Welcome to the Ayan Hirsi Ali Podcast, a home for critical thinking and common
sense. Today, Michael Shellenberger is joining me for the second time. He
was one of my favorite guests and I'm delighted to have him back on.
Michael is the founder and president of Environmental Progress. He has been working as
a climate activist for twenty years and as an environmentalist for thirty. He was
Time Magazine's Hero of the Environment in two thousand and eight. The last time
he joined me, we discussed his book Apocalypse Never. He now has a
new book arts titled San fran Sico, which looks at issues such as the
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A A N. Michael, thank you very much for joining me again.
UM. It's always a delight to talk to you, UM on this podcast.
I plan to talk to you about San Francico, your new book,
But then all sorts of things started to unfold, current events like the election
outcome in Virginia and the one I think it's still a tie in New Jersey,
New York and other places. And then there's also Glasgow and there's a
lot of stuff going on there. So bear with me. Let me just
ask you your opinion on the following. So we have a governor in New
Virginia who is a Democrat and who could have easily held on to his seat,
and in fact that was we thought that was the case for a long
time. He loses that election to a person I've actually never heard of before.
And I don't think I followed local politics in Virginia before, but now
that I do. The people who elected this new governor and who set off
the old one did it for a number of reasons, but the most important
one that's highlighted today is education. What's your take on it. Yeah,
it's great to be back. I'm wonderful to be with you. And yeah,
it's my book, really, both books Apocalypse Never in San Franciico,
Why Progressives Ruined Cities, had a lot to say about what just happened this
upset in Virginia. Of course, it's a state that where the governor of
the democratic governor should have been elected. It's been trending democratic. I believe
Biden won with over ten percent points. Don't quote me, but he won
by a significant margin just a year ago. And the election ended up turning
on this issue of critical race theory, which, as you know, is
this idea that racism is the most important issue in American life, that people
of different races have different are essentially different from one another. It contains a
story about victimology, which is that you know, all black people are victims
essentially, all white people are privileged essentially, and that to victims everything and
too oppressors you know nothing. It's very similar to what I'm arguing against in
San Francico, and you could see that in the elections. It played out
more in the realm of schooling, which is, you know where the Republican
candidates said we got to get this terrible racist ideology out of our schools.
And the response from the governor was twice bad. It was first, well,
it was three. He said, First, there isn't such thing as
critical race theories not being taught in the schools. That's just not true.
The second thing he said was parents shouldn't be involved in schooling or involved in
their children's classroom. So I think that I'm writing this piece called why Progressives
Ruined Democrats. It plays on the theme of San Francico, which is why
progressives ruined cities the big Basically my argument is that, you know, the
parts of the progressive agenda that are popular tend to have to do with class,
not race, and Republicans have done a really good job challenging Democrats on
class based concerns, you know, since the Trump Revolution of twenty sixteen,
but they've let racial this just sort of hyper racial moral panic, along with
victimology, really take over what it means to be a progressive, of what
it means to be a Democrat. And the implications of that, of course
are absolutely extraordinary because it means that we're in the midst of a major historical
political realignment. And here's the interesting thing. We live in a state California,
where I know a lot of Democrats, and they would agree with absolutely
everything you said. Just now. The Democrats that I see and socialize with,
who are my friends, they hate critical race theory. They think that
some of these issues that we have an actually class center and have nothing to
do with race. And yet those very same people continue to vote for the
people who are obsessed with race. Is being a member of a political party
or is being you know, attached to a political party. Is that like
a tribal feeling? Oh for sure. I mean I live, you know,
I live just up the road from you in Berkeley, California, so
I saw the same thing. You know, We're clearly in a really dynamic
moment, so things could still change very quickly. California obviously is one of
the most progressive states in the country, so in some ways I would expect
things to change here after they change everywhere else. You know, Virginia is
a pretty liberal state, but it's not as as liberal or left wing as
California is. You know. That being said, just in the last few
weeks, we've seen you know, my book came out three weeks ago.
It looks like in that just in that time, we see that the District
Attorney of San Francisco will likely be recalled, Several school board members will likely
be recalled, all from the radical left. If the DA goes and the
mayor probably appoints a moderate to be the DA. From the city council,
the person on the city Council as a moderate would be replaced by somebody else
is probably a moderate. You know, you look down the road and you
could see San Francisco returning to moderate hands and LA within one or two election
cycles. Similarly, you know, Democrats are I don't I mean, they're
going to take a huge loss in a year from now, almost certainly I
lose control of the Congress, probably lose the presidency in twenty twenty four,
and Democrats will have to respond. And you know, this is where I
sort of go with as piece, is that it doesn't look good for Democrats
according to their own numbers, if they continue to go down this hyperwoke path.
