Speaker 1: I get the feeling, James. And this is a compliment
that if we had just said at the beginning of
this podcast, movies, you would have been able to do
that for an hour without anyone else saying.
Speaker 2: Us, Yes, that's actually so.
Speaker 3: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
what you can do for your country, mister Gorbachev, tear
down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Stephen Hayward. Today our guest is h R. McMasters to
talk about the world, the war, then everything else. Philet'
says was a podcast I.
Speaker 3: Voted thirteen times to open government. Back up Senator Schumer,
my colleague eagerly, greedily wanted to become the face of
the shutdown the American people and American people's opinion. Senator
Schumer is a He's a wet match in a dark kave, Happy.
Speaker 4: Halloween and all that.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and sixty three.
I'm James, Alex and Clammy Minnesota with Stephen Hayward and
Sunny California and Charles C. W. Cook in Florida. Who
knows what the weather is there? Who cares? Let's skip
the throat clearing palaveror with which we usually commenced our
shows and go straight to our guest. H. R. McMaster
retired with Tenner General and former Assistants to the US
President for National Security Affairs. He's a senior Fellow at
the Hoover Institution, where he lectures and hosts the series
Today's Battlegrounds and Good Fellows. Is the author of multiple
best sellers, including Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, The Fight to
Defend the Free World, and most recently, At War with
Ourselves My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House.
Speaker 4: Welcome sir, Hey, it's great to be with you, guys,
James Stephen Charles, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got a whole bunch of questions. But
I want to go right to Today's Battlegrounds because I
wouldn't have thought this would be the case two years ago,
but it is Ukraine. A lot of people are saying
that we're looking at a seemingly two different worlds here,
one in which Russia, by throwing more and more and
more untrained conscripts into the meat grinders, actually making an
inky inky out incremental progress, while at the same time
Ukraine has engaged in a massive and brilliantly categorized and
strategized destruction of the oil, energy, infrastructure, and transportation sector.
Speaker 4: What do you what.
Speaker 2: Do you see going on there? And what do you
see happening in six months?
Speaker 4: Let's say, Well, what you're seeing is Ukraine is is
I use using it. I think, you know, long range
capabilities in a very smart way. They're going after military facilities.
You saw how they've used drones for example, like to
sink the Black Sea Fleet and to push it away,
uh from from Ukraine. Uh and these deep strike targets
on refiners is kind of the right target set because
Russia has old infrastructure. It's got very few really big
oil oil refiners that you can see. You can see
them from space right and and uh and so they've
identified you know, kind of the the the narrow point
in the in the funnel here for for Russia. And
and they want to bring the war home to Russians
and way that you know, it doesn't really know place
the Russian people at risk, like the Russians are placed
in Ukrainians at risk with these massive onslaughts against you know,
schools and and apartment buildings, as well as Ukraine's infrastructure,
and it's starting to have an effect. You know, there
are gas lines, you know, in Moscow. And so this
narrative of hey, this is just a special military operation, well, hey,
it's a special military operation during which Russia has incurred
a million casualties dead and severely wounded, has wrecked the economy,
and so I think this is putting a tremendous amount
of pressure on Putin, who's in a very weak position
at the moment.
Speaker 5: Hr' Steve Hayward out in California, And I distinctly recall
the last time we had you on. I think it
was I who raised the question we're all talking about
the Middle East, of course, and Ukraine, and I said,
what about Latin America? And so between then and now,
as we know, the gerald Ford Aircraft Terrier strike Force
has moved off the coastline. There's a whole controversy about
taking out drug boats and so forth. But what's your
reading on what's going on there? What's this all about?
Is it about Guiana? Is it about we really think
the Maduro has to go and we're ready to try
and help with some effort.
Speaker 4: To do that, or how do you see that shaping up. Well,
it is largely about the Maduro regime revery. This is
a regime that has just destroyed that country between him
and Javez, and they're eight million. They drove eight million Venezuelans,
one third of the population outside of the country in
the last election, seventy percent of Venezuela's voting to get
rid of that jackass. And you don't. But he plug
the power anyway, you know. So, but what's significant, I
think from our perspective is this is a hub for
you know, what I would call the axis of aggressors
in the Western hemisphere. Chavez depends on Cuban and Russian
security capabilities and Inteligen's capabilities. He relies on Chinese cash
and for cash flow, and he relies on the Irritians
to large degree. And of course he's aiding and at
betting at Hesbula as part of that, because now with
Hesbula you really decapitated and decimated by the Israeli defense
forces and Israelian intelligence. The Western Hemisphere is their main
money making enterprise for Hezbola. So so really Meduro is
the nexus for these what I would call them far
left progressive dictatorships in Latin America as well as far
left progressive movements which he funds, and he funds them
really through the illicit economy. We have some pretty significant
sanctions on Maduro, but it's the illicit cash flow, largely
through narcotics, that is a big source of strength. And
this is what President Trump is going after, is his
cash flow by trying to interrupt the trafficking of drugs
to North America and to Europe. By the way, that
this is, this is the trafficking network that Medua runs
as the head of a major drug cartel.
Speaker 2: What what does our response look like? I mean, it's
possible that something will happen and we'll never hear about
it because there's simply a bunch of burly guys with
face paint in the middle of the night who did
the job and that's that. Or do you expect that
there's more robust and kinetic action as they say in
support of this again, who knows? But what what should
we look for and what should we not be surprised
not to hear about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, James, well, you know what I'd like to see
and help. I'm what I like to barely not see
you just have to make sure that's there is a
comprehensive approach to this problem with clearly defined objectives. Are
the objectives just to waken Maduro and to weaken his
ability to support you know, Nicaragua and Cuba, you know
the you know Petros in Colombia, his his his political movement, uh,
you know, to Silva and in Brazil, right, I mean
these are he's the patron for all these guys. Or
is it to really help the Venezuelan people restore the constitution?
