Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. They
Speaker 1: call me Ben. Our compatriot Knell is away for the moment,
Speaker 1: but never fear. Our super producer Paul Decont is here.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you're here, and you are you that makes
Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know. Now, you
Speaker 1: may recall our very first episode ever on a gentleman
Speaker 1: named Edward Berney's one of the most important and uh
Speaker 1: slightly obscure, at least until our episode came out thinkers
Speaker 1: in history right, Yes, the the man commonly known as
Speaker 1: the father of public relations, the most famous, the most
Speaker 1: famous relative of Sigmund Freud in our modern age. Both
Speaker 1: of those things are true. If you're a fan of
Speaker 1: this show and you haven't listened to that episode of
Speaker 1: the podcast, it is one of the few that Matt
Speaker 1: Nike had agorically recommend you listen to and share with
Speaker 1: your friends, family, and colleagues. Without going too far into
Speaker 1: what happens in that episode, Let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: Edward Bernets is the reason that you and your loved ones,
Speaker 1: as well as your enemies to probably practice several things
Speaker 1: that seem normal today seem normal, Yeah, because you know
Speaker 1: that very very quickly. It's insane how quickly people can
Speaker 1: become accustomed to something, something that is not normal, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden becomes normal to the average individual,
Speaker 1: to an our community perhaps or even civilization as a whole,
Speaker 1: something that was never done before and now it's normal. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's likewise astonishing how rarely we question bizarre things. So
Speaker 1: often we hide behind the idea of tradition as a species,
Speaker 1: I mean, or so often we uh, we don't ask
Speaker 1: fundamental questions about why something has framed the way it
Speaker 1: is or presented the way it is. For instance, why
Speaker 1: do we eat bacon for breakfast? This was not the
Speaker 1: case for the vast majority of human eras on this planet.
Speaker 1: Why are we actually at war with a particular country
Speaker 1: at any given time? And one that I always go
Speaker 1: back to as as a strange example here is Matt,
Speaker 1: why why do people wear ties like neck ties? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: it's because of the form. It's all about form, not
Speaker 1: so much function. Uh yeah, it just looks really good
Speaker 1: to have that line going down the chest. Someone's read
Speaker 1: a couple of fashion guides. I see, yes, make it work.
Speaker 1: So there, Yeah, that's that's a good point. We did
Speaker 1: earlier on a different show that we've worked within the
Speaker 1: past called brain Stuff. We looked at the origin of
Speaker 1: where neckties come from. And Matt, you are spot on correct.
Speaker 1: It serves no function. It's not I was talking from
Speaker 1: that took us. It's not a it's not a functional thing.
Speaker 1: That took us is more functional than an actie. So
Speaker 1: leading to this, why why does a country work a
Speaker 1: certain way? Folks think about the government in the country
Speaker 1: that you live in today or the governments in countries
Speaker 1: used to live in. Right, how closely does the government
Speaker 1: in practice adhere to the theory of government as outlined
Speaker 1: in your country's constitution or other documents? Yeah, wres this?
Speaker 1: You know? Getting it right? For some of the most part, well,
Speaker 1: most people, regardless of where they live, will generally agree
Speaker 1: that there is at least some degree of difference between
Speaker 1: the government on paper and the government in practice. Right,
Speaker 1: And in some cases this can seem like a relatively
Speaker 1: obscure difference, right, or it can seem like a matter
Speaker 1: of persnickety, nitpicking interpretation. But speaking of obscure, today's episode
Speaker 1: focuses on another figure, sort of like bern As, another
Speaker 1: profoundly important, equally obscure historical figure, Walter Lippmann. Now when
Speaker 1: we say he's obscure, we mean to the public, to
Speaker 1: the every day Joe and Jane walking around. Uh, they
Speaker 1: probably don't know who Walter Lippan is. I did not
Speaker 1: know who this person was until we started thinking about
Speaker 1: this episode and reading some of the materials. Um just
Speaker 1: like Edward Berne. But but these gentlemen were very much
Speaker 1: well known within circles of the powerful. I think we
Speaker 1: should at least like put that out there right like
Speaker 1: they were. They were the guy. Yeah, yeah, the we were.
Speaker 1: It's funny because before Paul, Matt and I went on
Speaker 1: air today, I brought in a a fancy glass for
Speaker 1: my typical coffee because we are talking about the elite,
Speaker 1: and it looks like an absentthe glass. Gotta be honest
Speaker 1: with you, Well, I'll tell you what it is. Truth
Speaker 1: be told. Not as convenient as the regular mug or
Speaker 1: cup that I would typically use, but you know tradition.
Speaker 1: So so here are the facts. About Walter Lippmann. As
Speaker 1: we said nowadays, Walter Lippman is, let's say, obscure enough
Speaker 1: that were you to walk on a on the average
Speaker 1: city street and ask someone you know identify the following figures, say,
Speaker 1: you know Neil Armstrong, probably know that, No, he's some
Speaker 1: sort of astronaut. Maybe at the least identify you know,
Speaker 1: the big current or past presidents. They probably probably at
Speaker 1: least recognized the name of past presidents, right. Uh. But
Speaker 1: if you said, who's Walter Lippman, they would say does
Speaker 1: he Does he on the grocery store? I don't know, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, you were asking someone in Harvard, and then
Speaker 1: the answer might very well be I think that's a
Speaker 1: building on campus. I'm pretty building. But as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: in his day, this man was profoundly influential and remains so,
Speaker 1: so let's get to know him a little bit. Walter
Speaker 1: Lippman was born on September eight nine, eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: in New York. He was a child of privilege. He
Speaker 1: attended the Sacks School for Boys before matriculating into Harvard.
