Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: It beats listening to nothing.
Speaker 1: My goodness, being Frank, where the only way to be
Speaker 1: is Frank. Well everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're
Speaker 1: the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, FRANKL. Glona,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to thank you for joining us on
Speaker 1: what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation podcast, where
Speaker 1: no conversation is out of bounds and all points of
Speaker 1: view are welcome. We are recording live to take. We
Speaker 1: always give you a date so you have some context
Speaker 1: and relativity to what we're talking about. Is the second
Speaker 1: of August, you know. I chose the slogan intelligent conversation
Speaker 1: to describe this podcast as a response to the far
Speaker 1: too often acrimonious debate and blather that has seemingly replaced
Speaker 1: civil discourse, especially in a society that has become extremely
Speaker 1: fractured politically. I believe that we all have been guilty,
Speaker 1: at one time or another of raging on someone of
Speaker 1: a diametrically opposing point of view. I know that there
Speaker 1: have been times when it has taken great self control
Speaker 1: for me to not end the conversation with a single
Speaker 1: word idiot. This conflict has certainly been exacerbated by our
Speaker 1: reliance on the relative on anonymity and security of social media,
Speaker 1: and it's not related solely to personal conversation either. Just recently,
Speaker 1: former President Donald Trump had a particularly contentious interview with
Speaker 1: a panel of journalists at the NABJ conference. In fact,
Speaker 1: many including me, found it shocking. So in our quest
Speaker 1: for intelligent conversation, we have two great guests to explore
Speaker 1: the question can we return to civil discourse? And did
Speaker 1: we ever really have it in the first place. I
Speaker 1: call him the renaissance Man because he does so much.
Speaker 1: He's an author or musician, professor of Media at Fordam University,
Speaker 1: and so much more, including the author of the book
Speaker 1: In Radio Play Its Real Life, An Alternative History of
Speaker 1: the Beatles. He is also a frequent contributor to Being Frank.
Speaker 1: Welcome again, doctor Paul Levinson, Paul, thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us again.
Speaker 3: Well, my pleasure as always, you know.
Speaker 1: You're always welcome. Now to introduce my second guest, making
Speaker 1: his first appearance on Being Frank, and again this is
Speaker 1: very truncated and still impressive. Of course. Lance Strait is
Speaker 1: a professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University
Speaker 1: and a trustee and president of the Institute of General Semantics.
Speaker 1: He is founder and past presidents of the Media Ecological
Speaker 1: Association and past presidents of the New York State Communication
Speaker 1: Association and the New York Society for General Semantics. Doctor
Speaker 1: Straits is the author of eleven books, including Brave New
Speaker 1: World Revisited, Mediacology and Approach to Understanding the Human Condition
Speaker 1: Concerning Communications, Epic Quests and There Were Excursions in the
Speaker 1: Human Life World and many more with more on the way.
Speaker 1: Here's the recipient of many awards, including the Media Ecology
Speaker 1: Association's Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and the Walter J.
Speaker 1: On Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship in Eastern Communications,
Speaker 1: Distinguished Research Fellow Award, also the Global Listening Center's Outstanding
Speaker 1: Research Award and the New York State Communications John F.
Speaker 1: Wilson Fellow Award for Exceptional Scholarship, Leadership and Dedication in
Speaker 1: the field of Communications. Dr Strait, thank you for taking
Speaker 1: time to join us.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm happy to be here, but I have to
Speaker 4: say you said I was the author of Brave New
Speaker 4: World Revisited, and that's actually Aldus Huxley. The book I
Speaker 4: wrote was Amazing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman's Brave New
Speaker 4: World revisited. I just don't want to get you to
Speaker 4: get any kind of angry mess on that account.
Speaker 1: Thank you, we're pre considering it's our topic to the
Speaker 1: sea today. I greatly appreciate it. Yes, I did a
Speaker 1: little bit of editing, and I probably over edited at
Speaker 1: that particular point, so we really appreciate the corrections. You know,
Speaker 1: being accurate is important, especially for people like us, so
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that. Guys. I want a little a
Speaker 1: little bit of if I might just departure just for
Speaker 1: a second and get your comments on the breaking news
Speaker 1: just recently, the prisoner Exchange, if you will, and particularly
Speaker 1: your comments on the release of Wall Street Journal reporter
Speaker 1: Evan Gerceovich. Guys, I know both of you were storm
Speaker 1: supporters of the First Amendment, et cetera, so i'd like
Speaker 1: to know your feelings on that.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, I'm not sure that we're
Speaker 4: both staunch supporters supporters of the First Amendment, at least
Speaker 4: not in the same way, so you know, I would
Speaker 4: just not make that assumption. But on that, you know,
Speaker 4: I think we're generally very pleased to see these folks released.
Speaker 4: And I understand the objection to never you know, the
Speaker 4: idea of never negotiating with terrorists, and as far as
Speaker 4: I'm concerned, Putin is a terrorist, and it's quite clear
Speaker 4: who the exchange is being made from. For that is
Speaker 4: the difference between the folks that we're getting back and
Speaker 4: the type of folks that he wanted back, you know,
Speaker 4: being assassin's murderers and other criminal types. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, we see the same kind of thing when
Speaker 4: Israel makes a swap with say, you know, many of
Speaker 4: the Arab you know, generally terrorist organizations where they're very
Speaker 4: much one sided swaps where it's ten to one or
Speaker 4: fifty to one between folks who are taken hostage or
Speaker 4: prisoners of war in military sense, versus people who are
Speaker 4: arrested for terrorism, and maybe in some cases people who
Speaker 4: are wrongly arrested. But you know, certainly folks who have
Speaker 4: a legal system that they can work within.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Lance, Paul your feelings.
Speaker 3: Well, first, I want first I agree with everything that
Speaker 3: Lance just said, but I do want to add a
Speaker 3: couple of points.
Speaker 5: One.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that many, maybe even all of our listeners
Speaker 3: were watching last night when the plane landed in the
Speaker 3: United States, and there of course was Joe Biden and
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris and the families greeting these hostages who were
Speaker 3: held by this. You know, I think the closest example
Speaker 3: of an Adolph Hitler in our world today is indeed
Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin, and I don't make that comparison lightly. So
Speaker 3: it was here they are landing, and I have to
Speaker 3: say I was moved to tears watching that, and one
Speaker 3: point in particular, a lot of people, as we know,
Speaker 3: and you know, you and I have been talking about this,
Speaker 3: Frank for months now, and I've been talking to other
Speaker 3: people about it, the alleged decline of Joe Biden's cognitive capacities,
Speaker 3: and in particular, you know, some of our listeners may
Speaker 3: have heard of a syndrome called sundowning, which happens when
Speaker 3: sometimes people get old. They're okay during the day, but
Speaker 3: they really have a sharp decline in their cognition in
Speaker 3: the evening, hence the word sundowning. And I can't tell
Speaker 3: you how many people have pointed that out to me
Speaker 3: when I've came and I have been coming to Joe
Speaker 3: Biden's defense ever since the debate, and I have to say,
Speaker 3: you know, in fact, I posted something on Facebook book
Speaker 3: it was eleven fifty nine PM and I had just
Speaker 3: witnessed Joe Biden not only welcoming the hostages back, which
Speaker 3: was a wonderful moment, but basically fielding all kinds of
Speaker 3: questions from the media that went on for about ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen minutes. I don't think any of us right here,
Speaker 3: you know, in this podcast, could have done a better
Speaker 3: job than he did. So I know this is a
Speaker 3: slightly different topic, and I'm not unhappy that Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: will be the Democratic nominee, but I just want to
Speaker 3: say I'm very unhappy at the way that Joe Biden
Speaker 3: was hounded out and not really given a chance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate your points of view. Part of our discussion,
Speaker 1: appreciating others points of view. I tend to agree with
Speaker 1: them as both stated by both of you, gentlemen, So
Speaker 1: that makes it a little bit easier. But that will
Speaker 1: be part of our discussion as we go forward.