So I would not even use the word regime change
in our President Trump pays that to be with, but
I mean this is helping Venezuela to restore the constitution.
If that's the case, there should be a concerted effort
to dry up his cash flow, which are seeing part
of that now, But there could be other actions associated
with that as well. There could be cyber actions in
certain certainly financial actions and so forth. I think also
what you want to do is you want to divide
and the security forces that he relies on. And I
think this is probably what you know what you know
what our government agency that is involved in that is
probably doing is probably trying to make an approach to
some of these guys. Hey, you know, you're on a
sinking ship. You know, if you want to get off
the ship, you can get off the ship and maybe
encourage some kind of revolt of the elites within within
that security force.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The third thing you want to be able to do
is reach the population to kind of trace the grievances
of Venezuelan's back to him. You know, he's at the
top of these criminalized patronage networks. So a lot of
people see Maduro as a patron but he's the one
who's destroying the country.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then and then finally, you want to kind of
work on this problem from the outside in to insulate
him from sources external strength and support, whether you know
really you know, as I mentioned before, China, Russia, Cuba,
uh and and and Iran. And so I hope there's
a comprehensive approach to this. And and I think the
goal should be, you know, to weaken the regime, but
also to ensure that what we're doing strengthens the opposition.
And of course, you know, we had you know, the
leader of the Venezuelan opposition opposition just received the Nobel
Prize I think there's an opportunity to take advantage of
that as well.
Speaker 5: But hr Steve again, I want to shift gears to
the Trump White House here in Trump Too. I do
want to preface it by saying that I never get
tired of telling people that your Dereliction of Duty book
is one of the five best books ever written.
Speaker 6: About the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And you know, our mutual friend Mac Owens and I
talk endlessly to see who can want up each other
about how great it is. But it's also a great
book about the question of civil military relations, which you know,
as you know, Mac is a great expert on You've
been very candid but also measured in your observations and
lessons from your time with President than Trump in the
first term. And I sort of want to bring up
that question of civil military relations because so much of
the Trump cabinet in the second term is such unconventional people.
There are very few people in the cabin who you
recognize from a normal Republican administration. And of course one
of the persons who's controversial is the Defense Secretary, but
also the people he's put in charge of negotiations, like
Steve Whitkoff, and his own son in law.
Speaker 6: Right, So, there's two forms of this question.
Speaker 5: One is is there a parallel between the problems of
civil and military relations that you laid out in your
great book from almost thirty years ago, or if you
want to just answer the question in more general form,
those thoughts would be welcome to.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks, Steven.
Speaker 4: I am concerned about about dragging the military into partisan politics.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, you've had you've had visits to military bases or
ships that kind of look like a rally. I think
there should be more of an effort to make them
not look like rallies. You know, for example, the at
the president wears. You know, there should be no selling
of mag and merchandise, you know, to to troops and
that sort of thing. We know that that kind of
thing has happened, and I think that that what you
see happening is in I think the legitimate effort, an
important effort to reverse some of the policies of the
Biden administration, the policies associated with pushing what some people
call woke agenda. I don't think that's a that's really
useful word. But what I'm really talking about is is
an approach in the military where they're advocating for equality
of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. Uh, the associated
kind of valorization of victimhood, you know, and and uh
and this idea, this crazy idea that you should judge,
you know, the soldier next to you based on their
identity category instead of instead of their courage, their toughness,
their commitment to the mission and to one another, which
is associated with their willingness to sacrifice for one another,
and their sense of honor. Right, that's how we that's
how we judge our fellow soldiers and servicemen and women.
So I think, in the process of applying it corrective,
the Secretary of War now victory exits. I think he
seems to me to be fighting a rear guard against phantoms.
I mean, this idea. You know that there are woke
generals and admirals. Hey, I'm telling you, Stephen, I don't
know any woke generals and admirals. I mean there are
probably a few, you know, professors, I know who are
you can follow in that category, but not generals and admirals.
And so the people who are pushing this agenda, besides
the Auto pen and the Biden administration, were you know,
we're the political appointees in the Department of Defense and
in the White House, they're gone. Hey, you know, Prisident
Trump won declare victory. And so I see that there
is this misunderstanding that where all this nonsense came from.
It didn't come from the military. It came from political appointees.
And by the way, that's how the chant of command works.
It goes from the President to the Secretary of War
to the combatant commanders in the serchiefs. So, hey, I
think that there's a to misunderstand. And I worry about
I worry about like the left, you know, trying to
label the military extremist, which is not. And I worry
about the far right or some people on the far
right trying to label the military as as woke. Just
keep the military out of this nonsense. You know what
what has afflicted our society. We don't want that coming
in coming into the military. You know, a lot of
what he's doing though, in terms of revert you know,
you know, reinstating standards, you know, I mean, it got ridiculous.
I mean there were people who were declaring themselves you know,
some Norse religion, you know, so they could so they
could so they could grow a beard, you know. And
and and I'll tell you that the women soldiers, I know,
they want general gender neutral standards and tough standing. They
wanted the standards to drop, right. So so I think
what the bid administration did in many ways was a
disservice uh to women service uh uh to service women
and and uh and and to minority leaders as well.
I mean, you know this, if if you make it
clear that you want a quality of outcome, what happens
is when the best qualified person who happens to be
a member of minority group gets gets promoted. Oh, people
look might look at him or like, oh, well, yeah,
I guess I know why that person scattle. I mean,
it's just it's terrible. It's destructive to cohesion, and it
had to end. I just don't want the cure to
be worse than the disease, you know. And and uh
and then the other thing that bothered me, I guess
a little bit was this idea that when you're fighting brutal,
unscrupulous enemies, that you should be equally as brutal, right,
I mean it's our warrior ethos, you know, is based
on you know, there's those principles I mentioned, right, our
sense of honor, our commitment to one another, a willingness
to sacrifice, you know. And but we're also committed to
overmatching the enemy in every combat engagement, but also to
employing you know, firepower with discipline and discrimination to do
our best to protect innocence.