Speaker 1: Now Sacks by the way, s A C. H. S.
Speaker 1: You might recognize that name somewhere with a goldman in
Speaker 1: front of it, like golden sax yes um. And this
Speaker 1: is where he studied at Harvard under the famous philosopher
Speaker 1: and novelist George Santayana, who was a teacher of numerous
Speaker 1: other numerous other people who went on to become literary lions.
Speaker 1: You know, T. S. Eliott would be one of the
Speaker 1: most famous examples. Then in May of nineteen ten, he
Speaker 1: began his career in journalism as a cub reporter with
Speaker 1: the Boston Common after he dropped out of his the
Speaker 1: master's course that he was taking at Harvard University. And
Speaker 1: this this is interesting because we found a couple of
Speaker 1: different things in the research. Will find many biographies to
Speaker 1: say he graduated right in nineteen ten, and then you'll
Speaker 1: find other writers who say that he dropped out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so either way, he did go to Harvard. At some
Speaker 1: point he was assistant to the philosopher novelist George Santiana. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirteen, Lippman co founded a paper called The
Speaker 1: New Republic. It's a liberal American magazine. The published articles
Speaker 1: on politics and and the arts and UH. In that
Speaker 1: same year he published a book called A Preface to
Speaker 1: Politics and his writing, his philosophy at this time, in
Speaker 1: this early phase, garnered the attention of one Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 1: Just a little side note there about the New Republic
Speaker 1: at the time when he founded it, in quite for
Speaker 1: quite some time afterwards, it had a fairly small readership
Speaker 1: of only you know, ten to twenty thousand people. But
Speaker 1: the people reading that magazine were the important people, right,
Speaker 1: the bankers, the professors, the jurists. And in nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: Lippman was appointed as an advisor to President Wilson Woodrow Wilson,
Speaker 1: and during this time he helped the president draft a
Speaker 1: famous speech about World War One and was called the
Speaker 1: Fourteen Points. You can read it in full online today.
Speaker 1: So Lippman was at this point an interventionist in a
Speaker 1: largely isolationist society. And what what we mean by that
Speaker 1: is that the majority of the US public did not
Speaker 1: support foreign intervention because there was this feeling that, well, one,
Speaker 1: why should we get involved, right, It's it's imperialist on
Speaker 1: some level. And two we're separated by oceans, right, and
Speaker 1: there's no imminent threat at this point in this isolationist society,
Speaker 1: Lippman was an interventionist. He was one of the people
Speaker 1: who argued that it was both rational and advantageous for
Speaker 1: the United States to enter into World War One in
Speaker 1: some capacity or another. He wrote propaganda that was meant
Speaker 1: to sway the needle on public support. Right, because in
Speaker 1: a representative democracy, the theory goes that the voters must
Speaker 1: support a large scale government action, or at least the
Speaker 1: majority of voters must support something for it to occur. Yes,
Speaker 1: because the representative part of that government, the the people's
Speaker 1: part of the government in Congress, they are the ones
Speaker 1: that actually declare war in an act war, especially at
Speaker 1: this time for World War One. So you had to
Speaker 1: get the voters and the people's voice to say, yes,
Speaker 1: let's do this. And so Lippman and Edward Bernese both
Speaker 1: worked for what was called the Committee on Public Information.
Speaker 1: I love that name, the Committee on Public Information. And
Speaker 1: this was a wartime propaganda institution built to do two things. First,
Speaker 1: to spread or propagate pro intervention, pro war literature, art, music,
Speaker 1: anything in pop culture, as well as academic arguments for
Speaker 1: intervention on the part of the US. And then the
Speaker 1: second task was to suppress, discredit, or destroy anything that
Speaker 1: was anti war. So if you uh, just pulling an
Speaker 1: example out of thin air, right, and one way in
Speaker 1: which something like this might occur still happens today, it
Speaker 1: happened for decades after, uh, would be Let's say there
Speaker 1: are two there are two art galleries in a town,
Speaker 1: and one of them has has a featured artist who
Speaker 1: is glorifying the moral duty or imperative to save people
Speaker 1: in another country. And this this gallery is filled with
Speaker 1: this one artist work. And then in the other gallery, uh,
Speaker 1: there's someone who has a exhibits about imperialism and the
Speaker 1: unintentional tyranny of intervening, whatever your intentions, in a culture
Speaker 1: you don't understand and a civilization that never asked for
Speaker 1: nor needed your help. What this sort of operation would
Speaker 1: do would not be to have the government openly shot
Speaker 1: them down. You would have critics from newspapers praising whichever side,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what side we're talking about. We have
Speaker 1: critics praising the interventionist if they want to intervene, or
Speaker 1: praising the isolationists, and then you would have them also
Speaker 1: dismissing or ignoring the other side of that cultural argument.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's almost this um uh soft aggression
Speaker 1: tactic that that is employed by this stuff, and in
Speaker 1: a weird way, it's it's not fully going after a
Speaker 1: lot of times, at least from what I was reading
Speaker 1: this research, the the Committee on Public Information wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: physically go after anyone, but they would use the media to,
Speaker 1: like you said, ben, completely ignore or just trash something
Speaker 1: that they didn't agree with. Right, yes, exactly. And the
Speaker 1: most important part of that is in these sorts of operations,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know the ultimate force behind this trend. It
Speaker 1: would appear to be and this is the most important part,
Speaker 1: it would appear to be an organic consensus arrived at
Speaker 1: by every Jane John and Jimmy Smith in America, just
Speaker 1: to pick I don't know, ridiculous. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: rotten tomato score. If the tomato score is at a
Speaker 1: certain height, or you know, if it's in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, man, okay, I'm gonna go see that.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to read the stuff about it.
