Speaker 1: You know, I gotta say school. It turns out school
Speaker 1: is hard. It turns out that it's not just the
Speaker 1: alpha and the omega. There's twenty two other letters in between,
Speaker 1: and they all make different words and different declensions. And I,
Speaker 1: for some reason forgot that I was an Episcopalian and
Speaker 1: didn't have to know any of this stuff. And I
Speaker 1: taking this Greek class and it's killing me.
Speaker 2: Not what your country can do for you, ask what
Speaker 2: you can do for your.
Speaker 1: Country, mister.
Speaker 3: Tears down this wall.
Speaker 4: Read my lips.
Speaker 3: It's the Wigreshet vodcast with James Wilas, myself, Stephen Hayward
Speaker 3: himself and joining us again to other Rob Long, So
Speaker 3: let's set as a podcast.
Speaker 1: Hi, Robin, Hi, and what's your name?
Speaker 3: Matt had to ask who you are?
Speaker 1: Because you have to be careful.
Speaker 4: Never read too careful.
Speaker 1: I agree, you'll never get bored with when we never
Speaker 1: get bored.
Speaker 3: We're welcome everybody. It's the Ricochete Podcast number seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fourteen. I'm James Lovick's coming to you today on
Speaker 3: a microphone. I think somebody stole it. I mean, I
Speaker 3: know things are better in than the newspaper industry, but
Speaker 3: I don't think we're at the point yet where people
Speaker 3: start pawning things they find in people's desks. But we'll know,
Speaker 3: we'll figure out exactly what happens coming to you live
Speaker 3: from MacBook Air and coming to you from well, from
Speaker 3: someplace in an undisclosed place where I believe there was
Speaker 3: ceremonies and rituals. Perhaps maybe that he will explain to
Speaker 3: it his brother Rob and Stephen Hayward as well too. Steven, Rob,
Speaker 3: Welcome to both of you. Good to be here.
Speaker 1: It's good to be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good to see you. James. Yeah, you do look
Speaker 4: like you're in some dark dungeon or something. Yes, I
Speaker 4: mean we.
Speaker 1: Should let everybody know that this that the low quality
Speaker 1: audio for James Lilacs is like a specifically designed torture
Speaker 1: for him, like nobody else would care. But I know
Speaker 1: it's killing him because I can see like the veins.
Speaker 1: The video is good enough. I can see the veins
Speaker 1: on your forehead, just kind of getting like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: getting whatever. I don't even know what the words would be,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure that's actually to the Stostrowe supplement.
Speaker 3: I'm so Rod, You're back. Where are you?
Speaker 1: Beat?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: As you know, James, I am. I'm a student now.
Speaker 1: I went back to school. I'm at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
Speaker 1: I am a graduate student surrounded by incredibly smart young
Speaker 1: people who have these incredibly moist brains that they can
Speaker 1: remember Greek stuff. I idiotically have elected to take Greek.
Speaker 1: I don't have to take Greek to be an ordained
Speaker 1: episcopal minister, which is sort of my think, my eventual
Speaker 1: end here. But I did it anyway because I, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Greek's important, and you know, if you don't
Speaker 1: know a little bit of Greek, then you're always at
Speaker 1: the mercy the people who do, and it's not a
Speaker 1: very good thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, I find my son all the time at the
Speaker 3: mercy of people bluell Greek.
Speaker 1: Well you do, and like you know, you're selling the
Speaker 1: New Testament. You find yourself thinking yourself, wa, wait, what
Speaker 1: was that word? And how did they use it? Like
Speaker 1: two verses back and two verses for.
Speaker 3: What is that perfect example of that would be the
Speaker 3: And there is dispute about this, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: There should be dispute about the parable of the homily,
Speaker 3: about the being easier for a rich man to for
Speaker 3: a camel to go through the needle that a rich
Speaker 3: man going.
Speaker 1: Many interpretations of that the beautiful parable, but they seem
Speaker 1: to center around mis translation and misunderstanding perhaps what.
Speaker 3: They mean by the eye of a cattle, that rope, yeah,
Speaker 3: and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: So the richer you are, the more insistent you are
Speaker 1: that there are some textual translation issues there that you
Speaker 1: could tell pretty much someone's net worth by their interpretation
Speaker 1: of that. First, the most famous one, I think is
Speaker 1: in the world is the actually in the most famous prayer,
Speaker 1: maybe the most one of the most famous prayers ever,
Speaker 1: the Lord's Prayer, where if you are a you know,
Speaker 1: you're kind of on our side kind of you know,
Speaker 1: larger debate, a Western Christian augustin Latin kind of Christian, right,
Speaker 1: it's deliver us from evil. And if you're kind of
Speaker 1: on the eastern side, you know, the Greek church fathers
Speaker 1: like Cyprian origin, those people, you read that not as
Speaker 1: the neuter noun evil but as the masculine. So it's
Speaker 1: so deliver us from the evil one. And I may
Speaker 1: seem little, but it's like you know you but then
Speaker 1: you look back, Okay, well, how was this used? You
Speaker 1: know in the verses before, how do is that you
Speaker 1: using the rest of mark and all that's a Matthew, sorry,
Speaker 1: and like you get in all that stuff and like you,
Speaker 1: I mean this stuff I could do. By the way,
Speaker 1: this is not my problem. My problem is the second
Speaker 1: decline of Greek adjectives and the special cases of the
Speaker 1: word otos. And so I'm doing all right. And the
Speaker 1: other thing I've discovered in this we can talk about
Speaker 1: concurrent events. Apparently there's at lection going on, is that
Speaker 1: I've discovered that being a writer professionally for forty years
Speaker 1: is more than yeah, forty forty thirty five years, thirty
Speaker 1: something plus years. It helps you to realize you could
Speaker 1: sit down and write. You know, I can turn out
Speaker 1: you want twelve hundred words in an hour. I can
Speaker 1: do that. It's my job. I can do that. But
Speaker 1: they don't want it interesting. They want it like they
Speaker 1: want you to support your thesis with facts and citations.
Speaker 1: And I find that rude.
Speaker 2: Although I have to say Rob that I've always preferred
Speaker 2: the Brooklyn version of the Lord's Prayer that culminates with
Speaker 2: lead us not into Penn Station.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right.
Speaker 4: Even the New Right you want to talk about evil
Speaker 4: and you know the pit of hell that captured it
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 2: But well, I can ask you this, this maybe a
Speaker 2: segue into the election topic.
Speaker 4: I forget which conservative.
Speaker 2: Illuminary twenty years ago described our colleges and universities as
Speaker 2: seminaries of intolerance.
Speaker 4: And you're at an actual.
Speaker 2: Seminary, right and now, of course it's not a place
Speaker 2: of intolerance.
Speaker 4: But and you said before we started going live, you
Speaker 4: said that it will be finding it hard.
Speaker 2: And I think that seriously, because you know, you are
Speaker 2: there and your co students there are asking about the
Speaker 2: most serious questions about the transcendent versus the which is
Speaker 2: the election, right.
Speaker 4: But I am curious.
Speaker 2: I mean, most seminaries that I'm familiar with are pretty
Speaker 2: the student body and the faculty are pretty liberal.
Speaker 4: You know, they want to write a gender neutral Bible
Speaker 4: and things like that.
Speaker 2: And I'm not less concerned about that. But are people
Speaker 2: that are worked up about the election? Do they have
Speaker 2: grief counselors on speed dial and the event Trump wins
Speaker 2: or what's the atmosphere are you?