Speaker 2: And this is I didn't come up with that.
Speaker 4: I mean, Saint Thomas Aquinas came.
Speaker 2: Up with that.
Speaker 4: So I think I think, I think, you know, there
are a few things that bothered me about the conclave
and and and and you know the relationship of the military.
But but on the other aspects of okay, what does
the military owe the president and the surgery of war?
They owe those two their best military advice. And what
I'm concerned about is, you know, this this kind of
idea that that they're that they're not going to get
that because somebody in a senior military rank like worked
for Mark Milly, who they hate people work for Mark
Milly because the guy was the chairman man. It's not
because you know, it's it's not because that they were
they were against President Trump or something. There's no way,
I mean, so I just think I we got to
really work hard to keep that bold line in place
between our military and partisan politics.
Speaker 1: Hi there, Charles kok K in Florida. I wonder if
I can ask you about drones. I've been watching some
of the footage coming out of Ukraine. I've read a
little bit about developments within the china Es military, and
perhaps I'm falling for the latest buzzwords and hype, but
it seems to me that this could be huge. This
could be a massive change in the way we fight.
Am I right? And if I am right, is America
keeping up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Charles, you are right, It already is a massive
change in the in the way that we fight. America
is keeping up in terms of the technology, you know,
and our ability to develop drones that have the capabilities
you want them to have. Of course, they come in
all different sizes, with different payloads, and they have different roles, right,
They have you know, reconnaissance rolls, deep strike roles, as
you've seen with many of these like lower cost to
head drones that have that have a great greater, greater range.
And then but then also you have these tactical drones.
And I think what has really changed the character of
combat is is these first person view drones which are
which are wire guided, but the but the wire guide
is like thirty kilometers now instead of you know, six kilometers,
which was maybe at the outset of the war. So
what this has created, Charles, is kind of a no
man's land that is reminiscent I think of World War One.
So whereas this has really shifted in a significant way
the character of warfare and combat, you know, there's also
a lot of continuity there. It looks like World War
One because remember World War One, the problem initially was
machine guns and then massive artillery, you know what the
Germans called materiel schlocked, and so to get around material shlock,
they changed their tactics. They put in elastic defense, defense
in greater depth, smaller outposts forwards. Sound familiar, That's what
the Ukrainians are doing. And then the Germans with the
Lutendwarf offensive in the spring of nineteen eighteen, which they
launched simultaneous with unrestricted submarine warfare to try to knock
France and Britain out of the war before the America
came in. They used infiltration tactics, small groups to try
to get around the front lines and then attack. You know,
artillery and command posts and logistics facilities. That sounds like
what's going on around Picross right now in Ukraine. But
I think the fundamental conditions have not shifted in terms
of having decisive capabilities, because the Russians have not been
able to sustain those offensives and they're taking massive losses
as they do it now. But to your question, hey,
how does this change warfare? It changes warfare because these capabilities,
along with some others like intelligence collection capabilities, especially those
in lower Earth orbit You're like, like imagery and RSRF
collection or radio frequency collection capabilities, have shifted the battlefield
into the realm of more transparency, and so all forces
have to act almost like as if they're in visual
range of the enemy. So what this means for future
war is we need countermeasures to that, and in the
opening phase of the next war, I think we're going
to have to apply a range of capabilities designed to
blind the enemy, to blind the enemy shooting down drones.
And you're seeing some of these countermeasures now coming out
with drone against drone right drone v drone warfare where
you know where swarms of drones are are kind of
protecting you. But also directed energy capabilities and as well
as the range of electromagnetic warfare capabilities which have already
been employed against against drones. So those are all coming online,
and so what you're going to see is this interaction
like you always see in war between dueling capabilities, you know,
machine gun, tank, tank, anti tank, missile, submarine, so onar,
bomb er, radar. But the next war is obviously going
to be fought also in cyberspace as this one has been,
but in low Earth orbit for sure. The next war's
going into space because to blind your enemy, you're gonna
have to you're gonna have to dazzle or destroy their
space based collection capabilities. So we're developing a range of capas,
but we haven't done to get your question, how are
we doing? We haven't been able to do it at scale.
I mean what the scale of what Ukrainians and Russians
are doing is astounding, and also the speed of innovation.
I mean, what will happen is there'll be a countermeasure
developed Ukraine is a Russian countermeasure. Ukrainians will detect it
and then within certainly a couple of weeks, but often
within days, they have an adaptation to their drones that
that that mitigates the effect of that countermeasure. So I
think also what we're learning is not only you know,
the effect of drones, but also the importance of open
architectures for weapons systems, so they can be they can
be uh, they can be modified on the fly.
Speaker 2: It's all fascinating. Aybody who study in warfare and you
believe and you hope that maybe one hundred starlings could
be self propelled and nudge your Chinese satellite out of orbit,
and that's our secular weapon, you hope, and you think
that maybe we can develop an aujus system that will
just clean them all out of the skies.
Speaker 1: But then you.
Speaker 2: Realize when you see some of these demonstrations in China
that they have of just you know, sort of esthetic
drones or they go into the sky and form great
mini pictures. The ability to coordinate masses of these and
the ability then to perhaps swarm and overwhelm defenses, and
you start thinking to yourself, well, it's not that an
insurmountable problem, but it is a problem. Now, what you've
said is that the ideas are recognized, the threat is recognized,
and what needs to be done and nimble we need
to be to counteract that. That's that's all baked in already.
But we've all seen sclerotic procurement. We've all seen how
entrenched ways of thinking keep some people from adapting because
it's the it's their fief to me, it's their bili wick.
And you want to think that everybody is of a
mind to realize that something has changed significantly in warfare
in the last twenty years, the last two years. Is
the Pentagon mindset now nimble and forward looking and impatient
with those people who want to preserve this or keep
this or naysay that, or is there a sense of urgency?
