WEBVTT

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It's important to know these things.
I guess or so I keep telling myself,

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not what your country can do for
you, what you can do for

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your country. Mister gerbatchaf tear down
this wall, read my lifts. Either

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you were with us or you were
with the terrorists, even if they've never

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been on TikTok. Your trackers are
embedded in sights across the wind. TikTok

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surveils us all and the Chinese Communist
Party is able to use this as a

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tool to manipulate America as a whole. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long

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and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilas
and the day we talked to Nick Ever

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said about demographics, Russia, China, what's next? Let sabrisels a podcast.

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We never get bored. Welcome everybody, It's the Ricoche Podcast Nuver six

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hundred and thirty five. Why don't
you join us at ricochet dot com.

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Go there now, take a look, and you're going to find the site

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you've been waiting for all your life. It's been there for decades, two

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decades, stretching into the mists of
history and hopefully going on into the years

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to come. Because people like you
will join and also joining me now me

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being James Lelex here in Minneapolis or
Rob Long in New York, I presume

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in Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, Welcome, welcome, welcome there.

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We are coming to the end of
the month, close to it, April

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Spring Beckons and the glorious site of
a bipartisanship agreement on TikTok TikTok of all

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things. The CEO appeared on Thursday
before the House Energy, Well Energy,

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and Commerce Committee to perhaps fend off
a regulatory crackdown. However that may take

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form shape. They may have to
spin it off into the Texas Project it's

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called. They may have to be
more transparent about whether or not they're actually

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in coo hosts with the people who
are putting we years in camps. If

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you saw any of that, gentleman, what did you think of it?

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And are you heartened or dismayed?
I know Rob doesn't think that TikTok should

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be banned at all. He thinks
that's a bridge too far. So well,

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well, I guess what I what
I feel like is that it's um,

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it's a lot of theater. I'm
not sure I know what it's supposed

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to do. I'm not sure that
TikTok collects any information about Americans that Amazon

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and Google and Facebook and all those
things don't. I mean, before you

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go any fire, can you tell
me one critical difference between TikTok and those

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companies you just mentioned. Well,
yeah, I mean TikTok is you know,

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TikTok reports to the Communist Party of
China, Right, It's also a

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huge American hedge funds one giant pieces
of it. Depending on how you look

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at it, the data is the
data, where the data is kept is

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look. Look. I think that
being more careful about where our data is

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it is probably a good idea.
But the idea that, amongst all the

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threats that are reat in America an
American sovereignty today, that we should be

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I think wasting our time with the
trivial triviality of TikTok is kind of silly.

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TikTok is dangerous to American children because
social media is dangerous to American children.

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American I cus are going down,
not up for the first time ever.

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And so but I wouldn't I wouldn't
say TikTok is uniquely more dangerous than

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Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter for that
matter. I mean as somebody who I

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mean, I'm familiar with all of
them. I'm not a big fan of

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them. I guess Instagram I like
as I'm old, but the actual I

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mean, to be quite honest,
the the supervision on TikTok is better than

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the supervision on Twitter. Twitter is
a pornography delivery device. That's what it

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does. Now, it's porn.
You don't see porn on TikTok. There

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are words you can't say on TikTok
um, so we have to be careful

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about. I mean, look,
I hate to try answer to but my

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answer to brother Rob, my answer
to Brother Rob is this nice try.

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The distinction is that TikTok reports by
means that we that are not necessarily that

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are that are difficult to outline because
the Chinese want them to be difficult.

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It reports to China. It's owned
in one way or another. The ultimate

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authority is China, and the ultimate
authority in China is the Chinese Communist Party,

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and fools that they are. They
proved it by announcing just before the

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hearings were to begin, I believe
the day before the hearings were to begin

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that they the Chinese Communist Party would
oppose a forced sale of TikTok, meaning

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they feel it's theirs Okay I found
yesterday heartening. You can say, and

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you are right, that there are
worst problems addressing the country facing the country.

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But it's a sloppy democracy. Democracy
is always sloppy. One of the

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rare areas of agreement, one of
the real bipartisan places of agreement is that

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everybody now recognizes that China is a
threat. Cold War two has now begun

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in Ukraine. It's an old fashioned
proxy war in one way, Ukraine is

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our proxy. Russia is now China's
proxy. This has gotten serious. Nancy

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Pelosi. I will give you a
long list of charges against Nancy Pelosi,

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but she is opposed to China.
She visited Taiwan to put a thumb in

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the eye of the Chinese and Nancy
Pelosi's Democratic Party rex sis TikTok as a

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danger. And because there's a lot
of theater. Of course it's half eggnor

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and so forth. But because there
is a bipartisan consensus on this, Dan

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Crenshaw thanked the CEO of TikTok for
bringing Congress together legislation of some kind is

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very likely to come out of this. I think, so China is bad,

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It's really dangerous. And if the
way of standing up to China involves

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a great deal of silliness, so
be it. Okay, I agree with

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most of that, except that my
concern is that it doesn't it doesn't go

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beyond the silly and the window dressing. Our entanglements with China are so deep

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and so complicated and so dangerous.
And I agree with you about the danger

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that to focus on a social media
application, which by the way, doesn't

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have that much data that's useful to
the Chinese, isn't right now a purchasing

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platform, unlike Instagram. Seems like
we're going to exhaust ourselves the way people

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in Congress often do with a trivial
matter, and not get into the deeper

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stuff like the continuing number of American
businesses that do business in China, the

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continuing dependence on Chinese capital, the
continuing dependence on Chinese electronics and component manufacturer,

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or the hearing that was taking place
at almost the same time in a

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different hearing room on the defense budget, which is clearly inadequate. The defense

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budget is the usual little increment over
this overwell, you spent last year's of

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vast sums and they're sat the Secretary
of Defense and the Chairman of the Joys

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Chiefs saying no, no, no, no, this is plenty for China

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for standing up to China. No
problem, that's serious. I agree that's

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serious, and it wasn't being taken
seriously. And that's just defense. What

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I mean the commercial entanglements that American
business, in American commerce has right now,

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and it seems to me that you
know, there's a certain amount of

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that. That's that's why I don't
I'm not arguing that TikTok is not a

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threat in any way. I actually
feel like TikTok is more of a threat

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as it's because it's part of a
social media tendency which has been dangerous and

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has been you know, kind of
cretinizing a lot of Americans. But I'm

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more concerned with what with how we
get financial the large financial institutions including insurance

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companies, electronics, component manufacturing,
virus and medical research facilities, and how

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we disentangle commercially from China. I
don't see a path to standing up to

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China, to holding it back from
its ambition to be the regional hegemon.

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As they say, I don't see
a path to do that as long as

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we are this and meshed with them
economically. That is the difference between Cold

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War One and Cold War two.
You have hearings like this in order to

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sort of set the stage for introducing
more people to the idea of unmeshing.

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There's already a lot of people who
post pandemic thinking about wait a minute,

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Okay, I've been coasting along on
this nice, gauzy, warm, humid

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breeze for all of these years,
thinking that we get and we get involved

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with China. They liberalized, they
get rich. They're not comedies anymore.

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I mean, they're really not comedies
anymore. They call themselves comedies. But

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come on, with all that commerce
and all that money and all those skyscrapers,

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it can't be comedies. And eventually
everybody's going to get along because they

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need us and we need them,
and we got some cheap goods and that's

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great, and they're getting richer and
all. Well, it doesn't work anymore

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for a variety of reasons. Is
I think we're going to hear in the

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rest of this show, so a
lot of people post pandemic, all of

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a sudden had a twig snap in
their brains say, wait a minute,

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this is not working out for us. All of a sudden, they were

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the guys who sent this thing here, whether inadvertently or not. I think

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it was inadvertently. They're the guys
who lied about it. They're the guys

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who made it, probably with funding
from our inmeshment here. They're the guys

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who bought up all the cop They're
the guy, wait a minute, can

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we maybe not can we maybe start
making some stuff ourselves? And that's no

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longer a small little crazy adam floating
around in the body politic. I think

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a lot of people are looking to
re shore or to reposition. People are

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happy when we find that, oh
they're building in India, they're building in

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Vietnam. That's good. Let's have
some more of that, because China is

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not our friend. So what do
you do then to amplify that idea amongst

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the people who pay a lot of
attention. Maybe you show them exactly what

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this little thing in their hands is
doing. And I agree with Rob.