Speaker 1: You know? All that's interesting because the prince of Theological
Speaker 1: Seminary and Princeton University have the same DNA, right, they
Speaker 1: were born. They it was all a seminary when it
Speaker 1: started back in eighteen whatever. And then as things sort
Speaker 1: of changed that then the university kind of got more
Speaker 1: secular and the seminary state of seminary, and the seminary
Speaker 1: was sort of endowed and started by the Presbyterian Church.
Speaker 1: So Presbytery Church is still it's still it is still
Speaker 1: a seminary for the Presbyterian Church. Is not really a
Speaker 1: seminary for the Anglican or Episcopal Church that I belong to.
Speaker 1: So I have to do a little extra stuff just
Speaker 1: to kind of like keep my thing on. But and
Speaker 1: I think this is true of other places too. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's just Princeton or Princeton Seminary. Other discools
Speaker 1: maybe maybe not. But the purposefulness of it, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely liberal and that and and some of it's some
Speaker 1: of it's liberal in a lovely way exactly isn't supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But the purposefulness of it it kind of helps.
Speaker 1: As I said to somebody, they didn't get it. The
Speaker 1: other thing is that they're not a lot of laughs here.
Speaker 1: Like my d material is getting great, great response, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't abody like the purposefulness of it keeps the
Speaker 1: riff wrath out. You're here for you know, people here.
Speaker 1: The young people are here because they really really do
Speaker 1: want to serve their church. And it's also academics and
Speaker 1: PhDs and people who have like are much more sort
Speaker 1: of you know, academic and brilliant. But the foundational thing
Speaker 1: here is that Okay, we're doing something. There's something bigger
Speaker 1: that we're a part of and we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing and it's guiding us. And that is different, I
Speaker 1: think fundamentally from the secular institution across the street which
Speaker 1: sprints the university, which I think is extremely quiet these days.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful campus. Prince is one of the beautiful
Speaker 1: places in the world. And I I mean, I hope
Speaker 1: that the whatever, the whatever happens in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks is going to be digested by these people in
Speaker 1: a way that doesn't cause them too much distress or
Speaker 1: too much you know, I mean either way, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: or too much whatever. But it is, I mean, it
Speaker 1: is a different way to look at there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of activism and the seminary campus and I walked
Speaker 1: through the university campus every day and there's not I
Speaker 1: don't I mean, I see posters and stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: not nobody's yelling and screaming on the squad anymore. And
Speaker 1: they might start, but they're right now, they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of not And I think the seminary doesn't have that.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody has has a vocal group of students
Speaker 1: who wear a kafia and are concerned about what's happening
Speaker 1: in Gosam, right, They're not shutting anything down. And they
Speaker 1: made a they had a demonstration counter demonstration to somebody
Speaker 1: who spoke at the convocation that lasted ten minutes and
Speaker 1: it was respectful and written down and wasn't you know
Speaker 1: there was no rotating hunger strikes put it that way.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Maybe it's the purposefulness of it
Speaker 1: that helps. It's like, you know, you don't hear you
Speaker 1: don't hear a lot of these things going on in
Speaker 1: STEM campuses, right because people like, well I got a
Speaker 1: plot problems that I got to do it U. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's that going on, or maybe it's just a
Speaker 1: sense that like if you really get, if you're really
Speaker 1: thinking about bigger things, everything else seems like a smaller thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd be curious to see exactly how politically sophisticated
Speaker 3: they are, or whether they're even interested in becoming politically sophisticated,
Speaker 3: because you can say that it's a basic biblical principle,
Speaker 3: basic human principle to take care of the poor, for example,
Speaker 3: to be aware of those less fortunate than yourselves, good
Speaker 3: thing to think about. It's how you do that that matters,
Speaker 3: and how you do that as a whole different series
Speaker 3: of expectations and assumptions about government, people and the rest
Speaker 3: of it. And I just wonder you, Rob can be
Speaker 3: that guy who says, yes, indeed, but what if an
Speaker 3: abundance society, what if prosperity, rising tide and all the
Speaker 3: rest of that. What if that is the most efficacious
Speaker 3: means to securing liberty, justice, and abundance for all? And
Speaker 3: what if we do that by removing the state's intercession
Speaker 3: so that individuals, I mean, they're good. Look at you
Speaker 3: like this, this thing coiled around a tree that's saying
Speaker 3: there's an apple. There's a really tasty apple. Why don't
Speaker 3: you take a bite out of that? I mean, well,
Speaker 3: can really be the you know, the dark prints of
Speaker 3: this whole thing? Would they regard you as such? If
Speaker 3: you started talking about these things. That's a very interesting
Speaker 3: question in your squishy manification.
Speaker 1: Here's the good news. The good news for that I've
Speaker 1: this is just what I've encountered, but that there was
Speaker 1: a lot of talk at the beginning, spent the beginning
Speaker 1: semester and for the new students with me of the
Speaker 1: diversity of opinion that they're going to encounter. And one
Speaker 1: professor actually said, look, you're going to be in this class.
Speaker 1: You need to know that there are people in this
Speaker 1: class who vote differently from you, who think differently from you,
Speaker 1: who worship differently from you, and that is what makes
Speaker 1: us a seminary and a place of learning and not
Speaker 1: something else. And I remember thinking like, wow, that's really amazing.
Speaker 1: I think they're like they must be. I couldn't I
Speaker 1: hadn't started yet. I couldn't tell. Is this something to
Speaker 1: tell the conservatives, hey listen, you keep your whatever? Or
Speaker 1: is this something to tell the liberals, Hey listen, you
Speaker 1: keep your mits off the conservative I don't know. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell. What I discovered later was that part of
Speaker 1: it is just what happens is that this is a
Speaker 1: very popular place to come, unlike sort of these other
Speaker 1: to the big divinity schools in the country, one at
Speaker 1: Harvard and the one at Yale. This is a place
Speaker 1: to come if you actually believe in something and you
Speaker 1: actually have some kind of faith. Really, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't even mean that as a joke. And so people
Speaker 1: come and Princeton has just traditionally the Princeton University has
Speaker 1: had a lot of connections to the South, so people
Speaker 1: come from this. There are a lot of people here
Speaker 1: from the South, and I think the warning has always
Speaker 1: been to them, Listen, We're going to be in a
Speaker 1: class with people, and your professors are academics, believing academics,
Speaker 1: but academics, and you're going to learn stuff that you
Speaker 1: may not have encountered in your time in your you know, church,
Speaker 1: for instance, the very distinct, different separate creation stories that
Speaker 1: begin the book that we call the Bible. Right by
Speaker 1: chapter three, you're already confused. And that is part of
Speaker 1: the you know, as they say in software development, that
Speaker 1: is as a feature, not a bug. And you're just
Speaker 1: gonna have to put up with that because I think,
Speaker 1: I think there have been stories of very very bright,
Speaker 1: enthusiastic students coming here from very very very committed faith backgrounds,
Speaker 1: and they come and they spend you know, semester reading
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, which a lot of people haven't done,
Speaker 1: and or reading the Hebrew or reading the Greek and
Speaker 1: then the New Testament and then having a freak out
Speaker 1: and say, oh my god, nothing I was told is true.
Speaker 3: It's all a lie.