I guess that's what I'm looking.
Speaker 4: For, James. I think there is, you know, and I
think this has been a big change and a positive
change in the Trumpet administration. And it's mainly because, you know,
the Trump administration. You know, prisident Trump is unconventional, right,
you know, he's very disruptive. Oftentimes he becomes, you know,
maybe too disruptive and disrupts himself. You know, but let's
set that aside for a second. But what what he
what what he's doing is he's willing to kind of
to break the process, put new processes in place. There
are some policies they put in place already that I
think are quite promising that allow for the rapid procurement
of these capabilities. And what encourages me is the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg, is he's not like a
normal person to come into the Department Defense, right, He's
you know, he was He's the founder of a big
private equity firm, and and his skill set has been
to develop companies, you know, and you know, and improve
the effectiveness of companies, many of which have had defense
or intelligence application. He knows how frustrating the process can be,
and now he's in charge of that process as the
Deputy Secretary of Defense. And and so I think that
one of the reasons why we didn't have earlier, I
think is because the same people kept coming into the
Department of Defense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: What happened is a Republican administration would come in, the
Democrats would go to a think tanks, went back to
the private sector, and then those same Democrat you know,
sort of political appointees would come back and vice versa.
So I think you have a new group of people.
Speaker 6: The one thing that I kind of.
Speaker 4: Worry about though. James is like, you need some of
the exquisite capabilities and you know, the more expensive capabilities
to get you into the fight. Right if you're if
you were to carry like a little drone in your
hand to the front, how did you get to the front.
And then also, you know what we're seeing in Ukraine
and what we see saw Gaza and urban warfare is
that war is still about the control of territory, populations
and resources. And you know, guess what you need to
do that. You need infantry, and guess what you need
to get your infantry into that fight. You need mobile
protective firepower, you need tiar and layered air defense capabilities.
You need the joint capabilities it can be brought to
bear to disrupt the enemy in greater depth. You need logistics. Hey,
that sounds like combined arms and joint capabilities to me. So,
you know, I think of combat that's rock paper scissors.
It's like the kids game rock paper scissors. And if
you don't have the full compliment. You know, if you
didn't bring scissors and the enemy brings out the paper,
you're done. So I think it's important for us to
have this range of capabilities, and some people were saying, hey,
we don't need these exquisite capabilities anymore. Well, I mean
that's easy for you to say, but when you're in
close combat, you want that exquisite capability. I for one,
enjoyed being in the seventy ton killing machine in Desert Storm.
You know, I was grateful for General Dynamics man and
all the people who gave you that beautiful that beautiful machine,
you know. So so I think that you know, we
do need, though, to develop these capabilities so that they can,
as I mentioned, be upgraded very quickly. And we have
some real new design capabilities now. So for example, like
some of these new defense companies, instead of doing it
the old way James, like where you don't get a
request for proposal right then it'll create a spec document
that's like thousand, thousands of pages, right I mean, and
then and they'll say, okay, now give me money, give
me money to build the prototype. And then they build
competing prototypes. There's a down selection and then you know
that takes forever. What some of these new companies are
doing is they're just building it and are saying, hey,
look at this thing I built you guys want it,
you know, because I think it meets your requirement. So
I think there are some significant changes happening. But also
what we have to be cognizant of here, and this
is a real danger, is we have allowed our supply
chains to become too dependent on single points of failure
controlled by China. And of course that's been very much
in the news in the last several weeks, but it's
been the case like since the nineties. Got it just
got worse and worse in the two thousands and twenty tens,
and we didn't do enough about that. So I think
that's where we need a sense of urgency as well.
Speaker 2: I think when it comes to getting men into the theater,
when it comes to using drones and flight capability, when
it comes to using all sorts of suppressive firepower and
the rest of it. I think in the future we're
going to see where you take a man and you
put them in a flying craft and the craft will
have guns and r oh, just to the jet. I'll
shut up now.
Speaker 5: Well, about the rocks you were mentioning a moment ago
of rock paper scissors, We asked them one very specific question.
There's been a lot of chatter about whether we should
supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which would enable them to
strike deep into Russia. And the debate reminds me in
some ways of a debate I know, you know well,
which was back in the eighties, long debates about whether
we should give Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance against
the Soviet Union then, and I think some of the
same risk risk factors then are on our minds. Now,
what do you say, yeay, r nay, Do you have
an opinion on the tomahawk question?
Speaker 4: I say yay to it, because you really to be
effective at countering this onslaught. I think it was seven
herd and twenty projectiles of various types, all different types
fired on Ukraine yesterday. Right, you need or you need
to be able to shoot down those arrows, but you
also have to be able to kill the archer. And
what Ukraine has demonstrated is the ability to use these
these long range capability, these you know, in a in
a very disciplined manner, by going after military bases, by
going after military targets as well as some of the
infrastructure that's related to sustaining Russia's war making machine. Like
the like the refineries that we were discussing earlier. So
I think that, you know, I think providing those capabilies important.
They already have some of these in limited quantities, like
the storm shadows for example, and UH and and uh
and the you know, the Taurus is the German version.
But I think I think we should we should sell them,
you know, as I guess as we're doing it now,
sell them to the Europeans who can provide them, uh,
to the to the Ukrainians. And I know there has
been some discussion about, well, it's hard to teach them
how to use it. I mean, the ukrates are demonstrated,
they are incredibly they're ingenious at this stuff, and and
and and uh.
Speaker 2: I think they can.
Speaker 4: Figure it out pretty quickly, you know, with uh minimal training.