Speaker 4: But maybe, Frank, just to your point that you know
Speaker 4: it isn't I think it is the right thing to
Speaker 4: do to get hostages back and to and for that
Speaker 4: to be the priority. And that's what happened in this instance.
Speaker 4: And you know, even if we have to give up
Speaker 4: these horrible, convicted criminals, it's worthwhile to get folks back.
Speaker 4: And I think your point was maybe we could ask
Speaker 4: what the hell they were doing there in the first
Speaker 4: place and why anyone would be there, but you know,
Speaker 4: we should set that judgment aside and just you know,
Speaker 4: understand that this is the right priority. And my analogy
Speaker 4: with Israel is along the same lines. And in fact,
Speaker 4: it's one reason why we can so many of us
Speaker 4: are critical of net and Yahoo is because he doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to have that priority, the priority of the hostages uppermost.
Speaker 5: In his mind.
Speaker 4: And that is really a violation of both the tradition
Speaker 4: within Israel, but also of you know, really an ethical
Speaker 4: standard that we ought to adhere to.
Speaker 3: So let me just let me let me just add
Speaker 3: that I as a professor and an author. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm beginning to lose count of how many times I've
Speaker 3: turned down invitations to go to Russia in person. And
Speaker 3: I don't usually turn those down. In fact, you know,
Speaker 3: like Lance, and you know, most academics, including you. I mean,
Speaker 3: we're thrilled when anybody invites us anywhere, and if they
Speaker 3: throw a little money, okay, take me up to dinner.
Speaker 5: That's good enough.
Speaker 3: But you know the fact, by the way, I'm beginning
Speaker 3: to feel this way about some southern states in the
Speaker 3: United States, like in Texas, but that's another story. But seriously,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't go to Russia. It's not you know, on
Speaker 3: the one hand, it would be very exciting, but I
Speaker 3: don't know who has read what or for all I know,
Speaker 3: after this podcast it'll come to Putin's attention, you know,
Speaker 3: the things that we're saying about him.
Speaker 5: So I think that is a serious issue.
Speaker 3: And on the other hand, I understand journalists wanting to
Speaker 3: do their job, but you know, frankly, I would almost
Speaker 3: you know, put a ban on going to Russia. The
Speaker 3: State Department should do that, because you're dealing with a criminal.
Speaker 5: Enterprise over there.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, that term is often used to
Speaker 3: talk about Trump, who might want to be that way,
Speaker 3: but Putin more than wants to be that way.
Speaker 5: He has a regime.
Speaker 3: He runs the country the way a mob boss would
Speaker 3: run an outfit. And when you go a foul of
Speaker 3: a mob boss, Well, if you've seen any movies at all,
Speaker 3: you know what happens. So I think it's something that
Speaker 3: we really need to think about our own state department,
Speaker 3: that we have to be really really careful if any
Speaker 3: American goes to Russia.
Speaker 1: And again I agree, and it's kind of it does
Speaker 1: feed into our conversation for today because I did post
Speaker 1: something and it was very genuine we were talking about
Speaker 1: it before we came on the air, and genuine curiosity.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, some people need to go there. They
Speaker 1: have family and family issues that need to be dealt
Speaker 1: with in person. I get that. Journalists, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: and it's important. You know, it'd be easy to say
Speaker 1: we should just shut them off, but that's really not
Speaker 1: the purpose of journalism, which is to discover. So we
Speaker 1: lock ourselves out again in conversation for another day. But
Speaker 1: the point I'm trying to make was the amount of
Speaker 1: response I got from from many people, all of them
Speaker 1: who I like and respect, was all over the board.
Speaker 1: The spectrum of responses was incredible to to yes, I agree,
Speaker 1: I understand, So like you're missing the point, and then
Speaker 1: within that people going after each other and in the
Speaker 1: ways that you know, do you really need to get there.
Speaker 1: But let's develop that. But before I have a few questions,
Speaker 1: and I think maybe lay some background. First of all,
Speaker 1: let's want to come back to you and the Institute
Speaker 1: for General Semantics. It's a big word for most people.
Speaker 1: Fancy word, if you will, for most people. Break it
Speaker 1: down for us, what is it? Uh? You uh? Conceptualized it?
Speaker 1: Tell us about it, why it's important? What you do there?
Speaker 4: Sure? And uh, what's what's the big word? Do you
Speaker 4: mean institute or general?
Speaker 1: For most of my friends all fall into that category.
Speaker 4: Forgive me, I see, well that tells me a lot. Well,
Speaker 4: I'd be glad to explain it. And we just got
Speaker 4: off of a three day seminar in London where we
Speaker 4: you know, and it does take some time to really
Speaker 4: get into it in depth. But the idea of general
Speaker 4: semantics was founded by Alfred Korzipski back in nineteen thirty
Speaker 4: three and in his magnum opus called science Insanity. And
Speaker 4: it really boils down to understanding how we react and
Speaker 4: evaluate and make sense of the world. You know, how
Speaker 4: do we know what we know and how do we
Speaker 4: represent that in a faithful faction fashion, faithful to facts.
Speaker 4: So we look at the perhaps the best known saying
Speaker 4: in general semantics is the map is not the territory,
Speaker 4: which is understanding that, you know, first of all, what
Speaker 4: we perceive about the world is not what is actually
Speaker 4: out there, but we can be more or less accurate.
Speaker 4: And then the way that we describe the world is
Speaker 4: not the same as what's out there, and it's not
Speaker 4: even as the same as what we perceive about the world,
Speaker 4: but we can do better. And general semantics is about
Speaker 4: finding ways to do better, better ways of perceiving and
Speaker 4: talking about the world and evaluating the world. And you know,
Speaker 4: part of that is to understand the basic principle of
Speaker 4: non identity, that nothing is the same as anything else,
Speaker 4: and everything is constantly changing. But when we talk about things,
Speaker 4: we act as if they're static and stable and nothing
Speaker 4: dynamic is going on. And to understand, you know, conscious
Speaker 4: of abstracting the fact that we move, we take information
Speaker 4: from the environment, and we get more and more general,
Speaker 4: we put things into categories. We get more and more
Speaker 4: subjective as we do that, and we get further and
Speaker 4: further away from actual reality. As it is, so a
Speaker 4: lot of the problems. You know, in one sense, I
Speaker 4: could take this back and say, well, what do we
Speaker 4: mean by civility? And and I like the fact that
Speaker 4: you pointed out you asked, is are we really less civil?
