: this guy was, how uniquely dangerous he was. Now I

674
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 5: sound like Trump. I may have been the first person

675
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 5: to say I actually think I was that he was

676
00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 5: a fascist. Now we can argue forth Molly about you

677
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 5: know how what we want to call fascists and whatnot.

678
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,760
Speaker 5: Key point about making that point is not that Trump

679
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,799
Speaker 5: is on an absolute moral plane with Hitler or a Mussolini.

680
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 5: It's exactly when you know, you go see the dermatologists

681
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 5: to show him a mold, to ask if it's a

682
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 5: melanoma or just a pimple. Not because it's already stage

683
00:37:36,040 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 5: four cancer, because you want to know what the pathology

684
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 5: is and what the outcome is likely to be. When

685
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:48,319
Speaker 5: you recognize that Trump is essentially part of an ongoing authoritarian,

686
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 5: right wing nationalist movement that we should call for short, fascist,

687
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 5: you recognize how dangerous he is. And back in twenty sixteen,

688
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 5: when I was saying that, saying that he represented that

689
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:03,839
Speaker 5: he was an absolutely hostile figure against anything one could

690
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 5: recognize as the liberal democratic order, I was perpetually as

691
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 5: I'm sure you were too, and as other Pressian people

692
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 5: were mocked and derided and alarmist by the full range

693
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 5: of New York Times conservatives, and I was right.

694
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: We all were writing, Yeah, I want to read a

695
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 1: line you have here, So you have this paragraph. The

696
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 1: Murdoch media congomerate has been ordered to acquiesce. It's no

697
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:30,240
Speaker 1: surprise that it has. But Trump's other fellow travelers, including

698
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: Roger Stone, the Republican Political Operative, and Dirty Trickster. And

699
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: then and you mentioned Alex Jones, a ranting conspiracy theorist

700
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: who believes in a global plot where in an alien

701
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: force out of this world is attacking humanity. Not to

702
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: mention Jones marketing of the theory that Michelle Obama is

703
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: a transvestatee who murdered Joan Rivers. But I think this

704
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:53,400
Speaker 1: is the line. These are not harmless oddballs Trump is

705
00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 1: flirting with. This is not the lunatic fringe. These are

706
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: the lunatics.

707
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 5: Thank you, Molly. I like that line, and I wrote

708
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 5: it a long time ago, seven years ago, and it

709
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,239
Speaker 5: was ever more true last night. This is not the

710
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 5: lunatic fringe. Every political party has got a center and

711
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:10,720
Speaker 5: a left wing and a right wing, and it's got

712
00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:13,720
Speaker 5: nuts around the edges, and we can recognize it, whether

713
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 5: it's the Labor Party in Britain or the Democratic Party

714
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 5: in the United States, take your pick. This is not

715
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 5: the lunatic fringe that Trump is flirting with. These are

716
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 5: the lunatics whom he speaks for it, you know, and

717
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 5: we I'm so acclimatized to it. And to use a

718
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:30,160
Speaker 5: word that I know is overused but is essential here.

719
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 5: It is still so much in the process of being normalized.

720
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:33,920
Speaker 3: You know.

721
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 5: Of all the things I read this morning about it,

722
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:38,040
Speaker 5: I thought that what Michael fanone is that how you

723
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 5: pronounce his name?

724
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:40,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The police officer.

725
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 5: The police officer was the shrewdest and the most acute.

726
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 5: He said, what happened last night is that you're setting

727
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:50,840
Speaker 5: up the idea that accepting or not accepting the results

728
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 5: of an election is a choice. Politicians choose to accept

729
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 5: the results of election or not. You can say, oh,

730
00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 5: it's you're wrong, But then he answers, I'm right, and

731
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 5: therefore you have set up right away a kind of

732
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 5: ping and pong. Well, maybe he's a little bit right.