Speaker 2: Well, we've covered a lot, and I think there's a
few more things in the world that we could probably
get a right too. But we know you have to
go and we'll leave him for the next time. Unless,
of course, piece is broken out globally and there's nothing
to do but sit back and bask in the shine
of it. All might not happen. Hr McMasters, it's been
a great pleasure at war with ourselves. My tour of
duty in the Trump White House is the book you
might want to pick up, or any of his other fine,
fine works. And it's been a pleasure talking to you, sir,
and we hope to have you back again soon.
Speaker 4: Hey, always great to be with you, guys.
Speaker 2: Take care, take it bye bye, and Charles, do you
have a drone?
Speaker 1: My seven year old has a little drone he got
for Christmas. But it's a threat to anyone.
Speaker 2: We need to pot you up a bit. Your seven
year old has a drone? Does is he skilled enough
to be able to control it with one of those
out you know things, with all the little toggles and
the joysticks and the rest of it. Or does he
use his phone to manipulate it? No?
Speaker 1: No, it has a remote control with the joysticks. It's
not a phone based drone. But I tend to fly
it because he tends to fly it into a tree.
Speaker 2: Yes, well that'll happen, Stephen. What kind is yours? I'll
bet it's a DG.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I've got several of them. Actually, I've been
a drone not from the very beginning.
Speaker 5: I've still got one of the big old giant ones
from twelve years ago whenever, and now I'm just a
drone nut.
Speaker 6: I'm the early adopter and.
Speaker 2: The equivalent of the satellite dish in the backyard and
some you know, some mozart place. Yes, I have a
little dj I neo that is packable, and I take
it with you and fly about, and I'll still never remember.
I forget standing on the shores in England and Suffolk
and looking at the picture and admiring the view I
had before I realized that I was sending it out
to its death, to its doom. It was no idea,
and it reached the limit, and it's sort of it
pulled back and came back to me and the film
of these because it has an automatic landing ability which
just comes back to your hand. I don't know if
yours does. It's just like watching this bird come back
to a very worried parent that's happy to see it.
And then of course I put it in a tree.
So it's lots of fun, yes, But when you realize
that these are indeed the instruments of war, that the
very same thing that we play around with and have
panoramic shots of our backyard are following men into trenches
followed by a no signal indicates that there's a very
horrifying and personal aspect to these that has changed a
lot of the nature of warfare. I mean, men in
combat in a trench never had to fear like a
personal a personal demon that was set on them on
harvesting their soul, which is what it feels like in
some of these places. But then again, we've been predicting
this war was going to come to a cracking point
for years now and it hasn't shifting. Domestically. Checking my watch,
do we have a government still shut down? I can't
tell you, guys, what are you feeling about this?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I've made this speech before that
all of our other governments, including a lot of federal government,
are still open, but certainly staken local government are open.
My latest thought about this is that nothing will happen
until at least next Wednesday, and that's pure politics. I
think Democrats are expecting or hoping that they're going to
sweep the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey and
maybe some other races around the country, probably the Proposition
fifty in California that will allow the Democrats to carve
up the congressional districts to take out what few Republicans
remain that will pass and maybe pass Handling, and that.
Speaker 6: Will give them a big talking point.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 6: Otherwise it's not gonna nothing will happen before Wednesday, but.
Speaker 1: Will I'm interested in this because I agree Steve that
was my view as well. And then I read a
really interesting piece this morning in National Review by Henry Olsen, who,
oh yes writes does a podcast with Ricochet, and he
says that, yeah, the Democrats are probably going to win
those races, and yeah, they're probably going to get the
sixty is it sixty percent they need in California or
just fifty percent for the proposition to go through. But
they're not walking away with it. In Virginia, they're not
walking away with it in New Jersey. There is no
blue wave wave, and you would expect to see a
bigger reaction against Trump. So, yes, I have no doubt
they'll say it. They've been pretending they didn't shut down
the government. They'll say anything, but I do wonder whether
they're going to be underwhelmed. And if somehow Citarelli were
to win in New Jersey, that argument is going to
fall on deaf is because that will then be the story.
Speaker 6: Yeah. No, it's a gamble on their part, for sure,
but I think that's what they're hoping for.
Speaker 2: Charles, you had a fun tweet this morning here and
it's almost a stick this one anywhere Charles W could
tweet which consisted of nobody actually believes this, it's absurd.
Now you're actually linking to something which is one of
my favorite talking points about the culture in these social
wars and all the rest of it. Some fellow, I
don't know why you're referring to how many followers is
this guy? What some low number of people are you
engaging with? Oh, he's got to he's got one hundred
and forty one thousand followers, all right, he said, sorry,
quote some cultures are inferior to others. End quote is
just racism with extra steps. So yeah, yeah, So tell
me this conversation fascinates me. Tell me exactly why you
thought this was absurd and that nobody believes it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you why, because both the left and
the right in America clearly believe that some cultures are
superior to others. So the right and I think This
is probably not just the right, but it's most people
evidently think that there are bad countries because they have
been made aware in their lives of say Iran or
Saudi Arabia or Marley. There is a difference between saying
the people there are inferior, or their skin color makes
them inferior, or under all circumstances, irrespective of their surroundings
they would be in which is the thing I very
strongly do not believe, and saying there are cultures that
are different than the cultures that obtain there that are better.
So that is the obvious case. But the case that
seals it for me is as applied to the left.
What was the sixteen to nineteen project if not the
assertion correctly in this particular, that say the Confederacy was
an inferior culture than the Free North. They believe it too.
If they didn't, they wouldn't go on all the time
about their politics.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite favorite contradictions. They think it.
Speaker 1: For goodness sake, they think it. They never shut up
about it.
Speaker 2: There's a Iram Kendy. I remember hearing an interview and
I wish I could track this down, But what he
was saying was that cultures that believe that they are
higher archy, that there are hierarchies in the in the
cultures of the world, are irredeemably bad. That those who
believe in making a hierarchy of other cultures are inferior.
And what he's saying then is that they are inferior
to the cultures that do not make hierarchical judgments, which
thereby establishes a hierarchy, right, the good one who doesn't
and the bad one who does. So there's your just
in America.