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The problem is not TikTok as much
as it is the criticization. Great word

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of what social media has done.
Every time that you see a mob of

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youth in a McDonald's or a target
or a shopping mah god, start to

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attack somebody. Half the people are
landing the blows on the other half of

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their cameras up black mirror style,
holding it to get it, to put

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it on world, start to put
it on TikTok, to immortalize this great

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moment of mob violence in order to
get themselves clicks and light. These people

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are lost, that generation, that
part, that element of society is lost.

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So I don't think you can train
them to think that this is all

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until they grow up and realize it. Maybe that is in a way that

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you behave. But something that says, this device in your hand is doing

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something to you. Snapshot, Yeah, I don't know you snapchet Twitter the

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porn deliberty device. You know,
it depends how you follow it to pop

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up in my feet. I get
mostly news and the rest of it.

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But just talking about the actual I'm
talking about the the the aggregate, okay,

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media delivery on Twitter. But TikTok
is different in the sense of that

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is there a TikTok in China?
No? There isn't They have a completely

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different, separate app for that,
and it has different algorithms, and it

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has different instructional purposes. It glorifies
people who go to school and learn their

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lessons and learn math and the rest
of it, and instills into them,

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you know, Middle kingdom superiority,
the one that they god for us,

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seems to have an algorithm in it
that services the craziest stuff. And so

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we keep having this, this feedback
loop of insanity that keeps amplifying until the

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more and more you get jaded,
more and more and more and more with

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this little destructive device that preaches nothing
essentially but pranking and anti social behavior.

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And I mean, yes, there's
all the other things that people use TikTok

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for, but is it a societal
destabilization device at its worst? Yeah?

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And if you'd gone back forty years
and said, I predict the future in

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which a communist nation will put into
the hands of our uses a glowing grass

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glass rectangle that will break down their
social ability and we'll be powerless to stop

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it, it would have been paranoid, coldware nonsense. But now we kind

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of shrug and say, what are
you going to do? And besides,

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we have bigger problems. We can
walk and chew gum. We can separate

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TikTok from its Chinese elements, do
something about what it amplifies in the you

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know, in the name of providing
an alternative to people. That isn't this

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bread and circuses in the palm of
their hand nonsense? That is correct,

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none, that's not going to happen
if we get rid of TikTok, right,

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I mean bread and circuses? Is
Snapchat? I mean Snapchat's in an

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American company, and it's just as
just as addictive and just as weird,

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and just as all those things they're
They're a little bit friendlier. They don't

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have an entanglement with the Chi coms, And I understand that is an issue,

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But I'm not even arguing that we
shouldn't be concerned about it. I'm

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just we should arguing that there are
other the other the device that you're looking

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at this software on is the to
me, let me finish is a bigger

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problem than the software that you're using. The device is manufactured in China with

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uh in Chinese factories. That that
is to me a higher priority. How

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do we get phones in our hands
that don't rely on economic dealings with the

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Chinese. That's a very difficult problem. Cook is working on that problem.

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Yes, he's working on that problem
because he said he knows that sentiment in

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this country. I beg your pardon. Yeah, Tim Cook is working on

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that problem because he knows that sentiment
in this country has shifted. And he

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will have had the televison in his
office in the background yesterday and thinking,

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and he'll be thinking to himself,
Ooh, maybe we'd better move out of

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China a little faster. By the
way, my favorite summary statement on all

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this, professor Jennifer Lynde at Dartmouth
tweeted, proving that a brilliant professor can

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use Twitter. It's on TikTok.
Jennifer lynd of Dartmouth. It's a tough

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issue to be sure. On the
one hand, TikTok shares user data with

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an a How's ai superpower rival,
and on the other hand, it recks

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kids brains. It's both. I
wanted to agree with Rob when he was

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going off. I wasn't trying to
cut into disagree. I was cutting into

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agree because yes, the problem is
the device in our hands. But actually

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I wasn't thinking of it as being
where it's from, and where the materials

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come from, and who builds it. I'm thinking about the actual existential nature

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the device itself. I love my
phone. I love being connected to every

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single piece of information in human history. I love getting all of my music.

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I love my movies. I love
the way it tells me how I

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can get home and with another's traffic. Everything about it I love. But

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the fact is is that it is
a portal also to madness and sociopathy,

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and disconnected from all of the traditional
elements of society that have bound us together

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low these many millennium. The problem
is that people want what is coming through

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it. If there is a channel, if there's an app that shows nothing

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but disembowelings and in decapitations, I
don't want to watch that. I'm not

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going to watch that. I'm just
not in the same sense that if you

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put a pile of guns and drugs
in the middle of an Amish community,

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they're not going to start killing each
other and getting high. The culture that

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people bring to the thing is the
problem. And we have a culture that

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has the guardrails peeled off, that
have the stop sticks removed, the speed

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bumps shaved down, and now there
is a absolute complete race to the bottom

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that everybody's enjoying for likes and lulls
and clicks. And that's the problem.

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The problem is the culture of the
people who come to this device in the

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first place, not the device,
not where it's made, not the app.

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The problem is the culture in the
people who are making things worse.

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Oh man, do I feel old? But I don't. Actually, I

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don't feel you know. And the
thing is, I've been working out,

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I've been watching my diet. I
feel pretty good. But the question is,

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you know, you do all these
things to extend your lifespan. What's

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00:16:18.919 --> 00:16:22.679
the point if you feel old?
Well, the point is is that it

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00:16:22.879 --> 00:16:26.879
is possible, you might say,
to extend the lifespan and feel youngers.

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00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.240
That is that can you do that? Well? According to a Harvard scientist

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00:16:30.279 --> 00:16:34.320
and Nobel Prize winning breakthrough, absolutely
it's possible. Oh well, by lengthening

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222
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youth Switch today, and we thank
youth Switch for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast

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and now we're welcome to the podcast. Nicholas Eberstadt he holds the Henry Went

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00:17:38.680 --> 00:17:42.799
Chair in Political Economy at the American
Enterprise Institute. He's the author of Russia's

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Peacetime Demographic Crisis and the book Men
Without Work, America's Invisible Crisis, and

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he's written extensively on demographics and economic
development throughout the world. Welcome Nick Well,

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we had g and putin meet today. Each country faces their own demographics

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for different reasons. China's suffering in
war, will suffer some say, the

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catastrophic fall out of the one child
policy. All Russia. It's got a

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lot of men who get drunk and
don't reproduce, and they're slaughtering huge numbers

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of their future generation in a pointless
war. So pick one of those,

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whichever you wish to discuss first,
and tell us what the situation really is

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demographically for the other countries we seem
to be facing and squaring off against Bielder's

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choice. It's a no limits alliance
with a lot of demographic limits. Right.

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So in Russia, the biggest problem
is is the paradox of high education

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low human capital. They've got a
europe style education profile, lots of time

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trapped in classrooms, but they've got
a health profile for young men that looks

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kind of like the country of Haiti. It's not even third world. It

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would be unfair to say it's a
third world profile because a third world would

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object. That's apart from that's apart
from the casualties they're suffering in Ukly.

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Apart from the casualties, they they
casties not improve it. They've they've figured

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out that you don't need to have
starvation and communicable disease to die prematurely.

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They do it through injury and through
vodkacascular disease. So they're they're punching way

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below their weight economically because they've got
this kleptocracy which smothers the value of human

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resources. And part of I think
what's been going on for the last two

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decades with the Kremlin, with Putin's
Kremlin, is trying to engage in increasingly

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risky behavior, getting away with it
to compensate for this down glide path.

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And you know, it works.
It works until it doesn't. And now

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we're kind of seeing what happens when
when it may not work anymore. And

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China, Nick, your piece in
the Wall Street Journal I've lost track now

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about ten days or so ago,
in which you argued that, of course

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you repeated the figures on China,
the demographic collapse in China, not collapse,

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but the shrinking of the Chinese population. But you argued in a way

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I had never seen before that it
poses a particular problem for China because of

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the traditional Chinese family. Could you
draw that out, Star Well, I

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mean the current circumstance with the birth
drop and you could call it a collapse

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over the last six years, because
I think that tells us that there's something

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really snaky going on there. But
that's for a moment or two from now.