733
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 5: And so we've never before had in American history, at

734
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 5: least since the Civil War, a figure who was aggressively

735
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 5: and unmistakably an enemy of the democratic constitutional order. And

736
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 5: to continually treat this guy as a political phenomenon, as

737
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 5: CNN did last night, as The New York Times, since

738
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:28,359
Speaker 5: this I'm doing day after day as simply one more

739
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 5: figures on this spectrum as well, maybe flirting with the

740
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 5: lunatic fringe but not actually embedded with the lunatics, I

741
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 5: think is just an historic mistake of such enormous proportions

742
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 5: that I fear the consequences, and I fear them particularly Molly,

743
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 5: because I wrote a piece early on in the Biden

744
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 5: administration called Biden's Invisible Ideology, and what I was trying to.

745
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 5: It was meant to be a kind of sympathetic account

746
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 5: because what I sensed, with no inside knowledge, was that

747
00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 5: Biden and the people around him, who deliberately did not

748
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,840
Speaker 5: take on all of Trump's Michigoths about the election and

749
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 5: the rest of it, had a smart, intuitive sense. There's

750
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 5: a great old boxing coach named Charlie Goldman who once said,

751
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 5: never play a guy in a game he invented, because

752
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 5: he didn't invent it to lose at it. And that's

753
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 5: very wise, right. And if you played Trump's game, you lose,

754
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 5: because that's Trump's game. I understand the logic of that.

755
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:26,200
Speaker 5: And they decided to invest in restoring and renewing institutions,

756
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 5: which I profoundly believe in, and in lowering the price

757
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 5: of insulin. When Trump was screaming about his wall and

758
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 5: the rigged election, I recognized the decency of that, and

759
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 5: I recognize a certain kind of logic in it too.

760
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 5: But in every historical struggle between institutionalists and fascists, the

761
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:46,840
Speaker 5: fascist win because they do not respect the institutions, and

762
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 5: these sists are left looking around at the end saying, hey,

763
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,720
Speaker 5: what happened here? We did everything right? We did everything correct,

764
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:56,840
Speaker 5: and they're shocked that they have lost and that the

765
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 5: institutions they were trying to defend and protect have been destroyed.

766
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 5: And I am terribly frightened that we are seeing this

767
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 5: year and what happened last night was one more episode

768
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:07,719
Speaker 5: in the destruction of liberal institutions.

769
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus, all right to talk to me about the book.

770
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 5: Well, the book is actually my new book. The real

771
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 5: work on the mystery of mastery is actually in an

772
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 5: odd way that I've been trying to articulate out on

773
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 5: the road, and I am the Willy Lowman of American literature.

774
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 2: Molly the Mystery of mastering exactly.

775
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 5: I go from town to town with my satulate books,

776
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 5: trying to be well liked, like welly and selling them.

777
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 5: One of the things I've learned on the road is

778
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 5: people ask me often because my last book, A Thousand

779
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 5: Small Sanities was explicitly a defense of liberalism, by which

780
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 5: I mean not just the progressive wing of the Democratic Party,

781
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 5: but the much broader moral adventure of trying to have

782
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 5: democratic procedures and egalitarian institutions in the world. That that

783
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 5: was what that last book was about. And people say,

784
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 5: this new book, where are the politics in this new book,

785
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:58,720
Speaker 5: because it's all about my own exotic adventures in learning

786
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 5: to do new things in middle age. I learned to drive,

787
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 5: I learned to draw, I learned to box with my

788
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 5: daughter Olivia, who you know well, to dance, which is

789
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,720
Speaker 5: the climax of the book, is Olivia and I dancing

790
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 5: out in the esplanade, real dancing foxtrot and waltz with

791
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 5: the teacher to Sinatra records out in the Esplanade in

792
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 5: Central Park at the height of the pandemic. That's the

793
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 5: image of the book ends on Oh wow. So the

794
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 5: question people have asked is, well, is this sort of

795
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 5: a diversion from that, you know, kind of saying whoo,

796
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 5: we got through that by the skin of our teeth, perps,

797
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 5: we did. So now we can go out and elves

798
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 5: and improve ourselves. And that's not really my intention at all.

