Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Our next guest is an award winning journalistic communications consultant
Speaker 1: who has worked for both A Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.
Speaker 1: He's a guest speaker at Stanford n YU. He's also
Speaker 1: a digital media producer who has worked with the likes
Speaker 1: of David Bowie, Moby Santana, Britney Spears, and a lot
Speaker 1: of others. Spencer Critchley is managing partner at the marketing
Speaker 1: agency Boots Road Group. He's got to do book out.
Speaker 1: It's entitled Patriots of Two Nations, Why Trump Was Inevitable
Speaker 1: and What Happens next. Spencer joins us on the phone
Speaker 1: in Monterey, California on this election day. Spencer, nice to
Speaker 1: have you here with us. Oh, it's great to be
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you. So I want to be smart
Speaker 1: here without getting to political and pointing figures, because I
Speaker 1: feel like there's enough divisiveness and anger within our country
Speaker 1: right now. Um, and I don't want to point fingers
Speaker 1: at a candidate or another. But your book, what I
Speaker 1: like about it is you look at history and I
Speaker 1: read something that you wrote, UM about it, about you
Speaker 1: understood kind of what happens and what's kind of happening
Speaker 1: in our nation right now, that this has been coming
Speaker 1: since the founding. America is two nations occupying the same
Speaker 1: land but seeing everything very differently, even including truth itself.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about that. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: great topic and we could probably discuss it for hours. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know, I certainly could go on for hours. It's
Speaker 1: an occupational but yeah, like like many people, I was
Speaker 1: stunned when Donald Trump won. I was helping out with
Speaker 1: the Hillary Clinton campaign that year, and I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about it ever since, and I started researching it and
Speaker 1: it did take me all the way back to the
Speaker 1: founding of the country. And I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think we make a mistake if we blame, say Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: for example, for the division that we see in the
Speaker 1: country right now. Um, I think he's a manifestation of
Speaker 1: a division that goes back to the founding. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: what I found was, while our founding uh fathers created
Speaker 1: the United States as the first civic nation based on
Speaker 1: Enlightenment reason, meaning you're not an American because of your
Speaker 1: ethnic identities, it's because you agree to support the Constitution
Speaker 1: and the laws of the United States, which is a free,
Speaker 1: rational choice, and that was the first country in history
Speaker 1: to be like that. There was a counter Enlightenment resistance
Speaker 1: to that idea, and it wasn't just people being reactionary.
Speaker 1: There were people who said, yes, reason is important, but
Speaker 1: reason isn't enough. We also need to have faith and
Speaker 1: tradition and culture. For some of them it was race
Speaker 1: and art. And those people resisted the idea of a
Speaker 1: rationally dominated world, and we see that down to the
Speaker 1: present day. A lot of the loyalty to President Trump
Speaker 1: is really a counter Enlightenment phenomenon. I would argue it's
Speaker 1: people who like him because of the patriotism and the
Speaker 1: preservation of traditional values and even loyalty to what they
Speaker 1: see as a strong leader. Well, it's interesting too that
Speaker 1: you kind of get into and again, like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get political or point fingers or anybody, but
Speaker 1: our world we were going to have candidates like a
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And I'm assuming you mean it could be
Speaker 1: on either side of the aisle, the political aisle. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's more likely on the right because conservatism tends
Speaker 1: to be more of a counter Enlightenment tradition. Although you
Speaker 1: have to be careful about over generalizing that way. And
Speaker 1: in fact, everybody UH tends to thinking both the Enlightenment
Speaker 1: and counter Enlightenment mode. Basically everybody who liked art, music, tradition,
Speaker 1: culture is thinking in a counter Enlightenment mode. But going
Speaker 1: back to say Edmund Burke, one of the founders of
Speaker 1: modern conservatism, he was a counter Enlightenment figure who was
Speaker 1: horrified by the French Revolution, which he saw as an
Speaker 1: example of Enlightenment rationalism gone insane. And I think he
Speaker 1: was right about that. There is a risk so we
Speaker 1: could see this on the left. We have seen less
Speaker 1: wing demagogues. It can show up either way. And and
Speaker 1: the left, as I point out in the book, has
Speaker 1: its own kind of counter Enlightenment tendencies, although it tends
Speaker 1: to lean more it's it's dominated more by Enlightenment rationalism.