Speaker 4: Because I think a lot of people would assume that
Speaker 4: we are, But it's not entirely clear that we are
Speaker 4: in fact less civil than we were before. And in
Speaker 4: a more concrete sense, are we less if we are?
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of us have the feeling,
Speaker 4: and we can go with that, we can talk in
Speaker 4: an imprecise way about that. You know, we feel like
Speaker 4: something's changed, but in what sense? And to whom I
Speaker 4: think people were probably a lot less civil, uh say,
Speaker 4: to African Americans one hundred years ago than they are today,
Speaker 4: So to whom also makes a difference. But so I
Speaker 4: would look at all of these these kinds of questions.
Speaker 4: But if we're talking about civility here in incommunication, you know,
Speaker 4: then at least one of the things is we have
Speaker 4: to be clear and what we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: what is it that we're referencing in the world. And
Speaker 4: when we stop doing that and we just start to
Speaker 4: talk to talk about things in these very vague categories
Speaker 4: and put people into categories of stereotypes and say you're
Speaker 4: a liberal or you're a maga, you know, or whatever,
Speaker 4: and we're just dismissing them left and right. We're bypassing,
Speaker 4: we're talking past each other. And what the best way
Speaker 4: to get past that is to go to specifics, go
Speaker 4: to what's going on. One of our great sayings, along
Speaker 4: with the map, is not the territory, and the word
Speaker 4: is not the thing it represents is the acronym WIGO,
Speaker 4: which stands for what is going on. That's the primary
Speaker 4: question to ask in any situation, what is going on specifically, concretely,
Speaker 4: what is going on here?
Speaker 1: Well, that's put that in mind. And you sent me
Speaker 1: an article on editorial that you recently wrote that I
Speaker 1: read was very detailed, and I want to take a
Speaker 1: little quote for me. It was a special edition of
Speaker 1: General Semantics and Politics, and it was titled a Double
Speaker 1: Double Bind of Rational Political Discourse. And in that you wrote,
Speaker 1: I have one quote, and I'd like you to elaborate
Speaker 1: on a little bit, if you would, because I think
Speaker 1: it's very relative to our conversation. Moreover, my purpose in
Speaker 1: this essay is to consider the relationship between democracy and reason,
Speaker 1: that is, between democratic politics and rational political discourse. As
Speaker 1: a product of the Enlightenment. Modern democracy merged out of
Speaker 1: a particular kind of semantic environment, a particular type of
Speaker 1: media environment. When that has happened as the semantic and
Speaker 1: media environments that gave birth to democracy have been changed
Speaker 1: and transformed, please explain that a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1: I think that's very much at the core of where
Speaker 1: we're at here.
Speaker 4: Well, sure again, I mean when we look at and
Speaker 4: we usually trace the roots of democracy to ancient Greece,
Speaker 4: and we're talking about people who, you know, culture that
Speaker 4: put reason and in that case, logic, rationality ahead of everything.
Speaker 4: And then we see modern democracy coming out of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 4: It's coming out of modern science and the idea that
Speaker 4: we can go out into the world and see things
Speaker 4: for ourselves and determine whether things are true or false,
Speaker 4: statements are true or false, or generalizations at least are falsifiable,
Speaker 4: That we can think in a rational way, and that
Speaker 4: democracy is dependent on that ability to act in a
Speaker 4: rational and relatively dispassionate way in your decision making. And
Speaker 4: that can work on two levels. I mean, I can
Speaker 4: do it in terms of self interest and ask is
Speaker 4: it good for me? And if it's good for me,
Speaker 4: I'm going to support it. You know, I can be selfish,
Speaker 4: you know, we call that enlightened self interest after all,
Speaker 4: or I can do that in a more kind of
Speaker 4: group minded sense and say is it good for my community,
Speaker 4: is it good for the collective, you know, society? And
Speaker 4: if so, you know, if I can make that rational determination,
Speaker 4: then I support that. And if you can't give me
Speaker 4: evidence for why that's the case, then I can say
Speaker 4: that we need a different kind kind of policy. So
Speaker 4: and and all of that comes out of very specific
Speaker 4: media environments. And by the way, Frank, I mean in
Speaker 4: that article, I also kind of tie this together that
Speaker 4: democracy is sort of like the tip of the iceberg,
Speaker 4: and it's founded on really more basic is rule of law.
Speaker 4: And it's something that we're also agonizing about today. But
Speaker 4: rule of law is very much about being dispassionate and
Speaker 4: rational and controlling your semantic environment and saying, you know, yes,
Speaker 4: this counts as evidence. Yes, this is a fact, No,
Speaker 4: this is opinion. Can you distinguish between them? And this
Speaker 4: is a fact based on what you've observed. This is
Speaker 4: a report that someone else has said that you yourself
Speaker 4: have not observed. That's an important distinction. This is an
Speaker 4: inference you're jumping to. You're assuming that this is true,
Speaker 4: but you don't actually have the factual basis to determine.
Speaker 4: Making these kind of determinations is very much at the
Speaker 4: heart of that. So we go from there that both
Speaker 4: of these are founded on a sense and even the
Speaker 4: ideal of justice, which I think is paramount, they're founded
Speaker 4: on this notion of reason, that we can act based
Speaker 4: on reason rather than on other factors. But that these
Speaker 4: arise out of cultures in which literacy has taken root.
Speaker 4: And again, if we talk about rule of law, or
Speaker 4: go back to say Babylon with their syllabic form of writing,
Speaker 4: and then the ancient Israelites with the first alphabet, and
Speaker 4: ancient Greece with their alphabet, and then the modern form
Speaker 4: coming out of typographic literacy after Gutenberg introduces his printing press.
Speaker 4: So we create a specific kind of media environment and
Speaker 4: semantic environment in which rational discourse can thrive. And then
Speaker 4: we get to the electronic media. And this was the
Speaker 4: point where our both poemized former professor Neil Postman, you know,
Speaker 4: made the point of amusing ourselves to death that in
Speaker 4: with electronic media and especially with television and it's undermining
Speaker 4: rational discourse in favor of amusement, entertainment, drama, and the
Speaker 4: sort of emotional responses to to politics. And that means
Speaker 4: that rational discourse is becomes problematic in our time, and
Speaker 4: that is it really raises the question can we have
Speaker 4: democracy without that as the ruling form of discourse? And
Speaker 4: it's not here that we can.
Speaker 1: Let's bring Paul and I'll pull you and I have
Speaker 1: a question. You can have a list of great questions.
Speaker 1: I want to get a little relative to what Lance
Speaker 1: just said. So please, I know you have you want
Speaker 1: to say something right now?
Speaker 5: Please do Thanks.
Speaker 3: Well, I just want to get back to what I
Speaker 3: think is really the crucial point about civility in a democracy,
Speaker 3: and Lance explicitly mentioned it.
Speaker 5: Who deserves our civility?
