1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:05,559
Well kind of sort of yam,
maybe ask not what your country can do

2
00:00:05,639 --> 00:00:12,199
for you, ask what you can
do for your country. Mister gerbutschaf tear

3
00:00:12,439 --> 00:00:22,320
down this wall, read my lips. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long

4
00:00:22,359 --> 00:00:25,679
and Peter Robinson. I'm James Blyles. The day we talked to Victor Davis

5
00:00:25,719 --> 00:00:30,000
Hanson about cities, culture, the
future and all that stuff. So let's

6
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:35,119
have oursels a podcast. And the
numbers have been improving the number of crimes

7
00:00:35,119 --> 00:00:39,560
on subways has been declining, and
I don't want people to feel anxious again

8
00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:42,359
when something like that comes to lighted. To do it is keeply disturbing.

9
00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:48,920
Believe me, you'll never get bored
with when we never get bored. Hello,

10
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:52,039
mister and missus America and all the
ships at see. Let's go to

11
00:00:52,439 --> 00:00:56,600
ricochet dot com, shouldn't we where
you can find the most stimulating conversations,

12
00:00:56,759 --> 00:01:00,200
civil conversations mostly on the internet.
Wonderful place to be. And it's the

13
00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:04,840
reason that we are at episode number
six hundred and what forty two right now

14
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:08,400
or something like that. We're getting
up there. I'm the Ricochet flagship podcast,

15
00:01:08,439 --> 00:01:12,840
which this is I'm James Lylenx and
the comforting, calm, sane bosom

16
00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:17,799
of the Midwest. Peter Robinson is
in California in a in a civilized enclay

17
00:01:17,879 --> 00:01:21,400
with barbarism all about I predict,
and Rob long as usual, is in

18
00:01:21,480 --> 00:01:29,159
Gotham, which is either the epitome
of the civilization and fine living or a

19
00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:34,280
hellscape in which the tunnels that run
to ground are beset by madness and murder

20
00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:40,200
of the most dystopian order. Hi, gentlemen, how are you today?

21
00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:42,359
That's probably so well, that's the
news this week, of course, is

22
00:01:42,359 --> 00:01:47,079
that there was a gentleman who was
talking loud on the subway and got choked

23
00:01:47,079 --> 00:01:52,799
out, and so everyone is retreating
to the usual stances. What do you

24
00:01:52,879 --> 00:01:57,599
make of this? Is this a
Bernie gets moment which results in I'm not

25
00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:00,319
exactly sure what Bernie gets resulted in. Are we going to get more of

26
00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:06,280
Curtis Slee wat types to guard the
population because the civic authorities seem unlikely to

27
00:02:06,359 --> 00:02:12,000
do so. Is this another opportunistic
way of taking somebody's death and making from

28
00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:16,199
it a bunch of statements that are
applicant. Give me your take, Rob

29
00:02:16,199 --> 00:02:22,240
it's your town, it's about town. Um uh, well, I mean

30
00:02:22,319 --> 00:02:24,800
I don't think it's going to sound
like a Burnie gets moment. Some people

31
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:29,680
are depending on you know, how
you're disposed, right, Bernie gets uh,

32
00:02:29,840 --> 00:02:32,439
famous famous subway vigilante Bernie gets if
you're you know, under the age

33
00:02:32,439 --> 00:02:36,439
of ninety, maybe you need to
have a refresher. I was on the

34
00:02:36,479 --> 00:02:43,960
subway, he was he was attempt
somebody attempted to mug him. Some some

35
00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:46,280
some robbers attempted to mug him.
He pulled out a Yeah, he pulled

36
00:02:46,280 --> 00:02:49,159
out a It turns out it was
a screwgar. He pulled out a gun

37
00:02:49,199 --> 00:02:55,479
and shot him. And so he
instantly became either vilified vigilante in the you

38
00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,879
know, in the in the style
of the time, right, which was

39
00:02:58,879 --> 00:03:06,960
sort of a time of Charles Bronson
runs, etc. That wow, or

40
00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:08,520
he became a folk hero. It's
important to know, by the way,

41
00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:12,759
that the crime still like stored in
New York City. The high water or

42
00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:15,039
low water mark, depending how you
look at it, murders in New York

43
00:03:15,039 --> 00:03:19,479
City was nineteen ninety UM. So
he sort of crystallized what a lot of

44
00:03:19,479 --> 00:03:21,400
people thought about New York City,
which was said it was you know,

45
00:03:21,439 --> 00:03:27,520
this dangerous place where um, where
thieves were all over and you put a

46
00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:30,520
sign in your car in window back
then, I mean really up until the

47
00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:34,599
early nineties saying no radio in car
because they had to a thing called the

48
00:03:34,639 --> 00:03:37,120
smash grab. People just smashing their
car and steal your radio and run.

49
00:03:37,759 --> 00:03:49,080
Um. This is different because everyone
has written the subway feels has has felt

50
00:03:49,719 --> 00:03:53,080
at risk. Not from somebody trying
to steal. It's not from some some

51
00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:58,639
you know, violent but rational actor
rights of thief trying to take your money.

52
00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:00,719
I want your money, you have
money, give me your watching,

53
00:04:00,759 --> 00:04:05,319
your phone and your money. But
by some ambulatory psychotic who has been in

54
00:04:05,360 --> 00:04:11,960
and out of some version of prison
and psychiatric care. Uh and is now

55
00:04:12,159 --> 00:04:15,360
wandering the streets and is capable of
any kind of irrational, sudden, irrational

56
00:04:15,519 --> 00:04:21,160
violent movement like pushing in front of
a train. That's very different. Um.

57
00:04:21,199 --> 00:04:25,319
I mean I think at this point
muggers would be a welcome relief.

58
00:04:25,319 --> 00:04:27,439
They'd be oh my god. But
the return of the muggers would be like

59
00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:31,600
thank god, people you know regain
insanity professionals. Yeah, So this this

60
00:04:31,639 --> 00:04:34,480
is I think a watership moment for
a lot it is. Unfortunately, it

61
00:04:34,519 --> 00:04:38,360
is not a watership moment for a
lot of people who for whom it should

62
00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:44,079
be, which is their reflexive attack
on the guy who protected people in the

63
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:50,279
subway from a known, unknown,
violent criminal with forty two prior arrests,

64
00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:58,560
two outstanding lawrence and an outstanding lawren
on him. Um. This this,

65
00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:00,399
this, this, this actually is
a great big divide. It's not between

66
00:05:00,399 --> 00:05:06,480
liberals conservatives, really, it's between
um progressive politicians, elected politicians who are

67
00:05:06,759 --> 00:05:12,480
busying themselves with you idiotic waste of
time. Um, like you know,

68
00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:17,240
trans education and prosecuting a former president, and citizens of a city that just

69
00:05:17,279 --> 00:05:23,040
think, okay, that's all cherry
and cherry and hot fudge sauce on top.

70
00:05:23,319 --> 00:05:27,480
Let's stick to your knitting. Subways
are dangerous places, and they and

71
00:05:27,519 --> 00:05:31,199
they shouldn't be and and and the
fact that they are isn't a failure of

72
00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:35,199
the police, right. It isn't
like in the sixties and seventies and eighties

73
00:05:35,199 --> 00:05:38,519
where you said, well, you
know, the NYPD is pretty corrupt or

74
00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:42,720
there this or that that. It
is not a failure of policing. It's

75
00:05:42,759 --> 00:05:47,079
a failure of the of the of
the system that is being administered. This

76
00:05:47,079 --> 00:05:54,319
guy was arrested forty two times.
So it's not but it's not a failure.

77
00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:57,480
If this is exactly what the intended
outcome should be, that it would

78
00:05:57,480 --> 00:05:59,240
be a failure. That could be, but you know what I mean,

79
00:05:59,519 --> 00:06:02,079
I mean, if the propective of
a citizen, Yeah, if if if

80
00:06:02,120 --> 00:06:08,319
if they the point is to not
get these people criminally justice system involved and

81
00:06:08,399 --> 00:06:11,600
to remand them to some sort of
restorative justice program. That is not a

82
00:06:11,639 --> 00:06:14,839
failure at alities. But then he's
walking around the streets with forty warrens.

83
00:06:14,399 --> 00:06:18,040
It's the exact outcome they desire and
believe is good for society or at least

84
00:06:18,079 --> 00:06:23,680
the individual, or at least their
sense of justice. Um. Yeah,

85
00:06:23,879 --> 00:06:28,000
I would just say the difference here
is that this is a No one is

86
00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:30,199
saying that this guy is a The
point about this guy isn't that he was

87
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:35,279
a bad guy. It's that he
was an insanely an insane person who is

88
00:06:35,399 --> 00:06:42,000
dangerous and he's wander around the streets. Um, and that seems to be

89
00:06:42,560 --> 00:06:46,000
Um that that is actually crossing a
lot of partisan lines right now in here

90
00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:48,279
a city, which is sort of
a good thing. Thank god they still

91
00:06:48,279 --> 00:06:51,800
want to vote any differently, Peter, you have in California, and it's

92
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:55,839
a large place. It's huge.
I know I can just make broad,

93
00:06:55,839 --> 00:06:59,360
sweeping generalizations. But you also have
a problem with the unhoused, as this

94
00:06:59,439 --> 00:07:03,319
phrase as a now mentally unwell,
with lots of people who are in various

95
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:08,000
throes of psychosis, walking around the
streets with their with their pants hanging down

96
00:07:08,079 --> 00:07:12,240
or frozen in place because they've taken
crocodial or trank or something. Here's the

97
00:07:12,279 --> 00:07:15,480
thing. We have more of this
now than before when Rob said that previously

98
00:07:15,519 --> 00:07:18,360
it was just your basic thugs who
were going car to car and chacking people

99
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:23,000
down or stealing rate. Now we
have just crazy, ambulatory people who are

100
00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:26,480
doing mad, crazy things. Do
we have an increase in the number of

101
00:07:26,519 --> 00:07:31,199
people who are biologically insane because something
got unwired in their brain or as I

102
00:07:31,199 --> 00:07:36,720
would suspect, this is the result
of a class of drugs that is flying

103
00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:41,879
the markets and rewiring people's brains and
making them nuts. That we have this

104
00:07:41,959 --> 00:07:46,759
is not a natural sort of mental
illness. This is a assumed mental illness

105
00:07:46,759 --> 00:07:49,519
by people who've gone down the route
of drugs, facilitated of course by massive

106
00:07:49,519 --> 00:07:53,480
amounts of them from China and Mexico. That's one take. What do you

107
00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:59,759
think I'd go for that? The
crime rate in New York is still lower

108
00:07:59,759 --> 00:08:03,600
than it is in Detroit and Chicago. We get that tossed at us,

109
00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:07,079
even as right out here in San
Francisco we keep getting reminded that the rate

110
00:08:07,079 --> 00:08:11,879
of violent crime remains low. I'm
happy it does, it takes place,

111
00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:16,720
but the streets out here are still
in San Francisco. Not where I am

112
00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:22,079
in Palo Alto, but San Francisco's
thirty miles away. You don't have to

113
00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:30,480
walk far to find streets with empty
syringes, sidewalks with empty syringes. One

114
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,919
of my kids drove up and parked
his card to see some buddies, and

115
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:39,240
within three hours the window had been
smashed. This happens over and petty crime,

116
00:08:39,039 --> 00:08:43,840
dirt, a sense of danger.
Now here's what happened earlier this week,

117
00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:50,200
Nordstrom announced that it's going to close
both of its downtown San Francisco stores.