799
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:38,160
Speaker 5: On the contrary, and forgive me if I sound a

800
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 5: little pretentious about it, what I was trying to do

801
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 5: was talk about pluralism because the key I think, the

802
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 5: key idea, the key concept for liberal democracy, is the

803
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 5: idea of pluralism. It's as important, if not more important,

804
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:57,000
Speaker 5: than the idea of democracy. Or the idea of equality,

805
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:00,080
Speaker 5: or it's about the idea that we accept the known

806
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 5: that many, many different kinds and classes and creeds can

807
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 5: coexist without killing each other, which is a very new

808
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 5: idea in the history of humanity. The preceding idea was

809
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 5: always that, well, all of those creeds and classes and

810
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,319
Speaker 5: kinds will war with each other and mascuer each other

811
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 5: until somebody dominates. That's the core ideology, by the way

812
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 5: of Trumpism, as it is of all fascism, that all

813
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 5: of life is simply a contest for domination, and somebody

814
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 5: will win, and someone will lose, and the winner will

815
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 5: destroy the loser will exterminate the loser. And the core

816
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 5: idea of liberalism as it's grown up since the Enlightenment

817
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 5: is exactly the idea that you can coexist, that you

818
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:44,240
Speaker 5: can not only accept but embrace a pluralism of different kinds.

819
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:46,279
Speaker 5: You know. The image I used in the book is

820
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 5: when I like you know, you go out on a

821
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:51,880
Speaker 5: Friday night into Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and the sat Mars

822
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 5: are celebrating in their way, and the Labovators in their way,

823
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 5: and the hipsters in another way, and sometimes can't tell

824
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 5: the hipsters from the Hastam right, because they dress a like.

825
00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:03,439
Speaker 5: That's the glory of a liberal city like New York

826
00:45:03,560 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 5: is we coexist. We sometimes, we have difficulties, often we do,

827
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 5: but basically we accept that principle of pluralism. The point

828
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:12,400
Speaker 5: I'm trying to make in this book is that principle

829
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 5: of political pluralism rests on a principle of a pluralism

830
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 5: of pleasures. That we only can get to a pluralism

831
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 5: of opinions if we're rooted in things we genuinely like doing,

832
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 5: if we're rooted in all the little activities that bring

833
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 5: us together as people across classes and kinds, that show

834
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 5: us in advance that it is possible to coexist. You know,

835
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 5: my hero in this regard, and it's funny, you know

836
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 5: I mentioned that the book ends with Olivia and I

837
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 5: dancing together in Central Park is Frederick Law Olmsted. And

838
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 5: it was the great designers appoint of at Homestead that

839
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 5: he was oho a journalist, a writer for he was

840
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,320
Speaker 5: a park designer, and he went south to the Slave

841
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 5: States and he said, not only is this and obviously brutal, cruel,

842
00:45:55,600 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 5: oppressive culture, but it oppresses the masters in its own ways,

843
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 5: not to mention, obviously the slaves. And one of the

844
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:05,920
Speaker 5: ways it does is that it eliminates the possibility of

845
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 5: what he called beautifully commonplace civilization, that is, all the

846
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 5: small ways in which people interact with each other on

847
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 5: a daily basis, because if you live in a society

848
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 5: of fear and terror, you can't have those kinds of interactions.

849
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 5: And he wanted Central Park to be a place for

850
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,720
Speaker 5: commonplace civilization, a place where people, a park for people

851
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 5: of very different backgrounds, very different kinds, very different pleasures

852
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 5: could all coexist in a pluralistic way. And this book

853
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 5: by talking about my own pluralism of pleasures. Learning to

854
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:43,439
Speaker 5: drive from an Ecuadorian immigrant, learning to draw from an

855
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:48,760
Speaker 5: inspired but kind of crazy old style reactionary not crazy

856
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:53,439
Speaker 5: but determinedly backward looking, learning to do or at least

857
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 5: observing magic with a brilliant, irascible Brooklynite. It's all about

858
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 5: how every time that in every everything we do, we

859
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 5: are necessarily everything we are. You know, when you learn

860
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 5: to do something like driving, you are forced into the

861
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 5: broader society of drivers. You're forced to confront the way

862
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 5: that cities are self organizing, that we amazingly if you,

863
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:19,359
Speaker 5: like Molly, we sort of obey traffic laws even when

864
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 5: nobody is enforcing them, because we recognize that it's the

865
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 5: only way all of us can coexist in traffic is

866
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 5: through those things. So that in that own steady and sense,

867
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:34,800
Speaker 5: a pluralism of pleasures always has to be the foundation

868
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 5: for pluralistic politics, and that's very much what this book

869
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 5: is about.

