Speaker 1: Jump on a bus and head down to Florida where
Speaker 1: you belong.
Speaker 2: Okay, get out of town.
Speaker 1: Get out of town, so you don't represent our values.
Speaker 2: You are not New Yorkers.
Speaker 1: There are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. Okay, cut
Speaker 1: me the checks. I mean, just if you want to
Speaker 1: be supportive. But maybe the first step should we go
Speaker 1: down to Palm Beach and see what you can bring
Speaker 1: back home. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook and myself James Lylax. Today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about whatever comes to mind and you are going to
Speaker 1: love it. So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 3: President Trump has the option, as the commander in chief
Speaker 3: to compel an adversary to the table, which is precisely
Speaker 3: what he did, and at the end he chose to say,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'd rather talk to you at the
Speaker 3: table than obliterate your capability to export oil and fund
Speaker 3: your terror regime.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty four. I'm James Lylyx in Minneapolis, Cherles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook in Florida is with us, and Steven Hayward is
Speaker 1: dead serious about not being on this podcast today. We
Speaker 1: look forward to having him back next week. Charles, Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm fine, Thank you. I didn't just relate that.
Speaker 1: We're just relating before you before we went live here,
Speaker 1: that you've been on the Highway and then apparently around
Speaker 1: Disney World for some strange reason. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: nightmare this time of the year. How do Floridians actually
Speaker 1: view the influx of people from all over the country
Speaker 1: who come to pay exorbitant prices to be beamed at
Speaker 1: by people in furry costumes and the life I love it?
Speaker 1: Are they regarded sort of as a pestilent. They're not
Speaker 1: a pestilence. They're beloved.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a big part of the economy, but just
Speaker 2: as important, if not more important, people who come into
Speaker 2: the state pay all of our taxes.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is that, but there's always that faction that says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure they bring in money, they bring an employment, all
Speaker 1: the rest of it. But you know, they make my
Speaker 1: life incrementally a little bit more difficult, and so I
Speaker 1: hate them and I wish we would pass regulations. But
Speaker 1: then again, that's a state that's generally a blue state,
Speaker 1: and Florida is not that, so I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're enjoying the tax benefits of everybody who
Speaker 1: went down there. I myself made many pilgrimage to Walt
Speaker 1: Disney World during the time when the child was in
Speaker 1: the Disney life and the age out of that. Thank God,
Speaker 1: I did not want to be one of those Disney
Speaker 1: adults that you see infesting social media. More and more
Speaker 1: and more, they seem particularly sad breed sad. As the
Speaker 1: President might say in all caps with several exclamation points,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what we can possibly say about Operation
Speaker 1: Epic Fury, because I have no idea what's going on,
Speaker 1: and I don't pretend to the only thing that seems
Speaker 1: to be the case is that we're talking to somebody,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure who. I'm not sure whether or
Speaker 1: not there are any political entities that have any power.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure whether or not the IRGC is doing
Speaker 1: things of their own accord from their various cells. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know. You might what's going on,
Speaker 1: Nolan Jurles tell it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know either. I do know that if
Speaker 2: we cut and run now, whether we call a diseased
Speaker 2: fire or not, then we will have in effect told
Speaker 2: the Iranians that they can get rid of us anytime
Speaker 2: they like by closing the straits before moves. And that
Speaker 2: seems to me to be a big problem and in
Speaker 2: some sense to undercut one of our rationales, which is
Speaker 2: that we wish to deprive bad actors in the world
Speaker 2: of that sort of power. If you recall a very
Speaker 2: good in my view, Marko Rubio's speech from I Don't
Speaker 2: Know ten twelve years ago, he made the point that
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that we can't allow the Iranians
Speaker 2: to have a nuclear weapon, aside from the fact that
Speaker 2: they want to use it against Israel, is that once
Speaker 2: you get that, then you have a trump card, as
Speaker 2: it were, And he pointed to North Korea. He might
Speaker 2: also have pointed to Ukraine, which doesn't have that and
Speaker 2: god invaded by Russia. The argument being North Korea can
Speaker 2: now do pretty much what it wants because anytime we
Speaker 2: say we would like it if you would change your ways,
Speaker 2: they say, aha, but we have a nuclear weapon, and
Speaker 2: we didn't want Iran to be in the same boat.
Speaker 2: Well it's not quite the same. But if Iran has
Speaker 2: an economic nuclear weapon and just say, well, we will
Speaker 2: crash the global economy and cause gas prices to go up.
Speaker 2: Then that would be pretty bad. And I really hope
Speaker 2: that we're not going to leave this with that being
Speaker 2: the resolution.
Speaker 1: Because then I don't see how they can.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you how they could, and I agree,
Speaker 2: I don't think they should. But how they could is
Speaker 2: a bunch of people in the Republican parties say to
Speaker 2: the President we would quite like to keep our seats
Speaker 2: in Kong, and people are annoyed because gas prices are
Speaker 2: high when we are bombing them, and the stock market
Speaker 2: goes down when we are bombing them, and Trump, who's
Speaker 2: quite short term and is thinking, says, okay, then, I
Speaker 2: mean I don't think that will or should happen, but
Speaker 2: that's how it could.