118
00:08:50,279 --> 00:08:54,519
That's going to be over three hundred
and fifty thousand square feet of retail

119
00:08:54,559 --> 00:09:00,519
space empty. Here's what Nordstrom said, and it's email to employee quote the

120
00:09:00,600 --> 00:09:05,000
dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market
have changed dramatically over the past several years.

121
00:09:05,080 --> 00:09:11,039
Yeah, have they impacting customer foot
traffic to our stores and our ability

122
00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:16,200
to operate successfully, which means the
ability of employees to get in there and

123
00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:20,000
out of the store and feel safe
while they're going to the store and from

124
00:09:20,039 --> 00:09:30,120
the store and in the store.
So it seems to me that the crime

125
00:09:30,200 --> 00:09:33,919
is one thing, and there's a
blazing incident that gets everybody's attention, like

126
00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:41,840
the one we opened talking about,
but this overall level of unease that things

127
00:09:41,879 --> 00:09:46,559
are not are spinning out of control, that the city is no longer being

128
00:09:46,679 --> 00:09:52,639
run with a primary view to simple
safety and cleanliness, both in New York

129
00:09:52,039 --> 00:09:58,200
and in San Francisco, and the
feeling that these cities are well. New

130
00:09:58,279 --> 00:10:01,559
York is so big and so vibrant. It's just the feeling that there's something

131
00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:07,399
dying, something dying. This is
all unnerving. There is some good news,

132
00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:09,759
or at least here's can I give
a silver lining here? Sure,

133
00:10:09,799 --> 00:10:13,159
I'm sure is that in New York
City. I don't know about the stats

134
00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:16,360
for San Francisco, but in New
York, but I suspect it might be

135
00:10:16,399 --> 00:10:22,679
the same or similar in New York. The crime is not higher than it

136
00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:26,120
was in the sixties, seventies,
eighties and early nineties. Um. The

137
00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:30,799
murder rates, lower, assault rates, I mean, all the indications are

138
00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:33,759
better than they were if you go
back far enough, right, which means

139
00:10:33,759 --> 00:10:37,159
that there's a whole population of New
Yorkers who who have a I mean,

140
00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:41,039
and they're young too, they're you
know, maybe they've only been here ten

141
00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:46,440
years, fifteen years, who have
a memory of this city as incredibly livable.

142
00:10:46,799 --> 00:10:50,279
Right in New York City even now
has has has a lower crime rate

143
00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:54,679
than with a lot of American cities, um, and a lot of world

144
00:10:54,679 --> 00:11:00,440
cities, um. But there their
standards just were raised under very very good

145
00:11:00,480 --> 00:11:03,960
firm law and order management, you
know, the one two punch of Giuliani

146
00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:11,360
and Mike Bloomberg. So there's standards
for what an urban environment should be are

147
00:11:11,480 --> 00:11:13,919
very very high, and they're very
upset now. James is right. That

148
00:11:15,039 --> 00:11:18,799
may not translate for a whole bunch
of reasons into sort of something happening at

149
00:11:18,799 --> 00:11:24,679
the ballot, but it in the
past it has. And the difference here

150
00:11:24,759 --> 00:11:26,720
is that the people who are living
in the city in the fifty sixty,

151
00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:33,519
seventy, staighties, early nineties felt
that there was an absolutely inevitable decline,

152
00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:35,320
yes, that there was just no
way to stop it. You couldn't stop

153
00:11:35,360 --> 00:11:39,039
it. This is just what happens
to these cities. And then it was

154
00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:41,200
turned around and suddenly, so oh
no, Actually, you know, you

155
00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:45,240
can have people sitting out outside of
the streets and little tables, and suddenly

156
00:11:45,240 --> 00:11:50,200
Brian Park is this beautiful place that
has seasonable like events and it's like lovely.

157
00:11:50,240 --> 00:11:52,480
It's not a crack. Then it's
not. It's not. It's not

158
00:11:52,519 --> 00:11:54,679
an open air drug market anymore.
But it doesn't have to be the way

159
00:11:54,679 --> 00:11:58,960
it was. And I think there
are enough young people, I hope that

160
00:11:58,159 --> 00:12:01,120
think, oh, well, this
is simple. The way to solve this

161
00:12:01,159 --> 00:12:05,679
problem isn't we have to change human
nature or change the course of history.

162
00:12:05,519 --> 00:12:11,120
We just have to get the successful
policies back. And the successful policies,

163
00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:16,559
though some will say, included stop
and frisk, it included a whole bunch

164
00:12:16,559 --> 00:12:20,200
of things that are now off the
table because of disparate impact. You have

165
00:12:22,279 --> 00:12:26,200
left parties have all made that shift. We're not going to do that anymore.

166
00:12:26,240 --> 00:12:30,879
This is contrary to our foundational beliefs
about the way society operates. So

167
00:12:30,960 --> 00:12:33,120
I mean, there was an appetite
for it back then because people wanted something

168
00:12:33,159 --> 00:12:39,039
done. But now there's all of
these intellectual guard rails that keep people from

169
00:12:39,039 --> 00:12:43,000
saying, from keep people from adopting
the things that worked before, it seems,

170
00:12:43,120 --> 00:12:48,559
which is what's worrisome on New York. San Francisco is different in a

171
00:12:48,639 --> 00:12:50,279
number of ways. But on New
York. I thought Kevin Williamson had a

172
00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:54,919
wonderful line when he was with us
last week. This is a paraphrase.

173
00:12:54,960 --> 00:12:58,519
I can't quote him exactly, but
this is a close paraphrase. New York

174
00:12:58,600 --> 00:13:01,120
is the greatest place in the world
to live as long as the streets are

175
00:13:01,159 --> 00:13:11,120
safe and the subway works. It's
just not complicated. It's just not complicated

176
00:13:11,639 --> 00:13:15,919
out here. Our violent crime rate
again, I'm talking about San Francisco.

177
00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:20,600
The violent crime rate remains low,
but the petty crime rate is way up,

178
00:13:20,879 --> 00:13:26,360
and you can feel it, you
can sense it. We don't we

179
00:13:26,399 --> 00:13:28,279
don't have a subway out here.
Like the subway, their buses, there's

180
00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:33,360
the bart system and so forth.
People rely on that less. For San

181
00:13:33,399 --> 00:13:39,559
Francisco. Again, it's not complicated. The city is so beautiful, so

182
00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:46,679
filled with bright young kids, just
such a spectacular place that all you have

183
00:13:46,759 --> 00:13:52,000
to do is make sure the streets
are clean and safe, and they can't

184
00:13:52,039 --> 00:13:56,679
do that. It's just astounding.
Well again, Peter, you're talking about

185
00:13:56,759 --> 00:14:01,600
victimizing the people who are the victims
of capitalists, since we have an unfair

186
00:14:01,639 --> 00:14:05,759
system that is shot through with inequity, and houselessness is everywhere and untreated metal

187
00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:11,960
illness abounds because Ronald Reagan personally kicked
open the doors that the mental asylums and

188
00:14:11,039 --> 00:14:16,440
usshered everybody into the sunlight blinking.
Uh, we can't do anything, can't

189
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:20,240
anything that you try to do is
going to victimize the victims, which seems

190
00:14:20,240 --> 00:14:24,120
to be the take that they have. In Minneapolis, we have not a

191
00:14:24,159 --> 00:14:26,360
subway, but we have a light
rail system which is becoming well, has

192
00:14:26,399 --> 00:14:33,399
become unusable for most people because it's
overrun with people who are doing meth and

193
00:14:33,600 --> 00:14:39,159
fanty and smoking and weed and the
rest of it, and being in their

194
00:14:39,159 --> 00:14:43,039
seats. Did you say fenty fenty
Yeah? What it is concused of the

195
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:50,360
lingo. Yeah, So you have
people who are who are rightly discouraged from

196
00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:54,799
using it because they fear for their
personal safety. Um, and that sort

197
00:14:54,799 --> 00:14:56,919
of I mean, when we built
this thing, this huge, multi billion

198
00:14:56,960 --> 00:15:00,240
dollar system. It was supposed to
be the jewel of our transit stem,

199
00:15:00,279 --> 00:15:03,559
shuttling people from the burbs to the
jobs downtown. The whole model is broken

200
00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:07,720
because the jobs aren't downtown anymore.
And this elaborate, expensive system has been

201
00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:11,679
taken over by people who have no
invested interest in maintaining any some sort of

202
00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:15,840
social public order. And again we
know what, we know what. The

203
00:15:15,879 --> 00:15:20,399
solution is. Send in the Metro
Transit police who will remove the people,

204
00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:24,559
who will make them pay and say
no, it is against the rules of

205
00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:28,639
our society, as we understand them, for you to do drugs on this

206
00:15:28,759 --> 00:15:35,720
train. But they don't. They're
talking about it, but they don't plan

207
00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:41,440
going overhead. Sorry about that.
From the perils of living here in the

208
00:15:41,519 --> 00:15:43,519
urban city that I do. You
know, I gotta tell you this though.

209
00:15:45,159 --> 00:15:48,440
It is May, right and we're
coming up to you know, the

210
00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:52,600
first week of May is just glorious
in Minnesota because the trees start to bud

211
00:15:52,639 --> 00:15:56,519
in the flowering trees and one of
the most beautiful things you can imagine.