Speaker 3: And the very asking of that question assume as don't
Speaker 3: ask the question if you think your answer is going
Speaker 3: to be a pat Well, everyone deserves And I think
Speaker 3: that most people would agree, no, everyone does not deserve
Speaker 3: our civility. But I think that we can help clarify
Speaker 3: the situation by pointing out, for example, and I often
Speaker 3: think about this as a professor, I have courses in
Speaker 3: which we talk about very controversial political topics. And it
Speaker 3: occurred to me a long time ago, because I've been
Speaker 3: doing this for many years, that students deserve a professor's civility.
Speaker 3: They're paying tuition, they're taking a course, they are entitled
Speaker 3: whatever their point of view is, whatever their political point
Speaker 3: of view is, even if they are a Trump supporter.
Speaker 3: And I've had students who are Trump supporters. But I'll
Speaker 3: make this very interesting point. I was, I think I
Speaker 3: was one hundred percent civil to them in our classrooms.
Speaker 3: But relationships continue very often after the university relationship has concluded.
Speaker 3: And so I became friends with some of these people
Speaker 3: on Facebook and other systems, and you know, I have
Speaker 3: to tell you, and this goes back to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: I had to unfriended and block some people former students
Speaker 3: of mine, because they were saying outrageous things back then
Speaker 3: about Hillary Clinton, using all kinds of obscenities in a
Speaker 3: public discourse to describe Hillary Clinton. I warned them once
Speaker 3: I won them twice, they not only did not get better,
Speaker 3: they got worse. So I basically blocked them. And I
Speaker 3: don't feel the least bit guilty or bad about that.
Speaker 3: So I think students deserve oursibility, Our children deserve oursibility,
Speaker 3: Our pets deserve oursibility. You can't get mad at a
Speaker 3: dog for bothering you, because it has to go side,
Speaker 3: you know, to relieve itself, even though it's inconvenient for you.
Speaker 5: But does a maga Republican?
Speaker 3: Does somebody who has the unmitigated goal to blatantly lie
Speaker 3: and say that in some democratic states the Democrats think
Speaker 3: it's okay to murder a newborn baby. I can't think
Speaker 3: of a more outrageous lie, and that they don't deserve
Speaker 3: our civility.
Speaker 5: It's great.
Speaker 1: It is a perfect segue. One of the questions you
Speaker 1: got it leads right into it is just absolutely perfect
Speaker 1: and atlance you could take it as well. Literally, is
Speaker 1: it possible to be civil to a fasci fascist, to
Speaker 1: someone who simply doesn't care about the truth and makes
Speaker 1: that obvious? And I'll give you a practical example as
Speaker 1: we all do as it you mentioned. I got a
Speaker 1: person I don't know but commented on a Facebook post
Speaker 1: and at some point I said, let's get beyond politics,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the value of a person, of a
Speaker 1: human being. I don't understand how people got past the
Speaker 1: initial trumpion when he mocked the disabled reporter who was
Speaker 1: a Politzer Prize winner, et cetera. It's all there right
Speaker 1: in front of us, So I said, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't.
Speaker 1: For me, it needed it didn't have to go further
Speaker 1: than that. That was that was the deal breaker for
Speaker 1: me at that moment. So I'd like you to explain
Speaker 1: how you can rationalize how you can explain that. And
Speaker 1: of course I get back, well, you felt for the
Speaker 1: media hype of something that didn't happen when I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the YouTube and it's not Ai and I sent
Speaker 1: him the YouTube link and there's no response, So there's
Speaker 1: not willing to even hear factual evidence. Where do you
Speaker 1: take that conversation from from there?
Speaker 5: Lance?
Speaker 1: Why don't you take it from that? When you get
Speaker 1: to that point, we've given someone factual evidence here it
Speaker 1: is you may believe it or not, and they don't.
Speaker 4: Where do we go Well, Well, first of all, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure that I agree that about some people not
Speaker 4: deserving our civility, But a lot of that goes back to,
Speaker 4: well what do we mean by civility? Because you know,
Speaker 4: in Paul saying okay, he unfriended people whose posts he
Speaker 4: finds offensive. I don't see that unfriending someone as being
Speaker 4: a lack of civility. You know, in fact, that is
Speaker 4: a very civil way to respond to things. And and I,
Speaker 4: you know, the way I see it is that a
Speaker 4: lot of this has to do with, you know, we
Speaker 4: have a particular kind of semantic environment that we function in,
Speaker 4: and that semantic environment has certain rules about what is
Speaker 4: acceptable and not acceptable behavior. And those rules, you know,
Speaker 4: are generally not formally established, but they are generally known
Speaker 4: by the participants, and you know, they can change over time.
Speaker 4: But so you know, in fact, what Paul was pointing
Speaker 4: to is that in the classroom, the classroom is a
Speaker 4: particular kind of semantic environment where you have expectations and
Speaker 4: rules or I feel like norms about how people are
Speaker 4: going to communicate. Now, one of the problems that comes
Speaker 4: up is the fact that once the electronic media come
Speaker 4: into play, they have this effect of blurring boundaries, breaking
Speaker 4: down borderlines, and kind of creating this mush of semantic
Speaker 4: environments that once were distinct. And I think a great
Speaker 4: example of this is that was it the Access Hollywood
Speaker 4: tape that caught Trump and know and that he later
Speaker 4: then dismissed his locker room talk. You know, and if
Speaker 4: you think of the locker room as a semantic environment
Speaker 4: and all male environment, then you know, he might be
Speaker 4: able to argue that that kind of talk is acceptable
Speaker 4: in that semantic environment, which, of course, that's not the
Speaker 4: environment in which Trump and was it, Billy Bush, what
Speaker 4: was happened to be in? But and based on what
Speaker 4: I know about millennials and gen Z's and and all,
Speaker 4: I don't I think that's not the semantic environment that
Speaker 4: you'd find in a locker room today. But it you know,
Speaker 4: for those of us of a certain age, it wouldn't
Speaker 4: be that far afield from from what you would call that,
Speaker 4: you know, locker room talk.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: But of course this is recorded on tape. I mean,
Speaker 4: it wasn't a locker room, but it was also recorded
Speaker 4: on tape and then provided, you know, distributed over electronic media,
Speaker 4: and that that breaks down the boundaries online. They call
Speaker 4: this also context collapse because previously distinct contexts are collapsing.
Speaker 4: So in the same you think about Nixon, and you know,
Speaker 4: he never cursed in his public you know, performances, but
Speaker 4: on tape, on those secretly recorded tapes, he's you know,
Speaker 4: cursing like a drunken sailor. So you know, that was understood.
Speaker 4: And I think when we talk about civility, maybe a
Speaker 4: more more concrete way to talk about it is about
Speaker 4: formal rules when we communicate, and that there used to
Speaker 4: be many more formal rules about communication. A child addressing
Speaker 4: an adult would refer to mister or missus or miss
Speaker 4: and would not call someone by their first name, you know,
Speaker 4: and understood that growing up when I was a kid,
Speaker 4: you know, little little kid growing up in Queen's and
Speaker 4: my mother would take me to Manhattan, you know, go
Speaker 4: by subway. She'd say, we're going to the city. You
Speaker 4: have to dress dress up, right, I mean you have
Speaker 4: to dress differently to go to the city, to go
Speaker 4: into public. You know, people acted differently and differently in
Speaker 4: movie theaters. You know, people wouldn't think of shouting out
Speaker 4: or applauding, you know, or doing these kinds of things.