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I've done some homework with a friend
and colleague of mine at Penn State,

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a really good demographer named Ashton Verderi, and we've kind of we've projected

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out, we've modeled out what happens
to the Chinese family in the decades immediately

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ahead. And the reason that you
haven't seen anything on this before, Peter,

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is because you know, demographers,
like economists or like dogs with a

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dog dish, right, if there
aren't any data, they don't play with

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the data. And no government in
the world collects information on family structure,

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you know. They censuses were started
in you know, the Mediterranean and in

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East Asia to mobilize military manpower and
attacks people. So it's all headcounts and

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households. We went through and simulated
what was at what had actually happened with

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families in China over the past century
and where things look like you're going,

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and it's a it makes all of
the headcount stuff look a lot more acute

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and makes it look a lot more
pessimistic. So there's there's a a collapse

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of extended family, and you can
say collapse. It's a really it's like

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a roller coaster ride down and there's
no way to stop at And it's also

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a tilt towards taking care of old
people. There'll be more more parents to

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look after for middle aged people than
children. And China, if I understand

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the argument, I'm going to bring
my ignorance to bear on your genius neck

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here. I'm going to try to
layer my own questioning your peace with my

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attempt to understand it. In Chinese
society historically, it's a little bit it's

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a little bit like it Italy in
the senses you have centuries in which the

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government has never really to have been
trusted, and so the family networks of

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family, extended families, this has
been the network of trust that has permitted

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economic activity to take place. Your
great uncle knows somebody's grandfather. You're in

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Shanghai, but the grand great uncles
in Singapore. Therefore we can do business

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together, and China is particularly dependent
as compared with Northern Europe and the United

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States, where we have a different
structure, different more trustworthy government. Historically,

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China is particularly dependent on for its
economic vitality on the extended family.

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Have I got that roughly correct?
You? Not roughly? You put it

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perfectly? I mean that's absolutely perfect. Are perfect. It's social. It's

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been the social safety nap since before
the time of Confucius. It's also been

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the economic springboard during good times because
you can borrow money or get help from

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your extended family. And if you
don't have an extended family, who you're

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going to call? And I'm sorry, one more question if I may,

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and over to Rob and James.
I'm feeling greedy with you here, Nick,

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But the dramatic economic growth in China
of the last three three and a

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half decades in which we've seen figures
vary, but some hundreds of millions of

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people lifted out of really die or
poverty. And that took place. This

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is a multiple choice question with only
two choices. That took place. A

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because the Communist Party of China discovered
a new form of government that would prompt

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and encourage and foster economic growth and
the Communists did it or b because the

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Communist Party of China had the wits
to get out of the way and permit

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the traditional Chinese extended families to get
to work making use of the twentieth and

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early twenty first century technology. The
government did it, or the government got

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out of the way. That's a
tough one. How long do we ah

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00:25:04.119 --> 00:25:07.839
can't stand it? Wants to jump
in. There's a there's a trick.

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There's a that was a trick question
because there they got the benefit of something

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that they had no right to profit
from, which was an explosion in Kim

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that happened um kind of unbeknownst to
anybody. Thanks to improvements and health before

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the one child policy kicked in,
and you know, generations got smaller.

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China had a kin explosion after the
death of Mao. Between like basically the

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death of Mao and about twenty ten, there was a proliferation of cousins,

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uncles, aunts, sibs. And
this is because mortality stopped, because it's

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because mortality survival improved. So I
mean so so they'd always had been born

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in the past, but now they
got to live to a youth, middle

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age, old age, and one
of the I think hugely we hadn't seen

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this. We stumbled on this ourselves
doing this homework, But in retrospect it

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looks like one of the really important
things, not just in China but in

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the rest of East Asia in the
so called economic miracles, was the explosion

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of family ties. You know,
there's just a lot more family to rely

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on, and that's been overlooked by
almost all economists and sociologists who've looked at,

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you know, this fantastic economic rise. Hey, Nick, thanks for

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00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:36.759
joining us. So if I could
just talk about America for me, because

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it seems to me as how old
I am that I remember certain optimism despite

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the fact that you know, a
billion, bajillion years China has been a

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place where people buy things and not
sell things. In fact, that's been

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00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:57.640
the conflict with China since the beginning, Right, they wouldn't buy anything we

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had, so we made them buy
um. And then with Russia, we

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00:27:03.839 --> 00:27:07.400
thought when so unique collapse, you
thought, well, they've tried everything else,

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00:27:08.119 --> 00:27:11.400
so maybe they'll actually have a democracy. You don't be wobbly one with

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00:27:11.440 --> 00:27:18.400
they'll have one. Well we learned
the lesson there and the two kind of

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00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:25.519
optimistic American maybe now naive seeming naive
theories were one, trade engagement, economic

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00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:30.680
engagement is gonna solve China's problems.
Like China's They're gonna figure there. They

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00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:33.359
want to make money, They're gonna
they're going to figure it out. They're

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not going to be a trouble in
our They're friendly. This is the friendly

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00:27:37.319 --> 00:27:41.880
despot, right, I mean,
you know, we even created Panda,

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00:27:41.960 --> 00:27:45.599
you know, the whole panda.
We people thought of China as an interesting

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00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:48.759
place the way they would never have
thought, they would never have said going

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00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:52.400
to you know, some kind of
despotic dictatorship was just had the same kind

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00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:57.440
of benign benefit. And people sort
of expected that Russia, having tried everything

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00:27:57.480 --> 00:28:02.720
else, it's kind of like into
a European groove of some kind of you

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00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:07.480
know, messy parliamentary whatever with the
you know, but it'd be all great.

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You know, this is an incredibly
crude character. But the end of

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00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:15.400
history, right that we could see
the future, and the future was going

354
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:18.440
to be pretty good. So now
we have at this cross roads. We

355
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have we have the very strange thing
where the China and Russia of agreeing not

356
00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:26.200
a Greek so much was the president, she goes to Moscow. He kind

357
00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:30.160
of fleeces Putin, who needs him
desperately. Putin gives away the store,

358
00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:37.319
including an enormous amount of of of
Chinese autonomy in a region that the Chinese

359
00:28:37.319 --> 00:28:40.240
and Russian has been fighting about for
a thousand years, which is, you

360
00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:45.519
know, the far eastern part of
Russia. But it looks like they're making,

361
00:28:45.200 --> 00:28:52.759
um, they're making separate deals,
and they kind of think the two

362
00:28:52.839 --> 00:28:57.079
of us can make a go of
this. So what are we left with?

363
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As Americans are to say, well, you know what, turns out

364
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:11.599
capitalism isn't such a great solution,
after all, free trade isn't such a

365
00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:17.359
great solution. After all, Maybe
a little economic isolationism would be useful.

366
00:29:17.400 --> 00:29:22.519
I mean, is that what's what
do we do now that the old Chivalists

367
00:29:22.799 --> 00:29:26.240
are I think disproved? Well,
well, Rob, First of all,

368
00:29:26.319 --> 00:29:30.079
what we're left with is we're left
with all of the good parts of the

369
00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:33.640
world. I mean, this is
like point, This is like Losers Club,

370
00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:37.799
And you know, I know which
team I want to be on.

371
00:29:37.960 --> 00:29:40.599
Boy, if I take a look
at the if I take a look at

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00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:44.799
the human resources there, I mean, the idea that this is going to

373
00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:48.640
displace the US or the West is
kind of it's kind of a laugh riot.

374
00:29:48.839 --> 00:29:55.799
I mean, my my friend and
colleague at American Enterprise Institute, the

375
00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:02.279
always prescient Derek Scissors China Economy X, about fifteen years ago, did a

376
00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:08.279
very detailed calculation to figure out the
exact date when China surpasses the United States

377
00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:15.799
economy, and the date is never
right. So we're now seeing the We're

378
00:30:15.839 --> 00:30:21.359
now seeing kind of what peak China
and declining Russia look like. They can

379
00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:26.519
be very very, very unpleasant and
dangerous even though they're not going to surpass

380
00:30:26.640 --> 00:30:33.319
US. I have a sick fascination
with North Korea, whose GNP is zero.