Speaker 1: Happen, right, Yeah, it could. It could well. At least
Speaker 1: a whole civilization didn't die.
Speaker 2: I found that.
Speaker 1: Tweet to be that may be the meanest tweet of all,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was a bit. My daughter sent
Speaker 1: it to me and said, is this something I should
Speaker 1: be worried about? And I said, no, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: know them. I'm not exactly sure what he says what
Speaker 1: is the civilization that's going to die? Is at the
Speaker 1: ancient Persian civilization that preceded Islam, is at the quote
Speaker 1: civilization end quote of the mullas what is it? And
Speaker 1: if if it is the regime that's going to die,
Speaker 1: then why did he say? I didn't want it to happen?
Speaker 1: But I do love who knows question mark in all
Speaker 1: caps to be the epitome of strategic ambiguity.
Speaker 2: And then finished with God bless the Iranian people.
Speaker 1: People right, who were going to end. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: would I would have worked on that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I would have run by a few people. But that's
Speaker 1: not how it goes. And I don't get particularly upset
Speaker 1: about it, and it did seem to concentrate minds wonderfully. Well,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: It's context dependent. That's sort of rhetoric, right. If you
Speaker 2: look back to Truman at the end of World War Two,
Speaker 2: he did threaten the Japanese that we would inflict destruction
Speaker 2: from the air of the sort that has never been seen.
Speaker 2: But that was a bit of a different circumstance. We
Speaker 2: were gearing up to send seven million people touch a
Speaker 2: p so I thought that was a bit over the
Speaker 2: top of the president, but I also didn't worry about
Speaker 2: it beyond being upset by the rhetoric from an American
Speaker 2: president because I didn't think he was going to do it,
Speaker 2: because he, of course wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 1: Well. It was quite the weak for maure though. We
Speaker 1: had a spectacular rescue operation which was conducted by setting
Speaker 1: up a base in inside of our own practically, and
Speaker 1: at the same time we hurled a bunch of people
Speaker 1: to the Moon and they're coming back soon and fingers
Speaker 1: are crossed. We're going to have a splashdown, which seems
Speaker 1: archaic now, doesn't it. We're so used to the Challenger
Speaker 1: and the Challenger, so used to the crafts just gliding
Speaker 1: to a stop, these massive bricks that these guys drop
Speaker 1: that orbit managed to pilot through a particular small, little
Speaker 1: ending strip that seemed to be the future, and now
Speaker 1: splash down seems like they're going to get out with
Speaker 1: buzz cut haircuts and then we're going to change the
Speaker 1: channel to I Love to idream a genie. Do you
Speaker 1: think that this mission has accomplished what it was supposed
Speaker 1: to accomplish and what was that?
Speaker 2: Well? I will very quickly note that it's Friday afternoon
Speaker 2: and they haven't got back yet. But if they get back,
Speaker 2: it seems that it absolutely achieved it was supposed to achieve,
Speaker 2: and what it will have achieved if it is successfully
Speaker 2: completed is remarkable and no less remarkable for the fact
Speaker 2: that we have done it before. How long has it
Speaker 2: been since we last went to the moon? Was it
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two?
Speaker 1: I think so, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Fifty four years, and since then no one else has
Speaker 2: done it. The United States remains the only nation to
Speaker 2: have been And next year or the year after, we're
Speaker 2: going again. Yes, these do and this is great, This
Speaker 2: is great, James great. You know, there was this period
Speaker 2: in around I don't know, two thousand and five to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty maybe where people were quite dismissive of what
Speaker 2: I think is a miracle, which is the Internet and
Speaker 2: the way it's delivered to your hands. And they would say, fine,
Speaker 2: everyone in the whole world now has the Library of
Speaker 2: Alexandria and their pocket. But and then they would list
Speaker 2: things that we could no longer do. And this was
Speaker 2: a totally fair point. I think it just wasn't fair.
Speaker 2: As an illustration of our supposed decline. They would say, well,
Speaker 2: we don't not have concord anymore, so we can't cross
Speaker 2: the Atlantic in two and a half hours. We used
Speaker 2: to be able to do that, And well, we can't
Speaker 2: go to the Moon anymore. We used to do that,
Speaker 2: but now we don't and we don't have the Space
Speaker 2: shuttle anymore. And there's some truth to this. I just
Speaker 2: think that it was too depressive as an argument. But
Speaker 2: now we kind of do have the moon again. I mean,
Speaker 2: if this finishes successfully, we're back in that phase which
Speaker 2: seemed to be hibernating for fifty years.