Speaker 4: I remember when that started to happen in the seventies,
Speaker 4: you know, and folks, you know, media studies kinds of
Speaker 4: you know, mediacology type folks, you know, saying, well, it's
Speaker 4: sort of like people have gotten too used to television
Speaker 4: and they're acting like they're in their living rooms now. Uh,
Speaker 4: but I think that's a lot has a lot to
Speaker 4: do it. When the Sopranos came on, you know, it
Speaker 4: suddenly it became much more. There was much more of
Speaker 4: a license to curse in public. And nowadays, you know,
Speaker 4: I remember having my son when he was little and
Speaker 4: being at a McDonald's and at a table next to
Speaker 4: me there are people cursing up a storm, you know,
Speaker 4: just thinking like, well, geez man, you know, you're in
Speaker 4: a public place, you're in a place that kids eat,
Speaker 4: you know, and you're talking this way. So I think
Speaker 4: at a certain point, you know, this is really what
Speaker 4: we're talking about, that when we have formal rules and
Speaker 4: this idea that you are violating them, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: things are actually are much more civil, and there's been
Speaker 4: this gradual erosion. And when Trump came along, he just
Speaker 4: took it, you know, I mean he pushed it up,
Speaker 4: you know, did a quantum leap on it. But not
Speaker 4: discontinuous from what has been going on all along. But
Speaker 4: you know, obviously we're all kind of mindful about how
Speaker 4: much how badly this has gotten out of hand.
Speaker 3: Now I say something in defense of television. And this
Speaker 3: is actually a longstanding disagreement. Lance and I have had
Speaker 3: had a disagreement Eye and a Lance in my mutual
Speaker 3: professor and tutor in the PhD program where we both
Speaker 3: got PhD at New York University, Neil Postman. On either
Speaker 3: side of it, it's crystal clear that television is not
Speaker 3: to blame. Before television, there was no television in Germany
Speaker 3: in the nineteen thirties. And I said earlier that I
Speaker 3: think Vladimir Putin is the closest living person to Hitler
Speaker 3: in power today. But even Putin hasn't gone as far
Speaker 3: as Hitler went, and that was in an age of radio,
Speaker 3: not television. And on the other side of it, I
Speaker 3: just I'm finishing a course I'm teaching at Fordham University
Speaker 3: this summer. And there's a media theorist that I'm sure
Speaker 3: Lance is familiar with his work, Andre Mehr, who wrote
Speaker 3: a book just about two years ago called post Journalism
Speaker 3: The Death of Newspapers. And what he argues in that book,
Speaker 3: and he's obviously not the only one who's arguing this,
Speaker 3: is that it's social media that have brought us to
Speaker 3: this pitch of incivility and why is that it's because
Speaker 3: unlike television, which is not a perfect medium.
Speaker 5: No medium is perfect by any means.
Speaker 3: But basically there's gatekeeping, meaning not anyone can just get
Speaker 3: on television and say whatever they please. And what social
Speaker 3: media did is they removed that gate and I was
Speaker 3: actually very much in favor of that, but I have
Speaker 3: to agree with someone like Ezra Kleine, who I don't
Speaker 3: agree with a lot of.
Speaker 5: The things he said.
Speaker 3: He had an op ed about two years ago, maybe
Speaker 3: last summer, in which he actually said Marshall McLuhan was right.
Speaker 3: The medium is the message. Social media are responsible for
Speaker 3: the disarray, the acrimony, the polarization of our society because
Speaker 3: anyone can get on there and shoot their mouth off, lie,
Speaker 3: tell the truth, say something in between. And all that
Speaker 3: people care about, and we've talked about this at great
Speaker 3: length as well, Frank, all that people really care about
Speaker 3: social media is not whether something is true or not.
Speaker 3: It's whether something is provocative enough to merit likes and shares.
Speaker 3: And that's that's the story right there. And so if
Speaker 3: we're worried, and I think we should be, about the
Speaker 3: deterioration of our public discourse, if you want to blame
Speaker 3: a media system. It's Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, et cetera.
Speaker 4: I certainly I gotta I gotta response to this, because,
Speaker 4: first of all, the example of Nazi Germany me this
Speaker 4: is kind of confusing different things because we're talking about
Speaker 4: civil discourse. That's not about morality, ethics, or even politics.
Speaker 4: It's about having certain rules for how you communicate with
Speaker 4: other people. And Germans, even under the Nazi regime, were
Speaker 4: actually quite more formal than Americans. I mean, American culture
Speaker 4: has a long history of informality relative to others, but
Speaker 4: there was nothing uncivil about the way Germans interacted with others,
Speaker 4: except to the point where when we talk about people
Speaker 4: who are considered not worthy of their respect or their civility,
Speaker 4: which goes back to my point about say African Americans
Speaker 4: in the United States one hundred years ago, or many
Speaker 4: other minority groups for that matter. So it's really not
Speaker 4: about that. And I think television definitely has resulted in
Speaker 4: this because for all of the commercials for say, feminine
Speaker 4: hygiene pop products, a lot of the distinctions and our
Speaker 4: Paul's old classmate Joshua Morwitz makes this point about again
Speaker 4: breaking down barriers that areas that formerly were very formally distinct.
Speaker 4: This is this is what men talk about and what
Speaker 4: men know, and it is kept from women, and this
Speaker 4: is what women know and talk about and it's kept
Speaker 4: from men. All of these boundaries start to break down
Speaker 4: and we get this coarsening of the culture. And it
Speaker 4: didn't start with social media, and it really did start
Speaker 4: with the television culture. You can see it. And I
Speaker 4: have nothing against the music, but in the kind of
Speaker 4: style of punk rock, you know, we see, we saw
Speaker 4: that coming out, and it's again, it's been it's been continuous.
Speaker 4: I will say that. You know, again, Paul, you through
Speaker 4: in polarization.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: I think on that point, yes, because what television tended
Speaker 4: to do, being this massiest of mass mediums, was to
Speaker 4: homogenize things to a large extent, whereas the you know,
Speaker 4: social media tend to break things down and put people
Speaker 4: into into silos. So I would definitely agree on that score.
Speaker 4: But these other things, you know, again, it's informality. It's
Speaker 4: when the waiter, when waiters started to come to your
Speaker 4: table and say, hi, my name is Frank, and I'll
Speaker 4: be your waiter for today. I don't want to know
Speaker 4: your name, just get me my damn food.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's that all of these kinds of things.
Speaker 4: It's when, you know, when there stopped being dress codes.
Speaker 4: I started after the pandemic. I decided to start wear
Speaker 4: a tie. I mean, I wear a jacket and tied
Speaker 4: to class because I want to instill in the students
Speaker 4: the idea that they that this is a distinct semantic environment.