Speaker 1: If it's in like the thirties or twenties, and then oh,
Speaker 1: I'm never probably not gonna go see that trash because
Speaker 1: you don't have time usually if you're the average person
Speaker 1: to go through and read every single review now you
Speaker 1: want the bottom line the best news, Explain it to
Speaker 1: me now, because I'm almost off the elevator, right or
Speaker 1: the light almost turned green, as the case would be
Speaker 1: from any communities, only have twenty bucks to spend, and
Speaker 1: I gotta choose where I'm gonna spend it. Even better,
Speaker 1: Lippman also traveled the world and wrote extensively, prolifically. That's
Speaker 1: that's such a fantastic dream life. You know. I think,
Speaker 1: here I am in Vienna, and here was my thoughts
Speaker 1: on the Viennese. Oh, man, you want to be Anthony
Speaker 1: Boordain so badly, don't you? Lippin know you? Oh you
Speaker 1: know what? You know what? Uh? A little food centric?
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I think he's doing a great job
Speaker 1: being Anthony boording Okay, but but I appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love Who wouldn't love to travel the world and write?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I can't think of anyone. So
Speaker 1: Lippman was no exception to that, that rule that we
Speaker 1: have arbitrarily decided as almost universal. So then on September eight,
Speaker 1: n Lippman's column for The New York Herald, which was
Speaker 1: called Today and Tomorrow. I love that title. It first appeared,
Speaker 1: and eventually this was syndicated to more than two and
Speaker 1: fifty newspapers within the United States and then another twenty
Speaker 1: five other nations. And then it also won two Pulitzer Prizes,
Speaker 1: one in ninety eight and another in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: So in his day, Walter Lippman was a world famous
Speaker 1: columnist for the New York Times and other papers of note,
Speaker 1: and overall the world held his opinion in tremendously high regard.
Speaker 1: He lived amid New York's elite and therefore a a
Speaker 1: percentage of the world's elite. He dined with presidents, he
Speaker 1: would write speeches for them, He advised them in formal
Speaker 1: and informal capacities. He was a true man behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what he truly believed in. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this so well and good? But why why is he
Speaker 1: the subject of today's episode? Uh? Is he them? Is
Speaker 1: he that? They? And stuff? They don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: What did he actually leave? We'll tell you after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor. So let's bring the rubber to
Speaker 1: the road. Matt Walter Lippman is responsible for creating, popularizing,
Speaker 1: coining several terms that you have almost certainly used at
Speaker 1: some point in your life, friends and neighbors. The first
Speaker 1: one is the well let's let's do let's do one
Speaker 1: that's little us specific first, that's the Cold War. He
Speaker 1: is the person who popularized the term Cold war with
Speaker 1: a series of articles Inn called the Cold War right
Speaker 1: pretty good. When you title something, it's probably gonna stick. Uh.
Speaker 1: In those articles, he was speaking out against President Truman's
Speaker 1: policy of containment. Uh. And the more popular term that
Speaker 1: you have you have obviously heard. There's no one who
Speaker 1: has not heard this, this term, at least no one
Speaker 1: that speaks English has not heard this term. And that
Speaker 1: is stereotype. Yes. One of his works, Public Opinion, It
Speaker 1: begins with the world outside and the Pictures in our heads.
Speaker 1: This is the chapter that introduced his idea of a stereotype,
Speaker 1: what what a stereotype is? And Uh. It explained how
Speaker 1: public opinion was formed and how it was manipulated because
Speaker 1: of what we trust as what he called an authentic messenger. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, Littman was working um with the
Speaker 1: Committee on Public Information also called the Creole Committee, and
Speaker 1: they were influencing public opinion by censoring information that was
Speaker 1: anti war they're also producing thousands of these pro war
Speaker 1: pamphlets and cartoons and magazines, movies, all kinds of media. Also,
Speaker 1: the USA enter World War One or World War let's say,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventeen it wasn't a one at the time, nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody was waiting for the sequel. But the whole idea
Speaker 1: is that the United States said it was not going
Speaker 1: to enter World War One no matter what, and this
Speaker 1: committee is sitting there actively trying to make it happen. Right. So, this,
Speaker 1: this idea of a stereotype, the picture in our heads
Speaker 1: versus the world outside is is the subject of a
Speaker 1: great deal thought in public opinion in the Lippman book.
Speaker 1: In this work, he attempts to explain how these pictures
Speaker 1: that arise almost spontaneously in people's minds. He was hoping
Speaker 1: to explain how those come about. The most simple way
Speaker 1: to say it would be that, according to Lippman, we
Speaker 1: all live in these second hand worlds, and we live
Speaker 1: this way because we are aware of much more than
Speaker 1: we have ever personally experienced. You know, we like Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: we know that astronauts exist, but many people have never
Speaker 1: met and we'll never meet one we know that billionaires exist,
Speaker 1: but many people have never met and will never meet.