There's a young, very young political consultant named David Shore for the Democrats
who argues, who's been arguing this for weeks, and it's been out there
obviously, really since last last year the elections, James Carville has been warning
Democrats that this focus on race and culture was really off putting. I tweeted
out last night Van Jones and other CNN correspondents basically just saying openly that Democrats
have become annoying, insulting, patronizing, shrill, just everything that we know
about how Democrats have become. So Democrats will either have to change or they'll
just continue to lose elections. It's just that simple. I just saw a
reaction from Joy Read to the Virginia election, and she just said the Republican
Party is dangerous and that kind of Patrick, and you know you use the
word shrill. It's absolutely right, you know you If I were a Democrat,
I would say today, you know, we're losing the independence, We're
losing Democrats who voted for us, and we're losing Republicans who moved away from
the Republican Party because of Trump. And instead of reflecting on why they lost
and getting to the bottom of it, they are. From the reactions that
I can see on a superficial level just coming through the media, they're doubling
down on it. I just listened to President Biden who came from Glasgow and
talked again about COVID, and I think talking about COVID and the pandemic,
that's a very very important issues, the issue of the day. But his
response to why so many elections who are lost and elections that shouldn't have been
closed are so are just what you described. It's the denial, it's staying
on the woke path invoking race every time. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean,
I think it's a question. I mean, I think what's great about
politics is that it you can live in a delusional bubble for a while,
but the great thing is that you'll just lose elections and you'll lose power,
so and eventually, you know, these things have to correct themselves. I
do think, you know, it's interesting to me that the Democrats, basically
all the big what the Democrats have been focused on is all falling apart at
the exact same time. So, as you mentioned, it's not just that
the voters have repudiated this moral panic on race. Voters Americans are the most
part not racist. We're less racist than ever where. We get insulted when
people tell us that we're racist with good reason. So that's all kind of
falling apart. At the same time, the climate change stuff is just a
joke. I mean they you know, basically Biden and the weeks leading to
the Climate United Nations Climate talks in Scotland, they've been pleading with OPEC to
produce more oil, even at the same time that he has been along with
the broader Democratic coalition, attacking expanded oil and gas strolling in the United States.
You know, the United States over the last five years should have been
increasing its investment in oil and gas production. It did not out of a
reaction to progressive climate change demands. We should be just having much more.
In fact, the whole world would then have more oil and gas because it
is a global market. So you see that happening. Then they go to
Scotland and they say, oh, we're all going to do stuff. Well,
they couldn't even agree to stop financing coal plants, which should have been
easy, low hanging fruit for them. They couldn't even agree to do that.
But it doesn't even matter because the conference itself, it's voluntary. It's
just public relations. The first day Biden falls asleep, he gives this terrible
press conference that he's just barely coherent in and then meanwhile, today I just
tweet out this morning announces that it's going to spend half a trillion dollars building
more nuclear over the next fifteen years than the rest of the world built over
the last thirty five for reasons that have nothing to do with climate change,
because it knows it needs a lot of energy. And by the way,
neither you know, President she of China or President Putin of Russia bothered even
going to und climate talks. So it's just clear as day. It seems
to me that we're in the midst of an epical shift from a kind of
Postcold War era that lasted about thirty years to whatever. The post Postcold War
era is probably some new geopolitical rivalry with between the United States and China,
But clearly it's the end of the early it's the end of this really I
think bad. I think we're also in the you know, just about to
end a really bad and we're about to go into a big backlash against all
the woke, bad, woke racial stuff. At the same time. Yeah,
it's the fascinating thing is that's this woke nonsense. It just sabotages everything
you wouldn't You shouldn't expect to be talking about cracial justice and all that nonsense.
And I don't think that racial injustice is nonsense. I just think that
this inject increase into everything, which is what the work do, that's nonsense.
And even on a topic that should be in my view, free of
this stuff like climate, the environment, what a pandemic, it gets into
all of that. One thing you said earlier about the geopolitics, Number one
just twenty years ago was nine eleven, two thousand and one. And when
that event happened, there is attacked. The United States of America tried to
destroy everything that we believe in. One of the key responses was America should
never ever pen on oil from the Middle East again. And the private sex
that worked very hard to deliver on that and only just shut it down.
You say, you wrote that in your previous book, and you say that
we have the capability of developing nuclear energy and that can lead us to a
clean planet. China's doing it, and China, as you know, is
not our best friend. Why are we not doing it? It's the most
rational path to take. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's crazy, right,
and hopefully China's big push into nuclear, and of course Russia is a
major nuclear builder around the world, will force it. You know, we
had a big sea change in public opinion. You know, a lot of
the progressives, including the people who I argue with on other issues, have
become pro nuclear, but they haven't had the support in their own party for
it. But it's the same issues as we discussed last year. It's just
continuing fear of nuclear weapons. But it's also become a big scam. You
know, if you have nuclear, you don't need all this renewables, you
don't need all this junk. Basically, you don't need all this money spent
on special interests, on special causes. You just you know, with natural
natural gas and nuclear basically the only things that matter when it comes to reducing
carbon emissions. If you use nuclear natural gas, there is no climate problem.
So the key is to expand those two things. Well, that's that's
the opposite of what the climate activists want. They actively are a campaign against
it. They get financing from the big investor banks like black Rock, and
they're in bed with the Chinese solar panel manufacturers. I mean, I think
since you and I talked last year, we've seen a series of pretty big
events occur. We now know that China has subsidized that solar panels not just
directly with money, but also to the use of coerced weaker Muslim labor.
We know that the solar panels required the use of the dirtiest form of energy
in the form of coal, and that the unaccounted for cost of waste,
and this is according to a Harvard Business Review study that came out a few
months ago, should make electricity from solar four times more expensive once that waste
is properly accounted for. So the renewables, the expansion of renewables is also
coming to a halt, and it's in a point of crisis. And as
I pointed out, you know in a recent substack, the US and the
world really invested so much in unreliable, weather dependent renewables and not enough in
oil and gas development that the world is now having a massive energy crisis.