Speaker 1: It's all been a lie. And they, you know, they
Speaker 1: call home and usually they're often there's a parent there
Speaker 1: or a grandparent or male relatives as a pastor, and
Speaker 1: they're like, they turned me, they said, sometimes these things
Speaker 1: they turn these absolutely one hundred percent faithful Christians into
Speaker 1: total atheists. And we didn't want to do that either,
Speaker 1: but they do want you to read the book because
Speaker 1: it's the book, and the book's complicated, and so so
Speaker 1: I think part of that was like, hey, don't freak
Speaker 1: out when you When you don't, you can't answer the
Speaker 1: question who parts the Red Sea with a clear cut answer,
Speaker 1: and that again, that's like, I don't know, that's we're
Speaker 1: still we're still talking about the primeval history here, I mean,
Speaker 1: not primary host. We're telling out you know, the early
Speaker 1: I don't know what do we page fifty and already
Speaker 1: we're confused, Like all right, so I love that part because,
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm I'm mister squishy in the middle.
Speaker 3: Well, that's great, because I would hate to think that
Speaker 3: the diversity of the opinion means people who believe in
Speaker 3: taxing unrealized capital gains above five hundred thousand versus people
Speaker 3: who believe in taxing it about six hundred thousands. We've
Speaker 3: got all all walks of life periity theologically, would you say,
Speaker 3: and I'll leave it at this, because we could just
Speaker 3: sit here talk. We do have an election. Parure is,
Speaker 3: do you are most of the people who are coming
Speaker 3: to the school, uh episcopalian? Would you say that they're
Speaker 3: more inclined to Biblical literalism or more inclined to sort
Speaker 3: of the idea that it's a set of tales divinely
Speaker 3: inspired mind you, but nevertheless not a not a direct
Speaker 3: transcription of what happened. We're not talking seven days. We're
Speaker 3: talking seven days describing a vast period of time that
Speaker 3: only God can comprehend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I think, I think, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't really know. I don't know. I suspect that the
Speaker 1: the thing about Biblical literalists are the univocalists. Maybe is
Speaker 1: that it's a hard time. You have a hard time
Speaker 1: if you're reading the actual Bible, because it's it's got
Speaker 1: it's the guy, all these doublets and all these little
Speaker 1: things in it that just seem like, okay, well this
Speaker 1: is I see here where the key author of the
Speaker 1: Old Testament came in and you know, the put it
Speaker 1: this in front of the thing. And I could say
Speaker 1: the exit is a perfect example because you have, like
Speaker 1: this the story of the of leaving Egypt, which is
Speaker 1: this great adventure tale, and then that's the first half,
Speaker 1: and then you have this song in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: which is ancient and older than anything. And then the
Speaker 1: second part, the third part of it, on the other
Speaker 1: side of it is this list of laws, the rules,
Speaker 1: and they didn't all come at the same time. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of looks lovely about it. And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the Bible can that was a pretty good book. It
Speaker 1: couldn't stand up.
Speaker 3: As a screen runner. That must be you know, frustrating
Speaker 3: for you first acts, great steps and up we wondered,
Speaker 3: yeah right now literally wanders a little in the second part.
Speaker 3: The third act got a really clinching so she even
Speaker 3: do you have anything else on the subject because I like,
Speaker 3: I like, I say, I look forward to a Rob
Speaker 3: long podcast that is extent, that is, that is exclusively
Speaker 3: devoted to his experience. Was at the school.
Speaker 2: I laid down a marker with Rob that I want
Speaker 2: to talk to him at least after the first year's
Speaker 2: under your belt.
Speaker 4: I mean, not just yet.
Speaker 2: And you know, we get into things like you know,
Speaker 2: Carl Bart versus Thomas Aquinas.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go out right right. Well.
Speaker 2: I guess one brief comment though about James's question, which
Speaker 2: is either literal reading or you know, figurative reading, And
Speaker 2: it seems to me depends on what you mean by literal.
Speaker 2: I believe you can take the Bible literal if you
Speaker 2: accept its premise that it's divinely inspired and your revelation
Speaker 2: from God. If you start there, then it seems to
Speaker 2: me you don't have to have the position that it
Speaker 2: literally meant a seven to twenty four hour days creation,
Speaker 2: since the sun wasn't created to what the third day, right,
Speaker 2: which which defies our sort of categories there.
Speaker 4: But once you accept that it's serious.
Speaker 2: Then it seems to me that that dichotomy of the
Speaker 2: what we sometimes say the fundamentalists who take every word literally.
Speaker 2: That starts to dissolve a bit, and you think of
Speaker 2: it much more deeply and seriously, I think. And I'll
Speaker 2: just stop there because I will say I did read
Speaker 2: Leon Cass's book on Genesis.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you know that book.
Speaker 1: No, I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ah, it's worth reading.
Speaker 4: But of course it's five hundred pages and very dense.
Speaker 4: And he's he's doing a.
Speaker 2: Sequel on Exodus that will also be fine.
Speaker 4: It may be done by now, I'm not sure, but you.
Speaker 1: Could be there forever. I mean, you could spend the
Speaker 1: lifetime studying the first two chapters of this Bible.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 3: The great thing is at the end of it, rob
Speaker 3: I suppose, and your your last classes on revelations, which
Speaker 3: is just a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the end of it, you know everything. That's the
Speaker 1: great dandy.
Speaker 3: Way to wrap out the show right there with the
Speaker 3: six heads and all the rest, and requires the trumpets. Well,
Speaker 3: great pin in that move on next topic, elections, anybody
Speaker 3: has been captured following what Kabalahara said in her recent appearances,
Speaker 3: where there seems to be a great uneasiness settling in
Speaker 3: on some parts of the left that she may not
Speaker 3: be able to close the deal.
Speaker 1: That may be the.
Speaker 3: Joy of Brad Summer has evaporated and people are seeing
Speaker 3: somebody who just really isn't up to the task. What
Speaker 3: do your sense from the nation's reaction and eventual injudication
Speaker 3: of the merits of Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think they I have to say
Speaker 1: that her team was right. What right when they kept
Speaker 1: her out of interviews, they kept her from talking. That
Speaker 1: was a turns out that was a pretty good strategy.
Speaker 1: Now we've heard her talk, and we've seen her handle
Speaker 1: really easy questions from incredibly sympathetic interviewers, and she just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have some kind of she seems doesn't strange.
Speaker 1: I find it generationally very strange that she doesn't. And
Speaker 1: I'm actually from Kamala Harris, who I you know, like
Speaker 1: she didn't arrive here. I mean, as hard as his
Speaker 1: believer in live, you're an unaccomplished person. She was a
Speaker 1: prosecutor and she ran a statewide. It wasn't a great
Speaker 1: state wide, but she ran a statewide. And so she's
Speaker 1: she knows how to think on her feature clearly does
Speaker 1: because she was on to what to trials. She was
Speaker 1: in court. So this, this terror and almost choosing to
Speaker 1: say nothing to me is the most terrible I can
Speaker 1: put it is that it's just the terror of running
Speaker 1: a going from basically small time elections to running big
Speaker 1: time elections where you're in charge instead of taking orders.
Speaker 1: That that could be. It can also be that she's
Speaker 1: just a deeply unserious person, which I think is also
Speaker 1: true she does. But I think that's a third thing happening,
Speaker 1: which is like, I don't think I don't think that
Speaker 1: she thinks that she needs to do any of this
Speaker 1: or have any of this. Is what I find most
Speaker 1: disturbing is that I don't think she thinks of these
Speaker 1: things as deficiencies. She thinks she's just gonna, like, I'm
Speaker 1: just have to do this to get become president. But
Speaker 1: when I'm president, I sit there and preside and gab
Speaker 1: and chit chat and run a meeting which I can run.