212
00:15:56,519 --> 00:16:00,960
I love in my backyard flowering trees
go. And you're thinking, James commercial

213
00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:03,799
for that tree joint no. What
I'm telling you is this, it's getting

214
00:16:03,799 --> 00:16:07,440
warmer, which means that some people
switch their sheets. I don't. I

215
00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:11,480
don't switch my sheets out when they
gets warmer because I have everybody. Now,

216
00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:15,799
that's right, bowl and Branch.
The warm weather comes and you know

217
00:16:15,919 --> 00:16:21,480
these are I don't know. It's
like they're dynamically oriented to whatever season it

218
00:16:21,519 --> 00:16:23,679
happens to be. That's because Bowling
Branch is the betting expert. They make

219
00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:29,399
the highest quality sheets with incredible craftsmanship. Each sheet set is slow, made

220
00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:33,240
for unmatched softness with one percent trace
bold organic cotton that gets softer with every

221
00:16:33,279 --> 00:16:36,480
wash. You know, I say
it every week because I mean it every

222
00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:40,320
week. The signature hammed sheets from
Bowling Branch are best sellers for very good

223
00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:44,799
reasons. One, Bowling Branch uses
the highest quality one organic cotton threads on

224
00:16:44,879 --> 00:16:48,320
earth to Each sheet set is as
they said, slow made for superior softness

225
00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:51,799
and a better night sleep. And
three they feel buttery to the touch.

226
00:16:51,840 --> 00:16:56,279
And four they're super breathable, so
they're perfect for both cooler and warmer weather.

227
00:16:56,519 --> 00:16:59,200
That's why they're loved by millions of
sleepers, including me. And you

228
00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:02,200
can hear more of them. But
I don't know, ten thousand reviews,

229
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:03,599
it's got to be more than that. Plan. Now, those ten thousand

230
00:17:03,640 --> 00:17:07,240
reviews, by the way, have
given them five stars. That's what I

231
00:17:07,319 --> 00:17:11,599
love about Bowling Branch knowing the ten
thousand and five stars reviews are behind known.

232
00:17:11,640 --> 00:17:15,559
It's not that it's nice to know, but it's just how good they

233
00:17:15,599 --> 00:17:18,960
feel, and how week after week
after week, these sheets don't deteriorate like

234
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:23,000
you put some Kleenex into the washing
machine, but they just get better and

235
00:17:23,079 --> 00:17:26,359
better and better and better. I
don't know whatever wear these things out.

236
00:17:26,720 --> 00:17:30,480
I really actually don't care to ever
buy another set because these are perfect.

237
00:17:30,519 --> 00:17:33,759
So you can be like me and
everybody else, all the presidents who have

238
00:17:33,799 --> 00:17:37,079
slept on these sheets. Because you
get a thirty nine risk free guarantee with

239
00:17:37,079 --> 00:17:41,799
free shipping and returns on all your
US orders. So sleep better tonight with

240
00:17:41,880 --> 00:17:45,640
Bowl and Branch sheets. Get fifteen
percent off your first order when you use

241
00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:49,400
the promo code ricochet at Bowlin Branch
dot com. That's Bolon Branch ol An

242
00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:55,279
d Branch dot com promo code Ricochet
exclusion supply to see the site for details.

243
00:17:55,319 --> 00:18:02,799
And we thank Bowland Branch for sponsoring
this the Ricochet Podcast. Now we

244
00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:06,319
welcome back to the podcast Victor Hanson, Martin and Ilia Anderson, Senior Fellow

245
00:18:06,319 --> 00:18:08,559
at the Hoover Institution. It's written
more than a dozen books on a variety

246
00:18:08,559 --> 00:18:14,119
of fascinating subjects, and most recently
The Dying Citizen. You can find his

247
00:18:14,200 --> 00:18:18,319
pieces latest pieces along with his podcast, The Victor Davis Hanson Show at Victor

248
00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:21,000
Hanson dot com. Welcome back,
Victor, good to talk to you.

249
00:18:21,119 --> 00:18:22,799
Thank you for having me. You
know we're going to get to the book

250
00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:26,960
and the matter of immigration a second
Saint Quadamio being upon us. But we

251
00:18:26,960 --> 00:18:33,839
were just talking before about the possible
death of American cities, the double whammys

252
00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:37,559
of crime, people feeling unease,
and the emptying out of the office,

253
00:18:37,599 --> 00:18:42,799
infrastructure and the rest of it.
We've seen this before, We've come back

254
00:18:42,799 --> 00:18:45,839
from it before. But are we
a unique inflection point in the life of

255
00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:52,000
American cities that may actually not be
retrievable. There wasn't the work from home

256
00:18:52,079 --> 00:18:56,599
option when urban corps were dying before? And now why go downtown? Yeah?

257
00:18:56,640 --> 00:19:00,759
I think I think we're it's a
little different because of what you said.

258
00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:03,880
I had just been in San Francisco, and I was shocked, but

259
00:19:03,519 --> 00:19:07,519
thirty to forty percent. It looks
like these beautiful buildings that were built during

260
00:19:07,519 --> 00:19:15,279
the Renaissance between two thousand and twenty
fifteen are empty, and when you go

261
00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:19,359
down Market Street, it looks like
a medieval city. But the other thing

262
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:25,599
is this isn't This isn't the Democratic
Party anymore that's running those cities. This

263
00:19:25,720 --> 00:19:30,720
is a Jacobin party. They have
ideological agendas that are not compatible with the

264
00:19:30,759 --> 00:19:37,200
old Democratic Party. They don't really
believe that crime is an individual act.

265
00:19:37,359 --> 00:19:44,799
They believe that it reflects critical legal
theory, critical racial theory that if you

266
00:19:45,079 --> 00:19:48,799
go in and you smash and grab
and Walgreens in San Francisco and you take

267
00:19:48,839 --> 00:19:53,960
out allergy medicine or something, that's
only against the law because wealthy white elites

268
00:19:55,119 --> 00:19:59,319
don't steal allergy medicine, so therefore
they make laws against it. So all

269
00:19:59,319 --> 00:20:04,160
the laws of that are being broken
are subject to debate. And you'd see

270
00:20:04,160 --> 00:20:08,720
these people, so that means and
then the people who live there, they're

271
00:20:08,799 --> 00:20:14,240
kind of like when you talk to
them and you see them interview, they're

272
00:20:14,319 --> 00:20:18,279
sort of like HD Wells Eloy.
They don't they're just kind of I don't

273
00:20:18,319 --> 00:20:22,920
know, impotent. They just think, wow, I voted for all this

274
00:20:22,519 --> 00:20:26,799
and then the old days it was
great and maybe it'll come back. But

275
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:32,759
I'm I'm afraid now these other people
that I can't condemn for various reasons,

276
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:37,680
have taken my life away and I'll
just sort of take it. So there's

277
00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:41,759
no I mean, once in a
while they get angry and they we call

278
00:20:41,799 --> 00:20:45,480
a school board member, or they
tell you that, oh we've lost Lotle

279
00:20:45,559 --> 00:20:51,279
High School. It's now a mess. Or but London Breeds not doing this,

280
00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:55,319
so they recall Budden. But they
don't. They're not they're being shepherd

281
00:20:55,359 --> 00:20:59,839
off to oblivion and they don't seem
to want to or they're not able to

282
00:21:00,279 --> 00:21:03,960
chair. It's different. I think
it's much different. So Victor, could

283
00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:11,880
I ask on that point. Is
it that the tech, the long long

284
00:21:12,039 --> 00:21:17,119
tech boom that we've had here in
northern California. This applies to the rest

285
00:21:17,119 --> 00:21:19,400
of the country as well, as
you'll see in a moment, but it's

286
00:21:19,519 --> 00:21:22,480
especially vivid here if I'm right about
it, and I'm not sure i am.

287
00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:29,240
But the rich are now so rich
that they can simply insulate themselves.

288
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:37,240
It's a little inconvenient to have to
navigate dirty streets in San Francisco. But

289
00:21:37,319 --> 00:21:40,799
you know, the streets aren't that
dirty up on Pacific Heights. The streets

290
00:21:40,799 --> 00:21:48,880
aren't that bad up on knob Hill. So this dispersion of income, the

291
00:21:48,079 --> 00:21:55,920
rich have really become spectacularly rich,
and they just don't care. They're able

292
00:21:55,920 --> 00:22:00,440
to insulate themselves. Is that one
reason why there simply doesn't seemed to be

293
00:22:00,519 --> 00:22:03,480
I mean just we were talking about
this a couple of weeks ago in New

294
00:22:03,559 --> 00:22:06,079
York, and the old days,
Rob and I are old enough to remember

295
00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:11,160
that town would drift a little bit
too far to the left, and then

296
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:14,759
you'd have Then there would be the
sort of big boys, the big guys

297
00:22:14,839 --> 00:22:18,480
in Wall Street would get together and
say, okay, this is far enough.

298
00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:22,720
There will be some community organization,
or they'll back at can't. And

299
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:29,000
the wealthy people it wasn't they alone
who saved New York or they but they

300
00:22:29,079 --> 00:22:32,680
backed Rudy Giuliani. They would there
was a limit how bad things could get

301
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:37,119
because there were adults, and they
tended to be people of wealth who would

302
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:40,359
enforce the limit. And in San
Francisco it's as though this the rich,

303
00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:44,480
I don't know in their minds they've
simply walked away, or they've said,

304
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:48,039
the top of this city, the
hilltops, Pacific Heights are still pretty good.

305
00:22:48,079 --> 00:22:52,359
That's where we all live. We're
fine, I think so. I

306
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:57,160
wrote an article and the current New
Criterion about Silicon Valley, San Francisco and

307
00:22:57,519 --> 00:23:02,319
Stanford, and one of the th
was that these people are never subject to

308
00:23:02,359 --> 00:23:07,039
the consequences of their own ideology.
There's not nine trillion dollars or market capitalization

309
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:14,079
Silicon Valley. So we've never seen
history of civilization that concentration of wealth.

310
00:23:14,119 --> 00:23:18,880
It's not just you know, Mark
Zuckerberg or the Google people. It's low

311
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:23,400
level management that have five, ten, fifteen, twenty million dollars and they

312
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:29,440
are thousands, two millionaires, thousands
of them, and they go they drive

313
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:32,079
around. I talked to people now
and they'd drive in, knock on people's

314
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:33,680
door and said, I'd like to
buy this house for five million dollars.

315
00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:38,279
And so that's a law of it. And you can see how that permeates.