Petroleum prices are up sixty percent from where they were in just a year,
at their highest level in seven years. We're running we don't have enough gas,
and so countries including the United States, but also China and Europe are
all returning to coal because of the advocacy of climate groups. So I think
these you know, really progressive ideology is in crisis, and to some extent,
I just think the West is in crisis too. I think we can
pull out of it, but we've got to get beyond this basically woke religion,
which is complete with, you know, an apocalyptic view of climate change
and a religious essentialist and really pseudoscientific view of race. Yeah. So I
celebrated this outcome of the Virginia election and others because I hope that this means
we can get out of it. And when I say I celebrated it,
what I mean is the way parents in Virginia felt empowered enough to organize themselves
and bring an end to the narrative. The only question is do you really
think we can pull Before we pull out of it, how much damage can't
we expect? Well, it's been it's been pretty ugly so far, right,
I mean, we've seen in you know, I basically I wrote apocalyps
never versico go together in the sense that, on the one hand, they're
totally different. Apoc ups never argues that most environmental trends are going in the
right direction, most environmental trends are we want to do more of them,
more gas, more nuclear. Climate change is not the big threat that we
were worried about. I have a piece up today noting that really temperatures are
going to probably peak at two and a half degrees centigrade. Well, the
UN target had been two degrees for two decades until they recently changed it to
one and a half degrees. So we're actually on track not having very much
warming. And the big problem is we're in, at least in the United
States, but certainly in other countries, including Scotland. Interestingly enough, is
a drug addiction crisis. We had almost one hundred thousand people die of drug
deaths last year. That's an increase from just seventeen thousand and twenty years ago.
We have a whole generation that is just dying from totally poisonous, heavily
intoxicating, addictive drugs. And that's you know, of course, what's behind
or maybe not of course, but that is what's behind the so called homelessness
problem. So clearly we're we're having you know, we're a mass. I
mean, big things need to change, and they need to change quickly.
Yeah, when you were talking about climates. The phrase that just keeps rolling
in my head is that of the cost of living, And if you tie
that to the homelessness and poverty, I see precisely what you mean by how
these things are related. And and yeah, the outcomes. And I know
that when you describe the drug addiction and then behind it the drug tells the
fact that actually here in California, we know all this, or people we
we've put in power all this. But then they keep reverting back to this
racial injustice meme. And you have to wonder, then, with the cost
of living going up, gas price is going up, do you think we're
going to have more homelessness or less. Fortunately, we're going to have significantly
more until there's some political change. You know what I discover in San Francicco
is, on the one hand, there's a lot of different causes of what
we call homelessness. The word homeless itself is a propaganda word designed to trick
our brains into thinking this is just a problem of housing, or that the
people that are living in tents on the street or underneath highway underpasses, that
there's somehow just poor people. That's absurd. I mean, I think everybody
knows where these are people who almost all of them, at least if they're
living unsheltered, are suffering very serious levels of drug addiction and or some other
mental illness. You know, the solution is very simple. You have to
shelter everybody, require people to stay in the alters. You can't let people
sleep on the streets, you can't let people use drugs and defecate in public.
These are not compatible behaviors with civilization. So then the question for me,
for Sarencico was just why don't we do that? Yeah, And the
bottom line is victim idiology. It's this idea that you can divide people in
the world into the category of victims or oppressors. That victims, the state
of being a victim is permanent. It's not like in the traditional heroic journey
where you're victimized on the way to becoming a hero, such as every Hollywood
movie. But also just in those stories we tell about our own lives,
you know, when we all suffer, and so the stories that we tell
ourselves is yeah, I got through that hard part and it made me a
better person. Well that's not what victim idiology says. Victim Idiology says,
by nature of being black, or mentally ill, or a woman or an
addict, you are a victim. And to victims we give everything and demand
nothing in return. That's what TOM ideology requires. So even if you would
agree that some people are victims are on the street, the idea that you
just give them cash and a tent and some fresh needles to shoot or smoke
drugs with is bonkers. But that's the basic idea. Yeah, I'd say
the third part of it is just that we then elevate we I should say
they progressives elevate victims into sort of spiritual beings. Yeah. So it is
a kind of victim worship, but it is a kind of worship that maintains
their victims status through the policies that we enact relating to them. It's also
a desire to acquire power, So people use this narrative to get to powerful
positions. But then when they're in those powerful positions, they just make those
problems like well so homelessness or you know, the mental health issues, addictions,
these things get worse and worse with the people who are committed to getting
to power through the development of this victim you call it eptimology, and that
doesn't bode well for the country. Because the other thing that I find disturbing
is in San Francisco and in I WoT say even probably La it's homelessness,
mental health. These are things that we talk about all the time, and
yet these are also problems that I think you lay it out beautifully in your
book that we know I don't want to say one hundred percent solutions, but
we know that there are policies that actually help, and yet those policies are
not carried out. And if you could please talk a little bit about your
visits to the Netherlands and what you say so as an option, as an
alternative, and how much that costs. Sure, well, let me just
say first what we should do, because it's just clarifying I think, to
sort of a contrast what we know works and what we should do with what
with what we're doing in San Francisco. And this is based on you know,
my field work in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, but also interviews with the
head of the drug program in Portugal. We looked at basically every civilized nation,
every civilized city and state, and looked at how they dealt with it.