381
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:37.759
But North Korea can cause a lot
of trouble with the zero GMP.

382
00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:41.960
So countries with real gmps, if
their revision estates, can be a lot

383
00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:51.559
of trouble. What we what we
ought to have learned during the in retrospect

384
00:30:51.880 --> 00:30:56.920
embarrassing post Cold War era, this
you know, kind of sleepwalker, you

385
00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:04.559
know, dreamland three lost decades of
strategic thinking. Is that our our bet

386
00:31:06.039 --> 00:31:11.920
on China, which was not unreasonable
in the seventies and early eighties, didn't

387
00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:15.759
pan out. You know, we
didn't we thought that really we could not

388
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:22.559
just enrich China but liberalize the CCP
and get a friend, you know.

389
00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:27.400
And we've been way too slow to
wake up to this, in part because

390
00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:32.759
we've got a new threat that we
didn't have from the Soviet Union, which

391
00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:37.480
is all of the vulnerabilities that have
been created by economic integration into our economy

392
00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:44.559
with a power run by the economy
run by the CCP, so the CCP

393
00:31:44.759 --> 00:31:49.279
can attempt to manipulate the United States
from inside in a way that the Soaves

394
00:31:49.440 --> 00:31:53.920
never could have done because they were
a nothing burger an international trade So what

395
00:31:55.039 --> 00:32:00.680
you mean is TikTok, TikTok's look
at the NBA, ye, look at

396
00:32:00.720 --> 00:32:06.000
Disney. This is just in the
cultural can be part of the you know,

397
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:10.039
part of the discussion. You're groveling
to the CCP about this stuff and

398
00:32:10.279 --> 00:32:15.799
complaining about scientists, but at the
same time doing it ever President she tells

399
00:32:15.839 --> 00:32:22.039
them to do. That isn't exactly
the preemptively negotiating against themselves to try to

400
00:32:22.680 --> 00:32:27.359
pretty favored. I mean, I
think it's called cow talent. Yeah,

401
00:32:27.799 --> 00:32:31.039
okay, So speaking of cow talent, which I believe is is it a

402
00:32:31.240 --> 00:32:35.799
I think it's a Hindu word or
maybe that brings me to another. So

403
00:32:35.880 --> 00:32:38.960
put on our Kissinger hat. You
know, big strategy, big things right.

404
00:32:39.720 --> 00:32:44.799
UM's often wrong, but it's I
am given to it. But never

405
00:32:44.920 --> 00:32:49.279
less than interesting, never less than
interesting. It feels to me like there

406
00:32:49.400 --> 00:32:57.960
is one big, giant country that's
an economic engine, a total mess,

407
00:32:58.319 --> 00:33:02.880
the world's most populous quase democracy,
India, and it is once again a

408
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:10.200
race to see who what side they're
going to be on, because if they

409
00:33:10.359 --> 00:33:15.319
decide, you know what, actually, you know our traditional allegiance, you

410
00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:21.440
know, the traditional certainly since independence
to their neighbor to the north in Russia.

411
00:33:22.359 --> 00:33:25.279
Um, how important is it now
for us to say, all right,

412
00:33:25.400 --> 00:33:34.880
it's the West and the democracies plus
India? Are they should we we

413
00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:36.960
be looking at that? I guess
is what trying to say? Is that

414
00:33:37.119 --> 00:33:40.480
would that be the Kissinger strategy?
Oh? I think absolutely. We want

415
00:33:40.559 --> 00:33:47.000
to find as much as much friendship
with India as we can get away with.

416
00:33:47.599 --> 00:33:50.920
Hey, nick, I'm the one
who asked the good questions. Well,

417
00:33:51.079 --> 00:33:53.119
don't don't give him, don't give
him a cold star. You know

418
00:33:53.839 --> 00:33:58.440
what, what do they say?
There's something about silvereign gold, you know,

419
00:33:58.599 --> 00:34:00.400
find the new ones keep the old, Yeah, exactly. And our

420
00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:05.759
oies really are old. I mean
they're kind of like declining and you know,

421
00:34:05.880 --> 00:34:10.280
declining in uh in terms of headcount
and getting very old. They need

422
00:34:10.400 --> 00:34:14.960
more from us than they did in
the past. Because of that, we

423
00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:19.880
should be on the I mean,
America's got talent should also be in international

424
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:23.760
relations, right, we should be
looking for new friends Vietnam, India.

425
00:34:24.760 --> 00:34:30.840
I have the crazy idea that after
the current unpleasantness in Tehran, we may

426
00:34:30.960 --> 00:34:36.280
have an alliance with the Iran and
the future. What say that again?

427
00:34:36.639 --> 00:34:40.320
Just repeat those very same words.
What I have this? I have this

428
00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:46.079
funny idea that after we get over
the temporary unpleasantness with Tehran that we've had

429
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:52.199
since seventy nine, that we may
have a we may have a beautiful friendship

430
00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:55.079
in the future with Iran when they
get a new government. Yeah right,

431
00:34:55.360 --> 00:35:01.320
oh, until change money, a
tiny change in management. First about brick

432
00:35:01.400 --> 00:35:06.880
wise, we're casting about for others. What about Brazil? Often, as

433
00:35:07.400 --> 00:35:09.559
the saying goes, the greatest country
that never was, always on the edge

434
00:35:09.599 --> 00:35:15.239
of its potential, never reaching it. But there's hope, isn't there?

435
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:22.679
Brazil? Brazil could be a helpful
friend I even within Brazil. I've got

436
00:35:22.760 --> 00:35:27.880
a kind of a fixation with Mexico. And I know this is unfashionable,

437
00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:32.239
but I do the arithmetic. If
you have never been held back by fashion,

438
00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:36.880
nick, never in your law of
glorious career, well go ahead,

439
00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:39.960
let's hear it. Okay, if
you do the numbers on Canada, Mexico,

440
00:35:40.400 --> 00:35:45.880
and the US of A. In
terms of talent, you know,

441
00:35:46.360 --> 00:35:51.320
Mexico's got a lot of political master
to clean up. Maybe it never will,

442
00:35:51.800 --> 00:35:58.960
but in terms of the royal talent, there's more educated, skilled workforce

443
00:35:59.360 --> 00:36:02.760
in let's call it naftaland and then
there is in Europe than there is in

444
00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:07.880
China than there is in India any
other part of the world. And our

445
00:36:10.280 --> 00:36:15.320
let's not call it Fortress America,
but our North American thing could turn out

446
00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:22.000
to be the best thing that we've
ever had. Wow, this is great,

447
00:36:22.119 --> 00:36:27.480
so fantastically counterintuitive, which I like. But I guess what I'm more.

448
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:31.199
I mean, here's my concern.
Yeah, that all sounds kind of

449
00:36:31.239 --> 00:36:36.079
fine, It all sounds going to
work out. And I can remember going

450
00:36:36.159 --> 00:36:37.639
to conference. I can remember I
think I gave a speech once. I

451
00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:46.079
wrote something once about how everybody's right, the brick countries Brazil, Russia,

452
00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:54.440
India, China are going to drive
innovation and prosperity and productivity in the early

453
00:36:54.480 --> 00:36:59.239
twenty first century, and all those
those four countries are going to have this

454
00:36:59.320 --> 00:37:04.320
wonderful flooring. And none of that
happened. I mean, even in India,

455
00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:07.000
which is you know, a lot
more the most stable of those countries,

456
00:37:07.039 --> 00:37:09.280
it's still kind of a yeah,
it's it's it's it's got something.