870
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:42,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. What was the thing that you learned

871
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: where you were like, I'm not going to.

872
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 5: Be able to learn this well, drawing, you know, classical drawing.

873
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 5: I'd say at some point in the book that what

874
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 5: we basically do in life, we like to tell ourselves, oh,

875
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 5: I'm just concentrating on the things I'm good at. Basically

876
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 5: what we do is we banish the things we're bad

877
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:58,759
Speaker 5: at so we don't have to think about them. And

878
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,760
Speaker 5: you know, we spend our time elementary school just being

879
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 5: you know, shamed and humiliated and pained every day by

880
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 5: everything we can't do. We can't do algebra, we can't

881
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:09,760
Speaker 5: do trigonometry, we can't do drawing, And then we find

882
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:11,920
Speaker 5: a niche in life where nobody asks us to do

883
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 5: those things, and then we think we've actually gotten good

884
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 5: at something. We haven't. We've just banished the bad. And

885
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:19,360
Speaker 5: drawing is one of those things for me. You know,

886
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 5: you put me in front of a sheet of paper

887
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 5: and I stab away as though like Lady Macbeth with

888
00:48:26,080 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 5: a dagger. And I had a wonderful teacher, Jacob Collins,

889
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 5: and he got me to loosen my wrist and to

890
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 5: draw underhand instead of overhand, and step by step he

891
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 5: got me relaxed enough so that I could begin the

892
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 5: business of drawing nude bodies in half light. That was

893
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 5: the most resistant thing, because when I first tried it,

894
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 5: I just had tears in my eyes. I thought, I

895
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 5: will never be able to do this, and I never

896
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:53,760
Speaker 5: can claim to be good at it. But I'm certainly

897
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:56,920
Speaker 5: better at it than I was when I started. And

898
00:48:56,960 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 5: that was the single most sharing thing. Driving is well,

899
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:02,239
Speaker 5: you know, I didn't learn to drive until I was

900
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 5: in my fifties. And Luke and I got our licenses

901
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 5: literally not just on the same day, but within the

902
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:11,279
Speaker 5: same hour from the same driving judge, from the same

903
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:13,759
Speaker 5: driving inspector. And I think that may be the only

904
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 5: time in New York City history where a fifty five

905
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 5: year old father and a twenty year.

906
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 2: Old life I'm sure it's not.

907
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 5: No, probably not.

908
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:21,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it is New York.

909
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 5: This is everything has happened at least once. There's nothing

910
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 5: so peculiar that it has happened many times.

911
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: That's part of the joy.

912
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,320
Speaker 5: Of living in New York. Actually, nothing singular can happen exactly.

913
00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 5: I want to.

914
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 1: Ask you because I have relatives, close relatives suffering from dementia.

915
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 1: There's some evidence that learning new things can actually grow

916
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,240
Speaker 1: these pathways in your brain and can make you less

917
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:46,920
Speaker 1: likely to become demented.

918
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 5: I too have a close relative struggling with dementia. And yes,

919
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 5: that is one of the things that comes up again

920
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:56,600
Speaker 5: and again in the literature. I don't want to hold

921
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 5: it out as some kind of pantacea, because it isn't.

922
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,400
Speaker 5: It doesn't have that form. But what is certainly and

923
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 5: arguably true is that the lives of the aging are

924
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 5: immeasurably enriched by pursuing new activities, even if they're they're

925
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 5: at war with their own brains as tragically so many

926
00:50:15,520 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 5: I did a piece Molly about the science of aging

927
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:21,399
Speaker 5: and the tragedy of it is that medicine has given

928
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 5: us twenty years of extra life gross on motive, but

929
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 5: has nothing to do yet for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But

930
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 5: what's certainly true is that our access to happiness through

931
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:36,400
Speaker 5: our absorption in a new activity is just as profound,

932
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:40,320
Speaker 5: if not more profound, at sixty five or seventy or eighty,

933
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 5: as it is when we're kids. You know the basic

934
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:46,280
Speaker 5: rhythm of accomplishment, which is the thing I'm writing about.