316
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:44,200
California used to be run by Los
Angeles money and remember sammuority the LA

317
00:23:44,279 --> 00:23:47,880
time, the Chandler family. It's
run now with a Bay Area which wasn't

318
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:52,359
the dominant force, but after Silicon
Valley came in. You can see what's

319
00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:56,720
happened. If you look at kill
of what charges, what they've done to

320
00:23:56,799 --> 00:24:00,400
PG and E. It's the highest
electrical alm in the country, but it's

321
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:07,720
predicated on people living there that you
don't have one hundred and ten degree august

322
00:24:07,759 --> 00:24:11,079
like we do down here where all
the Mexican American people are that are poor

323
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:15,039
in Walmart, trying to keep cool. And when you look at charter schools,

324
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:19,519
they oppose charter schools, they oppose
teachers unions, but they find a

325
00:24:19,559 --> 00:24:23,720
way with prep schools to get around
that. So they always and that raises

326
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:30,960
a really interesting question whether it's sort
of a medieval penance or what it is.

327
00:24:30,039 --> 00:24:36,839
But they feel so bad about all
these problems that they voice their morality

328
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:41,359
and cosmic terms, but when you
actually look at their lives, they're completely

329
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:47,000
selfish and they don't integrate with people
that don't look like themselves necessarily, but

330
00:24:47,039 --> 00:24:51,079
they hector everybody, and you can
really see it on the Stanford campus,

331
00:24:51,079 --> 00:24:53,240
but you can see it in San
Francisco. To the other thing is if

332
00:24:53,240 --> 00:25:00,480
you add to that mix, you
don't if I was walking around San Francisco

333
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,359
two weeks ago, I just noticed
that when you look at recesses of schools,

334
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:08,480
there's no kids out there. There's
no families living in San Francisco.

335
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:12,359
The schools are dying. So you
don't have a lot of upper middle class

336
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:17,519
people who saying, who say,
I can't let my child get on the

337
00:25:17,519 --> 00:25:19,799
bus or they're crazy in my school. What you do is you have a

338
00:25:19,839 --> 00:25:23,799
lot of wealthy people and they put
their kids, you know, down on

339
00:25:23,839 --> 00:25:29,640
the peninsula or somewhere in prep school. So there's no families except for the

340
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,559
Asian community. And they're they're starting
to change a little bit. Even they

341
00:25:33,839 --> 00:25:37,880
you know, they're more bewildered than
angry. I talked to some people and

342
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,240
they say, you know, we
sent our kids a low high school.

343
00:25:41,319 --> 00:25:45,000
It's the best in California. It's
one of the worst victory for our listeners.

344
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,519
We should talk Lowell High School.
Correct me on this, but Lowell

345
00:25:47,559 --> 00:25:51,480
High School it used to be competitive
to be admitted, right, and they

346
00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:55,680
did away with public school. It's
a public school. It's like bed Stye

347
00:25:55,759 --> 00:26:00,720
in Manhattan, for example, or
Boston Latin School actly. And then they

348
00:26:00,759 --> 00:26:03,839
did away with the entrance exams,
or in one way or another they eliminated

349
00:26:04,279 --> 00:26:10,200
or very much dumbed down the standards
and totally change the character of the school.

350
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:15,279
Correct, Yeah, they did,
but they didn't remember what they didn't

351
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:21,480
do. They didn't fire the faculty
or at least immediately change the curriculum.

352
00:26:21,519 --> 00:26:26,119
So when you admit somebody on the
watery, that is considered by the advocates

353
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:30,119
of that new policy as synonymous with
graduation. So the teachers then have to

354
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:38,079
graduate those people are that they exhibit
a systematic plan or evidence of illiberality.

355
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:44,319
It's like Stanford University. The class
of two twenty six that's coming in,

356
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:49,640
according to the Stanford website, is
twenty two percent white, and the SAT

357
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:56,160
was optional. They will not reveal
the mean score of the people who chose

358
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,279
to take the SAT to enhance their
application, but they did to the press

359
00:27:02,319 --> 00:27:06,720
that's somewhere between sixty and seventy percent
of those who chose to take the SAT,

360
00:27:07,559 --> 00:27:11,200
and we're among the one percent in
the nation that got a perfect score.

361
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:15,079
They reach SECT at sixty to seventy
percent of those applicants, and they

362
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:18,359
were proud of that. And so
what does that do to the faculty at

363
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:22,799
stand for. If you can't,
you either have to do one of three

364
00:27:22,799 --> 00:27:26,400
things. You have to change the
curriculum. So if you're teaching history of

365
00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:33,640
Western humanities Homer to Dante, you
have maybe half the number of authors that

366
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:38,960
you did. Or you can inflate
the grades, or you can do what

367
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:42,680
one professor said to me, I'm
not going to die on the altar of

368
00:27:42,759 --> 00:27:48,119
standards. You can keep your standards
and then you exhibit a systematic prejudice that

369
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:55,039
will be evident to a diversity equity
inclusion czar. There's eighty of them on

370
00:27:55,119 --> 00:28:00,839
campus. I mek. So it's
happening all everywhere. And I did a

371
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,920
Hoover fundraiser to a bunch of Silicon
Valley guys and a guy came up and

372
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:08,240
he said, you're so pass And
I said, what, because we've for

373
00:28:08,319 --> 00:28:11,960
the last three years we give our
own tests. Don't you think that we're

374
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:15,079
going to do that someday? We
already do it. We give our own

375
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:21,839
private test on coding, and even
for people in HR and PR, we

376
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,000
want to have a test if they're
not going to do it at Stanford.

377
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:26,799
And he said, by the way, I would rather any day hire a

378
00:28:26,839 --> 00:28:33,160
Georgia tech code or electrical engineer than
the Stanford. So I think it's happening.

379
00:28:33,880 --> 00:28:40,160
People are reacting to this. So
I hey, Victor robed New York

380
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:44,839
joining it. So when so when
standards fall, right, they don't just

381
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:48,400
fall in a day or overnight.
They fall slowly, and nobody kind of

382
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:52,599
notices, right the old frog doesn't
know it's being boiled. Um. But

383
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:59,039
just to interrupt myself, if I'm
listening and I'm not from California Stanford and

384
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:00,839
I am needing one of them those
things, and you say that people are

385
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:03,559
going to be more interested in hiring
somebody from Georgia Tech or somewhere else,

386
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,279
I think that's great. That's actually
the market working, right, I do.

387
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:11,920
I think it's great. So if
the market works here, do you

388
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:15,119
think the market's going to work?
Um? Do you think it can work

389
00:29:15,559 --> 00:29:21,880
the way it worked in nineteen the
nineteen nineties, when um, the most

390
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,759
dangerous city in America, New York
City, did a law and order mayor

391
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:30,799
and within a short order became of
the safest cities in America. Um?

392
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:37,720
Do you think that's and and and
an attractive and attracting attracting forces to young

393
00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:41,119
people around the country? Around the
world to come to the city because it's

394
00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:45,559
New York City and it's not a
cesspool. Um, do you think the

395
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:49,480
market will do you think it's a
market correction that could happen here? Yeah,

396
00:29:49,559 --> 00:29:53,839
I think there's all these natural symphysical
forces are already. They always react.

397
00:29:53,920 --> 00:30:00,319
The biggest one that we've seen five
hundred thousand Californians in the last ten

398
00:30:00,359 --> 00:30:10,240
months left. They just left.
And another example is we in this community

399
00:30:10,279 --> 00:30:15,279
that I live near is about nine
Hispanic and we're one of the drop off

400
00:30:15,359 --> 00:30:19,240
points for the open border policy in
the six and a half million illegal entrance.

401
00:30:19,799 --> 00:30:25,400
But that is creating a huge backlash
by people who will tell you their

402
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:30,119
mom can't get into the dialysis clinic, their kid is roughed up at school

403
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:33,880
because he doesn't speak Spanish. And
these are Mexican American people voicing these complaints.

404
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:40,920
So there's always is going to be
a reaction to the reaction. I

405
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:45,599
don't know. But the problem is
eventually it works out. But it's kind

406
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,400
of like Hemingway instead of going broke, you know it, right, we're

407
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:56,319
graduating then it was suddenly suddenly Now, I think the COVID lockdowns, the

408
00:30:56,440 --> 00:31:02,400
George Floyd aftermath, the rioting,
the Trump, the whole Trump controversy,

409
00:31:03,359 --> 00:31:06,319
all of that, and then the
change in the Democratic Party. All of

410
00:31:06,359 --> 00:31:10,480
that was a perfect storm, and
we this is the most this is the

411
00:31:10,559 --> 00:31:15,160
most crisis I've never seen this country, even the sixties, at this crisis

412
00:31:15,319 --> 00:31:18,440
level. Well, that's interesting.
I'll get to that in a second.

413
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,559
But when you mentioned the five hundred
thousand people in California who move out to

414
00:31:21,599 --> 00:31:26,319
worry, is that this diaspora seeds
these are now red places with people of

415
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:30,240
blue And yeah, I think that
depends on where they go. You know,

416
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:34,240
if you're a conservative in California,
you tend to go to Texas or

417
00:31:34,279 --> 00:31:41,559
Tennessee or Florida or Wyoming. If
you're liberal, you tend to go to

418
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:45,640
Colorado or Nevada or Oregon or Washington. Washington, another place that you left.

419
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:49,079
That's the that's the word when you
said that, where you've never seen

420
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:52,759
the country in a stead of chrisis. Let's let's go back to the battle

421
00:31:52,920 --> 00:32:00,480
days of public conspicuous political assassination and
in a horrible divisions in the country over

422
00:32:00,519 --> 00:32:06,279
an unpopular war sixty seven through seventy
three, Inflation, oil shocks, just

423
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:08,279
the general feeling of it. I
don't feel that there is a sense of

424
00:32:08,359 --> 00:32:13,160
America in permanent, irreversible decline.
I mean, we got problems, but

425
00:32:13,359 --> 00:32:16,759
the sense was all pervasive in the
early seventies. We can't make anything.

426
00:32:16,839 --> 00:32:22,079
What we do make breaks, We're
dead for innovation, We're militarily useless.

427
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:27,519
It was all across the board,
the sense of American decline and crisis in

428
00:32:27,599 --> 00:32:31,039
the late sixties early seventies, as
compared to today. That's my pushback to

429
00:32:31,079 --> 00:32:35,799
the classical scholar who knows more than
I do. Yeah, but if you

430
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:40,440
look at the Stanford Electrical Engineering Department
in those days, or you look at

431
00:32:40,559 --> 00:32:45,880
the Harvard English Department, or you
look at the people who were in the

432
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:50,920
State Department, there was a professionalism
still, and there was a miraclecratic system.