Speaker 1: And I feel like she is a classic. And I
Speaker 1: say this as a member of my generation, because she's
Speaker 1: in my generation. She's a consultant, and she's running it
Speaker 1: like she's a McKinsey consultant, and so her answers are
Speaker 1: worth salid nonsense. You think well, I don't. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I'm not hiring a consultant. I'm hiring a president. And
Speaker 1: I think that to me is like that she's not
Speaker 1: even very good one. I mean, she wouldn't be at
Speaker 1: McKinsey or BCG or something. She'd be like one of
Speaker 1: the gray d ones because her word salads aren't that good.
Speaker 1: But I've been around enough consultants to know that they
Speaker 1: can talk for thirty minutes and it sounds good, but
Speaker 1: it means nothing. And she could talk for thirty minutes
Speaker 1: and it doesn't sound good. But she's She's right. She
Speaker 1: is the generation of Americans that believe that the highest
Speaker 1: form of enterprise is a consultancy. And unfortunately that is
Speaker 1: not the job that she is auditioning for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I keep expecting her to offer concave solutions to
Speaker 2: convex problems.
Speaker 4: I feel consultantly right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, the way I've been putting it is that
Speaker 2: we can talk about the polls if you want, but
Speaker 2: the body language of the body politic is clearly Satanly.
Speaker 2: Discomfort on all sides with her and her brat summer
Speaker 2: has become as I'm calling it, a splat fall. And
Speaker 2: look I mean, I've talked about this before, I think,
Speaker 2: but look, her reputation in California is that she was
Speaker 2: a terrible boss. I've known people who work for in
Speaker 2: the agency's office, Democrats, career Democrats who hate her and
Speaker 2: said she was just the most horrible person to work for.
Speaker 2: She had what ninety two percent turnout I'm sorry turnover
Speaker 2: and the vice presidential staff.
Speaker 4: And that's an amazing thing because people killed have those.
Speaker 2: Jobs in the White House and they're willing to put
Speaker 2: up with a lot of misery to be the center
Speaker 2: of the action there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And then finally there was a story that came out
Speaker 2: a few months ago that now I think you mentioned
Speaker 2: that she took a couple of days off to prepare
Speaker 2: for the CNN town hall where she did miserably.
Speaker 4: The story out three or four months ago that.
Speaker 2: Sometime in the last couple of years, she was invited
Speaker 2: to one of Davis Bradley's famous salage. Now David Bradley,
Speaker 2: for listeners don't know, he was a big He used
Speaker 2: to own The Atlantic before Marene Palell jobs bought it.
Speaker 2: And you know major publisher, U, major man around Georgetown
Speaker 2: has a big house up on Embassy Row I think
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts Avenue and he has these salons, were invited
Speaker 2: to dinner.
Speaker 4: It's all high powered people.
Speaker 2: She was so nervous about going that she had her
Speaker 2: staff do a rehearsal dinner for and they thought about, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we should actually serve wine at these rehearsals, so
Speaker 2: you know, what kind of what are people going to
Speaker 2: be asking me? What do I need to talk about?
Speaker 2: How do I what? So she was that nervous about
Speaker 2: going to what ought to be a layup for anybody
Speaker 2: in Washington, because everybody in Washington, I mean I lived
Speaker 2: there fifteen years, James has been there, you know, the
Speaker 2: Georgetown cocktail party to aspire to and it's easy. There
Speaker 2: was no pressure on her whatsoever. But she was nervous
Speaker 2: about it, which shows that she's not ready for prime time.
Speaker 2: And we can go on all day about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just say I'm saying, can I just buy?
Speaker 1: I want to? It's I'm just taking as a given,
Speaker 1: which maybe maybe not, but I when you say somebody
Speaker 1: is just dumb, then that is over right. It is dumb, right,
Speaker 1: And like, okay that she's dumb. I don't think she's dumb.
Speaker 1: I mean you know, she passed the bar. She't all
Speaker 1: though it wasn't great law school, all us things. You know,
Speaker 1: I just did a podcast with John Padrit's, and you know,
Speaker 1: John Panriits is very very critical of her, like she's
Speaker 1: an idiot. And I get it. I get that answer,
Speaker 1: I get that answer. I just mean that to me,
Speaker 1: it feels to me like she doesn't she she has
Speaker 1: no courage, which you desperately need to join this campaign,
Speaker 1: this this late. They're enormous. Her problem is really simple
Speaker 1: as a political problem, it's not that hard. She needs
Speaker 1: men and she needs moderates, that's it. And she needs
Speaker 1: to paint the other guy as a lunatic. Well he's
Speaker 1: gonna do that part himself, and all she needs is
Speaker 1: that part. And she's just she seems to have a
Speaker 1: hard time connecting to that. The boiler plate answers that
Speaker 1: she could have given that, you could have memorized that,
Speaker 1: aren't you know complicated? Are just show this kind of
Speaker 1: terror and fear and unwillingness to sort of act like
Speaker 1: she wants it. You know, it's a weird way. It's
Speaker 1: almost like she thinks that, Okay, well I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: It's like a gig. It's like, no, you have to
Speaker 1: have a you have to want to take the country
Speaker 1: in a direction. You know, when you if you answer
Speaker 1: a question, hey, look this is a very complicated question,
Speaker 1: then you have to give me a complicated answer. You
Speaker 1: can't just you know. I find it. I find amazing.
Speaker 1: Look at her now. It's how terrible this campaign has
Speaker 1: become because it started so great. I mean, you got
Speaker 1: to give him credit. Sure has a billion dollars. She
Speaker 1: made all the right phone calls. She looked really good.
Speaker 1: I mean I was saying a month ago, you know,
Speaker 1: weirdly about her. She's actually good at this, and it's
Speaker 1: all kind of you know what, It's all kind of evaporated,
Speaker 1: the way it does when the consultant packs up and
Speaker 1: leads and the company's left to actually make the things work.
Speaker 3: She was good at when everybody saw the picture, or
Speaker 3: the big smiling picture, different kind of energy, so different
Speaker 3: than the glowering orange amount and the rest of it.
Speaker 3: A lot of that was just vibe and imagery. I
Speaker 3: think part of the pride. I don't disagree with anything
Speaker 3: either of you said, but I think part of her
Speaker 3: problem or inability to compose herself well and impressively in
Speaker 3: these interviews is that she's suffering, she's experienced in the
Speaker 3: consequences of a lifetime of intellectuals. The disinterest is in
Speaker 3: the world, lack of curiosity, isolation, isolation, but also lack
Speaker 3: of curiosity. Just if somebody who's hungry about the world
Speaker 3: will know enough about it to be able to be
Speaker 3: asked for a few minutes when the question is asked,
Speaker 3: he'll have a template about that issue in their head
Speaker 3: because their mind has ranged by view of the places.
Speaker 3: That's just kind of what you would like to expect
Speaker 3: she doesn't have.
Speaker 2: I mean, right, but I mean Bill, if I could interrupt,
Speaker 2: I mean Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Remember both had
Speaker 2: taught constitutional law in law schools, Clinton Arkansas and Obama
Speaker 2: in Chicago. And I know people in classes from Obama
Speaker 2: at Chicago Law School, and.
Speaker 4: They said he knew what the conservative arguments were.
Speaker 2: Us to read Robert Borke in our classes with him,
Speaker 2: so they knew what the other side thought. I don't
Speaker 2: think Harris has ever for a moment picked up a
Speaker 2: copy of National Review or any other or heard anything
Speaker 2: certain argument ever, Right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I find it very baffling. I mean, and
Speaker 1: especially I mean, because it's like we're looking these two
Speaker 1: desperately bad circus bears grappling, and you know, like last week,
Speaker 1: suddenly Trump goes to McDonald's.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Rob, you, as a show business person, you have to
Speaker 2: thought that was a master stroke.