935
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:49,279
Speaker 5: Whether you're learning, you know, beatle guitar chords when you're

936
00:50:49,320 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 5: twelve years old, or you're learning, as I did, to

937
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 5: box when you're in your sixties, the basic rhythm is

938
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:57,720
Speaker 5: always the same. You break it down into its smallest parts.

939
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,759
Speaker 5: You know, boxing, you don't unleash your beligion insurance. My

940
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:03,840
Speaker 5: boxing teacher is an incredibly sweet, cool guy named Joey Contrada,

941
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 5: and he once said, very un self consciously, oh, it's terrible.

942
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 5: The other day in the boxing gym, a fight broke out. Instead,

943
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 5: you've learned this very tight choreography of jabs and crosses

944
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:21,320
Speaker 5: and slips and undercuts, and that's what boxing is about.

945
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 5: And it's very exhausting at first, because none of that

946
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:26,880
Speaker 5: sequence will make sense to you. You know, you're thinking about

947
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 5: it all the time, but with passion and perseverance, it

948
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 5: turns into overtime, a somewhat seamless sequence, and where you're

949
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,320
Speaker 5: not any longer thinking about throwing the right punches in

950
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 5: the right order. They're just coming, They're happening, and the

951
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 5: high we get, you know, psychologists sometimes call that the flow,

952
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:47,239
Speaker 5: that we enter into the flow, but I just think

953
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 5: of it as happiness, because what's happiness, after all, except

954
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:54,839
Speaker 5: absorption in some activity, meaningful activity outside ourselves. That's when

955
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 5: we all feel happiest, including sex, one might add, but

956
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 5: and taking in everything else's well, and that's always available

957
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:04,879
Speaker 5: to us. And if there's a kind of message for

958
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:08,080
Speaker 5: those of us who are who are entering middle age,

959
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:10,840
Speaker 5: to put it politely, that the book wants to send,

960
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:15,880
Speaker 5: is that pursuing a passion a new accomplishment imperfectly provides

961
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 5: you with every bit as much of that flow, every

962
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 5: bit as much of that cognitive opiate of absorption as

963
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 5: anything we did when we were twelve years old.

964
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 2: So interesting, Thank you, thank you, thank you.

965
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,239
Speaker 1: Adam Gopnik, tell us what the book is called again,

966
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:33,879
Speaker 1: I will do it in the intro too.

967
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 5: It's called The Real Work on the Mystery of mastery

968
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 5: by me, and as I say, it's an account of

969
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 5: my adventures in learning and struggling. It's in the mystery

970
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 5: of mastery. I don't claim mastery, but I claim some

971
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 5: insight into the mysteries of mastery. And as your listeners

972
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 5: now know and no one else does, it's undergirding is

973
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 5: to be about how pluralism of pleasures underlies pluralistic politics.

974
00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 5: So saying thank you, Adam as you're talking to Molly always.

975
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 2: A moment, Jesse Cannon, Molly John Fast what do you

976
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 2: see that this death ceiling thing? I think people are

977
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:14,280
Speaker 2: starting to get a little nervous.

978
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:19,560
Speaker 1: It's a completely fake thing that Republicans have decided they

979
00:53:19,600 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 1: can do to make life hard for Democrats. It started

980
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. When there's a Republican president, Republicans pass

981
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 1: the dead ceiling. When there's a Democratic president, Republicans don't

982
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: pass this dead ceiling. And so we know it's bullshit.

983
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 1: And for that, as Republicans to keep the entire federal

984
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: government hostage, they are our moment of fuckery. That's it

985
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,

986
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes

987
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,

988
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,000
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the common

989
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 1: conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.