Speaker 1: When we know that what Reddit loves this joke about
Speaker 1: this town in Germany that everyone says doesn't exist. Maybe
Speaker 1: a better example would be Bhutan. You know, the nation
Speaker 1: of Bhutan exists, but many people will never go there.
Speaker 1: According to this, Lipman's argument is that our own personal
Speaker 1: experience is primarily second hand, primarily indirect. We read about things,
Speaker 1: we watch things about things, and hope that the people
Speaker 1: who have experienced it directly are telling us something objective, rational,
Speaker 1: and accurate. Yeah, in other words, the truth. That's why
Speaker 1: when you get Mermaids on Discovery Channel, you're like, what,
Speaker 1: oh boy, sorry, I think enough time has passed for
Speaker 1: us to tell people we've talked about it before. So
Speaker 1: here's another aspect. What did he think of democracy? Because
Speaker 1: you see, Lippmann wouldn't have considered himself just a journalist.
Speaker 1: In fact, he considered himself a public philosopher, and most
Speaker 1: of his work centered around the concept of democracy in
Speaker 1: all its forms, representative democracy, so on. So what did
Speaker 1: you think of it? Unfortunately it's a terrifying question. Early
Speaker 1: on he was optimistic about this American US flavor of democracy.
Speaker 1: He embraced what we will call a Jeffersonian perspective. He
Speaker 1: believed that the American public would become intellectually engaged in
Speaker 1: political world issues and that they would fulfill the ultimate
Speaker 1: role of the public right, which is to be an
Speaker 1: educated electorate. Not only does everyone vote, but everyone understands
Speaker 1: the issues of play and why they're voting the way
Speaker 1: that they do. If you ask them who the h
Speaker 1: if you ask them who the county commissioner is going
Speaker 1: to be and why, they would know. If you ask
Speaker 1: them about humanitarians spending in you know, Yemen or in
Speaker 1: Mauritania or something, not only would they know their position
Speaker 1: on it, but they would know why, Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: support engaging Germany and defending Poland or you know, some
Speaker 1: something to that effect. And you would hope that the
Speaker 1: person would come back with a reasoned argument about why
Speaker 1: or why not. That would be nice. Sure, well that
Speaker 1: was that That's the optimistic view. But with the rule
Speaker 1: of industrialization weighing heavy in his mind the events leading
Speaker 1: to World War Two and the spread of totalitarianism, Lippman
Speaker 1: came to reject this view. Instead, he felt that nobody
Speaker 1: was questioning fundamental assumptions of democracy. Yeah, he didn't believe
Speaker 1: democracy as we understand it was working at all, And specifically,
Speaker 1: he didn't believe that the average citizen was in any
Speaker 1: way qualified to have any kind of input in the
Speaker 1: rebel of politics or in the actions of the state,
Speaker 1: and basically that the public was being led around like
Speaker 1: this pack of animals by journalists and the media and
Speaker 1: people who reported what the government was saying. Right. During
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, Lippman published two more books which were
Speaker 1: criticisms indictments of humanity. They were, in the parlance of
Speaker 1: our time, they were distracts, right mix like hot mixtape distracts.
Speaker 1: One was called Criticizing Democracy, one was called Public Opinion,
Speaker 1: and the other was called The Phantom Public. The American voter,
Speaker 1: Lippman claimed, was not capable of acting out of any
Speaker 1: rational collective self interest or even fully considering the issues
Speaker 1: at hand in a rational way, not only not having
Speaker 1: an answer to a question, but not understanding the question. Instead,
Speaker 1: he said, the average voter was ill informed, my opic,
Speaker 1: and prone to fits of enthusiasm. So in his disillusionment,
Speaker 1: if we were to put it in a modern context,
Speaker 1: would be something along the lines of, hey, you are
Speaker 1: supposed to vote in every election based on your aggregate calculation,
Speaker 1: whenever that might be of who becomes the best candidate, right,
Speaker 1: or why you think a certain local law shoot or
Speaker 1: should not be in place. When he says that a
Speaker 1: voter is ill informed, he means that they He means
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're talking about, right, they don't
Speaker 1: understand the issue for one reason or another. And when
Speaker 1: he says biopic, he means that they might be what's
Speaker 1: often called a single issue voter, someone who says, well,
Speaker 1: I will typically vote, you know, for a certain ideological
Speaker 1: standpoint or a certain party line, but the only thing
Speaker 1: I really care about is, you know, the the the
Speaker 1: illegality of owning a will to beast. I think it
Speaker 1: should be illegal. I think that, you know, the country's
Speaker 1: going to hell in a handbasket if one more person
Speaker 1: can own a will to beast. Well, yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: that's what I vote on. That's it. And that's that's
Speaker 1: where you get some of the more social issues becoming
Speaker 1: the most prominent things that are spoken about in the media.
Speaker 1: Shoure you think about stances on abortion or stances on
Speaker 1: Second Amendment rights, things that aren't necessarily the most important
Speaker 1: things to be focusing on, but they become the one
Speaker 1: thing that the voter will latch onto. And that's the
Speaker 1: craziest part because essentially it makes this an exercise in
Speaker 1: mad lib in a very dangerous way. Uh. I hope
Speaker 1: everybody has had the wonderful opportunity to play mad lib
Speaker 1: on a road trip or something growing up. But mad
Speaker 1: lib is a game wherein you ask talking to people
Speaker 1: like they don't know what mad libs are. I feel
Speaker 1: like we can't make assumptions. I guess, so, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: what are you? Let's let's tell people what mad lives are.