It's the same thing for everybody. It's basically you have to require you
have to have enough shelters for people that need them. They have to stay
in them. It's not you can't. The alternative is not to camp in
the streets or the sidewalks. That's just not allowed. People that are suffering
from severe mental illness or drug addiction are offered treatment, and if they're arrested
breaking laws, then they have the option of getting clean through rehab or going
to jail. It's not optional. And then I think the final part of
it, and certainly we need, is some sort of universal psychiatric care.
So in the Netherlands they actually have a private insurer model like we have.
It's not a single payer system like the French or the Canadians have, but
it is universal, it does cover everybody, and that's a similar component of
what we need. But what I loved about the Netherlands, and the part
of the reason I chose it as the model for California is, you know,
we Californians are snobs and and San Franciscans are more snobby than anybody.
So I wanted to choose a city that I think is a world class city.
Anybody that's ever been to Amsterdam knows it's a world class city. It's
it's not it's about the same site. It's actually bigger than San Francisco.
Obviously, California is, you know, bigger, it's huge. California is
the bigger economy than Britain's economy. But I wanted to give the example because
I did feel like, you know, you could explain to Californians, who
are very liberal on many things. You know that, look, you can
smoke marijuana in Amsterdam. You can hire a sex worker. It's a regulated
industry. It's that you know, there's you can bike everywhere. We love
biking in the Bay Area, and so I wanted to give that as the
model rather than than New York or Miami or San Antonio. That I have
all done good things, but who if you kind of talk about them,
I thought Californian San Franciscans would sort of turn their noses up. But that's
basically it. I mean, it's slightly different than Portugal, slightly different in
Japan, but that's the basic recipe. And Michael, it's also so that
Amsterdam is a progressive run city. The mayor is of the Green Party from
Kaholsama and has been as long as I remember. Amsterdam was from by the
Special Democratic Party, So progressives there somehow see things differently. Yeah, similarly
to the United States. Interestingly in California. The Netherlands is more conservative than
Amsterdam. Like around the world, people that live in cities are just more
liberal, that's right, more decadent, there's not that more. You know,
conservatives tend to be more rule and so the but the the country of
the Netherlands, so the country of the Nolans, is more a center right
than the city of amshamp which is more left wing. And I think that
helped a lot to get the changes they needed, just like I think it
would help here. And in fact, we even see a similar dynamic in
Texas, where the state of Texas is obviously more conservative than the city of
Austin, which is the capital, but it's a very culturally progressive city.
And basically the state itself has had to take action to force Austin to deal
with its open drug scenes. Yeah, because it had done basically what San
Francisco had done, which was just to basically say, oh, anybody can
camp any where because they're victims and they've been able to shut that down.
So I mean that's what basically, just to you know, fast forward to
the end of the end of the book of San Francisco, I basically argue
it's going to be much more it's going to be much more likely that California
becomes a more moderate state and takes action than it is that San Francisco does.
And in fact, I don't think it's a problem that can be solved
at this city level, in part because addicts are street addicts are such a
transient population. Yeah, and they're taking off. The question that keeps propping
up is the cost. How much does it cost to get everyone off the
streets, provide them with the mental healthcare they need, provide them with shelters,
provide them with an alternative to camping under of a passes and other places
that are not fit for human life. That's a great question. I mean,
it's funny I could I after two years of research, I still could
not get a clear number of how much we spend on this problem, and
neither can members of the state legislature. And part of the problem is,
you know, for example, how much of the fire department do we spend
on homelessness. It's very hard to figure out exactly, but we know that
about half of the fires that they put out in Oakland and Los Angeles now
are homeless fires, which is really wild when you consider that while there are
a lot of homeless, there's there's not half of the people, right,
So you're talking about a huge part of our public services are going to homelessness.
We know that we spend more money per capitating California on mental health in
any other state, and we obviously have the worst outcomes, So money,
if anything, has made the problem worse. In fact, I do argue
that it's a consequence of our prosperity that we've done. We've been so decadent
and so liberal in our policies. You know, what I would say is
part of you know, the cost depends on what you're doing. So if
you if you basically are just having paying social workers to maintain the lifestyles of
drug addicts who don't work and just basically sit in tents all day and do
drugs, it can be very expensive. You know, at this point,
it's about one hundred thousand dollars per homeless person in San Francisco. San Franco
Cisco. Wow, having a hard time saying the name of the city.
I could calling it San Francco. It's very expensive. On the other hand,
you know, and there's some people who are more expensive than others.
I mean, people with schizophrenia are very difficult. People with schizophrenia with drug
addictions extremely difficult. But my aunt at schizophrenia, she did well. She
lived in a group home in Denver. She never worked, you know,
she lived in a house with like six other people. That's a good outcome
for people with schizophrenia. She did well. There's other people like the twenty
five year old kid, you know, kid, young man that got a
that gets addicted to heroin and just as living in an attent in San Francisco.