457
00:37:10.960 --> 00:37:15.079
Yeah. Right, So I'm make
a note of that everybody. By the

458
00:37:15.159 --> 00:37:22.039
way, the moment rob formally announces
a worldwide trend, it evaporates. Oh

459
00:37:22.159 --> 00:37:30.360
my god, it's I'm the worst
concern is that, um is that here's

460
00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:31.920
my concern. My concern is that
there's an American attitude, I should say

461
00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:37.000
my attitude, which is that there's
a natural law that states that things will

462
00:37:37.159 --> 00:37:43.679
kind of get better and that they'll
get better with you know, economic exchange

463
00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:46.880
and slow incremental movements to democracy.
Not perfect, but it's going to get

464
00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:52.639
better. It happens automatically. But
I am now, I'm old enough to

465
00:37:52.719 --> 00:37:58.280
realize that nothing happens automatically. Uh, things happened because and so if we're

466
00:37:58.280 --> 00:38:01.199
going to create the North American economic
fortress, which I like. Well,

467
00:38:01.239 --> 00:38:07.800
we're going to create a kind of
a global idea to fight the newly emerging

468
00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:13.320
unity between Russia and China, which
is like China's the big brother, clearly

469
00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.519
the big brother, clearly pulling the
strings. What do we have to do?

470
00:38:17.920 --> 00:38:21.079
Like, what do we get at? What do we do? That's

471
00:38:21.159 --> 00:38:23.440
not going to be automatic, that's
not going to be reading an essay in

472
00:38:23.480 --> 00:38:28.159
Foreign policy telling us it's going to
happen automatically. Well, we have to

473
00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:32.400
start by waking up from our post
Cold War era dream world. We would

474
00:38:32.400 --> 00:38:37.440
have thought that the invasion of Ukraine
would have been enough for that, but

475
00:38:37.639 --> 00:38:43.280
it apparently it's only you know,
we want to stay asleep. We've had

476
00:38:43.320 --> 00:38:50.920
a we had this extraordinary and completely
aberrant generation when there was such a surfeit

477
00:38:51.079 --> 00:38:57.039
of American power that we could be
feckless at home and feckless internationally, and

478
00:38:57.159 --> 00:39:00.760
it didn't seem to we have so
much wealth and so much power away and

479
00:39:01.440 --> 00:39:06.400
think, well, you know that
isn't going to last forever, and uh,

480
00:39:07.119 --> 00:39:12.719
sooner or later, there's going to
be a call for grown ups,

481
00:39:13.039 --> 00:39:15.360
and um, you know, it
would be nice to have a couple of

482
00:39:15.440 --> 00:39:20.280
them around. You know, you
take a look at people like the late

483
00:39:20.360 --> 00:39:24.519
great George schultzm you had out at
Hoover. I mean, where where's the

484
00:39:24.599 --> 00:39:28.679
next one of those guys going to
come from? We need them, we

485
00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:32.360
need grown ups. Hey, Nick
May, I here's my closing question for

486
00:39:34.119 --> 00:39:37.039
now. You have such a fascinating
mind, however, that I intend to

487
00:39:37.119 --> 00:39:40.599
go after you again and again and
again. Nick and I did a show

488
00:39:40.679 --> 00:39:46.760
an uncommon knowledge on what to anybody
other than Nick the opening your opening position,

489
00:39:47.159 --> 00:39:51.880
naturally enough, would be the demographics
is the biggest bore you could possibly

490
00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:55.239
imagine. I did a show with
Nick on demographics which has been viewed something

491
00:39:55.360 --> 00:40:00.760
like four and a half million times
because Nick makes Nick may things interesting.

492
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:06.639
Okay, here's what I am responding
to your tone, and I want to

493
00:40:06.719 --> 00:40:12.960
make sure that I'm hearing it right. Here's the case for pessimism. The

494
00:40:13.079 --> 00:40:16.639
two leading candidates for president of the
United States, one is demented and the

495
00:40:16.719 --> 00:40:24.880
other is nuts, and they're both
old. The banking system, the FED

496
00:40:25.400 --> 00:40:30.840
has injected so much liquidity into the
economy since two thousand and eight. Let's

497
00:40:30.880 --> 00:40:35.800
be honest, they have no idea
how to wind this down without risking bank

498
00:40:35.920 --> 00:40:40.320
failures, widespread systemic failures out here. When SVB went down last week,

499
00:40:40.519 --> 00:40:45.920
I guess it was two weeks ago. Now you'd think Silicon Valley would be

500
00:40:45.119 --> 00:40:49.000
there's so much wealth. Do you
think they'd be insulated from that old fashioned

501
00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:55.719
word. Panic? People were really
scared, really scared. Okay, polarization

502
00:40:55.840 --> 00:41:02.639
in Congress, decay of the American
family, test scores going down. And

503
00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:08.199
now we look at Ukraine and World
Cold War two has begun. Ukraine is

504
00:41:08.239 --> 00:41:14.360
our proxy. China is using Russia
as its proxy. The Chinese are tough,

505
00:41:14.480 --> 00:41:17.960
they're smart, They're willing to use
artificial intelligence to monitor their people in

506
00:41:19.039 --> 00:41:22.840
a way that the KGB could never
even have dreamt of. Things are really

507
00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:27.039
looking bad. You mentioned Mexico.
Oh, for goodness sake, you've got

508
00:41:27.440 --> 00:41:32.559
Amlo Lopez Obrado, the current president, who is dismantling the one non corrupt

509
00:41:32.639 --> 00:41:38.079
institution in Mexico, which was the
election Bureau. I've heard arguments that the

510
00:41:38.239 --> 00:41:42.280
Mexican Navy is also non corrupt,
but because it spends most of its time

511
00:41:42.559 --> 00:41:46.760
at sea. But there he is
dismantling the one non corrupt piece of Mexico.

512
00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:53.360
Things are terrible and we're losing,
And then Nick Eberstadt comes on and

513
00:41:53.440 --> 00:41:57.960
says, well, you know,
I can't have a soft spot from Mexico.

514
00:41:58.519 --> 00:42:01.280
Well, you know China ship the
idea that they could take us.

515
00:42:01.519 --> 00:42:07.199
Are you serious? Do you You
really are pretty cheerful about the prospects.

516
00:42:07.320 --> 00:42:14.559
Is that correct? We can always
screw it up. I mean sometimes we're

517
00:42:14.599 --> 00:42:17.480
good at that. But we have
so many cards in our hands. We

518
00:42:17.599 --> 00:42:23.719
don't understand how much advantage we have
some of our adversaries do I mean we

519
00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:30.159
have. We are living through a
very curious time. We've had three decades,

520
00:42:30.639 --> 00:42:36.159
a long spate of I think what
in retrospect will be seen as sub

521
00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:42.239
par political leadership, both red and
blue. I don't know why it's been

522
00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:46.920
so poor at the last three decades. Somebody will explain it. Sometime.

523
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:54.000
With a little bit of leadership in
the United States, things would look real

524
00:42:54.119 --> 00:42:59.480
different, just the way they look
real different when we went from nineteen seventy

525
00:42:59.559 --> 00:43:06.880
nine nineteen eighty three. This is
just I could kiss you. This is

526
00:43:07.039 --> 00:43:12.119
such a lovely way to go into
the weekend. Nick. It's what I

527
00:43:12.199 --> 00:43:14.840
said, It is to easy,
right. We just need you know.

528
00:43:15.480 --> 00:43:19.360
It's like it's like being just stop
being Assume good leadership, right, right,

529
00:43:19.639 --> 00:43:23.440
right, assume a ladder. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.

530
00:43:23.440 --> 00:43:25.719
A couple of weeks ago, I
was sitting in a Mexican bar talking

531
00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:30.519
to a bunch of Canadians, and
I could, within within my range of

532
00:43:30.599 --> 00:43:34.159
vision, we're four hundred people from
India. Indian immigrants had come to America,

533
00:43:34.239 --> 00:43:37.920
and everybody was marinating in the same
identical cultural broth, with its own

534
00:43:37.960 --> 00:43:40.480
differences and having a great time.
So if it's possible in that Mexican resort,

535
00:43:40.679 --> 00:43:45.920
by God, we can make it
happen on the international global stage or

536
00:43:45.960 --> 00:43:47.599
so. I'd like to think so
much more to talk to you about,

537
00:43:47.599 --> 00:43:52.880
including the domestic ramifications of what our
Labor Force Participation Act is, but that'll

538
00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:54.280
be the next time we talk to
you, which we hope is soon.