Speaker 1: There are sort of mystical counter Enlightenment features on the
Speaker 1: left as well, including with Karl Marx, who in some
Speaker 1: ways was kind of a mystical thinker. Well, you know
Speaker 1: what's interesting too, And we had an earlier conversation on
Speaker 1: our broadcast UM talking about the digitization and use of
Speaker 1: digital and technologies within cities, and that basically the idea
Speaker 1: that technology and its own doesn't necessarily have the power
Speaker 1: of the efficacy unless you have a strong leader behind
Speaker 1: it to figure out how to use it right and
Speaker 1: and help it so that it creates a better society
Speaker 1: and more equal society. And the same thing with kind
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about is that it feels like
Speaker 1: we have on both parties. Really you know, a group
Speaker 1: of citizens that are looking for strong leadership. That's true.
Speaker 1: And although the faith in an individual tends to be
Speaker 1: more of a conservative counter Enlightenment tendency. But I'll tell
Speaker 1: you one thing that you hit on there is one
Speaker 1: of the risks with people on eyeside of this divide,
Speaker 1: the liberal side is the rise of technocracy and and
Speaker 1: too much faith in technocratic solutions, whether it's actually technology
Speaker 1: or bureaucracy, or faith in processes as opposed to preserving
Speaker 1: a sense of humanity at the core of it. And
Speaker 1: this is this kind of gets to the heart of
Speaker 1: the counter Enlightenment objection to hyper rationality. On the Enlightenment side, Um,
Speaker 1: if you think about uh Nazi Germany would be one
Speaker 1: of the worst cases of the counter Enlightenment god mad
Speaker 1: because that was sort of an extreme malignant form of
Speaker 1: romanticism with an extreme degree of faith in a charismatic leader.
Speaker 1: Opposing that you get equally horrible results with the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: which is the Enlightenment god mad, just as the French
Speaker 1: Revolution was, where it's way too much faith in systems
Speaker 1: and the science taken to the extreme. And as I
Speaker 1: end up arguing in the book, you know, you you
Speaker 1: should not really choose one or the other. It's in
Speaker 1: order to really function well in the world, have a
Speaker 1: full life, and maintain a civilization. Frankly, you need to
Speaker 1: integrate both modes of thought. The trouble is, we've seen
Speaker 1: a widening gap between them in recent years, and uh,
Speaker 1: some folks operating in bad faith, I would argue, are
Speaker 1: exploiting that gap for their own advantage. Well, I feel
Speaker 1: like gaps in general, right, you know, as a result
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen, as a result of what happened to Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: and then subsequent you know, cases of racism that we've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe because it's all in front of
Speaker 1: us big time, because we've all been home and we've
Speaker 1: had the time to kind of see it front and center.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of gaps within our
Speaker 1: society and whether you know, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you you talk about this great divide in general,
Speaker 1: and then we also say, you know, until we kind
Speaker 1: of figure this out and we connect it, we've kind
Speaker 1: of not finished creating the United States. I think is
Speaker 1: a big idea, but I think an important one to
Speaker 1: think about, and just unfortunately a big idea only has
Speaker 1: a minute laughter or so. Well. I appreciate, I mean,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the attention you've given it, and you
Speaker 1: appreciate that you've read the book and really thought about
Speaker 1: what it means, and I think you know you've got
Speaker 1: it right. Um. There's it's hard to see this from
Speaker 1: either side of the divide, and it really required integrating
Speaker 1: both world views to fully understand it. And the less
Speaker 1: sometimes people tend to see everything in terms of economics, um,
Speaker 1: and on the right, sometimes they see everything in terms
Speaker 1: of culture and identity. Uh. And you see crossovers even there.
Speaker 1: But you really have to see the big picture to
Speaker 1: understand it's not one thing that caused this division. It's complicated,
Speaker 1: it's smart, um, and it's a I just love the
Speaker 1: provocative idea. Spencer, Thank you so much. His book, Spencer
Speaker 1: critically Patriots of Two Nations, Why Trump was inevitable and
Speaker 1: what happens next.