433
00:32:51,359 --> 00:32:53,519
I went to UC Santacru's right when
that period you're talking about, and

434
00:32:53,599 --> 00:32:57,359
I remember my father brought me from
the farm and he dumped me there and

435
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:00,400
he said, hey, Victor,
I just walked out of the door out

436
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:04,559
of your co ed dorm and there's
a guy and a woman fornicating in the

437
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:07,519
shower. And I said, oh
wow, this is going to be interesting.

438
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:12,079
And then he said, look at
that door, and there was drugs

439
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:16,519
listed in the cow College Morrison House, you know, marijuana, psilocybin with

440
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,279
a price tag. So it was
wild. But then when I went in

441
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:25,920
to take a class in classics,
it was almost Renaissance type. It was.

442
00:33:27,279 --> 00:33:30,319
There was you had to turn your
paper in time, you had to

443
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:34,200
know Greek grammar, and it was
this is at uc Santa Cruz. And

444
00:33:34,359 --> 00:33:38,799
that's not true today. And I
know that it was more chaotic, and

445
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:44,279
some of it is. You know, we still was the Reagan Revolution that

446
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:49,640
stopped the continuous sixties. There was
a hiatus for twelve years between Reagan and

447
00:33:50,119 --> 00:33:52,799
Bush and then the younger Bush.
That eight years there were roadblocks, not

448
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:59,720
saying that they were perfect, but
they were impediments. But Barack Obama was

449
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:04,400
not a traditional Democrat yet he looks
that way now, but he wasn't.

450
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,639
He was considered a more radical Democrat. And now to the extent Joe Biden

451
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:13,320
is in control of things, the
people who are running this agenda. I

452
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:19,679
guess what I'm saying is in the
sixties people marched on the dean's office today

453
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,199
at Stanford to take the example,
I know, but the revolutions coming from

454
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:28,159
the Dean's office. They marched on
the Pentagon. The revolution is coming top

455
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:31,519
down from the channel, Mark Millie, I mean, you're short. This

456
00:34:31,639 --> 00:34:37,119
hadn't happened during Vietnam. The volunteer
Army had all the people we needed.

457
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,960
We're short sixteen thousand people in the
army. And I have a kind of

458
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,480
a joke when I used to when
I talked this year, I'd on military

459
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:50,320
affairs to audiences, I'd say,
Okay, anybody's kids going to go to

460
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:53,199
the military. They all said no. And then I got the same refrain,

461
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:58,679
Oh, my father fought in Vietnam, my husband fought in the First

462
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:01,400
Golf War. I'm not sent in
my son. And then when you when

463
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:07,800
you look at the data, white
males died at about double their demographics in

464
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:14,000
Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't know
if that's good or bad, but of

465
00:35:14,119 --> 00:35:17,519
the casualties in frontline combat white males. But if you go out and target

466
00:35:17,639 --> 00:35:22,000
that group and you say that you're
going to root out white rage, as

467
00:35:22,079 --> 00:35:28,719
Millie did or Austin did, Chief
of Neville, and you don't present data

468
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:34,320
that there is an epidemic of white
rage, then you alienate those people.

469
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,320
Same thing with the transgender and they're
not joining there. It's a mass.

470
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:43,199
If you look at all the data
that routbreak is irresponsible for the shortfall,

471
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:45,800
I hadn't seen that before. I
think that's really going to that's going to

472
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:50,840
affect it's going to affect the efficacy
of the military very quickly. I think

473
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,519
the Navy entering into a marketing partnership
with bud Light, as they've announced,

474
00:35:53,559 --> 00:35:58,960
I think that altered everything around it. Yeah, so I think it's a

475
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:01,079
little bit, a little bit,
it's not as dramatic. You're absolutely right.

476
00:36:01,159 --> 00:36:07,119
There's not the explosions and the weatherman
at least yet. But the difference

477
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:12,159
was when you had the Watts riots
or you had the Rodney Kings riots,

478
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:15,800
then you had the police. There
was a sense George W. I'll give

479
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:21,480
you an example. Colin Powell called
up George W. Bush during the the

480
00:36:21,639 --> 00:36:25,400
Rodney king as Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs and said, if you need five

481
00:36:25,519 --> 00:36:31,480
thousand troops, mister President, you
have them. And Bush sent five thousand

482
00:36:31,679 --> 00:36:37,960
troops right into Self Central. When
this happened, and Trump suggested you did

483
00:36:37,039 --> 00:36:40,360
that, everybody thought he was a
dictator and they said, you can't do

484
00:36:40,559 --> 00:36:47,079
that. And so we had one
hundred and twenty days, three billion dollars,

485
00:36:47,119 --> 00:36:52,760
two to three billion dollars, thirty
five killed arson looty, they damnaged.

486
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:55,960
They tried to torch the federal courthouse
and police precinct, the Saint John's

487
00:36:57,119 --> 00:37:00,639
and there was it was almost as
Kamala Harris said, it's not going to

488
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:04,280
stop. It shouldn't stop, It's
going to go on all the election.

489
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:07,440
And the head of the sixteen nineteen
projects said, you know, looting is

490
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:12,480
not that that's new. That right, the authorities or the establishment was a

491
00:37:12,599 --> 00:37:16,679
deer in the headlights. Reactually the
mayor of Portland or Seattle. I've never

492
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:22,119
seen that before. Yeah, but
you said something I thought was really fascinating.

493
00:37:22,159 --> 00:37:22,760
I just want to go back to
it for a minute. That the

494
00:37:23,159 --> 00:37:28,880
revolutionaries or the progressives or the sort
of I don't know what the disturbers are

495
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,920
coming from the top. You know, in olden times, right, you

496
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:37,119
know, the traditional family dinner,
the young person at the dinner table says

497
00:37:37,199 --> 00:37:44,400
something outrageous designed to give the older
person a heart attack at a stroke right

498
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:46,480
there, right, That seemed to
be how the jungle of the family dinner

499
00:37:46,519 --> 00:37:50,320
table worked. The young line is
trying to give the old line a stroke.

500
00:37:51,679 --> 00:37:57,159
Now every parent I know, my
age and older is constantly outraging their

501
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:00,559
children by saying something sort of anodyne
and maybe baffled and not using the right

502
00:38:00,679 --> 00:38:05,880
whatever pronoun or the right word.
And it really is the opposite the sort

503
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,679
of the radicals are now teaching.
The radicals are now governing. They're now

504
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:14,800
I mean, the New York City
where I live is not a machine state

505
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:19,639
in any meaningful way. What it
is. It's a it's a it's a

506
00:38:20,079 --> 00:38:23,880
policy state. It's a may fifth
form. Yeah, we saw that at

507
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:30,360
Stamford Law School that the person we
forget that really ended that lecture by Judge

508
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:35,199
Duncan wasn't the students they were protesting. It was the dean of inclusion,

509
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:42,519
Equity Inclusion who hijacked the event and
had a pre written in expectation that she

510
00:38:42,599 --> 00:38:46,280
would do that and then condemned him
for speaking out and that was the end

511
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:52,519
of it. And then she's now
on leave. But it's it's from the

512
00:38:52,639 --> 00:38:58,840
top faculty administration down the pentagon hierarchy
of generals who are going to revolve out

513
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,400
to corporate boards, right, and
I know the corporations are left wing,

514
00:39:01,679 --> 00:39:07,920
and they prep their attitude and their
profile downward. And you talk to lieutenant

515
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:10,639
colonels and they all say, I'm
never going to be I'm never going to

516
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:16,039
be promoted on how many shells hit
the target. Just not. But before

517
00:39:16,079 --> 00:39:20,599
we, uh, we get too
gloomy, Victor, because I know,

518
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:23,840
to make sure this Friday afternoon,
come on, yeah, I don't want

519
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:28,159
to be so name one or two
things that you think, you know,

520
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:30,920
what are the indications that you might
you might be looking for that things are

521
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:35,400
turning around. I actually found.
I mean, maybe I'm grasping here desperately

522
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:38,880
at whatever floating piece of detritus I
can. Um. I think it's interesting

523
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:45,199
that the big brands that were um, you know, unimpeachable, you know,

524
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:51,119
a Stanford diploma, a Yale Law
School diploma. You know, there

525
00:39:51,159 --> 00:39:53,000
are other brands like that, maybe
for some people that might even include something

526
00:39:53,039 --> 00:39:59,119
like Disney, and those are now
being shaken and those brands now no longer

527
00:39:59,199 --> 00:40:01,519
have the lust they had. And
part of us is, I mean,

528
00:40:01,559 --> 00:40:05,079
part of this is sort of true. Conservatives were just a little nervous with

529
00:40:05,199 --> 00:40:08,719
any kind of change. We talk
a big game about economic disruption and all

530
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:12,000
that stuff, but when it really
happens, to get a little nervous,

531
00:40:12,079 --> 00:40:15,199
Right, But isn't that good,
isn't it? I mean, I feel

532
00:40:15,199 --> 00:40:17,440
that way about the American party system. The American party systems is putting up

533
00:40:17,639 --> 00:40:22,320
probably may likely put up two very
damage, very unpopular politicians. It just

534
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:28,039
seems like these parties, the institutions
we've been clinging to for thirty forty years,

535
00:40:28,119 --> 00:40:30,119
both the big brands and maybe even
the big political brands, are out

536
00:40:30,199 --> 00:40:35,119
of gas, and maybe we're looking
at something new happening. Yeah, I

537
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,800
had I have talked to an editor
in New York and she said, gone,

538
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:44,280
or the days you want to hire
a Yale English An editor. So

539
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,480
yeah, I think that the other
thing, that's just I want to pile

540
00:40:47,559 --> 00:40:51,440
in on that. Yeah, I
just want to pile in on that very

541
00:40:51,519 --> 00:40:55,519
point. I had lunch not long
ago with somebody who had a very impressive

542
00:40:55,679 --> 00:41:00,320
twenty year career in the Financial District
of New York. And this guy had

543
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:05,559
been to an IVY League school and
was a very good athlete. And in

544
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,320
those days, twenty years ago,
if you were a good athlete from an

545
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:15,360
IVY you could write your ticket on
Wall Street. Rob and I were rejected

546
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:17,239
by Wall Street, which shows that
there were still some standards in those days.

547
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:22,280
But if you were an athlete in
orisman or is okay, he said,

548
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:27,519
that is just over. They don't
try that standards still matter in the

549
00:41:27,559 --> 00:41:30,559
financial world. You have to be
smart, you have to be hard working,

550
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:34,960
and an IVY degree, even among
athletes is no longer considered a guarantee

551
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:37,480
of that. They're looking at a
certain sense. We Rob said this earlier.