That guy, he's, first of all, he's probably breaking many laws
every day, including shoplifting to sustain his habits, but certainly camping publicly,
defecating in public, using drugs publicly. If he were arrested for for breaking
the law, brought in front of a judge and the judge mandated rehab and
said, look, you got to get rehab. And you know it's the
rehab that's you really wanted to be. Something like ninety days, probably impatient,
and probably not in San Francisco, so it'd be more like, you
know, under our fantasy California, the guy would be like, Okay,
I'll take the rehab instead of prison. I'm tired of being a junkie.
You know. Maybe there's a place for him in the countryside somewhere or some
suburb. He gets his life together, he gets reconnected with his family,
you have a single social worker as opposed to the current mess of system we
have. Now, there's no reason that within ninety days or six months he
could be independent. It's not going to be easy for him. He's probably
going to relapse. There's some amount of kind of a sort of case management
for him. But if you don't have the stick of prison or jail time
as the as the consequence of him continuing to break the law, then he's
very expensive. If you do have it, it's a lot cheaper. So
that's not I know, sometimes maybe a totally satisfying answer, but it tells
you, I think what the cost dynamics are specifically, Yeah, and I
think if you add to that the cost of the crime and not the you
know, you've you've you've discussed that the crimes committed by people who are addicts
and with mental health issues. But the drug hotels, these young men from
mainly from Latin America, who are organized and who sell the drugs and who
want this thing to go on because for them it's a direct profit. That
cost is also almost never spoken of, absolutely the societal costs. And how
do you how do you put a number on the loss of ten or twelve
drug stores in a year in the last year, or two drug stores that
no longer are available for the community to use, which is what's going on
because the you know, I don't know, your listeners may not realize,
and it's one of things that describe We pass legislation in twenty fourteen in the
same ballot initiative that basically reduces the consequences from a felony to a misdemeanor of
theft of nine hundred fifty dollars worth of goods and three grams of hard drugs.
So, I mean, it's when you look back on it, you
kind of go, oh, my gosh, why did we ever think that
was a good idea? Yeah, Basically it allows addicts to go into drug
stores steal nine dollars with items, sell them at a fraction of their cost
to build to buy enough drugs for a couple of days. And then the
drug stores they've been you know, because of the threat of violence, they
order the security guards to let it occur. And then after a certain amount
of time, the drug stores they just can't afford to keep the drug stores
open, so Walgreen safe way. We see them cutting back hours or just
shutting stores entirely, shutting stores in a city that is one of the richest
cities in the country and could easily sustain those stores. Yeah, it's all
boils down to what you said, this victimology and narrative. You know,
if you're a criminal, then it must be because of racism. If public
schools are not providing that service, does they should, then the standards of
education all allow it, and all this nonsense about race is introduced into them.
If if we have of one or two problems, very minor problems with
our police force, we go out and say defund the whole thing. I
mean, it all fits into that. I don't know, collective madness.
We've been talking about the mental health of individuals, but I fear for the
mental health of the decision makers as a group, the elite, and the
fact that they just kept making these terrible choices. Absolutely, the title san
Francico refers to the San francickness, you know, not just of the drug
addicts and mentally ill on the street, but also the San francickness of really
all of us, of the society of progressives, of people in California and
these liberal cities. And that really is a kind of compassion sickness. It's
a kind of Yeah, what I ultimately conclude is a pathological all truism or
what Jordan Peterson famously calls the devouring mother. Really, it's the overprotective it's
the overprotective parenting, it's the coddling culture, it's the victimology. It's it's
not just you know, and I at the end of the book, I
sort of wrestle with this idea from the great psychologist Jonathan Height, who sort
of says, he says, look, what progressives are doing is they're taking
one value among kind of six core values that are core values to most religions,
and they're taking one of them, which is care, and they're elevating
it above all the other values. I partly agree, but then I go
a bit. I think I go a bit further, and I argue that
really what progressive ideology, which you know, I think is rebranded already,
really is radical left ideology from you know, from Rousseau to Marx to Fucaut.
What it's done is it's basically said, you know that that each of
these traditional values, which include the like sanctity, respect for authority, loyalty,
it's redefined each of those values around the victim. So we should have
we should have our the authority should be to the victims as opposed to you
know, to the government or to God, or to the nation or to
the parents. The loyalty similarly, and sanctity. You know, the traditional
view, traditional religious views of the body is the body is pure and you
have to be careful what you put into it. And drugs are a problem,
not just because of their effect, but because there's a kind of defilement
of the body, of the sacred space of the body. Well, progressives
take that in a different direction. They would say the body, the body
of the victim is also pure, but it's not defiled by drugs. That's
okay, because they're just self medicating. Really, what you have to prevent
against is the is the intrusion upon these pure bodies with the police, you
know, with the critical with the criminal justice system and so part. And
I guess I didn't say it before, although maybe it was implied. Progressives
are solely focused, strictly focused, or at least very disproportionally focused on victims
of the so called system. Then they are on victims of other people.
And that's why, you know, because one thing you got, you would
ask I did, was if you're so concerned with victims, why are you
not concerned with the thirty times more African Americans killed every year by other civilians
rather than the one thirtieth killed by the police. And the answer is that
progressives, really from a straight line from Rousseau through Marx to Fuco, are
just obsessed with victims of the system and not concerned about victims of other individuals.