Speaker 1: You do it, but do it in the voice, okay? Uh?
Speaker 1: Mad lives you, guys, is where you got a bunch
Speaker 1: of blanks in a sentence, a long set of sentences perhaps,
Speaker 1: and you fill those blanks in with nouns and adjectives, adverbs,
Speaker 1: and then you read the whole thing and you've got
Speaker 1: this jumble whacked noodle sentence. I feel like you are
Speaker 1: unfairly criticizeing v I I don't know, not everybody, okay
Speaker 1: it maybe maybe everybody knows what bath libs are. You
Speaker 1: think they do I don't know. I think you're I
Speaker 1: think we're somewhere in the middle. Some people don't know
Speaker 1: what they are, but people who are listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: yeah probably do. Okay, all right, okay, right in conspiracy
Speaker 1: and how stuff works, that come you know what a
Speaker 1: mad lib is. So so the reason I'm setting that up, Matt,
Speaker 1: is because the it's it's a fundamental assumption that you
Speaker 1: and I are making. That absolutely right, people would all
Speaker 1: know what a mad lib is and how it functions. Right,
Speaker 1: And so the idea of fits of enthusiasm, right, that's
Speaker 1: the last the last piece of his his primary criticism there. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea of fits of enthusiasm would be the best
Speaker 1: explained today by social media. Right, So you see a
Speaker 1: post and it's shared over and over. Look at all
Speaker 1: these assholes buying wilde beast, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: This has to stop. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: somebody who ordinarily would never vote whenever, you know, go
Speaker 1: to a protest or maybe even isn't that active, uh,
Speaker 1: and their social media. Right, then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it's the most important thing, you know. And we we've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about the really uh, really depressing,
Speaker 1: borderline disgusting news cycle that occurs not just in mass media,
Speaker 1: broadcast media, but also in social media, where where you
Speaker 1: see a tragedy, a real, genuine tragedy occur and then
Speaker 1: two weeks later, the people who were incredibly incensed about
Speaker 1: it have completely forgotten because now, god forbid, someone wears
Speaker 1: something stupid at an award show, which I know it
Speaker 1: sounds brutal, but that that's the fact of the matter.
Speaker 1: So that's what I think he's talking about when he
Speaker 1: says fits of enthusiasts. I think you're absolutely right. And
Speaker 1: another thing that you could kind of lop into that
Speaker 1: would be the sloganism that has occurred at least in
Speaker 1: the past two elections, and it occurs throughout American elections.
Speaker 1: But having yes we can chanted by people and then
Speaker 1: put on bumper stickers and then that's that single sentimentality
Speaker 1: of yes we can do it, becoming this moving force
Speaker 1: for voters and then make America great again as well.
Speaker 1: Just something that encapsulates the enthusiasm of the people who
Speaker 1: you are trying to get behind you oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, or or denigrades the the value of the
Speaker 1: perception of people are institutions that are against what you
Speaker 1: want to have happen, right, like dirty wilde beasters. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm just gonna ride this wilde beeste comparison
Speaker 1: to the ground. Oh boy, yeah, we ah, we could.
Speaker 1: I should have Oh there we go. I should have
Speaker 1: picked a better I should have picked a better animal.
Speaker 1: I think will be so great. I'm actually I'm learning
Speaker 1: about wilde beast. Uh for an unrelated thing happens to
Speaker 1: the best of us. Sounds a little sketchy, but it's
Speaker 1: a it's a true story, right in, let us know
Speaker 1: about your experiences with wilde beast. So this this idea
Speaker 1: that voters will tend to not know what's going on,
Speaker 1: will tend to focus on only one thing, and will
Speaker 1: tend to uh impulsively lash out and sporadic burst or
Speaker 1: impulsively participate in sporadic first rather than continually exercising the
Speaker 1: rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Uh. This, he argued, was
Speaker 1: being used to insidious advantage by other forces in play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he thought other parts of the government perfected the art
Speaker 1: of manipulating the public. It's this idea of manufacturing consent.
Speaker 1: You might recognize that phrase from some of Noam Chomsky's work.
Speaker 1: He took it directly from Walter Littman, and he stated
Speaker 1: that before, um, like, you know, it's this idea of right,
Speaker 1: we've always been at war with East Asia? Oh man, Right,
Speaker 1: I thought we had always been at war with Oceana.
Speaker 1: Another one of Littman's beliefs was that the American people's
Speaker 1: increasing obsession with consumerism was causing them to have a
Speaker 1: decreased awareness and concern for pressing public issues. So basically,
Speaker 1: they were being distracted by constantly wanting to buy new things,
Speaker 1: upgrade at this point, their house, upgrade, their lives, um
Speaker 1: and the things around them, rather than the larger issues
Speaker 1: that were looming overhead. Okay, I see, So that the
Speaker 1: idea then that keeping up with the Joneses becomes one
Speaker 1: of the number one policy issues for a household. Well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just the You're absolutely right. The policy issue is now
Speaker 1: within the home and the clothes that you're wearing and
Speaker 1: the food that you're eating. And it's just it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if there's something going on in Europe. Right, I
Speaker 1: see all these people posting these high minded, sanctimonious arguments
Speaker 1: about owning wild animals, But did they even have a refrigerator,
Speaker 1: did they even have cable? And where are they posting them?