552
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:43,239
It's good in a way that now
Goldman and JP Morgan are looking to

553
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,840
Ohio State. And absolutely I think
that the standard the old world is collapsing.

554
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:52,079
That's the point. Yeah, I
think so. And I think here

555
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:57,000
forty five percent of the state of
California is identifies as Mexican American, and

556
00:41:57,159 --> 00:42:02,840
they are integrating and simulating in airing, and they are gradually I think it

557
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:08,079
will take another ten years. They're
gradually becoming to the point as the Italians

558
00:42:08,079 --> 00:42:13,199
in the nineteenth century. So if
your name now is Juliani or Cuomo,

559
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:20,199
you can't adjudicate their political leanings,
I think, and now pretty soon Lopez

560
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:30,199
and it's already starting to happen,
and the Democratic Party all has this elite

561
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:35,079
Hispanic in the legislature that have powered
but right below them guys that are thirty

562
00:42:35,199 --> 00:42:38,880
forty fifty sixty with families. Every
single thing they're pushing, from open borders

563
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:46,159
to transgenderism, to these new attitudes
toward crime, they don't like it.

564
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:50,840
And I think they're gonna They're starting
to vote. Here where I am,

565
00:42:51,039 --> 00:42:59,320
all of our our board of supervisors, local assembly, state, we have

566
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:04,639
Hispanic candidates and about a third of
them are conservative Republicans. Mike Gonzales's are

567
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:08,480
conson congressional right, you know,
fifteen feet away, and then David Valadeo

568
00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:13,880
is right or were here. So
it's starting to change. And that's I

569
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:16,280
think that's and you just named.
I don't know those two. I don't

570
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:20,760
follow their them as closely as you
do. But my impression is you just

571
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:28,960
named in Gonzales and Valadeo's bay.
You just named two smart, tough,

572
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:32,599
hard working guys. They are,
and Valadeo is the only person there was

573
00:43:32,599 --> 00:43:37,079
only two that voted to impeach Tron. He called me about it. I

574
00:43:37,119 --> 00:43:43,280
said, you should have pled that
you had COVID that day. But but

575
00:43:43,519 --> 00:43:46,280
he but he uh, he survived, And I just gave a campaign.

576
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:51,480
He just called me and I introduced
him in a campaign rally. He's Portuguese,

577
00:43:51,559 --> 00:43:54,519
but he speaks Spanish better. Every
time he runs. These guys bring

578
00:43:54,599 --> 00:44:00,599
out these elite, third generation left
wing Hispanics to defeat him, and they

579
00:44:00,639 --> 00:44:07,159
don't speak Spanish. He speaks at
point And Mike Gonzalez is a wonderful candidate.

580
00:44:07,559 --> 00:44:12,960
And so I think there's there's that's
hopeful as well. And then there's

581
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:16,800
always the fallback that when things get
so bad people come out of the woodwork.

582
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:22,199
That you one other thing, because
I was asked to this fight you

583
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:28,519
guys. That is when you look
at Matt Talibee Tybee, and you look

584
00:44:28,599 --> 00:44:35,119
at Schallenberger, and you look at
oh, Barry Weiss and Bill Maher,

585
00:44:35,519 --> 00:44:40,360
you start to get the impression that
and some of that, these people feel

586
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:45,559
they've created a Frankenstein and the monster
now is devouring them, and they understand

587
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:49,840
that that can't go on. It's
not going to be the guys who run

588
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,960
the grifting organizations at mass mail and
do noisy things on campus and the rest

589
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:58,880
of it. It's going to be
the people that the ones that you just

590
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:01,519
mentioned. I don't agree on every
single issue. I don't agree with Glenn

591
00:45:01,559 --> 00:45:07,679
Greenwald on a whole raft of things, but there's an intersection about government restriction

592
00:45:07,719 --> 00:45:13,280
of information. As Tiabe is also
talking about that, it's a new core,

593
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:16,159
it's a it's a new issue around
which people have disparate intellectual beliefs can

594
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,400
coalesce. And I think it's a
good one because the objective of that is

595
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:22,320
the maximization of freedom of speech and
the rest of it, which are things

596
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:25,760
that we've got to take back.
And if it's a bipartisan thing that does

597
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:29,360
it, and I got to,
you know, be in the same bed

598
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,360
with people who have completely different ideas
economically, I'm going to do that for

599
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:38,400
a while in order to restore some
some key points you said and get back

600
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,599
to what you said before before you
let you go, because we have to

601
00:45:42,039 --> 00:45:44,800
that a lot of these generals will
go through the revolving door and end up

602
00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:47,360
on corporate boards that are that have
left wing agendas. That's true, maybe

603
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,840
though some of those people on those
boards do. But do you think that

604
00:45:51,079 --> 00:45:54,880
maybe it's a lot of the people
in the elite circles don't necessarily subscribe to

605
00:45:55,000 --> 00:46:00,280
these luxury beliefs with any degree of
conviction. They're very easily detached from them.

606
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:04,960
But they do because A it's a
convenient and necessary means of signaling where

607
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,440
you are in the virtual scale,
and B perhaps they have an exaggerated idea

608
00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:13,480
of how popular these ideas amongst the
general population are. And it's not just

609
00:46:13,639 --> 00:46:16,000
the mega knuckle draggers, anilind snakes
and speaking in tongues down in Georgia.

610
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:21,320
No, there is a broad based
distaste for a wide variety of these things

611
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:25,599
because they go against a biology and
be essential American ideas about our identification.

612
00:46:25,679 --> 00:46:31,719
They are. I'd say it's sort
of how many people join were for the

613
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:36,920
Bolsheviks in nineteen seventeen, or the
National Socialists in nineteen thirty three, or

614
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,360
the Maoist It doesn't I think you're
right. Seventy or eighty percent do it

615
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:45,679
out of necessity or perceived advantage or
just you know, anyway slow. But

616
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:52,079
it doesn't really matter if they do
it, because most of these revolutionary movements

617
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:57,280
start with a very hardcore the squad, the Elizabeth Warrens of Bernie sand or

618
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:01,679
the Obash and if they can faith
through the institutions of which they control,

619
00:47:02,599 --> 00:47:08,199
corporate boardroom Hollywood, Professional Sports,
Kate through twelve, Academia, Silicon Valley,

620
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:13,880
Traditional on social media and they can
convey like they did with a bud

621
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:19,840
light for a while. Then they
can they can win, but they don't

622
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:23,039
have You're absolutely right, they don't
have people who sincerely agree with them.

623
00:47:23,079 --> 00:47:28,719
They just feel. My wife teachers
at Clovis Community College. She's in a

624
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:35,280
history runs a little history department there, and it's all it's all woke.

625
00:47:35,679 --> 00:47:39,639
But the number of people that she
knows who believes it is very, very

626
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:44,360
Just remember the Bolsheviks were the Menshevi
exactly, and the Mensheviks were the Bolsheviks.

627
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:46,719
Victor, thanks so much, Victor
Hansen dot com, new book,

628
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:50,239
all that stuff. We'll talk to
you again, always fascinating. We didn't

629
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:52,920
get to the things we want to
talk about, because heck, it's just

630
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:59,360
fun to talk to you about all
kinds of Victor. Will see you this

631
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:06,360
coming week. Yes, yes,
and you're going to Washington. Oh you're

632
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:10,480
coming down. You're going to Selma
Victor Tesla. Yes, well he may

633
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,519
well. We may have to meet
him with a bag of batteries halfway there,

634
00:48:14,559 --> 00:48:20,199
but charged on the farm. That's
great. Do you have a Tesla

635
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:25,719
charger. You have some I have
some explaining to too. My wife is

636
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:30,559
a big fan of Elon Musk,
so she went out and got starlink and

637
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:35,480
then she demanded that she drive to
work at Tesla so that I put twenty

638
00:48:35,599 --> 00:48:39,000
chargers. Scotty can charge up.
Huh. All right, she's deep and

639
00:48:39,079 --> 00:48:44,840
long and dogecoin keep her keep her
off that particular all right, thanks much.

640
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:47,679
I think about a survey that says
something like eight percent of American people

641
00:48:49,199 --> 00:48:52,920
want an EV and Ford loses a
huge amount of money and every one of

642
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:55,280
the vehicles that they have, and
it's one of those perfect instances where nobody

643
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:59,559
really wants this on mask. We
want the gas car, but everything is

644
00:48:59,639 --> 00:49:02,760
miniating against us having one because our
bidders believe that we shouldn't. It's like

645
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:07,360
the gas stove, the gas of
it and all the rest of it um

646
00:49:07,079 --> 00:49:13,519
And that's where you just wonder Rob's
use the boiling frog thing. But you

647
00:49:13,639 --> 00:49:20,000
know, it's just not a lot
of evidence to me that. I always

648
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,599
feel like Winston Smith with Julia standing
at the window, you know, looking

649
00:49:22,639 --> 00:49:25,599
at the pearls and saying, that
will be you know that that will be

650
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:30,559
what takes us away from Big Brother. The rest of the pearls are the

651
00:49:30,639 --> 00:49:35,000
future. The pearls are the hope, and that never arrives. There's just

652
00:49:35,079 --> 00:49:37,079
the knock on the door in the
arrested room, one on one anywhere.

653
00:49:37,079 --> 00:49:39,840
There's no segue there because I wouldn't
want to actually go to a product after

654
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:45,199
having said something so depressing. So
I will thank you say to Rob that

655
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,639
we got meetups coming where people can
get together and either be joyful and optimistic

656
00:49:49,679 --> 00:49:53,719
and hopeful or a music. People
are joyful and optimistic and hopeful in person.

657
00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:58,480
I think actually people and people all
over are much more happy and joyful

658
00:49:58,519 --> 00:50:01,639
and easy to get along within person
than they are online. Ricochet members are

659
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:05,960
easy to get along with online and
they're even better in person. So if

660
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:08,280
you have been looking to meet your
fellow members, please do. Randy's got

661
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:14,199
another meetup for Winston Salem in mid
July. Matt Foster's asking for RSBPS for

662
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,960
the annual German Fest meetup in Milwaukee. That's the last weekend in July.