Speaker 4: I can't tell them what to wear, but at least
Speaker 4: I want to communicate to them that I take this seriously.
Speaker 4: You know, to me that again, this idea of rules,
Speaker 4: you know, uh, you know, and it and that can
Speaker 4: be for evil. There's that old cliche of the bad
Speaker 4: guy who's always an upper class guy, and he's said,
Speaker 4: you know, like manners, mister Bond, you know, one must
Speaker 4: have manners. You know that that that sense of civility
Speaker 4: is not it does not correlate with ethics or morality,
Speaker 4: but it does serve as a basis and it has
Speaker 4: to be extended.
Speaker 5: Again.
Speaker 4: That's why I say it has to be extended to
Speaker 4: everybody that when we are civil to one another, we
Speaker 4: avoid a lot of these extremes that come that are
Speaker 4: are associated with them, the extremes of emotionality, of hostility,
Speaker 4: and the complete loss of rational discourse.
Speaker 1: Let's get back on WHS to respond, please.
Speaker 3: Of course, just about this for me is the crew
Speaker 3: difference between television and social media. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: been on television hundreds of times and I've been on
Speaker 3: social media tens of thousands of times. But anytime that
Speaker 3: I'm on television apropos what Lance just said, I wear
Speaker 3: a jacket and thie. And if I'm not wearing a
Speaker 3: jacket and tie, I wear a vest in thie. And
Speaker 3: by the way, like Lance after the pandemic, I've started
Speaker 3: to wear a vest, you know, not as civil as Lances.
Speaker 3: But I'm not wearing a jacket and tye. But I'm
Speaker 3: wearing a vest and you know, pretty nice shirts. So
Speaker 3: but here's the point. Anytime I was on television, and
Speaker 3: this still applies to some extent, I'm on my best
Speaker 3: behavior because I'm aware that God knows how many people
Speaker 3: are listening to me seeing me, et.
Speaker 5: Cetera, et cetera. Trying to be good. I'm trying to
Speaker 5: be as clear as possible. Social media is the complete opposite.
Speaker 5: It's like one o'clock in the morning, you're.
Speaker 3: Sitting with now with your phone, the synapse between your
Speaker 3: brain that thinks of a nasty retort and your finger
Speaker 3: is instant, and you know you're not dressed, you're not civil.
Speaker 5: It's just the raw you.
Speaker 3: And I find myself doing it all the time, and again,
Speaker 3: just in what's been going on. To get back to
Speaker 3: what we were talking about at the beginning the current
Speaker 3: presidential election, I find myself all the time, you know,
Speaker 3: making a comment about what's going on in the election
Speaker 3: without giving it a second thought, because that's what social
Speaker 3: media is. It's instant gratification for the id. There's no
Speaker 3: mediation in the human system. And so that's why I
Speaker 3: think social media are the main impetus for the attack
Speaker 3: on civility.
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm just going to say, it's not the opposite.
Speaker 4: It's just an amplification of what's already there. When you
Speaker 4: go on TV or I go on TV, it's a
Speaker 4: very formal situation of being interviewed. But when they show
Speaker 4: film of a riot and they show people, you know,
Speaker 4: when we see i'd say January sixth on television, we're
Speaker 4: seeing something that if we read a report on it
Speaker 4: would be communicated in a much more formal manner, but
Speaker 4: we're seeing people acting in very uncivil ways. And that's
Speaker 4: not counting dramatic series where again, the the the you know,
Speaker 4: it's gotten more and more uncivil as time goes by,
Speaker 4: as you go from Leave It to Beaver say to
Speaker 4: the sopranos, and you know we're seeing that happening, do.
Speaker 5: You, guys? I'm aware.
Speaker 1: I have to be aware of my time, and this
Speaker 1: is terrific. This is the point, and that's what we
Speaker 1: just managed to have the discussion. Disagree passionately, even if
Speaker 1: I might add at times, but yet kept it within
Speaker 1: the realm of intelligent conversation. That's kind of the point.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, how can we be effective,
Speaker 1: especially with someone who, as I mentioned, diametrically opposed to
Speaker 1: what we believe. What is an effective way somebody mentioned humor?
Speaker 1: Humor might be better. Should we be absolutely clear, this
Speaker 1: is the way I feel, I will not tolerate this.
Speaker 1: Our boundaries important. What's an effective way to deal within
Speaker 1: what we said, the medium that we have right now,
Speaker 1: which is social media, et cetera. What is the most
Speaker 1: effective way to deal with people who we run into
Speaker 1: all the time, who vehemently disagree with our points of view.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, there are limits to what we can
Speaker 4: do in any in any instance, but I think going
Speaker 4: to facts is really really essential and trying to find
Speaker 4: the common ground on what can we agree on are
Speaker 4: the facts of the situation, and then also understanding, you know,
Speaker 4: the tendency is to fall into two valued orientations. Is
Speaker 4: that's the term we use in general semantics, the binary
Speaker 4: of good or bad, Democrat or republican and so forth.
Speaker 4: And in fact, you know, I mean the idea there
Speaker 4: are only two sides to every issue, you know, the
Speaker 4: pro and con. But there are many sides. You know,
Speaker 4: let's understand that there are many sides, and let's look
Speaker 4: at you know, there are fifty shades of gray. There
Speaker 4: are fifty million shades of gray when we're talking about
Speaker 4: what is going on. But you know, the first thing
Speaker 4: is to say, what are the facts, you know, what
Speaker 4: is really happen happening here? And then the question of
Speaker 4: policy is what should we do about it? Where we
Speaker 4: can uh, you know, look at you know, how do
Speaker 4: we how do we understand these facts? And you know,
Speaker 4: what what are effective plans for dealing with them? And
Speaker 4: maybe we can disagree on what would be most effective.
Speaker 4: But uh, you know, again, if we can do this,
Speaker 4: of course civilly, it is your point, you know, without
Speaker 4: resorting to name calling, without resorting to labels and stereotypes
Speaker 4: and insults, And uh, I would question humor is the
Speaker 4: problem with humor comes up where you know, it means
Speaker 4: I'm making fun of you because we disagree. So I
Speaker 4: don't think that's going to to work. Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: and it does tend to create put us on different sides, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, for me to make you the butt of
Speaker 4: a joke, or or to make fun of something that
Speaker 4: you're taking seriously. So let's take it all seriously, and
Speaker 4: let's always on understand. I always go back to as
Speaker 4: Paul knows, I'm a big Tolkien Tolkien follower, and it's
Speaker 4: it's a line. It wasn't in the movies, but it's
Speaker 4: in the books from Lord of the Rings when these
Speaker 4: Hobbits run into the Ants who are the giant tree herders,
Speaker 4: and they've never met them before, and they ask them
Speaker 4: whose side you're on, and the ant tree Beard answers,
Speaker 4: I am not all together on anybody's side, because nobody
Speaker 4: is all together on my side. And I really love
Speaker 4: that those words, and of course he goes on to say,
Speaker 4: but I am no friend of those tree burning orcs,
Speaker 4: you know, which is let's also have some moral clarity here, Well.