Speaker 1: Just in America. Do progressives really expect us to believe
that they don't think Massachusetts has a better culture than Alabama.
I'm not saying that's my view, right, but that is.
Speaker 6: Clearly their view.
Speaker 1: They talk about fly over country. They suggest that there
are places in which people are enlightened and places in
which they are not. They dream of an electorate that
looks like the electorate of Washington and Oregon and California
and not of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. That is quite
clearly and in horse of the idea that there are
good cultures and bad cultures.
Speaker 2: But separately from race, they're looking at the right and
saying that the two examples that the right would use
of cultures that are insuperior, to use one of my
favorite non existent words to that of the West, would
be would be Africa and the Muslim world. And because
they they they would say that Africa's problems stem from
only colonialism, which is the sin of the West, nothing else,
and that Islam, which has now become a race, must
be called blameless because it must be held a blameless
and held up with a certain amount of valor and
admiration because it is targeted by the people on the right.
The reason that they love and embrace and get tingly
over the multicultural aspects of Islam has nothing to do
with the preception things that might horrify them if they
came from Christians. It's simply because they tell themselves that
all those people in fly Over Country in Alabama get
riled up about the Mussulman, and they're doing so for
bigoted reasons. So it's not a particularly sophisticated view of
the world. And it also just allies them with things
that are so culturally abhorrent to them. In the treatment
of what they regard as marginalized individuals in the West.
That is an incoherent, stupid thing to say, and that
it's said by somebody with one hundred and forty five
thousand followers apparently has some sort of academic pedigree pedals.
This nonsense just shows you there is no second order
thinking to any of this stuff. It's just the proclamation
of these virtuous little bits of twaddle.
Speaker 5: James, Well, James, you say it's a it's an understatement
to say it's not a very sophisticated view.
Speaker 6: It's even worse than that.
Speaker 5: I mean, first of all, for the umpteenth time, I'll
repeat that if the left didn't have double standards, they
wouldn't have any standards at all. But beyond that, what
you really see at work here is what the great
late Roger scrut would call the culture of repudiation. What
they really believe is that our culture is the inferior one. Right,
anything that serves the hatred of Western culture is what
they're for, So you'll elevate any other culture around the
world over our own. And finally, I was glad you
brought this up because I was going to bring up
Charles National Review article about this. What touched this off
was the original statement that some cultures are better than
others was from the leader of the long suffering Tory
Party in England, can be bad Knock, the daughter of
Kenyan immigrants to England, who has fully assimilated to British
culture and has been very forcefully attacking Wokeriy to you
Shorthand for a very long time now. And boy, the
left really wants to change the subject when it's say,
person of color making these politically incorrect arguments.
Speaker 6: So anyway, he's off to you, Charlie. That was a
great piece.
Speaker 1: And one of those arguments that Kemmy Badenock made was
that cultures that engage in female genital mutilation are worse
than Britain. Now, if you can find me a progressive
who doesn't believe that, whether quietly or not, I'll give
you a million dollars. That is uncontroversial thankfully in the West.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, unless you're talking about certain Northern European judiciary
members who seem to believe that if your culture says
it's all right to rape a thirteen year old, then
how can you be held accountable for it in a
Western country When you don't know what stuff like that
makes people tear their hair out and then six years
later there's riots in civil war or not. I mean,
I was just in England, had a great time, kind
of And it's always amusing because I go there. Before
I go there, my feet is full of stabbings and
horrible things and riots and Palestinian demonstrations and Bobby's knocking
on the door because you tweeted something wrong and I've
seen none of that in evidence. I granted, I spend
my time in the banana in the bubble, but it's
just amusing to see the complete and utter contrast between
everything that I read and the life that I live
TwixT London and Suffolk. So there's hope. There's hope. That's
what I'm saying. But related to the subject is a
recent piece by Helen Anderson Helen Andrews, I'm sorry, called
the Great Feminization, which basically is saying, you know what nineteenth.
I don't know about that, no go that far. But
what she does say is that we have moved almost
completely now from a culture that used to prior that
he used to prioritize, admire, uphold, depend upon what we
saw is traditionally masculine aspects and it's been replaced by
a cattery caddy little you know, hr covenant that has
brought a new scent, sense of ideas and the way
things go. And then it's not working out for us.
It's stifling things, it's driving people apart, and it's turning
us into a tiresome kindergarten where we're all being shussed
by some officious nanny somewhere. Did I trust you fellows
read the you guys? You read that one guys about that,
about how the chicks are ruined and everything I did? Okay?
Speaker 1: Thoughts, Well, I think she made many points. I think
she's very intelligent. I think that she, as she acknowledged
at the end of the piece and then the speech
she made that prompted it, she's arguing against interested one
level because she's a woman, but not at another because
she's objectionable. Those are her words. I think that her
piece was misinterpreted in some quarters, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.
She wasn't saying all women should be shunted away. She
was saying that wokeness has female characteristics, and I think
there is something to that. The most profound point that
I thought she made and one that crystallized the view
that I have held for a while but hadn't quite
taken to its conclusion is that we do not have
a situation now in which we have normal competition for
both sexes, because it's illegal in some sense for women
to fail. And so the federal government has guaranteed that
we will have parity or greater than parity in women's
favor in the workplace. And I hadn't thought about that
like that, But that's true when you look at the law,
because if there aren't enough women in a given workplace,
it's a civil rights violation. But if there are more
than enough I mean mathematically, not culturally women in a workplace,
that doesn't matter. And that's the part of this I
think that really was driven home for me, because when
you set that up as a civil rights question, what
you are doing is putting your thumb on the scales
and guaranteeing that you're going to have more workplaces that
are kind in inverted commas than rambunctious and male. And
that's where it becomes a problem. It's not a problem
to have lots of places in America that are feminine.