663
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:22,760
There's more stuff going on, so
you go to ricochet com for the beet

664
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:25,360
up. I think it's gonna meet
up tab or something. If these meetups

665
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:30,719
are are inconveniently scheduled or located for
you. There is a simple solution,

666
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:32,480
joint Ricochet. Put up a post, Hey, how about a meet up

667
00:50:32,559 --> 00:50:37,920
here or there? And name a
date someone people will show because that's what

668
00:50:37,039 --> 00:50:40,440
Ricoche members do. They show up. And we had a great, great

669
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:44,360
meetup last month in New Orleans.
I look forward to the next one that

670
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:50,079
I can make. But but that's
the fun of Bricochet. It's a membership,

671
00:50:50,119 --> 00:50:52,159
it's a club, and we want
you to join. And remember,

672
00:50:52,199 --> 00:50:54,960
if you're absolutely completely clinically paranoid and
you don't want to join any sort of

673
00:50:55,039 --> 00:50:59,039
site that you think is post back
to you and your opinions will get back

674
00:50:59,039 --> 00:51:02,280
to you, you can always use
a pseudon m We have I'm Lilacs everywhere

675
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:05,320
I go because it keeps me honest
and what I say, I don't say

676
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:07,000
things I don't mean or would regret
saying later. But if you're one of

677
00:51:07,039 --> 00:51:10,719
those people, you know, just
come to the site. By VPN means

678
00:51:12,039 --> 00:51:15,880
what's that you ask, Well,
let me tell you. Oh nice,

679
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:20,320
that's right VPNs. But you say
which one should I use? Well,

680
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,840
I'm here to tell you. You
could possibly go on your computer and ask

681
00:51:23,199 --> 00:51:29,119
chat GPT which one day want?
Can everyone talk about GPT? And artificial

682
00:51:29,159 --> 00:51:31,679
intelligence is going to change the world. You know, Microsoft and Google they're

683
00:51:31,679 --> 00:51:36,280
all investing really heavily in AI for
search. But guess what, they're also

684
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,440
the same big TEP companies that determine
your search results, and only now they

685
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:43,079
get to cut out a whole new
layer from the information by that you see.

686
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:45,840
So why should these companies link off
to third party websites and the search

687
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:50,360
results when they can let their robot
generate the perfect answer to your question?

688
00:51:51,199 --> 00:51:52,519
I'm not sure about that. Every
time that I ask chat, GPT,

689
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:57,559
this or any of the other AM
models, I'm always mindful of the guardrails

690
00:51:57,599 --> 00:52:00,480
that are put in place and how
they reflect the biases of the people write

691
00:52:00,519 --> 00:52:04,639
the programs. Well, listen,
you can get around this. You can

692
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:08,000
use express VPN to add a layer
of protection between you and big tech see

693
00:52:08,119 --> 00:52:14,000
express vpn app. It hides your
unique IP address on all your devices.

694
00:52:14,039 --> 00:52:15,800
I mean, it makes much more
difficult than for big tech to identify who

695
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:20,000
I am, who you are,
and match my activity back to me and

696
00:52:20,039 --> 00:52:22,840
your d back to you. You
don't want that, no, and what

697
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:25,239
you do want is something that's easy
to use. Now take it from us,

698
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:29,239
because we here have been using Express
VPN for years. All we have

699
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:31,599
to do is just tap one button
on your phone or your computer to turn

700
00:52:31,639 --> 00:52:37,639
it on. That's it. But
Express vpn doesn't just protect me from big

701
00:52:37,719 --> 00:52:40,039
tech. It also encrypts one percent
of my online traffic. That keeps me

702
00:52:40,119 --> 00:52:45,000
and you and everyone else safe from
well not everyone else. Doesn't keep the

703
00:52:45,039 --> 00:52:46,559
hackers safe and the prying I safe. No, they're shut out because you're

704
00:52:46,639 --> 00:52:51,920
encrypted with Express vpn. Best part
one, Express VPN subscription covers up to

705
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,159
five devices at the same time,
so your whole family can use it too.

706
00:52:54,679 --> 00:52:59,719
So stop letting big tech leach on
your data freely or your data depending

707
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:02,119
on how you pronounced the word.
Use this link Express vpn dot com slash

708
00:53:02,199 --> 00:53:07,119
ricochet right now and you can get
three extra months free. That's e xp

709
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:13,400
r e ss vpn dot com slash
ricochet to get protected with vpn, the

710
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:15,559
one that's rated number one by Seen
It by the way, number one by

711
00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:20,199
tech Radar, and most importantly number
one by those of us here at Ricochet

712
00:53:20,599 --> 00:53:23,719
Express vpn dot com slash ricochet,
and we thank Express VbN for sponsoring this

713
00:53:24,159 --> 00:53:30,800
the Ricochet podcast a few seconds here
before we have to go, Let you

714
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:35,599
know, let's discuss whether let me
put it into the way. One of

715
00:53:35,679 --> 00:53:38,480
the things that's fascinating about this whole
Brook book burning, book banning in school

716
00:53:38,559 --> 00:53:40,639
conversation, as you say, well, actually, what they're trying to do

717
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:45,480
is keep from middle school's graphic novels
that have rather explicit representations of sex.

718
00:53:46,639 --> 00:53:51,960
Maybe we don't need that. And
now Utah is being banned in porn hub

719
00:53:52,039 --> 00:53:57,960
because of Utah's age verification rules,
and it's like, okay, we're not

720
00:53:58,039 --> 00:54:00,960
going to ban all this stuff all
over the coun tree and make sure that

721
00:54:00,159 --> 00:54:05,400
every picture of a woman has her
clothes down to her ankles. We're just

722
00:54:05,679 --> 00:54:08,480
saying, maybe make it harder for
fourteen year old kids to see the most

723
00:54:08,559 --> 00:54:15,519
grotesque, debasing stuff out there.
Shouldn't that be? I mean, the

724
00:54:15,679 --> 00:54:17,880
right is really bad at making the
argument about what we're trying to do,

725
00:54:19,159 --> 00:54:23,280
because either you have a complicit media
that just extrapolates from this that you just

726
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,320
want to batter and here a bunch
of prudes and the rest of it.

727
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:30,840
No, I mean, we're just
trying to carve out a period of childhood

728
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:35,039
that maybe has some innocence passed them. My little pony, you're a six

729
00:54:35,119 --> 00:54:37,159
year old stage, well, I
have my little pony. Adults are into

730
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:40,320
that, you know what I mean, Guys, Well, I mean part

731
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:49,119
of the part if you're part of
the deliciously attractive of one of the great

732
00:54:49,199 --> 00:54:53,719
attributes of being young is if you're
interested brainwashing people and getting them that's incredibly

733
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:58,360
great. Like it's too rich and
and they're too vulnerable, right, if

734
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:00,079
you're if you want to sell people
on something, you want to sell them

735
00:55:00,119 --> 00:55:04,239
on smoking, you sell them on
sugary cereal or something. It's better to

736
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:08,039
get them when they're young, right
before their brand taste have been locked in.

737
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:14,920
So you can see why companies like
that, and you can see why

738
00:55:15,039 --> 00:55:19,119
larger economic interests like that, right, and you can see why progressives like

739
00:55:19,199 --> 00:55:22,239
that, because if I get them
in they're in third grade, second grade,

740
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:23,280
third grade, and fourth grade,
then I may have them for the

741
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:27,079
rest of their life and doesn't really
matter what conversations have at dinner table,

742
00:55:27,119 --> 00:55:29,199
because I have them for eight hours. You only have them for two.

743
00:55:29,599 --> 00:55:31,239
And then there's an argument of a
bedtime, right, that's kind of how

744
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:37,199
that's sort of the power struggle.
But in general, we've had this sort

745
00:55:37,199 --> 00:55:39,199
of kind of las a fair attitude
about what children. I mean, I

746
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:45,360
remember when I was a kid,
I never heard the F word ever ever,

747
00:55:45,639 --> 00:55:47,440
And I can hear it on the
street. I mean it'd be like

748
00:55:47,599 --> 00:55:51,320
I would have been, Oh my
god, I would have been I was

749
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:54,400
shocking. Now you don't walk down
the street. You hear everything. If

750
00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:57,800
people drive by, you can hear
their music, and you can hear the

751
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,239
N word. I mean I hear
it. You're ten times a day walking

752
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:02,880
around New York City. Um,
it's just naturally, just a natural course.

753
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:06,280
I mean, I mean Twitter,
for all of its you know,

754
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:07,559
whatever benefits it has, a munch
for, it has any but just to

755
00:56:07,639 --> 00:56:12,840
say it hasn't is a pornography delivery
device. That's what it does. No

756
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:17,000
one pays attention to that. It
isn't for me. There's nothing about But

757
00:56:17,159 --> 00:56:20,360
that's because you're not interested in.
But if you are interested in, if

758
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:22,400
you're a child and you're interested in, go to Twitter. You can see

759
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:23,800
anything you want. You can see
d you want to in two minutes.

760
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:28,760
You have to be thirteen years old
officially to join Twitter, but of course

761
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:30,840
people join it younger and the thirteen
years old is pretty young. Um.

762
00:56:31,159 --> 00:56:36,159
So we have we we've sort of
let all this stuff fly, and at

763
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:38,880
least now we're noticing that's happening in
schools and instead of like where it should

764
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:43,800
be happening, which is furtively and
you know whatever. But but it's in

765
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:45,480
general a good thing. They were
paying attention to what our children learning and

766
00:56:45,519 --> 00:56:50,199
what people are trying to teach them. But that that is only I think

767
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:54,320
because we have as a culture,
we have kind of um outsourced over the

768
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:58,159
past twenty thirty years, outsourced a
lot of stuff that we used to take

769
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:02,719
care of at home and separate from
government. Um. And we just was

770
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:07,079
naturally took it separately from government,
um. And we just sort of like

771
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:09,280
kind of outsourced it to you know, the quote unquote experts. Right,

772
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:13,719
So, what do I know really
about this or that I'm just the parent.

773
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:16,239
The people at school, they've gone
out, they have degrees in this,

774
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:22,480
they know. I think we're I
think we're watching American parents taking that

775
00:57:22,559 --> 00:57:24,800
back and I think that's that's a
good thing. I'm going to agree with

776
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:30,519
everything you just said, except that
we let it all fly. We didn't

777
00:57:30,639 --> 00:57:36,880
exactly let it all fly. There
were laws that were that in retrospect make

778
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:38,599
even more sense than they seem to
at the time. But beginning in the

779
00:57:38,679 --> 00:57:45,360
late nineteen fifties there was there was
one concerted attack after another on censorship laws,

780
00:57:46,079 --> 00:57:50,719
and we end up with a regime
in which there's simply no censorship at

781
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:55,719
all. The notion of local standards
that was the Supreme Court eliminated said censorship

782
00:57:55,760 --> 00:58:01,159
can be imposed, um can be
imposed that reflects local standards. And it

783
00:58:01,239 --> 00:58:05,400
turned out to be that as a
matter of practice that was impossible to uphold.