539
00:43:57.119 --> 00:44:00.760
Thank Nick for force you. Well, then we're going to We're going to

540
00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:04.519
get you on the calendar right now, because it's great to talk to you.

541
00:44:04.599 --> 00:44:07.960
And also, as Peter notes heading
into the weekend, the idea of

542
00:44:07.079 --> 00:44:12.440
carrying a kernel of optimism in one's
breast as you flounced, is in a

543
00:44:12.559 --> 00:44:16.360
long time madness. We love it. Nicholas Eberstat thank you for joining us.

544
00:44:16.559 --> 00:44:21.920
The book Men Without Work and Russia's
peacetime demographic crisis. Buy them,

545
00:44:22.119 --> 00:44:27.000
read them, learn doctor again,
and say a load of the other genius

546
00:44:27.079 --> 00:44:30.599
under your roof missus Mary Everstet,
I think to have lunch with her today.

547
00:44:30.639 --> 00:44:34.559
I'll pass. Please please, please
do, please do all the best.

548
00:44:34.880 --> 00:44:36.800
Thank you, guys. Have a
good weekend. Thank you, have

549
00:44:36.840 --> 00:44:42.320
a good weekend. And now it's
rob long to tell you why Ricochet is

550
00:44:42.360 --> 00:44:45.400
not just some cyber thing, as
they used to say. I love this.

551
00:44:45.119 --> 00:44:50.480
I bought a shirt on Amazon the
other day and the color was cyber

552
00:44:50.639 --> 00:44:55.800
lime, which was really bright.
I had seen cyber as an exciting intensifier

553
00:44:55.960 --> 00:44:59.360
used since the nineties, when it
was one of those words that they just

554
00:44:59.400 --> 00:45:06.119
sprinkled up cyber cafe George Foreman's cyber
grill, you know, because it had

555
00:45:06.119 --> 00:45:10.039
a little bondy blue plastic thing on
it. But cybernetically, that is not

556
00:45:10.119 --> 00:45:14.400
the extent to which Ricochet is confined. No, yes, it operates in

557
00:45:14.440 --> 00:45:16.719
the real world. Right. Yeah, we are telling you to get out

558
00:45:16.760 --> 00:45:22.480
of the matrix and uh come and
visit for real m The best. One

559
00:45:22.519 --> 00:45:24.719
of the best parts about being a
member of brickichet is that you could come

560
00:45:24.760 --> 00:45:28.599
to meetups and they are fun,
and we have some coming up, so

561
00:45:29.559 --> 00:45:31.519
just let you know. I think
less than a month from now, three

562
00:45:31.559 --> 00:45:36.079
weeks from now, maybe three and
a half weeks, New Orleans, New

563
00:45:36.239 --> 00:45:40.280
Orleans, it'll be the French Quarterfest. It's April fourteenth through the seventeenth.

564
00:45:42.239 --> 00:45:45.320
Um, come, I'm come and
say hi. Well, there's a schedule

565
00:45:45.639 --> 00:45:49.360
on the site. Go find it. If you're not a member, please

566
00:45:49.440 --> 00:45:52.320
join and then come to New Orleans. French Quarterfests is really lots of fun

567
00:45:52.639 --> 00:45:55.119
New Orleans. This is a perfect, perfect time to come to visit New

568
00:45:55.239 --> 00:45:59.880
Orleans. It's warm, it's tropical. You feel like it's a summer all.

569
00:46:00.639 --> 00:46:02.199
Um, and I'll be there.
I'm gonna be there, and I

570
00:46:02.559 --> 00:46:08.079
think I think others will be there. I think Charlie Cook's going to be

571
00:46:08.119 --> 00:46:10.360
there. I don't know. I
can't if I can't commit to that,

572
00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:13.840
but I think he's gonna be there. He and I were like, uh,

573
00:46:13.920 --> 00:46:15.880
defecting back and forth. Try to
figure out what it can be there.

574
00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:20.400
I'm fourteenth to the seventeenth. Sign
up, get yourself there. Uh.

575
00:46:20.599 --> 00:46:22.760
Flicker is doing a meet up in
on April twenty seconds. So a

576
00:46:22.840 --> 00:46:29.639
few days later in Stillwater, Minnesota, which is um, I don't know,

577
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:34.400
up there somewhere or um, yeah, it's and then to the left

578
00:46:34.440 --> 00:46:36.719
of me at the moment, to
the left of you, whateverything to the

579
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:38.559
left of you, James um.
And then of course uh in Winston,

580
00:46:38.599 --> 00:46:44.000
Salem that we're talking about one in
Mitchell Lot so um come to those.

581
00:46:44.519 --> 00:46:47.639
But it's also possible they do not
work for you in terms of location or

582
00:46:47.679 --> 00:46:54.119
timing. Here's the solution. Join
Ricochet and have one. Just announced that

583
00:46:54.280 --> 00:47:00.199
you're going to have one, and
you will find Ricochet members will be right

584
00:47:00.239 --> 00:47:05.920
there, ready to ready to meet
up. So one of the best things

585
00:47:05.960 --> 00:47:09.239
about the Internet is that you get
to meet people in real life, and

586
00:47:09.480 --> 00:47:15.360
that is one of the greatest parts
of Ricochet as well. Winston always reminds

587
00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:20.199
me of the jingle you know,
Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.

588
00:47:20.599 --> 00:47:22.400
And there was actually a debate,
a national debate about the bad grammar.

589
00:47:22.440 --> 00:47:25.360
I'm trying to think of the last
time we had a grammatical you know,

590
00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.840
a grammar related debate in this country
about such things. That goes back to

591
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:32.119
what I was saying before about how
low we fallow. But you know,

592
00:47:32.599 --> 00:47:37.119
I always hope always green shoots all
the rest. Even you have to look

593
00:47:37.159 --> 00:47:39.599
to other countries. The Dutch,
of course, the Dutch Farmer Party,

594
00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:43.480
which does not want to have all
their farms shut down for global warming,

595
00:47:44.840 --> 00:47:50.480
staged remarkable electoral victory. That's good
many of France, and we're not sure

596
00:47:50.840 --> 00:47:53.480
how exactly are we supposed to think
about France, gentlemen, because as little

597
00:47:53.480 --> 00:47:57.440
as possible as possible, a lot
of people are saying, well, Macron

598
00:47:57.519 --> 00:48:00.639
has no choice. He's going to
raise the retirement age. And I you

599
00:48:00.679 --> 00:48:02.119
know, those Frenchs who don't want
to work in the first place are all

600
00:48:02.159 --> 00:48:06.880
getting upset about this. Envisioning just
repeat what's going on. He's he's raising

601
00:48:06.920 --> 00:48:12.760
the retirement age from sixty two to
sixty four, right and then and there

602
00:48:12.840 --> 00:48:16.239
in a country where it's already illegal
to work more than forty hours. And

603
00:48:16.360 --> 00:48:23.360
the result of this rob riots,
riots, garbage strikes, um, all

604
00:48:23.440 --> 00:48:29.840
what they called many festa up and
down. It's like a national grev.

605
00:48:30.280 --> 00:48:31.920
Yeah, that's the great, that's
what a strike is. A greb and

606
00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:36.840
greb because you have a grief.
Um, I was in a shop once.

607
00:48:37.559 --> 00:48:38.679
This is a long time ago.
Uh, this is kind of why

608
00:48:38.679 --> 00:48:43.559
I love the French Um, the
sup dramatic. And there was a suddenly

609
00:48:43.599 --> 00:48:45.960
there was a many Festeschia students down
the street, down the boulevard, and

610
00:48:46.119 --> 00:48:49.280
there was like loud and noisy,
and so we kind of went into the

611
00:48:49.280 --> 00:48:52.559
shop and kind of like just like
what them passed, and they passed their

612
00:48:52.599 --> 00:48:53.800
shouting things and everything, and I
couldn't really see the signs. So I

613
00:48:53.840 --> 00:48:59.000
asked the lady, like, what
is it, you know, pukua greb,

614
00:48:59.079 --> 00:49:01.679
you know, what's the reason.
And she kind of shrugged that great

615
00:49:01.719 --> 00:49:04.920
GALLICX shrug and she's like, you
know, the students, and she said,

616
00:49:04.960 --> 00:49:09.719
the French students are protesting because,
of course, the for the uncertainty

617
00:49:09.760 --> 00:49:15.280
of the future. Like yeah,
well that's the literally definition of the future.