Speaker 1: And then like a bulletin board. That's what it is,
Speaker 1: the community bulletin board. Yeah, at the corners at the
Speaker 1: general store. Yeah, good call. Though Matt so he felt
Speaker 1: that journalism was partially to blame for this because it
Speaker 1: was not fulfilling what he saw as its correct duties,
Speaker 1: which again in theory on paper, would be providing rational,
Speaker 1: accurate information. And one big issue for him in this
Speaker 1: regard was what was known as muckraking or what we
Speaker 1: call investigative journalism. If we want to put a necktie
Speaker 1: on it, uh, And he he objected to this because
Speaker 1: he saw as a means to foment distrust of public
Speaker 1: institutions and officials. And then Flipman wondered, you know what,
Speaker 1: why should someone who isn't a physicist have a voice
Speaker 1: in conversations about physics? And you know that makes sense,
Speaker 1: right if the if the physicists of the world are
Speaker 1: all one room and they're arguing about the the latest
Speaker 1: theory and physics, right, and and what we can learn
Speaker 1: the future rushes towards us infinite in its promise, and
Speaker 1: it's danger. And then there's one guy who's not a physicist.
Speaker 1: He's just like in the room, he's a psychiatrist. Okay,
Speaker 1: sure he's qualified in something else. Maybe he's a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: What what can he lend to this conversation. I happen
Speaker 1: to think psychiatrist would be able to lend a lot
Speaker 1: of insight into a conversation with physicist. Yeah, he just
Speaker 1: he's he can't spell very well. So he saw the
Speaker 1: sign on the door coman physicist, and he thought he
Speaker 1: was in the right place. There we go. That seems
Speaker 1: to make sense right on some level. So Lippman, if
Speaker 1: you can imagine him scratching his chin for a second
Speaker 1: here and thinks, yeah, that checks out. So how is
Speaker 1: the world of politics any different? And we'll explore Lehman's
Speaker 1: thought on that right after this. This is the dangerous part.
Speaker 1: No single individual, Lippmann thought, could easily understand the complexity
Speaker 1: of the modern world. There's just too much stuff going on. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: he believed that the idea of an authentic public opinion,
Speaker 1: meaning a consensus or agreement formed by people who were
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about public affairs and interested in public affairs. He
Speaker 1: believed this was mainly a myth. This was a unicorn,
Speaker 1: this was winning the lottery seventeen times in two weeks.
Speaker 1: I guess it could happen. Yeah, you would have to
Speaker 1: have a lot of things go perfectly right in order
Speaker 1: to achieve that state. I think so. I think perhaps
Speaker 1: Littman might be on the right track there, But he's
Speaker 1: a bit polarizing about he's just one way or the
Speaker 1: other way. He proposed that the most effective form of
Speaker 1: governance would be a world in which the elite, the cognocenti. Oh,
Speaker 1: the cognisenti. That's uh, those who are in the know,
Speaker 1: just like you listening out there. Um, he thought they
Speaker 1: would have. If these people had all of the authoritative agency,
Speaker 1: then they could make these benevolent, indisputable decisions for all
Speaker 1: of us, the unwashed masses, right, the hoi poloi, the peasants,
Speaker 1: the uneducated. That that's actually you and me and Ben
Speaker 1: according to them, but not Paul. Paul is one of
Speaker 1: the Gosh, you can just see the eliteness on his face.
Speaker 1: He wears a tuxedo to work every day. Oh it
Speaker 1: does look nice though, And I have to say, Paul,
Speaker 1: I respect you because I notice it's always a different tuxedo.