Speaker 1: It was brilliant. Oh, I totally. I think it was
Speaker 1: absolutely But but I thought to myself, like it took them.
Speaker 1: How long? It's October fifteen, whatever, he was October twentieth.
Speaker 1: It's a couple of weeks for the election, and this
Speaker 1: is the first time this guy has done this. The
Speaker 1: laziness with which that campaign has, like, well, let's give
Speaker 1: another rally, give another rally. No, no, no, you put
Speaker 1: him and McDonald's. I would take him to Costco. I
Speaker 1: would put him. I would have him do the checkout
Speaker 1: at home depot. I would have this guy, this billionaire,
Speaker 1: orange billionaire, at every real job in America once a week.
Speaker 1: Don't do the stupid rallies where he blathers and lies
Speaker 1: his way through fifty minutes of nonsense. He was great
Speaker 1: at McDonald's, and people, the voters like to see that
Speaker 1: the president knows what a McDonald's looks like inside. And
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he was there fifteen minutes he made
Speaker 1: some jokes that should have been I tell you, I
Speaker 1: honestly believe from labor day on, he had the job
Speaker 1: a week and not a stupid, embarrassing, insulting rally, he'd
Speaker 1: be twenty points up.
Speaker 3: He would have to be a job a week because
Speaker 3: people absolutely would forget the next thing. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: moved on past the assassination attempts pearled, and he would
Speaker 3: have to. You're right, Rob, do this every single day,
Speaker 3: rotate through all of the various franchises, sparing nothing. He'd
Speaker 3: love it too. I mean, just imagine the jokes, the
Speaker 3: self deprecating jokes. Who could be done if you put
Speaker 3: on the orange apron. You know, you just sit there
Speaker 3: and talk about it. Matches. Before we go any farther, though,
Speaker 3: I'm going to welcome Rob back by forbidding him the
Speaker 3: opportunity to bust my segue. I'm simply going to go
Speaker 3: right into a spot.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, listen, I want to say this, James. I,
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm I'm on my way to taking
Speaker 1: religious orders. So I'm trying to take take seriously the
Speaker 1: only two commandments that we as Christians have to follow,
Speaker 1: which is one is God, honor your God, basically gratitude,
Speaker 1: and the second is to love your neighbor. And so
Speaker 1: in the spirit of that, I'm I'm not going to
Speaker 1: interrupt your sege to your spot.
Speaker 3: It is a philosophical disquisition I would love to have
Speaker 3: if somebody is saying they are not interrupting your spot,
Speaker 3: but yet they are interrupting your spot. Does intention count
Speaker 3: or does the effect of their actions? We can talk
Speaker 3: about that a little bit, but.
Speaker 4: It's a Christian paradox, James, is what I think.
Speaker 3: Certainly, there's no paradox when it comes to data security.
Speaker 3: You need it, you want it, and it's a big
Speaker 3: problem when.
Speaker 1: You interrupt somebody's spot. You know it, I mean, you
Speaker 1: do it. You just go right to like you with intention,
Speaker 1: that's the most important thing. That's actually the most important
Speaker 1: thing theologically I think see is intention is like this
Speaker 1: is what I have. You know this is there's no
Speaker 1: half metage anyway, right, you were something, you're right.
Speaker 3: But if someone believes actually that their interruption is actually
Speaker 3: improving that it's a bit that is a joid by all.
Speaker 3: Then there's a little bit of the overweening ego in
Speaker 3: there that says that you're not actually doing a good thing,
Speaker 3: You're doing something to aggrandize yourself. Say, having said that,
Speaker 3: I would like to remind people I had made a
Speaker 3: point about data security and why it's important. I thought
Speaker 3: this all the time. I was just over in Europe,
Speaker 3: and every time I wave my phone at something or
Speaker 3: tapped this, or accept the rest of it, I thought,
Speaker 3: exactly where is my data going? I'm on another continent.
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Speaker 3: Ricochet podcast. And I wonder, however, if it's in kung Yee,
Speaker 3: I want to see, you know, the the Italian language
Speaker 3: lessons that I took back in college would make me
Speaker 3: want to in clung Yee, but probably not. And anybody
Speaker 3: who speaks of telling me is probably just wet themselves
Speaker 3: in my accent. All right back to the election that
Speaker 3: we have now. Rob was saying that it'd be a
Speaker 3: great thing if Trump continued to do this, but the
Speaker 3: blowback would be so delicious. I mean the fact that
Speaker 3: that one McDonald's trip generated so many pieces of hair
Speaker 3: on fire about. You know, he wasn't wearing a hairnet.
Speaker 3: Two of them. I saw about that. Somebody else went
Speaker 3: back and pulled the records to see what.
Speaker 1: You know, It's not real hair. It's an antibacterial, micro
Speaker 1: antimicrobial fiber.
Speaker 3: Well I would like to know that. But you know,
Speaker 3: for being the most vetted candidate in modern history, somehow
Speaker 3: we haven't gotten around to the microfiber nature of it's here.
Speaker 3: But they don't see the latest thing, of course. And
Speaker 3: I'm going to say something which I know it was
Speaker 3: going to be shocking to you guys, but it appears
Speaker 3: to me as if they're trying to make Donald Trump
Speaker 3: sound like Hitler I know, I know, or a fascist.
Speaker 4: Now we all are old.
Speaker 3: Enough to note that every single president of a Republican
Speaker 3: nature in our lifetime has been Hitler, and I was
Speaker 3: the one. If you go back and search in Lexus nexus,
Speaker 3: I am convinced that the first mention of this phrase
Speaker 3: is mine a long time ago, which was in the future,
Speaker 3: everyone will be Hitler for fifteen minutes. And I mean
Speaker 3: Reagan was Hitler Bush Hitler the one word I and
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris I believe gave a speech today what she
Speaker 3: called them a fascist. And these people have very little
Speaker 3: understanding what fascists I mean other than it's the things
Speaker 3: I don't like, and they know they don't. They don't
Speaker 3: like it, so I'll give it to you. Then is
Speaker 3: ninth time to charm? So the old Hitler fascist thing.
Speaker 4: He would have thought that at some point, let's do this.
Speaker 2: Let's stipulate that Trump is as awful as they say
Speaker 2: he is, or that Rob sometimes says he is.
Speaker 4: I think he's not. But all right.
Speaker 2: The point is, you would would have thought that somebody
Speaker 2: in the democratic hierarchy would at some point have read
Speaker 2: the old fable of the little Boy who Cried Wolf
Speaker 2: and reflect that they shouldn't have made such damn fools
Speaker 2: out of themselves. Going back seventy years now, by the way,
Speaker 2: I have all receipts on this. The first instance I
Speaker 2: can find was nineteen forty when Henry Wallace, in a
Speaker 2: Democrats charged that Wendell Wilkie. He was an old one world, right,
Speaker 2: Wendell Wilkie was Hitler's preferred candidate in the election that year.
Speaker 2: And by the Hitler was a real thing going in nineteen.
Speaker 4: Forty, right. I can't remember this from the history books. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then you know Tom Dewey was Hitler.
Speaker 2: That's what Harry Truman said actually right about the same
Speaker 2: week in the ninth forty eight election cycle, late October.
Speaker 4: And then Goldwater.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean I go on for pages
Speaker 2: about all the ways that he was made out to
Speaker 2: be Hitler, and any go on down the list.
Speaker 4: You know, Regulus Hitler. Right.
Speaker 2: The only Republican who has never called Hitler was Eisenhower.