Speaker 5: Paul, Yeah, well I agree with most of that.
Speaker 3: Let me just say that on behalf of humor. What
Speaker 3: humor does is it relaxes people. And if you can
Speaker 3: get a person to laugh or even smile, it does
Speaker 3: tend to diffuse the situation. And not by making fun
Speaker 3: of the person, because that's obviously just going to get
Speaker 3: them angry, but you know, making a joke about something else,
Speaker 3: a play on words, and I mean this might sound
Speaker 3: a little bit, I don't know, unfair or even provocative,
Speaker 3: but I've found in my life that appreciation of humor
Speaker 3: correlates very highly with intelligence. And if you can find
Speaker 3: someone who appreciates your humor and they appreciate you appreciate
Speaker 3: their humor, they appreciate your humor right then and there
Speaker 3: there's like a connection between the two of you, despite
Speaker 3: your political differences. But realistically in terms of who we
Speaker 3: can talk to in a way that's less provocative and
Speaker 3: less nasty than the way that increasingly people are talking
Speaker 3: to each other.
Speaker 5: I think unfortunately in a way.
Speaker 3: It relates to what is now frequently said to the
Speaker 3: point where it's a cliche. But probably it's a cliche
Speaker 3: because it's true. You have people on one side, you
Speaker 3: have people on the other side, and then you have
Speaker 3: this amorphous group that's in the middle, you know, the
Speaker 3: swing voter, and that's who both the Democrats and the
Speaker 3: Republicans are trying to appeal to because neither side has
Speaker 3: a majority. And then of course gets more complicated, you know,
Speaker 3: because some states are swing states with the electoral college, etc.
Speaker 3: But I think that those are the people who, for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, are in the middle. They have problems both
Speaker 3: with the Democrats and we're just talking politically here and
Speaker 3: the Republicans and what you don't want them to do
Speaker 3: to give up on the system and say, so the
Speaker 3: hell that I'm just not voting. And by the way,
Speaker 3: people in their twenties are among the most extreme in
Speaker 3: that group. Obama was thrilled when he got close to
Speaker 3: sixty percent of first time voters in their twenties. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's insane. It should be ninety eight percent or something
Speaker 3: like that. But I think that that's where we have
Speaker 3: to try to reach out as much as possible, turn
Speaker 3: near the cheek when we can in the hope of
Speaker 3: engaging these people. However many they are who are on
Speaker 3: the verge of giving up on the political system in total,
Speaker 3: don't have any.
Speaker 5: Use for either party. Maybe there's some way of reaching them.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen can take a quick break. This is Being Frank.
Speaker 1: We're having intelligent conversation the very point of this podcast
Speaker 1: and this evening's episode with professors Lance Strait and Paul Levinson,
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lebono will
Speaker 1: reintroduce our guests in just a minute. You know, we
Speaker 1: bring our audience a fresh topic every week. We stream
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Speaker 1: or at our website Hudson Riverradio dot com. Just click
Speaker 1: and you're on. My guests. Fordham University media professors doctor
Speaker 1: Lance Straight and doctor Paul Levinson had a wonderful discussion
Speaker 1: up to this point. We only have a few minutes
Speaker 1: left to pack in all this great stuff, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about former President Trump,
Speaker 1: who's incendiary political rhetoric from day one only seems to
Speaker 1: get fiery, if that's a word, more fiery incendiary. Most
Speaker 1: recently at the NABJ conference with a very confrontational interview
Speaker 1: with a number of panel of journalists. But you know,
Speaker 1: we see it as firing up his base. Is he
Speaker 1: part of the root of the problem or our leaders?
Speaker 1: Do we follow them that to that degree where his
Speaker 1: incendiary rhetoric becomes his follower's rhetoric lance, Why don't you
Speaker 1: take that first and we'll follow up with Paul Well.
Speaker 4: I mean, in that particular instance, and you can see
Speaker 4: that the journalists were quite civil and you know, and
Speaker 4: there's much a much stronger sense of formality and rules
Speaker 4: of communication in journal and then he responds in this
Speaker 4: hostile manner by accused, you know, by saying, you know,
Speaker 4: what was a very straightforward, if serious and confrontational question.
Speaker 4: You know, they response to that by accusing her of
Speaker 4: being nasty. And I think in that instance, I would
Speaker 4: just go back to this context collapse that is characteristic
Speaker 4: of the electronic media in general, and here in this
Speaker 4: case in television, where you could go back to Ronald
Speaker 4: Reagan who understood that when he gave a public address,
Speaker 4: his audience, his real audience, was not the people gathered
Speaker 4: in front of him in the face to face situation.
Speaker 4: It was the folks watching on at home, and that
Speaker 4: he would look into the camera and not at the audience.
Speaker 4: So while he was called the great communicator, he in
Speaker 4: fact was a poor public speaker, but an excellent television personality.
Speaker 4: So I think in the same way, Trump's audience, as
Speaker 4: he understood it, was not the African American journalists gathered
Speaker 4: there at that moment. It was people who would be
Speaker 4: watching in that moment or watching clips of it later
Speaker 4: on Fox and among his followers via social media, where
Speaker 4: he would be seen as standing up to these you know,
Speaker 4: woke and you know, leftist types. So I think that
Speaker 4: was really what's going on there. But in terms of
Speaker 4: your question, you know, absolutely, you know, once again, I
Speaker 4: think it's this amplification. Trump understood television quite well and
Speaker 4: understood electronic media and just pushed it in the direction
Speaker 4: that it was already going. In mediacology we talk about
Speaker 4: the bias of the medium. The bias of this medium,
Speaker 4: of all electronic media, is towards greater informality, less boundaries,
Speaker 4: less for you know, less distinctions, and he just he
Speaker 4: understood that, you know, perhaps not in a in an
Speaker 4: overt way, but certainly in an instinctive way and just
Speaker 4: pushed it to where it could go, and it served
Speaker 4: him well for him.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, when we could develop, keep calling love. Sure, right,
Speaker 1: we'll be back, Paul, please. Final thoughts.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I agree with everything Lance said,
Speaker 3: but I think there's a yet more important factor. And
Speaker 3: I keep going back to Nazi Germany because that has
Speaker 3: been to the present at least the most explicit expression
Speaker 3: of fascism with obviously disastrous consequences. I mean, arguably everything
Speaker 3: that's going on in the Middle East is even a
Speaker 3: result of all that, because Israel was formed in the
Speaker 3: aftermath of the Holocaust and it really destroyed not only civility,
Speaker 3: but all kinds of important and good things in our society.