Speaker 1: You're not phoning it in. So away from tuxedos and
Speaker 1: and back to the elite. Lippman is essentially arguing that
Speaker 1: the informed public does not exist, that the public is,
Speaker 1: despite what is on paper about democracy, inherently incapable of
Speaker 1: doing what is right, doing what is smart, doing what
Speaker 1: is good for lack of a better word, So instead
Speaker 1: he pictures this sort of technocracy, this uh, this leadership
Speaker 1: of scientists and longtime politicos who will be able to
Speaker 1: make the decisions on behalf of all the other people
Speaker 1: in a country. And this this means that not only
Speaker 1: would you as a voter not have a say in
Speaker 1: something like a it is something like a law about
Speaker 1: pollution or a law about regulation and deregulation, which you
Speaker 1: also wouldn't have knowledge of what was going on. So
Speaker 1: that's as idea that the control of information, both gathering
Speaker 1: it and distributing it, would be in the hands of
Speaker 1: this technocracy that would be trusted to use scientific methods
Speaker 1: to figure out what was really going on and make
Speaker 1: good decisions not just about what's happening, but about who
Speaker 1: should receive specific messages. He wanted to establish a semi
Speaker 1: governmental or quasi governmental intelligence bureau that would evaluate information,
Speaker 1: supply it to other elites to make decisions. And this
Speaker 1: bureau could also determine which pieces of information should be
Speaker 1: transmitted through the mass media to the public and which
Speaker 1: pieces of information people were better off not knowing. And
Speaker 1: he would have he would have gotten away with it
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for those dastardly kids coming up with
Speaker 1: the old Internet thing. Absolutely absolutely, and a Scooby Doo
Speaker 1: moment is appropriate here. We should say that Walter Lippman
Speaker 1: later stepped away, retreated from this latest argument to a degree,
Speaker 1: but that idea remains massively influential and not too unfamiliar
Speaker 1: historically when we consider the past governments of earlier civilizations. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a king and all the people that the king's
Speaker 1: ancestors slept with, and they're in charge. That's just the
Speaker 1: way it is, especially if they have divinity about them
Speaker 1: that God has somehow chosen them. Right, Or there's a chieftain,
Speaker 1: same thing, or there's a you know, there's religious leader,
Speaker 1: same thing. Here's where it gets crazy. Not only did
Speaker 1: Lippman think that democracy was more or less impossible in
Speaker 1: its current form, but more and more people seem to
Speaker 1: impractice agree with him. Today they do, And this is
Speaker 1: what we've spoken about already on the show. Critics of
Speaker 1: both the theoretical function of the current government and the
Speaker 1: practical function of the government seemed to often agree that
Speaker 1: the average voter, you and me and everybody else doesn't
Speaker 1: know much but is instead ruled by emotion and is
Speaker 1: prone to impulsive irrational decisions. Now are irrational here would
Speaker 1: mean voter decisions um are actually working against the voters
Speaker 1: self interest. What you would you should be voting for,
Speaker 1: you can There are a lot of examples with that,
Speaker 1: especially when you talk about tax reform, and then you know,
Speaker 1: the majority of the voters, especially in the lower to
Speaker 1: the middle class, you know, not seeing the benefits that
Speaker 1: may perhaps people in the upper classes would see. Um,
Speaker 1: and you have more voters in that lower class, but
Speaker 1: you're still going to get a popular consent a lot
Speaker 1: of times, right of course. And this is not something
Speaker 1: that is in any way exclusive to a political party,
Speaker 1: no a genre of a political party, or an issue
Speaker 1: or an issue. Yeah, this is a This is a
Speaker 1: tendency that Lipman sees and that the current people in
Speaker 1: charge whatever that time is and whatever, uh really, whatever
Speaker 1: post Lippman ideology you wanna you wanna grasp at, this
Speaker 1: is typically what people in power will believe, and we
Speaker 1: can see this in action. There's an interesting tendency here
Speaker 1: because later critics such as William F. Buckley on the
Speaker 1: on the right side of American politics were Noam Chomsky
Speaker 1: on the left side, both saw a special interest as
Speaker 1: the ultimate decision makers in too many political discussions. Of course, uh,
Speaker 1: these these two fellows, these two guys would not agree
Speaker 1: with each other, and I'm sure they would disagree on
Speaker 1: exactly which organizations they considered tyrannical special interest groups. But
Speaker 1: the point remains. In Chomsky's arguments, in particular, the media
Speaker 1: is seen as acting as a street enforcer for what
Speaker 1: he sees as special interests. This inextricably entwined system of
Speaker 1: government officials, heads of businesses, large corporations, these powers behind
Speaker 1: the throne too often are seeing as the real voters.
Speaker 1: And that's unfortunately a common thread that you will here
Speaker 1: discussed more and more in recent years. These critics would
Speaker 1: argue these special interest whatever they may be in special
Speaker 1: interest itself is sort of an umbrella term, sort of
Speaker 1: a thought uh thought, terminating cliche, right, special interest it's
Speaker 1: a bit of a boogeyman. But these are the forces
Speaker 1: pushing the public in one direction or another, framing issues
Speaker 1: in a way that benefits their own internal aims, regardless
Speaker 1: of their effect on the common good. For the majority
Speaker 1: of U. S citizens, if their common aime aligns with
Speaker 1: the common good, then great, fine, bully for us, Go team,
Speaker 1: We've vultron together. We've done our Captain Planet thing. This
Speaker 1: law made the world a better place. But the problem
Speaker 1: is that even if it acts against the public interests,
Speaker 1: then okay, great for us, go team, We've vultron together,
Speaker 1: and profits are going to rise. Jeezs. Optimists once imagined
Speaker 1: that the age of information was going to be one
Speaker 1: of unending elucidation, a world in which every single person
Speaker 1: had equal access to knowledge and equal ability to act
Speaker 1: on that knowledge in a smart way toward a common good.
Speaker 1: But you can ask people from the entire gamut of
Speaker 1: fields social scientists, statisticians, political pundits. They are often now
Speaker 1: convinced this is not the case. Yeah, right now we're
Speaker 1: in the sea change, some kind of paradigm shift in
Speaker 1: the world of news cover. You've got broadcast in print
Speaker 1: falling behind as online news sources begin their rise or
Speaker 1: continue to rise um including the news aggregators like the
Speaker 1: reddits of the world. Social media platforms are on the rise,
Speaker 1: where people are getting most of their information, even news information,
Speaker 1: from these sources. The the increasing likelihood of the so
Speaker 1: called search bubble, where you get stuck in and inside
Speaker 1: this world of news and algorithms that just reinforce the
Speaker 1: views that you've already shared or liked or you know,
Speaker 1: submitted as your preferences. And the emphasis then is not
Speaker 1: on critical thought but rather on the enjoyment of it all, right,
Speaker 1: Like the goal is not to inform you so much
Speaker 1: as it is to continue your time on the device,
Speaker 1: on the platform, right, just stay here longer. It's mentally
Speaker 1: or psychologically, it's similar to some of the tricks casinos use.