Speaker 2: If you think about it for two seconds, it's hard
Speaker 2: to make it stick on the guy who actually routed
Speaker 2: Hitler on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
Speaker 4: But so, I mean, I think they made damn fools
Speaker 4: of themselves saying this.
Speaker 2: They can't seem to come up with anything original, and
Speaker 2: it just shows their desperation.
Speaker 4: In my mind, they just said one other things. Well,
Speaker 4: I'll stop there, let roam on the Hitler.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say the fashion thing to think
Speaker 1: about fascism is like, I mean, okay, stipulate that fascism
Speaker 1: is bad. We don't like it, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it's not much of a you know, it's like racist,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like okay, yeah, it's have any value.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's connecting to the voters the
Speaker 1: way what you want to do. What she's just they're
Speaker 1: failing at that one thing, which is we've seen it.
Speaker 1: We've seen this movie already, the Trump movie. She's change,
Speaker 1: She's going to bring back change. We need change. Turn
Speaker 1: the page. He's exhausting and crazy and and incompetent in
Speaker 1: many ways, and there's a little bit of a trap
Speaker 1: there for him for them because, in my opinion, the
Speaker 1: thing that disqualifies him the most, aside from post election nonsense,
Speaker 1: is his handling of COVID, which was atrocious and wrong.
Speaker 1: But they agreed with it. So that's the problem, right, really,
Speaker 1: was that they agreed with everything he did. They were applauding,
Speaker 1: like if you could shut down the country more, they
Speaker 1: would like to do that. Like Trump, Davin knew some
Speaker 1: plan for the United States economy was to destroy it.
Speaker 4: He wasn't fast enough about COVID.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we need a little Ronda
Speaker 1: Santis Brian Kemp to keep the trains run on time
Speaker 1: in this country and so they but they're not connecting
Speaker 1: to what they should be connecting to. And weirdly he
Speaker 1: isn't either. But I think he's going to start. But
Speaker 1: I just to me, it's just it's it's it's banana.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a faculty lounge argument, which they
Speaker 1: still don't know is not America.
Speaker 2: Well, the approximate cause of this, the charge of this
Speaker 2: week is that General Flynn said that Trump said.
Speaker 4: I wish I had generals Lelly Doenal Kelly Sorry, oh god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that Flynn was the one that yeah, yeah, very general.
Speaker 4: Maybe he is the kind of okay.
Speaker 2: The point is that apparently Trump can't name a single
Speaker 2: World War two German general.
Speaker 4: Apparently he never heard of Irwin Rommel when somebody brought
Speaker 4: him up. So I mean, really, you take this seriously?
Speaker 2: Uh and oh Trump said this four years ago now
Speaker 2: and we're only hearing about it now two weeks before
Speaker 2: an election.
Speaker 4: Gosh, that seems awfully convenient, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Maybe he was saying that he just wanted to, you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of generals will leave a bomb under the table. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, and take a phone call outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, part of the problem is that we already
Speaker 3: had four years of Donald Trump and he did not
Speaker 3: annex the sedateent Land.
Speaker 2: The Battle on b As one of their typical classic headlines,
Speaker 2: it was Democrats tell us Trump wanted to be Hitler
Speaker 2: in his first term but simply forgot right.
Speaker 3: Indeed, well, the whole idea of nothing outside the state, nothing,
Speaker 3: that basic fascist concept is not something that sticks well
Speaker 3: on the right, because the left is very very progressives,
Speaker 3: are very proud to tell us how much everything should
Speaker 3: be gathered into the loving and embrace of the states,
Speaker 3: of the village, of the rest of it. We must
Speaker 3: have collective effort for climate change, we must have collective
Speaker 3: effort to reduce systemicisms, and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're all about using the instruments of the state,
Speaker 3: maximum powered in order to force course change human behavior.
Speaker 3: So I find it amusing when they make that charge,
Speaker 3: still believing somehow in their heart of hearts that it's
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight and that they're the party of just
Speaker 3: nothing but free love and absolute, total free expression and
Speaker 3: freedom for all the rest of it when they've morphed
Speaker 3: into the very sort of authoritarian apparatus that they supposedly
Speaker 3: aided in sixty eight. But moving beyond Trump and Kamala
Speaker 3: something even more important British election interference in American politics.
Speaker 3: This is a weird, strange story, and Steven, I think
Speaker 3: you might be the one to describe it for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Kier Starmer the new Prime Minister of Britain
Speaker 2: with the one of the largest labor landslides ever. They've
Speaker 2: got like four hundred and twenty five seats on the
Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4: That you have in the House.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the opinion polls show that Starmer
Speaker 2: is more unpopular than any new prime minister has been
Speaker 2: in the last fifty sixty years.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's cratering already.
Speaker 2: And in the midst of this, he decides that he
Speaker 2: and his party they want to come over en mass,
Speaker 2: like one hundred members of the House of Commons want
Speaker 2: to come over and campaign for Kamala Harris. Now there's
Speaker 2: two things about this. Where are the screams of foreign
Speaker 2: interference in our elections? And second, how stupid could Starmer
Speaker 2: be I mean, with all the momentum right now behind
Speaker 2: Trump and the likelihood that Trump is going to win,
Speaker 2: why would you want to alienate for no good reason
Speaker 2: of your own the next president of the United States,
Speaker 2: who you're gonna have to deal with about Ukraine and
Speaker 2: the European.
Speaker 4: Union and all kinds of other things.
Speaker 2: It's just to me, is this shows how incredibly inept
Speaker 2: a Starmer is as a political leader.
Speaker 3: I was just over there, and you're right, he's not loved.
Speaker 3: And there are a series of steps that were being
Speaker 3: towered in the Telegraph. Yeah, I know the Telegraph, but
Speaker 3: it's not exactly a raping right wing paper. The Telegraph
Speaker 3: was noting that there's been a series of art movements
Speaker 3: in number ten Downing Street paintings that have been removed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because they have the wrong message. Sir Walter Rawley, he's
Speaker 3: out Elizabeth first, she's out of here.
Speaker 1: Slavery for both of them.
Speaker 3: Gladstone I think got the boot at some point. She
Speaker 3: took down Margaret. He took down Margaret Thatcher's painting, right,
Speaker 3: because there's it on the wall, and he says she
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with her politics. He just didn't
Speaker 3: like paintings in which someone was looking down on him,
Speaker 3: And I thought, if you took thatcher's portrait and put
Speaker 3: it on the floor, it would still be looking down
Speaker 3: on you, mister Jover. The other thing that he recently
Speaker 3: took out was William Shakespeare. Apparently that one had to
Speaker 3: go and is going to be replaced by something that's
Speaker 3: a little bit more diverse, Walkie Sparkly, et cetera. They
Speaker 3: took all of the paintings of men out of eleven
Speaker 3: Downing Street, a meeting room where they meet four people,
Speaker 3: and it replaced them with women or pictures of women,
Speaker 3: in order to show their commitment to empowering the rest
Speaker 3: of it. So these are kind of tone deaf things.
Speaker 3: There are statements that you make to placate a certain
Speaker 3: number of your base, but they don't. They fall like
Speaker 3: a cold coal on the floors of the rest of
Speaker 3: the people in the country. You are wondering exactly why
Speaker 3: this was necessary exactly to do, But that's what you
Speaker 3: get from all the year zeroach type. We think it's
Speaker 3: bad over here, there are There was a proposed legislation
Speaker 3: that new rules to govern whether or not a pub
Speaker 3: owner an obligation to interfere when the banter between some
Speaker 3: mates in the back having a pint becomes injurious to
Speaker 3: the sensibilities of various protected groups. It's in order to
Speaker 3: keep the workers health and safety. Of course, that they
Speaker 3: might themselves having their ears upbraided by an off color
Speaker 3: joke would suffer harm and distress. So now there's talk
Speaker 3: of the publitions have to be banter cops, that everybody
Speaker 3: has to look around their shoulder and see if there's
Speaker 3: somebody who's taking down what they said in the local boozer.