618
00:49:16.559 --> 00:49:22.079
What how could you possibly satisfy an
angry mob when their argument is we

619
00:49:22.679 --> 00:49:28.559
make the future more certain? Um. The interesting thing about France is and

620
00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:32.880
and French politics is that Um and
Macrol may be wrong. I mean,

621
00:49:32.920 --> 00:49:37.800
he has passed this, this is
already the this is French law. He

622
00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:39.920
can do that, he did it, Um, but his calculation is that

623
00:49:40.039 --> 00:49:46.360
France is still France and people liked
to um. They like the screaming to

624
00:49:46.480 --> 00:49:52.199
happen after the change has occurred.
The screaming and the yelling is very important

625
00:49:52.239 --> 00:49:59.119
part of French politics. So there
was a study of a pole I read

626
00:49:59.199 --> 00:50:00.719
as a while ago, so may
have changed, but well it was basically,

627
00:50:01.079 --> 00:50:05.079
you know, ninety five percent of
all French people think, you know,

628
00:50:05.199 --> 00:50:07.679
obviously we're gonna have to raise the
retirement age. There's like math,

629
00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:12.639
you know, they're good at math, there they they they're they're the high

630
00:50:12.679 --> 00:50:17.239
school baccalaureate is actually very very good
at math. But not now, that

631
00:50:17.440 --> 00:50:22.239
was their argument. But not now. So percent of people think they're gonna

632
00:50:22.239 --> 00:50:25.039
have to raise the retirement age.
Nine percent people like but not now.

633
00:50:25.760 --> 00:50:31.079
Um, and that cross figuring that
you'll do it. They'll protest, they'll

634
00:50:31.079 --> 00:50:34.400
be garbage in the streets of Paris
for the next you know, a week

635
00:50:34.519 --> 00:50:38.480
or two, and then you know
everybody will just say yeah, GaX,

636
00:50:38.519 --> 00:50:43.760
shrug, and that's it's done now. Um. It's a very Unamerican attitude,

637
00:50:43.840 --> 00:50:46.199
right. The Americans like to argue
and fuss and fight and complain and

638
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:52.800
bitterly debate before they actually enact legislation. In France, they do it,

639
00:50:52.920 --> 00:50:55.159
you know what, because when they
know something's inevitable, that doesn't mean they're

640
00:50:55.159 --> 00:50:59.519
going to be happy about it.
So that's against the curious thing too that

641
00:51:00.039 --> 00:51:01.800
we hear all the time about the
Arab street. We have to worry about

642
00:51:01.800 --> 00:51:07.000
the Arab street when in fact,
the only country in which politics really truly

643
00:51:07.079 --> 00:51:12.599
do take place in the street it's
friends. Yeah, right, since seventeen

644
00:51:12.679 --> 00:51:16.280
eighty nine the street has actually mattered. But also remember I think that you

645
00:51:16.360 --> 00:51:20.360
know, the Dutch farmer thing is
true about the French farmer thing too,

646
00:51:20.719 --> 00:51:25.719
that these are countries that have a
very, very emotionally you know, I'm

647
00:51:25.840 --> 00:51:36.199
a hugely emotionally deep identification with farms
and farming and even if it you kind

648
00:51:36.199 --> 00:51:38.159
of roll your eyes at it a
little bit, it's certially part of the

649
00:51:38.239 --> 00:51:42.679
national identity. And they don't want
these farms to go. And it's yeah,

650
00:51:42.719 --> 00:51:45.559
the fronsport founder in the Holland and
they don't, they don't. All

651
00:51:45.639 --> 00:51:49.000
of that reclaimed land is where they
grow the tulips, in the potatoes and

652
00:51:49.079 --> 00:51:55.079
the stuff. Right, it's really
important. And when you I think what

653
00:51:55.199 --> 00:52:00.559
happens is when you sort of start
to especially for agricultural rule. When you

654
00:52:00.679 --> 00:52:06.440
start to outsource that to Brussels,
to the EU, they're gonna be there's

655
00:52:06.440 --> 00:52:07.519
gonna be trouble. There really is
going to be trouble. I mean,

656
00:52:07.599 --> 00:52:12.079
all of the global warming, all
the climate change stuff is coming from Brussels,

657
00:52:12.679 --> 00:52:16.760
and there's you know, I mean, they may meekly acquiesced, but

658
00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:24.719
there is. Whatever happens in Ukraine, it will be. We're hearing a

659
00:52:24.760 --> 00:52:28.480
lot about well, the thing to
do about Ukraine is making a member of

660
00:52:28.519 --> 00:52:32.920
the EU. It will take years
and years of negotiations before Ukraine is ever

661
00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:39.440
permitted to join the EU for precisely
that reason. Ukraine is an enormous agricultural

662
00:52:39.559 --> 00:52:45.400
country. If they let it inside
the EU, it places pressure on French

663
00:52:45.480 --> 00:52:50.719
farmers and on farmers, and the
farmers are one of the most powerful interest

664
00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:54.639
groups in the European Union political structure. Anyway, just a little observation there,

665
00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:04.239
we've numbed Jane. It's interesting though, how this appears domestically. I've

666
00:53:04.280 --> 00:53:06.800
seen a lot of people who are
looking at what's going on in France on

667
00:53:06.840 --> 00:53:10.840
the right and saying, finally the
people are standing up to their wef masters.

668
00:53:12.159 --> 00:53:14.679
I hear that a lot, and
they're cheering them on as though they

669
00:53:14.760 --> 00:53:19.119
think that the end result of this
is somehow Macron slumps out in shame and

670
00:53:19.519 --> 00:53:22.199
a new government of the people is
installed, which worked out there to the

671
00:53:22.440 --> 00:53:27.599
left of oh well, for France
in seventeen eighty nine. And then you

672
00:53:27.719 --> 00:53:30.320
have the people on the left who
are cheering this on because anything that sort

673
00:53:30.360 --> 00:53:32.559
of results in street fires and people
protesting and the rest of it is automatically

674
00:53:32.599 --> 00:53:37.280
good if it happens in Europe by
the right people. Now, if they

675
00:53:37.320 --> 00:53:44.320
were agitating for lesser government or for
some social or cultural or ethnic thing that

676
00:53:44.400 --> 00:53:45.599
the left did not approve, this
would be fascism, of course, and

677
00:53:45.639 --> 00:53:49.719
we'd be very worried about it.
But they're not. So what's funny is

678
00:53:49.760 --> 00:53:52.679
the idea somehow that the youth in
France at the age of twenty twenty two,

679
00:53:52.760 --> 00:53:55.760
the ones that Rob was referring to, will go and burn things on

680
00:53:55.840 --> 00:53:59.400
behalf of six two year olds who
might have to work a little bit more.

681
00:54:00.559 --> 00:54:06.679
I find that a remarkable piece of
cross generational solidarity. Or they just

682
00:54:06.880 --> 00:54:09.199
like the fun of destroying things,
and I think it's probably the latter of

683
00:54:09.320 --> 00:54:15.039
just getting out and starting the fires
and and and participating in a long standing

684
00:54:15.119 --> 00:54:17.440
French tradition. Why as Rob I'm
sure knows, and Peter too. It's

685
00:54:17.440 --> 00:54:22.000
interesting to walk in some old areas
of Paris and there's a bullet hole right

686
00:54:22.079 --> 00:54:25.679
there from eighteen forty eight you can
put your finger through because you know the

687
00:54:25.719 --> 00:54:30.800
commune got here and had a beef
about this et et. So yeah,

688
00:54:30.039 --> 00:54:34.840
it's Rob's right. It'll burn over
and the change will be made and people

689
00:54:34.880 --> 00:54:39.880
will continue to It's a remarkable I
will end with this. If I were

690
00:54:39.880 --> 00:54:44.519
a French, i'd be retired by
now. I can't possibly imagine what I

691
00:54:44.559 --> 00:54:45.800
would do with my well, I
mean I know what i'd do. I

692
00:54:45.840 --> 00:54:50.400
would continue to write. I would
continue to do what I do now.