Speaker 1: It's it's very very similar to that, so that this
Speaker 1: idea is dangerous. And there's there's another point like that
Speaker 1: ad here on on the concept of whether or not
Speaker 1: democracy is impossible. And it's something that you and I, Matt,
Speaker 1: have talked about at length before. I think we mentioned
Speaker 1: on air, but we talked about off air often off air.
Speaker 1: Often it's the concept of Dunbar's number. The gist is
Speaker 1: that human brains seem to be hardwired to accept only
Speaker 1: a certain number of other human beings around about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty as other humans. The rest the other
Speaker 1: billions of people in the world are either functions or
Speaker 1: grouped into broad categories. You don't know a Canadian person.
Speaker 1: That's not what your one fifty we guess what everyone
Speaker 1: who lives there is just one of the Canadians to you,
Speaker 1: maybe divided by what you see as their gender or
Speaker 1: what you see as their job. Right. The problems here
Speaker 1: are readily apparent. If you are a propagandist like Lippman
Speaker 1: or Bernese or so many other people working today, you
Speaker 1: only have to convince the victim of your propaganda to
Speaker 1: stop thinking of some people as individuals, make them think
Speaker 1: of people as categories. Convince them that whatever decision you'd
Speaker 1: like them to make, whatever protests you'd like them to attend,
Speaker 1: whatever vote you want them to cast, or whatever products
Speaker 1: you want them to boycott, just convince them it's in
Speaker 1: the best interest not of the world, not of the country,
Speaker 1: but of the one hundred and fifty people that they
Speaker 1: think of as real people. So the game is is
Speaker 1: a little bit smaller and not as difficult as it
Speaker 1: might appear. And for the leader of a country or
Speaker 1: you know, some political arm uh. This shows us that
Speaker 1: after a certain population size, it becomes very difficult for
Speaker 1: any individual to function as a genuine representative of the
Speaker 1: people they leed. Because if the Unbar's number turns out
Speaker 1: to be true, and there should be more research on it,
Speaker 1: but if Dunbar's number holds holds up, then these leaders
Speaker 1: are incapable of recognizing their constituents as human beings. Yikes.
Speaker 1: And just to that end, if we want to analyze
Speaker 1: perhaps what what Walter Littman's Dunbar number would be if
Speaker 1: we're sticking with one fifty uh. He was a member
Speaker 1: of this place called the Metropolitan Club of the City
Speaker 1: of Washington. There are Metropolitan Clubs in several other places,
Speaker 1: but this one is very particular because it is in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. It's a private social club in close proximity
Speaker 1: to the White House. I'm going to read you a
Speaker 1: quote here from their website. The Metropolitan Club is one
Speaker 1: of Washington's oldest and most valued private institutions since its
Speaker 1: founding in eighteen sixty three at the height of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, by six Treasury Department officials. It has pursued
Speaker 1: its primary goal of furthering literary improvement, mutual movement, and
Speaker 1: social purposes, whatever that means. Other members of this social
Speaker 1: club included influential journalists, policy makers, and quote nearly every
Speaker 1: US president since Abraham Lincoln. Now, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of place where you pay an exorbitant amount of money
Speaker 1: every year and you get to go there and just
Speaker 1: talk with your your people. Who are you know, at
Speaker 1: your stature, I guess, at your place in life. And
Speaker 1: this is where he would spend a lot of his time.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine that if these are your one
Speaker 1: and fifty people, because there were I think active members
Speaker 1: around the time, twelve members. I mean, you can't go
Speaker 1: much higher than that. Sure, And then it seems from
Speaker 1: a biographical note there, it seems pretty logical that he
Speaker 1: would say, you know, who should be in charge the
Speaker 1: people I know, the people from the Metropolitan Club. It's
Speaker 1: not that different from most human reasoning. Who should be
Speaker 1: in charge of the people that you know and the
Speaker 1: people that you like that you have experienced firsthand? Right,
Speaker 1: So we have to ask ourselves when we feel like
Speaker 1: we are making a decision, especially if we're making a
Speaker 1: decision on something that would affect the course of our government,
Speaker 1: the course of our community. Whatever. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be I know this has been heavy on the political
Speaker 1: aspects because of Lippman's background, but it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be that. You have to ask yourself how much if
Speaker 1: your mind and your actions are a car, how much
Speaker 1: time are you at the wheel? And how much time
Speaker 1: are you writing shotgun? And when you are not driving?
Speaker 1: Who is? This appears to be the stuff mass media
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to know, at least according to Walter Lippman.
Speaker 1: And again, he may seem obscure today, but like berness is,
Speaker 1: legacy remains relevant today. And to conclude today's episode, we
Speaker 1: have to ask you, where is democracy as a concept going? What?
Speaker 1: What trends do we see? Is the age of spontaneous
Speaker 1: almost endless information helping or hurting what so many people
Speaker 1: have praised and criticized for centuries now? And where is
Speaker 1: the American public going? And specific Yeah, do you think
Speaker 1: we are all distracted and disinterested to the point of
Speaker 1: not being able to make decisions informed or otherwise for ourselves? Um,
Speaker 1: just maybe you personally. Do you feel that way? I
Speaker 1: know sometimes I feel that way depending on the day.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
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Speaker 1: a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how
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