And I think essentially that really is the true racism, because if you're
black and you find yourself in difficulties, the assumption is there's absolutely nothing you
can do to lift yourself out of those difficulties of adversity because the system,
as you describe it, you know, manipulated by this oppressor abstracts white figure
that that holds the key to your destiny. And so whether you like,
you know, being described as a victim is also being put in a place
where you're a slave again. You can't you can't help it, you can't
come out of addiction, you can't get up in the morning, and you
know, put the effort that's needed to work hard to re establish your life,
to reorganize it, because it's not in your hands. Yeah, you
got it. I think last year you and I may have talked about how
we have a mutual friend in Pascal Bruckner, the French, yes, French
writer author, and he wrote this brilliant book called Tears of the White Man,
which really anticipated wokeism very very well, but in a more European context,
which he noted that you know, at a moment where African nations are
really at a point where they can pursue their own destiny. They're not subjects
of European power. They're after, you know, post colonialism. Well,
it's at that moment that suddenly you hear from Europeans how really the fate of
Africa's up to Europe, or that the reason that Africa is failing in some
ways African nations might still be failing is because of Europe that really, you
know that this discourse finds a way to put you know, white people at
the center of everything. So you know, if you anytime, you know,
so when you you know, the classic when you talk about, you
know, challenges facing African Americans among progressives, well it always has to do
you know, the answers always has to do with racism from white people.
You're right, it's sort of it's I mean, if you just kind of
listened to it, it's really gross. You know, this idea that that
all black people are victims and all white people are privileged. Well it's actually
it's just yeah, pressors. It's just a reassertion of the thing that we
were trying to get away from and really did but supposedly in a in a
way that reverses the hierarchy, but it doesn't. It actually reinforces it.
So yeah, I totally agree. It's a kind of narcissism. It's a
power move. It's looking to reinforce this older racial hierarchies, supposedly in the
name of reversing it, but really reinforces it. You know, one of
the things I became obsessed with this, you know, with this great self
help psychologist named Victor Frankel, who's really a stoic philosopher, and the idea
that you know, he's famous because he survived the concentry Asian camps by changing
his mentality and having you know, having goals including reuniting with his wife and
family and writing a book. And so I kind of asked this question.
It's like, how did we how did liberals go from having this view that
you know, we need to empower people, you know, we need to
we need people need to have the right mentality to basically to basically claiming that
anybody who says that is blaming the victim, you know, And why did
that come to take over in the nineteen sixties. Yeah, I read Victor
Frankel's book. That was an impressive, impressive life. I have in my
background politics, and so what every time I think about societies like the one
I came from, you know, Somalia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, these
countries that we call developing countries or authoritarian countries, and I compare them to
America and other great European societies, and I think if only we could in
Africa and in developing world, if only we could find a way of resolving
conflicting peacefully, then we can become like those rich countries. And that the
secret to success if we stay with America is that that has been discovered,
that has been found, it's been applied. We have a government and power
is checked and it's you know, it's it's it's spread. We recognize in
America the why it's bad for power to be concentrated in the hands of a
few. And if you look at what we call now blue states and red
states and that sort of thing, one of the things that I find striking
is that actually the country is divided now into if you're a Republican or if
you're a Conservative, you moved to a state run by Republicans, and if
you're a Democrat, you moved to a blue state. But what that then
means is it entrenches this notion of concentrated power. If there was some competition
in California, say from the Republican Party, things would be different. I
think the politicians would have to be forced to mend their ways. I see
a little bit of hope now with the Republican Party and some of the changes
that are taking place there, the shedding of Donald Trump, young King,
this guy who took Virginia. He comes across as really decent, insane.
The Republican Party is investing more time and efforts in recruiting people from immigrant communities,
black communities, women, and so on. And so you can see
with every election loss, when the Republican Party does an autopsy, then a
to do list comes out of it that they try and follow. I wonder
why the Democrats are not doing that. Well, we give it a minute,
we may see it happen. Okay, you're right. I mean,
I think we're in the midst of a very interesting political realignment. You know.
I think one of the big wild cards for Republicans is just yeah,
is you know, if Trump runs again, and everybody seems to think he
will, that will that means that will basically close the door to bringing over
I think some moderate Democrats, you know, but if it's somebody more,
you know, like young Ken, who clearly had appeal among Democrats who voted
for Biden, then we're talking about something completely different there. And especially if
you you know, I mean I mentioned David Shore, the young poster.
If on the Democrat side, you know, he and others have pointed to
the fact that you know, you know, Trump increased his support from Latinos,
which is massive, you know, really on class appeals, you know,
appealing to to you know, lower wage Latinos. So if Republicans can
can become a party truly of the working class without without the personality of Trump,
I think that opens up a lot of possibilities for it to really be
a majority party rather than a minority party. Similarly, though, you know,
it's not impossible to imagine some Democrats emerging that take that more moderate approach,
although I agree it's hard because the base of the Democratic Party at this
point is just so woke and just you know, it's really fully in a
religious has a fully religious mentality, viewing climate change just totally apocalyptic, you
know, racism and having supernatural views. I mean, I keep asking,
I've been asking I progressive friends why tomorrow I could declare myself a woman and
demand total um adherence to being called a woman by all of my friends.