693
00:54:50.480 --> 00:54:53.159
I just wouldn't be paid for it. I wouldn't have a place to go.

694
00:54:53.440 --> 00:54:59.280
I would It's bad to identify as
your job because then you end up

695
00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:00.679
at the end of your life stripped
of your identity and you become a bit

696
00:55:00.800 --> 00:55:04.719
useless. My father lived at the
age of ninety three because he was still

697
00:55:04.760 --> 00:55:07.199
involved in the business that he built. And for some people it's good to

698
00:55:07.320 --> 00:55:09.800
hang it up and do the things
that you want to do. But the

699
00:55:09.960 --> 00:55:15.199
idea somehow that I would be lesser
in my life, would be less happy

700
00:55:15.320 --> 00:55:22.679
if I were retired boggles the mind. And the people who in France who

701
00:55:22.079 --> 00:55:24.320
want, you know, what are
they doing? Are these people in the

702
00:55:24.360 --> 00:55:28.239
civil service who want to shuffle this
off as quickly as possible so they can

703
00:55:28.280 --> 00:55:30.920
just sit in the cafe and smoke
the goalas and the rest of it.

704
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:36.960
I don't know, but I'm happy
that I'm permitted to do what I do

705
00:55:37.119 --> 00:55:40.719
for as long as I do.
Right now, I think in our office

706
00:55:40.920 --> 00:55:45.480
is a monument to a columnist who
died at about the age of one hundred,

707
00:55:47.039 --> 00:55:51.639
and he was putting it out until
the day now, right towards the

708
00:55:51.800 --> 00:55:53.360
end, when he had to do
a radio interview, they would walk him

709
00:55:53.360 --> 00:55:58.039
downstairs, they'd take him around the
corner, they'd turn him around, and

710
00:55:58.079 --> 00:56:00.480
they'd give him a little push in
the direction of the radio station, and

711
00:56:00.559 --> 00:56:02.840
there would be somebody the other end
of the block who would lead him,

712
00:56:04.360 --> 00:56:07.800
receive him, to receive him right, and there'd be somebody there to take

713
00:56:07.880 --> 00:56:13.800
him up and do the rest of
it up right. Herb Kane, Herb

714
00:56:13.880 --> 00:56:16.599
Kane is that guy. Yes,
Herberkane is that guy. I remember,

715
00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:22.400
Yes, he used to write about
having his regular deliveries of vitamin V vitamin

716
00:56:22.519 --> 00:56:27.559
V for vodka deep into his nineties. And I remember Mark Stein once told

717
00:56:27.599 --> 00:56:30.880
me about an editorial meeting at the
Telegraph in which they were talking about Princess

718
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:36.159
Diana and the and the scandal,
and at the far end of the table

719
00:56:36.280 --> 00:56:38.480
Bill Deeds, then in his nineties, spoke up and said, Wow,

720
00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:45.239
that's not quite the way the approach
we took during the abdication crisis, right,

721
00:56:45.599 --> 00:56:49.239
So, James, when you get
to retire, never, I never.

722
00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:52.360
I have absolutely no intention of retiring. I'm already one of the longest

723
00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:54.599
running By the way, I don't
want to start a long conversation because we've

724
00:56:54.639 --> 00:56:59.119
been on for an hour. But
don't you, guys, ancient as we

725
00:56:59.280 --> 00:57:02.800
are, don't you have the feeling
that there are things that you're only just

726
00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:09.639
now figuring out, That there are
aspects of your bit ways of approaching certain

727
00:57:09.719 --> 00:57:14.599
writing. I know Rob is taking
on a new project, podcasting project.

728
00:57:15.400 --> 00:57:20.880
I feel as though there's still more
to learn, and that I'm I'm only

729
00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:23.840
just now figuring certain things out.
No, there's always more to learn.

730
00:57:24.000 --> 00:57:27.400
There's always there's never a day where
you can't find out it's something new that

731
00:57:27.440 --> 00:57:30.360
you didn't know before. There's never
a day that isn't benefited by taking one

732
00:57:30.519 --> 00:57:32.760
random factor or one picture from a
newspaper or one little clip that you got

733
00:57:32.800 --> 00:57:37.679
from a nineteen fifty new magazine and
exploring it and looking at it and going

734
00:57:37.719 --> 00:57:40.159
on Wikipedia and linking and linking until
you're spiraling down that rabbit hole and you

735
00:57:40.280 --> 00:57:44.239
dump out at the other end of
it and you realize, oh my gosh,

736
00:57:44.320 --> 00:57:47.400
the reason that the Burbank, the
Burbank City Hall was designed by this

737
00:57:47.480 --> 00:57:51.400
guy who also did a series of
other beautiful schools in California. And look

738
00:57:51.440 --> 00:57:53.360
at that one there, it's the
Lou Hoover Elementary School. Who is Lou

739
00:57:53.480 --> 00:57:59.159
Hoover. Lou Hoover happened to be
the wife of Herbert and Lou Hoover was

740
00:57:59.239 --> 00:58:01.320
the one who made it possible for
the wife of the first black congressman to

741
00:58:01.400 --> 00:58:05.480
come to a t at the White
House. And that was a big scandal.

742
00:58:05.559 --> 00:58:07.039
And look at this article here that
was written about it in nineteen twenty

743
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:13.480
nine by who, by James Kilgallan
kill. James Kilgallen is wait a minute,

744
00:58:13.559 --> 00:58:15.880
is his daughter Dorothy his daughter is
Dorothy. Let's type this on YouTube.

745
00:58:15.920 --> 00:58:20.039
Oh my gosh, there's a what's
by line where they're all blindfolded and

746
00:58:20.119 --> 00:58:22.159
Dorothy kill Gallan is actually trying to
figure out the identity of her father.

747
00:58:22.280 --> 00:58:25.920
It's tremendous. And there's Bennett Surf
and my gosh, he says something too,

748
00:58:25.960 --> 00:58:29.400
And what a wonderful thing I just
learned. I didn't know any of

749
00:58:29.480 --> 00:58:34.159
this before. The architect the meaning
of the reliefs in the Burbank City Hall,

750
00:58:34.559 --> 00:58:37.719
the fact that the priest t scandal
actually happened, how newspapers responded to

751
00:58:37.800 --> 00:58:42.480
it in nineteen twenty nine, which
is fascinating because the sort of institutional racism

752
00:58:42.559 --> 00:58:45.360
you might expect is not evident in
a lot of Southern papers. All of

753
00:58:45.440 --> 00:58:49.719
these things took about an hour and
enhanced my day. Now when I write

754
00:58:49.760 --> 00:58:52.639
about them, I'll learned something new
about the craft of writing, because I'm

755
00:58:52.679 --> 00:58:58.920
a big deal this year about getting
rid rid of Semi Colon's period. Actor.

756
00:58:59.400 --> 00:59:02.360
As Victor Organ would say, this
podcast was brought to you by youth

757
00:59:02.400 --> 00:59:06.320
Switch. Please support them for supporting
us, and that's great. If you

758
00:59:06.360 --> 00:59:08.360
could leave a five star review on
Apple podcast, that would be great.

759
00:59:09.519 --> 00:59:14.480
Which is the exclamation point. I
think that Victor Borgan did's right reviews.

760
00:59:14.519 --> 00:59:17.000
I'll allow new listeners to discover us, and that helps keep this show going.

761
00:59:17.039 --> 00:59:20.440
If you're interested more in the t
scandal, that the priests scandal,

762
00:59:20.559 --> 00:59:22.840
James Kilgallen and all that stuff,
you will be able to find that next

763
00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:28.239
week at lilacs dot com on Thursday. But of course we'll see everybody in

764
00:59:28.280 --> 00:59:32.280
the comments at Ricochet four point and
I say four point zero while I can

765
00:59:32.599 --> 00:59:43.239
next week, boys, next week, next week Ricochet, Join the conversation,