I mean, for example, I quite like the fact that
my children's school is dominated by female teachers, especially for
younger grades. But I don't think it is good when
you are mandating that everywhere ought to become like that,
because there are lots of places that probably ought to
stay male. The broader question of whether or not having
lots of women running around is going to destroy the
rule of law. I need to think more about. But
that I thought was really on the money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of men read that, bes and do
you know I should show this to my wife.
Speaker 6: Well, so, first of all, this article.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you caught this overseas trying to
follow it from afar, but it has created a huge station. Ah,
David French wrought a whole call them about it in
the New York Times.
Speaker 6: That shows you right there.
Speaker 5: I have been following some of the reaction from what
I call some of the smarter progressive, the sort of
center left abundance liberals who are kind of interesting and thoughtful,
and their reaction has been curious because on the one
hand they all rush to say, we don't agree with
Helen Andrews, but then the next sentence is, but she's
actually right about a lot of stuff, And you know,
for a very long time. I have pointed out, not me,
the economist Mark Pair who's a good friend, that if
you look at I should give a preface to this.
You will occasionally hear feminists say there ought to be
you know, a quote that fifty percent of leading professions should,
like lawyers, doctors, legislators.
Speaker 6: Should be women.
Speaker 5: And then Mark Perry likes to point out and he
has statistics that, let's see, ninety nine percent of garbage
workers are men, ninety eight percent of telephone alignment are men. Right,
you want to hard rock miners. Oh, and the fatality
rates much much higher for men in occupations than women.
How come we don't hear about, you know, demands for equity.
Shouldn't we have fifty percent of garbage workers be women?
And I've seen feminists presented with this question and their
answer always is, well, the wait, we need equity in
the professions to where the power is. Well, you know what,
see what you think about power when your garbage doesn't
get picked up. But I'll leave that aside for now.
But you can see what's going on here.
Speaker 6: It is political.
Speaker 5: It is about power, and I think Helen has touched
off a debate that's going to have some legs that
are going to go for a while.
Speaker 1: They also play a game with that one because while
you can comprehend the argument that this should only be
applied where the power is. When you hear it, you
think politician or banker, but they never apply that rule
to say, schools, because teachers have an enormous amount of power,
maybe the most power over people between the ages of
four and eighteen. Women are overrepresented in those roles. They
don't think that's a problem the other way around, And
that's where I think feminists can sometimes play games with
language that they only really define power in certain ways
and they ignore.
Speaker 2: It in others. Yes, I think you're correct. Now let's
grind all the gears and do something that is not
weighty and does not affect the fate of the world,
of the nation, of the culture, of the rest of it.
It's a holiday weekend, of course, this podcast goes up today.
Great because people here at tomorrow, Halloween is as dead
as can possibly be on November first, and nobody cares
the clammory realities of this new month. They are always
upon us. But that doesn't mean that we can't say
for the audience today what we believe to be the
most frightening movie that we have ever seen in our life.
And if they hear tonight they want to watch it.
Good Charles, you go first. I know you've been cheeing
away through the American uber for a long time. Okay,
I'll let you go second. Steven, I know you probably
have something.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I saw a few of the slasher films that were
popular a few, you know, ten twenty years ago, and
really didn't like them. Party it's just function of age,
just like them less. And so I'm going to do
a very antique answer and then to a you turn
on it. And you know, I saw The Exorcists when
it came out in the mid seventies. I managed to
like sneak into the theater because it was rated R
and I think I was sixteen, and I found that
pretty darn frightening, right, And later years when I watched
that movie again, I was actually impressed with how theologically
literate it is. They actually some of those scenes with
Catholic priests and the medical doctors debating, and then the
person who plays with father Damien I think is his name,
a wonderful performance.
Speaker 2: I forget the name of the act, anguished, an anguished performance, correcked.
Speaker 6: I thought it was a terrific performance.
Speaker 5: And so although I'm still, you know, creeped out by
the scenes of Linda Blair's had rotating and projectile vomiting
across the room and all the rest of that, I
look back on that now is actually a pretty darn
good movie, but pretty darn scary, and maybe maybe because
of its seriousness in a certain way, it becomes more
has more weight to it.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, Charles, You've now had a few minutes, James.
Speaker 1: I hate horror movies. I hate scary movies.
Speaker 6: I mean to watch them.
Speaker 1: My roommate in Oxford for a while loved them, and
he made me watch these movies, and I just can't
do it.
Speaker 2: I'm well, define what you believe a scary Are we
talking guts on the floor or are we talking creeping
dread around the corner? Atmospheric hammer movies, Vincent Price's eyes
alight with madness.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all, pretty much all of it. Yeah,
I wouldn't even go near sore. I've never seen that
in my wont.
Speaker 6: The hostile movies? I would ban those.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't watch that.
Speaker 1: I or horror slasher movies that make you job. You know,
it's so weird because I'm a nut for roller coasters.
Speaker 6: I love er.
Speaker 1: There's nothing too scary for me with roller coasters. But
when it comes to horror movies, I can't do it.
So I'm going to probably make people laugh because I'm
so innocent. But I think the most unsettling movie I've
ever seen is The Shining. I find it really creepy.
I can watch that because I love Kubrick and I
love the performances, and I do think it's brilliantly done.
I don't enjoy myself when I watch that movie, but
I do think it's very unsettled. But my sample size
is just so small. That's fine, You've chose in the exercist,
and I do agree, but that's the Jesus out of me.
I'm still.
Speaker 2: Shining is a deeply unsettling movie. Yes, And there's a
man I have I know only from correspondence on Twitter,
Lee Junkrachu's the director of Coco and a couple other
Epixar movies who has put out a book about it.
And there's an absolute master of the movie and what
you know, you can tell, because there's I think it's
in toy Story one. He actually slipped the texture of
the of the of the carpet from the overloak hotail
end of the movie. I mean the crazy theories about
it that what Danny is wearing suggests that Kubrick was
admitting his complicit nature in the faking of the Moonshine.