But I but if I if I said I was black, I would be
demonized. And so I think that there's a lot more genetic and biological um,
I think there's a lot. I think there's I think that my genetics
of biology make me much more similar to a black man than to a white
woman. So explain that. Explain that to me. Why that is,
Well, there is no rational explanation. It's simply that the trans community wants
to be larger than it is and therefore allows anybody who says that they're a
different sex to say that, and the African American community, through some peculiarities
of history, have sought to, you know, basically not allow and really
in some ways stigmatize h Arian Americans who are trying to pass themselves off as
white or or trying or trying to, um, you know, to be
acting white or in other way. So that's just a kind of weird historical
coincidence based on the on the completely arbitrary judgments of activists in both of those
communities. It doesn't have anything to do with kind of reality. So you're
clearly in a religious mentality, you know. I wrote San Franciico because I
was like, it's so ridiculous, Like when I got to the bottom of
it, I was like, really, is it really this dumb? And
it was like, yep, it's just that dumb, Like I can't you're
I was sort of hoping intellectually on both of these issues. You know how
dumb kind of woke religion is, but then also how straightforward it is to
solve the open drug scene problem. And you know, ultimately at bottom,
I'm like, you don't require anything, any fancy intellectual analysis. It just
it's just as dumb as it seems. Yeah, it's it's quite dumb.
If we look for you know, across the Atlantic for some hope, what
you see is that Labor Party was ruined by these people with similar views.
And of course, yeah, and it's no longer Tony Blair's Labor Party that
was vibrant and very strong and insane and rational, it's now become something else.
Altogether. This guy called Jeremy Corobbin destroyed it and took on this walk
nonsense. And that group, that subset of far far left I call them
progressives, are still within that party. But if you read the discussion in
the newspapers, in the British newspapers, you know, all the rational commentators
say it's a democracy can't survive with just one party. You're then going to
get power concentrated in the hands of a few, and I don't think it's
good or healthy for a political party to have power so long and so are
there are no, I think, very healthy debates and discussions going on within
the Labor Party how to fix this and how to get rid of these crazy,
fringe, extreme people who have hijacked the entire party. And I was
hoping really that we could that we will see something like that with you know,
one of our major parties, the Democratic Party, unless maybe what other
people are pointing to, which is I don't know, independent Party or something
like that, but there should be you know, a democracy can't really survive
on what with one party. Yeah, that's right. I mean, so
if if you sort of push forward on this, I mean you can sort
of see different paths, I mean, one of them. Obviously, the
future of the Republican Party depends heavily on whether or not Trump gets the nomination.
If he doesn't, then I think that the party has a chance to
become a majority party. And if that's the case, then it seems to
me that we're looking at a very similar realignment of the kind that we saw
under Reagan. Though I think the differences is that it's not a neoliberal realignment
like Reagan ushered in. It's really more of a nationalist like more of an
economic nationalist one that probably has an expanded role for the state. That is,
you know, Republicans no longer trying to privatize entitlements for example, and
being um, you know, pretty accepting an open and open towards gays and
lesbians. You know, I don't know what happens with abortion under either scenario.
Democrats, Um, yeah, Like, I mean, I would say,
if there's a third party that has any possibility, it would be in
California. We have an open primary system already, so you can have two
Democrats or two Republicans in the runoff or independence. But I think that depends
on you know what again here too, it just depends on the addits that
you get to some extent. You know, what's interesting is if you did
get a third party in California, whether it would be aligned with one of
you know, with one of the parties outside of California, whether it would
take it over a lot of big questions to ask. I mean, it
seems like, you know, certainly in California, there's a lot of unhappiness
somebody's got to emerge, you know, to challenge Gavin Newsom, somebody more
moderate on the one on the one hand, on the other hand, the
Republican Party's basically dead. It's very hard to raise the kind of money you
need to raise to compete with Gavin Newsom. You know, more more more
likely would be though, that moderate Democrats take power, take back power in
Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Gavin ends up governing more as a moderate
if he's reelected. Yeah, well, I hope that that is a scenario
where he can be successful challenged, because again, it's really only through the
ballot box that we will be able to see a peaceful transition to a more
normal life. And I think Virginia has shown that. I think what we
also see in Virginia is I was cheering on this woman Winsome Seers last night.
That's a black woman, I think, originally from Jamaica. She was
elected to the position of lieutenant general. And she stood there saying, please
don't it's not about my skin, and this country has given me all these
wonderful things. And she said, what did she see, like a little
bit away from from becoming the governor and I think that if you have more
and more individuals like that instead of a Trump, but more and more people
with that kind of background, Latino's other immigrants taking prominent positions in the Republican
Party, they do have a chance of winning. Chance. And then I
agree, Yeah, that also takes that the race arguments in that Prase narrative
out, you know, just tol us to that. Yeah, I agree
with you. I mean, I think there's there's real potential there. You
know, it's interesting. I mean, I I'm struck by how quickly and
how responsive our political system is. I mean, you know, there's there's
some people that still kind of say, oh, the elite try to touch.