784
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:14,079
And so it was a specific sort
of legal cultural political decision to dismantle

785
00:58:15,159 --> 00:58:20,639
elite decision. People didn't vote against
it, and there was an elite decision

786
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:27,559
case by case, part of the
liberal legal movement of the nineteen sixties that's

787
00:58:27,559 --> 00:58:30,519
simply eliminated. And now we have
Utah. Of all places, I say,

788
00:58:30,559 --> 00:58:37,960
of all places, it's the only
place that's trying to reassert some minimal

789
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:43,840
standards. And I don't know whether
it's being laughed at across the country,

790
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:49,559
but things have now become so inverted
that a pornography company, how do we

791
00:58:49,599 --> 00:58:54,719
know it's a pornography company because it's
called poor Knobs the state of Utah,

792
00:58:55,400 --> 00:59:00,119
supposing that everybody in the rest of
the country will will look at Utah on

793
00:59:00,440 --> 00:59:04,280
chortle. Oh, they can't get
poorn there anymore. What a punishment.

794
00:59:06,159 --> 00:59:08,039
Okay, I agree with you,
it's all, it's all mad. But

795
00:59:08,239 --> 00:59:12,280
but it's I mean, this business
about never hearing the F word. I

796
00:59:12,400 --> 00:59:19,599
can remember my parents were shocked,
shocked for a week when the issue of

797
00:59:19,679 --> 00:59:25,440
Time magazine arrived in the mailbox that
reproduced segments from the Watergate tapes, and

798
00:59:25,559 --> 00:59:30,199
they were shocked by that phrase that
burn over and over again expletive deleted.

799
00:59:30,639 --> 00:59:35,880
They could not believe that the president
of the United States used what, by

800
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:40,280
today's standards, would only be salty
language in the oval office. That and

801
00:59:40,559 --> 00:59:44,719
and that was the world in which
we grew up. It's impossible to convey

802
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:47,079
that to kids these days, that
it used to mention before the local standards

803
00:59:47,159 --> 00:59:50,880
was there. Yes, local standards
turned out to be ken, shabby and

804
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:52,199
a rain coat down at the train
station, you know, pleasuring him.

805
00:59:52,559 --> 00:59:55,800
So they and the elites would would
not be would not condemn him, because

806
00:59:57,159 --> 01:00:00,719
once you do that, once you
do once you suppressed the most grotesque form

807
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:04,719
of degrading pornography available. Well,
you know, it's just the same as

808
01:00:04,960 --> 01:00:07,760
saying a D. H. Lawrence
book must be abandoned, unable to unable

809
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:12,480
to see anything between the continuum.
But the F word thing is fascinating,

810
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:14,920
and it goes to Rob and we
should ask him about this because of the

811
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:16,800
writer's drake, even though I know
he has to go. I was arguing

812
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:21,400
with my daughter about the liberalization and
the normalization of the F word the other

813
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:23,559
day because I'd walk past a television
show she my wife were watching and it

814
01:00:23,679 --> 01:00:28,360
was F bomb F this, And
I am not a language proude. I

815
01:00:28,519 --> 01:00:32,239
prefer that people curse ornately in an
intelligent fashion, with some intelligence. But

816
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:37,719
just the fact that this word is
now so it's lazy. Dropping it into

817
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:42,519
the show and having a character use
it to make them real and legitimate is

818
01:00:43,039 --> 01:00:45,360
lazy that if you took it out, it wouldn't matter. So we started

819
01:00:45,519 --> 01:00:47,559
arguing about this, and she said, well, Succession is a great show

820
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:51,360
and people are using the F bomb
all the time. I saw it was

821
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:54,079
true, but if you removed it, you would never notice. You would

822
01:00:54,199 --> 01:00:58,760
never notice if nobody in Succession use
that because the rest of the stuff that

823
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,679
they're saying is so written, so
well crafted, that it depends on the

824
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:06,280
language, It depends on the car. You wouldn't notice it now, and

825
01:01:06,360 --> 01:01:08,920
then are you sure? On the
other end of the spectrum is deadwood,

826
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:13,400
in which I think about every third
word might be the F word, but

827
01:01:13,519 --> 01:01:19,960
it's wrapped in this this this hallucinogenic
Shakespearean language that is so beautiful and marvelous

828
01:01:20,039 --> 01:01:22,960
to listen to that it becomes music
and poetry. So it's all context.

829
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:25,880
And if everybody can do it like
David Milch, then I don't worry about

830
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:30,360
it. But it's the people who
keep dumping this tabasco into the water supply

831
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:34,760
and thinking that they're adding saffron.
That just that drives me crazy. Um,

832
01:01:35,039 --> 01:01:37,519
And now we have a writer strike. But now I believe also that

833
01:01:37,639 --> 01:01:39,239
Rob has to do a strike of
his own and leave am I correct?

834
01:01:40,199 --> 01:01:43,719
Well close? I mean, I
you know, at some point there will

835
01:01:43,719 --> 01:01:46,719
be some humiliating photographs of me picketing
in front of a thirty rock or so

836
01:01:47,159 --> 01:01:51,360
what will you have a little thing
to write themselves? Everybody has to write

837
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:52,880
their own little funny thing, and
that's I don't tell I would say,

838
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:57,639
thank you for the money, So
what I'll probably say, so please excuse

839
01:01:57,719 --> 01:02:00,760
this. Um, yeah, it's
one way or the other. I mean,

840
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:06,960
I think that there's probably a time
when people put them put the exploitive

841
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:08,880
deleted in a script to appear,
you know, to make it seem more

842
01:02:08,960 --> 01:02:14,280
rough and tumble. But I think
now it apps accurately reflects the way people

843
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,199
talk, unfortunately, and so now
it's like it doesn't seem like it's a

844
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:21,280
doesn't seem like it would be more
of an affectation to not put it,

845
01:02:21,679 --> 01:02:25,719
because just people use it constantly.
Um. And I just remember in my

846
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:29,440
lifetime, which like it has been
going on far too long, but in

847
01:02:29,559 --> 01:02:31,760
my my lifetime, that was just
being like ime on, come on,

848
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:35,119
lord. I mean, I don't
think we even I think when I was

849
01:02:35,159 --> 01:02:38,039
in college, I don't think I
can't imagine. I mean, I'm sure

850
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:42,920
I've definitely used it. I have
terrible language, but I mean just trying

851
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:46,559
to think of in the official areas, you know, we had an indoor

852
01:02:46,639 --> 01:02:49,840
voice and an outdoor voice, and
we had a you know, a proper

853
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:54,559
set of you know words and an
improper set of words. And there's one

854
01:02:54,639 --> 01:03:00,960
great moment in Bonfire the Vanities when
after Sherman McCoy is arrested and released,

855
01:03:00,239 --> 01:03:04,880
he's a minor celebrity in his society
and he's at a fancy dinner party and

856
01:03:04,960 --> 01:03:07,960
he discovers, my god, everybody
wants to talk to me because they I'm

857
01:03:07,039 --> 01:03:10,480
a huge, huge celebrity, and
uh, and he kind of starts making

858
01:03:10,599 --> 01:03:14,880
up stuff, saying to sound a
little tougher, and he uses the F

859
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:17,239
word, and it's as I think
it's a parent it's tom wolves about a

860
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:21,679
page of description. I mean,
he's going to use it. He's thinking

861
01:03:21,719 --> 01:03:23,280
about, he knows he's going to
use it, and it's the idea being

862
01:03:23,559 --> 01:03:27,800
that in a salon in New York
City in nineteen eighty seven, so it's

863
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:32,559
not that long. The use of
that word would have been shocking. And

864
01:03:32,760 --> 01:03:36,199
he says it because he says,
this is and this is what I said.

865
01:03:36,199 --> 01:03:37,880
I think I can't remember pervase it
and this is I said this to

866
01:03:37,960 --> 01:03:43,199
the guy to the guard. I
looked at him and I said, get

867
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:46,119
me out of this. At his
voice drops and he says the F word

868
01:03:46,280 --> 01:03:50,800
very like gutterly and low, and
he acknowledges by dropping his voice that he's

869
01:03:51,119 --> 01:03:53,480
embarrassed to have to use that language
among the ladies out of this place,

870
01:03:53,920 --> 01:03:58,639
and they all are shocked, titilated
and shocked it up. Absolutely, it's

871
01:03:58,639 --> 01:04:01,280
a great social moment for him.
But he just the idea that back then

872
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:04,760
that word would have been shocking and
the use of it would have been socially

873
01:04:04,880 --> 01:04:09,400
kind of cool, and you had
to couch it in all sorts of attitudes

874
01:04:09,519 --> 01:04:13,760
and now be able to just screaming
on the street. Great f and point

875
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:17,039
Rob, we'd like to we'd like
to remind you that Rob's point and Peter's

876
01:04:17,119 --> 01:04:21,239
and victors have all been brought to
you by the wonderful organizations known as a

877
01:04:21,320 --> 01:04:25,360
Bollen Branch and Express VPN. Support
them for supporting us, and you will

878
01:04:25,360 --> 01:04:28,880
get great products. Everything will be
better everything. And join Ricochet to day.

879
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:30,800
Why don't you Shore? We always
need the members. I always love

880
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:32,800
to hear new voices. You'll discover
the member feed where you know it's kind

881
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:35,280
of it's private, it's walled off. You know, you've got to pay

882
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:39,760
a few cheap shekels to go there, but it's worth it because I just

883
01:04:39,880 --> 01:04:42,800
loved hitting it about four or five
times a day. Five star review.

884
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,639
And Apple podcast. We've been begging
you for that for six hundred and forty

885
01:04:45,639 --> 01:04:47,920
two podcasts. Now, would it
kill you? Would it just kill you

886
01:04:48,079 --> 01:04:49,760
to go and give us one of
those? Now it wouldn't, So go

887
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:53,800
do it. Your reviews allow other
listeners to discover us, and that keeps

888
01:04:54,119 --> 01:04:57,519
Ricochet going and that's what we all
want, isn't it? You do,

889
01:04:57,800 --> 01:05:01,559
Peter rob It's been fun and we'll
see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four

890
01:05:01,679 --> 01:05:13,119
point er next week, boys next
week. Next week. Giles Ricochet joined the conversation