Speaker 3: And you know, I talked to people who can labor
Speaker 3: all their life and they just they grit their teeth
Speaker 3: and they just sort of despair of this nonsense ever ending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I remember years this is sort
Speaker 1: of somewhat similar. But years ago when New York City
Speaker 1: had a smoking in Restaurants ordinance, and of course it
Speaker 1: went it got you know, everybody knew it was going
Speaker 1: to happen, and those restaurant owners hated it because it's like,
Speaker 1: come on, let me just do anything. And you had
Speaker 1: to go when you went in a restaurant, you're, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm an old man, right, Remember when you go to
Speaker 1: a restaurant, they go smoking or non r and oh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because the smoking section non smoking section.
Speaker 1: And of course it was like masks no masks. It
Speaker 1: was stupid because like there'd be a table that was
Speaker 1: in the smoking section next to a table that was
Speaker 1: a non smoking section one. But you had to designate
Speaker 1: a certain number of tables, a certain amount of things
Speaker 1: you had to have, like the smoking area had to
Speaker 1: be like it was incredibly, incredibly onerous, and the city
Speaker 1: Council Andre Sultaner, the great chef Andrea Sultner, who ran
Speaker 1: one of the best restaurants ever called Lutesse. You know,
Speaker 1: he cooked almost every meal there for thirty plus years.
Speaker 1: When he retired. It was a front pace show of
Speaker 1: the New York Times. When he retired and his uh,
Speaker 1: somebody asked his wife, well, what are you gonna do
Speaker 1: with all your free time now? And she said She'd
Speaker 1: live in New York City for thirty three years because
Speaker 1: you know, I've always wanted to see a Broadway play.
Speaker 1: But of course she could ever see one because she
Speaker 1: was always working anyway, So he went down to town
Speaker 1: Hall and he was like arguing against this, He said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I've run a restaurant in the
Speaker 1: city for thirty years. I think I know best how
Speaker 1: to keep my customers happy. I think I know how
Speaker 1: to run a restaurant. Why are you telling me how
Speaker 1: to run a restaurant? And they looked at him, they
Speaker 1: acted like he was like from he was, well, what's
Speaker 1: the worst thing you could be? Like he was some
Speaker 1: kind of fascist, right, he was to bliedly Right, He's like,
Speaker 1: if I don't if I don't serve my customers, they
Speaker 1: will not come. That is the only regulation I need.
Speaker 1: And he was right, And it's the same thing. But
Speaker 1: these pub owners like, if I let things get out
Speaker 1: of hand and I don't step in. Everybody who's ever
Speaker 1: been behind the bar knows there's a time when you
Speaker 1: step in, there's a time when you people away. That's
Speaker 1: the job of a bartender, partly like you don't need
Speaker 1: a commission to tell you how to do that, and
Speaker 1: if you do, you're going to be out of business
Speaker 1: soon anyway.
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Speaker 3: we go, gentlemen, anything else that you would like to
Speaker 3: discuss elon musk say anything this week that we should
Speaker 3: be worried about. I'm never really worried about anything that
Speaker 3: he says. I mean, he'll repost something on next Twitter
Speaker 3: and then say either wild or two exclamation points, and
Speaker 3: from that I'm supposed to infer that he too is
Speaker 3: hit or his handbath.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, actually I make a comment on Rob's point and
Speaker 2: your question about having a commission to regulate what goes
Speaker 2: on in pubs. Look, you know, I always show to
Speaker 2: students the public opinion polls showing the complete collapse and
Speaker 2: confidence in our institutions. And one of the reasons for
Speaker 2: that is that our government is no longer competent of
Speaker 2: doing its basic task like, oh, I don't know, policing
Speaker 2: the streets, providing quality public education, of picking up the garbage. Right,
Speaker 2: But they want to start policing what we think and
Speaker 2: what we say because their competence apparently extends.
Speaker 4: Into that right and people.
Speaker 2: I think this is why people don't respect their institutions anymore,
Speaker 2: as they aren't any good.
Speaker 4: And the media same thing.
Speaker 2: Right, people can see that the media is completely partisan
Speaker 2: and superficial and so forth, and that explains I think
Speaker 2: some of Trump's appeal, and he's crude about it, but
Speaker 2: when he says we never win again, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people import into that exactly, that sentiment that gush, no,
Speaker 2: nothing seems to work. That's supposed to work. And meanwhile
Speaker 2: they're telling us we have to wear masks, pa is
Speaker 2: what we say, We're gonna censor Twitter and so forth.
Speaker 2: And so here's where let me try this, James. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna see if I can reach concord with brother Rob's
Speaker 2: and I don't know if we're gonna see the election.
Speaker 4: Brother Rob.
Speaker 2: But let's let's stipulate the that that Trump may not
Speaker 2: deserve to win. For all of the criticisms that you
Speaker 2: and many others make, but I believe the left richly
Speaker 2: deserves to lose to Trump. Not just a Republican, they
Speaker 2: deserve to lose to Trump.
Speaker 1: Great, that's a theological question that meant to be right. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, I don't think anybody deserves you know,
Speaker 1: I believe in salvation by grace. I'm not sure that.
Speaker 4: Well, we may need that after Trump wins.
Speaker 1: But I think that we I think that we as
Speaker 1: a country and as a culture, deserve President Trump or
Speaker 1: President Harris. I don't think these are two of our
Speaker 1: best choice. Is I don't thin they're two of our
Speaker 1: best leaders. I think we're kind of in a decadent
Speaker 1: phase where we think that all the questions are small
Speaker 1: and little and they can be sort of either insulted
Speaker 1: away on X or words slided away and some other way.
Speaker 1: And I think that we, you know, we the country
Speaker 1: kind of agrees, right. And what I what I what
Speaker 1: I object to about from my liberal friends is this
Speaker 1: idea that this is somehow new and oh those you
Speaker 1: suddenly discovered this like and it just drives me up
Speaker 1: the wall because it's like, this is not new. This
Speaker 1: this the the stupefication of American and political conversation is
Speaker 1: something that's I mean, I hate sounding like the kids
Speaker 1: saying you started it, but you started it and congratulations
Speaker 1: because you the left. And I think in many ways
Speaker 1: that the institutional left, which simply operated on the assumption
Speaker 1: that the grown ups will always be in charge, the
Speaker 1: grown ups always hold me back. I could do whatever
Speaker 1: I want. I'm a spoiled kid, and it's okay cause
Speaker 1: Daddy's Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna pull me back from
Speaker 1: the abyss. They're gonna they're gonna keep this from getting
Speaker 1: too weird. So you know, we can say nasty, horrible,
Speaker 1: ridiculous things about President George W. Bush or President HW
Speaker 1: Bush for that matter, or Mitt Romney or anybody we want,
Speaker 1: and we can go way over the top on that.
Speaker 1: But you know that's okay because we're the kids and
Speaker 1: we're allowed to do that, and the grown ups will
Speaker 1: never do that. And now they've discovered now you've created
Speaker 1: a whole new political movement. You've energized the political but
Speaker 1: half the people like that half, but a huge part
Speaker 1: portion of the energy and the Republican Party now are
Speaker 1: people who are been Republican for about twenty five minutes.