I think that's true, but when they suffer a defeat like this,
I just kind of go, you know, I don't know. I mean,
Democrats can just keep losing, But if the Democrats were to keep losing
so badly, then yeah, you would have some sort of new party,
you know, challenge them. You know. I think the other thing that
we all worry about, right is that that basically we just become more segregated
so that states like California become one party states, you know, other states,
because you know, Republican one party states. I think what's exciting about
Virginia is it shows that you can get a candidate who was you know,
not expected. You know, it's really the underdog, can't it not expected
to make um any headway, who can come and win in part because he's
not he doesn't have the abrasive qualities of a Trump, who, you know,
I think in the past would have had a more neoliberal orientation. I
think he comes out of the finance sector, but is you know, was
able to strike a more populous chord. So so yeah, clearly we're seeing
some innovation there. I think that, you know, somebody there's going to
need to be a proper reckoning on the Democratic side with what the agenda is,
you know, in California, like I mean, I kind of look
at what their Democrats are proposing nationally, you know, childcare credits you know
as the big one, some subsidies for renewables, and I'm like, that
doesn't address any of the big issues. In California, we were in the
midst of a bad drug addiction, untreatedmental illness crisis, and yet what's the
strategy on either of those is totally not clear? Right, So but I
think that goes to Republicans too. I mean, you know, during the
recall election, Larry Elder, who was the main Republican candidate, he didn't
really have a particularly good answer or a good story on what do you do
about homelessness and drug addiction. There was some hand waving, but he also
said things like, I mean, it's confusing because he would say, we
need to decriminalize all drugs. Yeah, at the same time he said,
oh, we got to have charities involved in taking care of addicts. That's
just not good enough. I mean, he really needed a more serious proposal.
I mean, it was interesting to me last night when I was watching
young Ken from Virginia give his acceptance speech. He talked about he said something
like, and we're going to invest in behavioral health, and I felt like,
wow, that is like a big piece of wonk are for your acceptance
speech. But it shows that, you know, but behavioral health is very
you know, avant garde language describe mental what we used to call mental health
or basically you know, behaviors that are affected by addiction or mental illness.
Yeah, you know, using very progressive and that's like a very using very
progressive wonky language describes something similar. But yeah, if that were if you
had someone that was more like a young kin than a Larry Elder. Yeah,
you know who's who's out there, you know, pretty progressive on a
bunch of things, you know, including healthcare, including you know, probably
in California they've got to be pro abortion rights, you know. Um.
But again that's hard because so much of the Republican based in California is actually
quite similar to the Trump base and the rest of the country. Yeah,
I noticed that. I think the problem also with mental health is what,
you know, the definition of mental health has become so elastic. So you
were talking about schizophrenia the other moments, and that falls under mental health,
but also what met and Marcos suffers from also falls under mental health. So
if you have a definition that's that wide, you will just be wasting resources.
Really, what does Megan Marcos say she suffers from? Search me?
Narcissism? Yeah, so I think entitlements, extreme entitlements and narcissism with some
neuroticism built into what I guess I mean guys like that's pathetic. That is
the problem. So if that's mental health, which she has, his mental
health and then you have people who are psychotic, either on drugs or because
of their genes, and are really violent, you know, veterans from military
with property is trauma. You know, where where do you know where's the
cutoff? I mean, one of the questions I was wrestling with in San
Francico that we wrestled with this staff with sort of is universal the universal healthcare
proposal that we're proposing. Is it just for there really down and out,
the people on the streets, the people suffering really bad illness. You know,
Ultimately we think we need universal mental health stay wide because before people get
to the point where they're on the street, they are kids experimenting with drugs
they need you know, often, you know, often this is the argus,
not my argument, but I agree, there's a lot of people that
are self medicating. Yeah, and so you see people that you know,
young people that would have benefited from an antidepressant or maybe an ADHD drug or
you know that plus some therapy and a job and some counseling would be fine.
You know. Um. One of the things is that you know,
the argument by by Sally Satel, who's one of the people that blurbed my
book psychiatrist at American Enterprise Institute. She just argue, use the opioid crisis,
you have to Yes, the drug companies were terrible and they weren't regulated
properly and all that stuff, and yes, loneliness and despair, all those
things are factors, but we just didn't provide proper psychiatric care for people suffering
from some treat highly treatable mental illness. I mean, anti depressants are miracles,
miracle drugs. But we have a pretty good I mean it's not perfect.
We have pretty good drugs for people, good medicines for people, but
they need to see a psychiatrist. You need so there and you know the
great thing is telepsyche now means that it's not should not be super expensive.
You don't need to go see a psychiatrist every week. Most people don't,
at least not for long periods of time. So when you ask about costs,
like, one way you bring down the costs is you help people to
get the care that they need. They're seeing a psychiatrist because that's the most
expensive part of the system, is the psychiatrist because they're mds. But you
know, most people, well they maybe just need to get their medicines.
They need to tweak it a little bit over some time, but then they're
going to be okay with exercise, therapy, diet, job, you know,
relationships, the typical ingredients of a happy life, and I think you
can you can end up avoiding a lot of the expensive cost later. But
again, you've got to have a society that understands. And this is where
the Dutch are brilliant. Yeah, that it does require carrots and sticks,
it does require discipline, and that the Beatles were wrong. Love is not
all we need. Yeah. Well, I could listen to you all day
long, all day long, and even though we you know, we're talking
about some of his grave issues, you always give me hope. So,
Michael, thank you so much. Oh it's wonderful to speak with you again,
and it's always a pleasure. Let's keep the conversation going. Thank you
for tuning into another episode of the Ian Heresy ALI podcast. I hope you're
enjoying these conversations as much as I am. Visit Ianhercli dot com to learn
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