Speaker 3: But the reason why I keep going back to the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties in Nazi Germany is I think that fascism
Speaker 3: is something that has been inherent all over the world,
Speaker 3: including sadly, the United States. And why does Trump continue
Speaker 3: to say these outrageous things, And you and Lance both
Speaker 3: you know, said as much. It's because he knows that
Speaker 3: there are people out there, disgruntled people, you know, angry people,
Speaker 3: people who feel they've been pushed aside, left aside, and
Speaker 3: now suddenly they have a champion who is speaking what
Speaker 3: they've been feeling, and they love that, and nothing is
Speaker 3: ever going to get them to stop voting for Trump
Speaker 3: when Trump. Just give one tiny example, when Trump came
Speaker 3: down with COVID nineteen, when he was still president, I
Speaker 3: saw a guy, you know, he looked, I don't know,
Speaker 3: like you know, like a typical Trump supporter, you know,
Speaker 3: a big, angry guy, you know, furious. His face was
Speaker 3: like perpetually red with anger. And he was standing outside
Speaker 3: the hospital and he was crying. He was so upset,
Speaker 3: and he said, I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 3: to the president. And I realized that this man loves
Speaker 3: Trump because Trump epitomizes and vocalizes everything, every unfortunate, horrendous
Speaker 3: thing that he has been feeling for most of his life.
Speaker 3: And we need to recognize that that fascist impulse was
Speaker 3: not destroyed at the end of World War Two. It
Speaker 3: was pushed back down and under, yes, but it certainly
Speaker 3: wasn't destroyed. And what we're still seeing, you know, with
Speaker 3: and this answers your question in another way, who can
Speaker 3: we be civil to? I have no problem being civil
Speaker 3: to a traditional Republican. I have no problem at all saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I know you think it's good. You know, trickle down economics.
Speaker 3: Let's give tax breaks to mainonnaires and bionaires. They'll make
Speaker 3: better commerce, everybody will benefit. I disagree completely with that
Speaker 3: economic point of view, but I can express that difference
Speaker 3: with civility and respect. I get people have different points
Speaker 3: of view, but I can't be civil, and there's no
Speaker 3: point pretending that I can be to an adult who
Speaker 3: so strongly identifies with and supports Trump and now his
Speaker 3: new underling lack ejd Evans.
Speaker 4: Can I just say, you know, quickly, the downside of civility,
Speaker 4: or the negative part of ability, is in fact what
Speaker 4: Paul's pointing to here, because civility diplomatic language can also
Speaker 4: be used to obscure things and to talk around the subjects.
Speaker 4: So you know, if we're saying that you know, I'm hurting,
Speaker 4: and you get this sort of like polite response that
Speaker 4: doesn't speak to who I am as a person, then
Speaker 4: that civility it feels, you know, like an upfront And
Speaker 4: the fact that Trump was able to just like knock
Speaker 4: that all aside and his communication is what appealed to
Speaker 4: these people who are feeling disaffected, who are feeling shut out,
Speaker 4: and that you know, so you have to understand that
Speaker 4: civility is not an unmitigated good and that it is
Speaker 4: used as I said, you know too, you know, for
Speaker 4: class distinctions and to shut out people who are who
Speaker 4: you don't like or who are not like you, you know,
Speaker 4: the deplorable, so to speak, and so on that night.
Speaker 4: Note I mean, I would differ with my friend Paul,
Speaker 4: and I would say that everyone deserves civility, everyone should
Speaker 4: be treated civil, even if they're not civil back to you,
Speaker 4: and that that is the only way, just as as
Speaker 4: a parent you treat your child, you act as an
Speaker 4: adult even when your child is being juvenile and immature
Speaker 4: and acting out. That is the only way to get
Speaker 4: past this.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, I think we helped show them the way. We
Speaker 1: had some really intelligent conversation here. Some disagreements, but all
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if resolved is the right word, but
Speaker 1: discussed and and that's worth something. It certainly is to me.
Speaker 1: And I want to thank my Fortum colleagues, Professor Lance
Speaker 1: Street and Professor Paul Ebinson of course for their intelligent conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you gentlemen, and we opened the door. You'll be back.
Speaker 1: I hope I helpe Lance. You had a good and
Speaker 1: you'll join us once again. This was wonderful. And Paul,
Speaker 1: we know we can count on you. I know it
Speaker 1: can always count on you.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So anyway, when to give special thanks to our listeners,
Speaker 1: because look, they take the time to give us a
Speaker 1: voice in their lives and they listen to us. I
Speaker 1: certainly hope they do. Remember, we offer fresh topic every week,
Speaker 1: so we're here for you. Check us out on the
Speaker 1: Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Leave us a comment. Remember
Speaker 1: I always leave you with a couple last things. First,
Speaker 1: I also want to thank author Brian Michael Schmidt. He
Speaker 1: suggested the topic, and we encourage people to have a
Speaker 1: public Facebook account. You can message me and suggest topics.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you, so we appreciate that.
Speaker 1: And of course, one quote that I always think is
Speaker 1: kind of appropriate to our show. It's one of my
Speaker 1: favorites from Marcus Aurelius, and I think it's appropriate. It says,
Speaker 1: waste no more time arguing about it. What a good
Speaker 1: man should be be? Okay, and Paul, we another reason
Speaker 1: I love to have you on because you always bring
Speaker 1: music with you. What are we going to listen to
Speaker 1: for this program?
Speaker 3: Well, I thought this recording would be appropriate to our topic.
Speaker 3: It's a song I wrote. I wrote the lyrics to
Speaker 3: Linda Kaplan, who wrote the Toys r US commercial. But
Speaker 3: years before that, and years before I became a professor
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight, one day I wrote these lyrics,
Speaker 3: brought them over to Linda's house. She wrote this music.
Speaker 3: We recorded a demo of that. It's called Cloudy Sunday.
Speaker 3: And when I was recording my album Welcome Up, Songs
Speaker 3: of Space and Time at Old Bear Record Studios up
Speaker 3: in Betavia, New York, I brought along this demo and
Speaker 3: has a lot of scratches on it, and I said
Speaker 3: to the producer, Chris Hoysington, Hey, this sounds a little
Speaker 3: like rain, doesn't it. Maybe you can put some special
Speaker 3: rain effects in there and you won't be able to
Speaker 3: tell the difference between the square ratches in the recording
Speaker 3: of the raad. He said, good idea, So he put
Speaker 3: in some harmony and a couple of other instruments. I
Speaker 3: put in a little harmony. That's what you're going to hear.
Speaker 3: Cloudy Sunday with me singing the lead.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, thank you again for Neil Richtor our engineer. I'm
Speaker 1: Frank Lebono, and thank you for being with us here
Speaker 1: on being Frank, it's the only way to be. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll see you next time.
Speaker 8: Cold Sunday.
Speaker 5: I wait to find the.
Speaker 8: Sunday the god.
Speaker 2: It's change, smooth and touch Domy bo y Sunday, but
Speaker 2: fall upon my birdy.
Speaker 8: Came Sunday contents and to and to speaking to Sool,
Speaker 8: but you.
Speaker 2: Coun't tell that. I'll log you work.
Speaker 8: So we love each other and passing, but I keep.
Speaker 2: Searching for something more.
Speaker 8: Last day, I voice.
Speaker 2: For the lot.
Speaker 1: It's a last time.
Speaker 2: Cloudy Sunday.
Speaker 8: A glimsitytan for cloudy Sunday.
Speaker 2: I said that she is warm, but question ward reflection
Speaker 2: of me or some nothing war
Speaker 6: Sunday Hunch in the River grad Dyo dot com