Speaker 1: And that you created this, and you you set the
Speaker 1: table for it, and now guess what people are coming
Speaker 1: to eat And they're not the people you expected. And
Speaker 1: now you want to go You want to put the
Speaker 1: toothpaste back in the tube and say, oh no, can
Speaker 1: we just please go back to what it was like
Speaker 1: when it was nice? And if you're if you were
Speaker 1: a sentient conservative or even center right figure of a
Speaker 1: certain age, you're like, well, you guys hated all the
Speaker 1: Republicans you love so much. You hated and vilified and
Speaker 1: called fascist, as James put it, So like, what do
Speaker 1: you expect me to do.
Speaker 3: That was yesterday. It was yesterday, and yesterday is everybody deserves.
Speaker 1: Everybody deserves what they Everybody deserves what they're going to get,
Speaker 1: and they deserve to get a good and hard.
Speaker 3: Well. I'm not so inclined to believe. So I like,
Speaker 3: when I say that we deserve this, I don't think
Speaker 3: we do. But the very fact that everybody has chosen
Speaker 3: it willingly tells me that I'm probably wrong. But I'm
Speaker 3: many things. What I don't know is, am I, uh well,
Speaker 3: Robi you had a piece for commentary, but the Daily
Speaker 3: Wire Matt Walsh is, am I racist? Tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about that on the way out.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, well, I mean, if you if you
Speaker 1: want to. I mean, in choises is the crisis of comedy.
Speaker 1: They're looking for comedy, know what makes people laugh? And
Speaker 1: Matt Walsh and I guess producer of The Daily Wire,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Boring, who's a really smart guy, and Ben Sapiro
Speaker 1: they sort of produced this movie. And Matt goes around
Speaker 1: and he has these I mean, it's like, I can't
Speaker 1: even I don't want to describe it. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, treat yourself. It's it's the funniest movie you're
Speaker 1: gonna the funniest and truest movie you're gonna see it.
Speaker 1: And it confirms the things that we've all known, which
Speaker 1: is that the sort of TEI nonsense, it's nonsense, and
Speaker 1: that it's not really serious, and that those people are
Speaker 1: kind of like off their rocker. All that stuff is
Speaker 1: in this in this movie and it's and what I
Speaker 1: love about it is that not only is it does
Speaker 1: it do? I agree with it? And I am applauding
Speaker 1: to it. I'm also laughing at it because it's like
Speaker 1: genuinely funny, and it is a It is a financial
Speaker 1: box office success, which is great. That is good news
Speaker 1: for everybody.
Speaker 3: Really, what it says something about the bubble in which
Speaker 3: a lot of these people live. If somebody was saying,
Speaker 3: I want to do a movie on what is a
Speaker 3: conservative and they wanted to talk to me, and they
Speaker 3: called me up and I said sure, and I show
Speaker 3: up and it's John Stewart in a grout show. Glass
Speaker 3: is with the notes, And I would say, but you're
Speaker 3: John Sewart. Mel wolves can go to all these people
Speaker 3: and nobody ever says, I where have I seen you before? Oh?
Speaker 3: It was that movie about what is a woman? That
Speaker 3: was all over the place or it was that twitter
Speaker 3: the rest of it, no intersection whatsoever. That's the point
Speaker 3: non contiguous information streams. Steven, have you seen the movie?
Speaker 3: And if so, uh, why not?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I know I have seen, but I haven't seen I
Speaker 4: haven't seen that, right, I haven't seen the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing yet, and I've been no good reason I was
Speaker 2: overseas whatnot. But at the point is is it used
Speaker 2: to be Michael Moore who was the funny guy who
Speaker 2: had ambushed and now our team is doing it just
Speaker 2: as well. And yeah, I mean Walls won't be able
Speaker 2: to get away with that many more times. But it's
Speaker 2: what you just say is they didn't know who he
Speaker 2: was and so they were utterly candid with him. Uh
Speaker 2: and you know, oh and of course the left, like
Speaker 2: the devil Rob hate to be mocked and laughed at.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, I mean, you know, then don't be
Speaker 1: so funny. There's a I started out as always commentary columns.
Speaker 1: I try to like talk more about show business than
Speaker 1: anything else. But reminding everybody this is great. There was
Speaker 1: great long running TV hit called Candid Camera, Right, Alan
Speaker 1: Funt did it for years if you're a certain age,
Speaker 1: not even that old, like you remember Alan Funt and
Speaker 1: his son Peter took over after Alan got too sick
Speaker 1: or too old. And there's always been Hayden camera shows
Speaker 1: on TV. There's Ashton Kutcher had punked and there was
Speaker 1: like a bunch of them, a bunch of them. And
Speaker 1: the tagline for Candid Camera was we catch people in
Speaker 1: the act of being themselves. And it was this wonderful, warm,
Speaker 1: funny thing like normal people being normal and it's just
Speaker 1: it's funny, it was, and that is exactly what Matt
Speaker 1: Walsh did. He caught people in the act of being
Speaker 1: themselves and they will never forgive for it.
Speaker 3: I believe that candid Camera grew out of candid microphone,
Speaker 3: which is on the radio, which is a whole different thing.
Speaker 3: It's like ventriloquism on the radio that release on how
Speaker 3: that works. But ended camera, unfortunately, I think, sort of
Speaker 3: spawned prank culture, which is a lot more boorish and
Speaker 3: a lot more yeah, I mean, invasive and mean and
Speaker 3: the rest of it. But I too remember a candid
Speaker 3: camera when I was a kid at Grappa's place watching
Speaker 3: it on whatever night it was, and that's the sort
Speaker 3: of little giggle that people got when they realized that
Speaker 3: they were in this. And the very fact that an
Speaker 3: entire culture, i mean, the show was very popular. The
Speaker 3: idea that you might be on Can did Camera was
Speaker 3: sort of this omnipresent question in minds so bad millions
Speaker 3: and something weird happened for you for decades you thought
Speaker 3: you look around for the camera because Alan Tunt with
Speaker 3: a little bald paint might stick itself off from a
Speaker 3: potted plant. And you give you a big smile and said,
Speaker 3: you've just been on the national television back before the
Speaker 3: days where everybody, of course wanted to be an influencer
Speaker 3: and make full of themselves for absolutely no reason having
Speaker 3: done so, that might just myself here, No, for a
Speaker 3: very good reason. To promote Ricochet and to promote Lumen
Speaker 3: and Incognitate, two great products, lumin for your metabolism and
Speaker 3: Cogni for your digital safety, and we thank them for
Speaker 3: sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. We thank Rob Long for coming back.
Speaker 3: Of course, we thank Steven again a regular member of
Speaker 3: the Flagship podcast family. And we thank you for going
Speaker 3: to Apple last week and giving us those five star reviews. Really,
Speaker 3: we thank you you, on the other hand, who hasn't
Speaker 3: done it yet, go do it. And also, by the way,
Speaker 3: if you haven't joined Ricochet, this is a great time
Speaker 3: because we're having a lot of fun discussing the election
Speaker 3: and there are meetups in person. Yeah, and we're gonna
Speaker 3: have a lot of fun discussing the election afterwards too
Speaker 3: in the member feed. But you've got to be a
Speaker 3: member to be a member of the member feed, he said, tutologically,
Speaker 3: that'll do. Guys. It's been a lot of fun and
Speaker 3: I hope to see both of you next week. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet
Speaker 3: four point.
Speaker 1: See you soon, PILs, Great to see you, Rob, Good
Speaker 1: to see you guys too. Yeah, bless you my sons.
Speaker 4: Ricochet join the conversation.