The way that the sets never resolve somehow psychologically works
upon you to make you uneasy, just with the whole
physical manifestation of the place. The fact there's a can
of baking soda that has an Indian head on it
that's supposed to speak of a burial ground. I don't
know the Indians got out that I had a big
burial ground. I don't know. All these things crazy theories,
but at the same time possibly so, I don't know,
Except for the Kubrick one. It has about it an
unreal nature, and Stephen King didn't like it. Stephen King
was irritated by the movie. But it is so off,
It is so wrong in so many ways that it
is one of the greatest pieces of sustained discomfort that
ending up with l Bowley singings. You know, Midnight and
the Stars with you as we pan out from that
great shot of nineteen twenty one. I just, I really
really do. Can't say I love it that I admire
the hale out of that movie. I have and because
I'm doing the hosting thing and I controlled the mic
and we'll shut down anybody whose interrupts. I have two
and they're very different. The first is close to The
Exorcist and the fact that the Exorcist in this movie
introduced something that I don't like, which is called the
body horror. But it's Alien. The first one I remember.
I mean when I saw The Exorcist, I remember being
scared before it started because of all the build up
and all of the hype about it Alien. I thought, yeah,
credit in space movie, you've seen a off and awful
lot of those black and white guy in a rubber suit.
From the very opening flutes descending and the credits beginning
on the screen, I was. I was filled with dread,
and every single thing about it just compounded the dread.
And nothing had really happened until something very horrible happened
and it wasn't supposed to, and then something very happy
there was definitely not supposed to happen in the hierarchy.
Who gets knocked out in the movies, and every pin
is knocked over, every expectation is sundered. It was just terrified.
I've never been drained like that in a movie before
or since. And it's a masterpiece. And I can't believe
they keep churning these things out in the television show
so bad. But there's something even scarier, And I think
it's because you see it as a child. When everybody
thinks it's a wonderful little story, it's a story of
a little girl just trying to get home with her
adorable companions that saw colorful. You know, The Wizard of
Oz is an absolutely terrifying movie to a child, as
it should, because we are convinced, I wrote, I wrote
my free stuff subject this week about it. We are
convinced that when that bony woman leans forward, you know,
with all of her cackling and energetic malevolence fixated on
this little girl and tells her that she's going to
kill her, she's going to get her and kill her
dog too while she's at it, that she means it.
And when she turns over that hour glass for the
first time in your short life. You understand mortality and
the futile fear and wanting to call out to your
loved ones and not being able to do so, and
there's no one to come to save you, and no
one does. There's something so terrifying about the Wicked Witch
that I just think because we they expose it to
us at an early early age, and it burns down deep.
And that's why I the fact that Margaret Hamilton actually
went to work with this woman, that that I knew
in ear later life, and that one of my dearest
friends grew up with Margaret Hamilton as her aunt, as
Aunt Maggie. Who would be if you would come over
and help with Halloween and open the door with the kids?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh great?
Speaker 6: I just love I just love James. Have you ever
seen the It's all over the Internet? Apparently?
Speaker 5: A TV listing from TV guid somewhere some years ago,
reads as follows the Wizard of Oz transported to a
surreal landscape. A young girl kills the first person she meets,
and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have seen that something had a good sense
of humor about Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, also quickly adds something to your analysis here that
I found interesting. My wife is much braver than I
am with movies. She's less brave with reler custers, So
I guess we've got the feel covered. And I said, recently,
let's show the kids Chitty Chitty Bang Bang oh, And
she said no, no, no, no, no, no, no what no,
no no. The child catcher scared the hell out of
her as a kid for the reasons you described in
the US. She thought they could get them.
Speaker 2: Me absolutely enough.
Speaker 1: I wasn't scared of the child catches, So I don't
know what's wrong with me. That's my Lacuna.
Speaker 2: Folks took me to see The Ghost and Mister Chicken
because it got don Nts in it, and he's funny.
Everybody loves don Knots, and I had to be taken out.
I dissolved in that movie because there's a point where
you come across in a dark night there's a portrait
on the wall with garden shears through its throat and
it's bleeding as this organ plays this tune by Vic
Mizzy by the way upside down. I couldn't take it.
And later they took me to see Mister Limpet, the
amazing mister limpet who Don Nototts again turns into a
fish in an animated sequence, and that disturbed me greatly
that such a thing was possible. So if people wonder
why sometimes I get pumped palpitations and go white is
a sheet when maybe a RFD theme plays with the
Andy Griffith Show, it's because of Don Notts. I'm deeply
deeply starved by that keletal mannequin. Not really, folks, I
hope you have been deeply scarved by the fact that
we've been discussing movies on a political podcast. Oh horrors,
But no, that's what Ricochet is all about, and that's
why you should go to ricochet dot com and sign up.
It's not just what you read in the main page.
It's not just the podcast. It's the community that forms
the members area as well, where you meet friends and
you talk about and yes, I mean this absolutely everything
under the sun. And if you are a fan of
geomagnetic storms on Old Soul, we will talk about what's
under the sun as well. Nothing is off limits, and
it's civil and it's smart and it's great. And I've
been there for as long as they plug that thing
in and I visit it every single day, two three times.
I'm their writing and hope to see you there in
the comments and whatnot. And I know that Charles knows.
I'm going to ask him which version of the software.
Speaker 1: We're all four point fourteen point fourteen point two.
Speaker 2: You heard the man, Go there and see all those
point two improvements while you can, because pretty soon be
fourteen point three. Thanks folks, Steven Hayward, Charles, E. W. Cook,
our guest, our producer, Perry, and EJ. Of course behind
the board somewhere, and everybody who goes to Ricosheta listens,
and everybody who goes and sign up, We thank you.
Have a happy Halloween, as internally contradictory as that may be,
and we we'll see you later. Bye,