Speaker 1: I agree there is more. The geist has the aurar
Speaker 1: of animal spirits about it. Again, the reason we didn't
Speaker 1: do those things before, and all the things that people
Speaker 1: said we couldn't do, was not because we locked the
Speaker 1: lest the most the ability to do them. It's because
Speaker 1: we lacked the will, or rather we elected people who
Speaker 1: believed that the will should not be there in the
Speaker 1: first place. The concord, I mean, they're economic challenges, yeah,
Speaker 1: cramped and uncomfortable and expensive and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Could we have continued with SSTs. Well, there's a big
Speaker 1: controversy here in the United States when we were trying
Speaker 1: to gear up to build SSTs, and eventually I think
Speaker 1: that they were outlawed. So that wasn't a case that
Speaker 1: we didn't have the tech. We had the tech. We
Speaker 1: didn't go back to the Moon because we couldn't figure
Speaker 1: a reason to and because we'd lost our enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: we'd lost the initiative and the drive. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know we couldn't build a base back then
Speaker 1: because we didn't have the scrubbers and we didn't have
Speaker 1: the robots and the rest of it. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that whatever we built. I mean, I think sometimes I
Speaker 1: had a peace about this NRO. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: on this very day, if we had gone back where
Speaker 1: I now write a weekly piece on the weekends, thank you,
Speaker 1: If we had gone back and built a base in
Speaker 1: the seventies, by the nineties, it would have been outmoded
Speaker 1: and kind of a joke, and people would have made
Speaker 1: fun of it, and nobody would be particularly impressed, and
Speaker 1: there'd be an air leak and six people would die
Speaker 1: and they'd say, why are we up there? We'd be
Speaker 1: reading stories about how the outdated computer system of the
Speaker 1: movement base is still running on floppy discs the size
Speaker 1: of a of a record album. I'm kind of glad
Speaker 1: we didn't. If you've seen the Alternative Future show for
Speaker 1: All Mankind, that's an interesting view of what had happened.
Speaker 1: If the Space Race indeed made us build bases to
Speaker 1: compete with the Russians in the eighties. But we didn't
Speaker 1: do that because we didn't. I mean, we could have,
Speaker 1: but we lacked the initiations. So all these things that
Speaker 1: people are talking about, well, we can't do this is
Speaker 1: usually the result of some larger organization frowning, banning, saying no,
Speaker 1: I mean, we could have built a California bullet train
Speaker 1: very quickly except for the environmental regulations, except for the
Speaker 1: union padding and the rest of it. We still could.
Speaker 1: We still can. We know that we can, but you're right, they.
Speaker 2: Don't want to build that. This is the big difference
Speaker 2: is I saw a tweet and it said Elon Musk
Speaker 2: managed to send three hundred rockets into orbit for ten
Speaker 2: billion dollars, and the California bullet Train is one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty billion in and hasn't gotten any track. And
Speaker 2: it's a fair point. But the difference is Elon Musk
Speaker 2: wants to send rockets into space. That's what the money
Speaker 2: that he has allocated for it is for. If the
Speaker 2: rockets don't go into orbit, then he fails. Whereas I'm
Speaker 2: looking at tweets from the project, the California High Spiled
Speaker 2: Rail project, saying this is great because we've created sixteen
Speaker 2: thousand while paying jobs. Okay, that's not the same thing
Speaker 2: as building a train though they don't actually want to
Speaker 2: build the train.
Speaker 1: No, the money stops to the unions and the rest
Speaker 1: of it when they actually finish the train. Now, I
Speaker 1: love trains, I do. I love wozling around Europe and
Speaker 1: a train. I like being on trams in European cities.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that I think that has to be replicated here.
Speaker 1: It's a huge country. I was listening to the podcast
Speaker 1: the other day and somebody was he was a brit
Speaker 1: was talking about he said he had to drive across
Speaker 1: the entire country. Took him forward. He had a four
Speaker 1: hour car trip to drive across the entire country. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure Midlands or South or whatever, but that I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's here to far go.
Speaker 2: Well, I just did that. That's why I'm ten minutes late.
Speaker 2: I just did that today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so, yeah, and so it's a big
Speaker 1: we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't need them.
Speaker 1: But it seems every day, but once a month on
Speaker 1: my feed there's a story from somebody in some travel magazine.
Speaker 1: I took the Empire Builder overnight and had a cabin
Speaker 1: and here was my experience. And it's always the same,
Speaker 1: it's always I absolutely had the greatest time. America should
Speaker 1: build more trains. We did have a seventeen hour breakdown
Speaker 1: in the middle of Montana in the winter, but they
Speaker 1: gave us free peanuts and my room wasn't heated very well.
Speaker 1: But you know, I I the price you pay. No
Speaker 1: Americans fill out of love with dreams an awful long
Speaker 1: time ago. So what are some other things, though, Charles,
Speaker 1: that we can do? Because I'm you're the one who
Speaker 1: wrote the great piece on optimism and cheer, there's some
Speaker 1: other things that we can do that people scoff about.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually think we should bring back supersonic travel,
Speaker 2: partly because it would be very useful to me. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 2: be how long to fly from Miami to London on
Speaker 2: a supersonic plan About three hours?
Speaker 1: Hmmm?
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's cramped, I would take that
Speaker 2: trade off.
Speaker 1: And you're a rangy guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then I've seen these plans for planes that
Speaker 2: go up essentially into the stratosphere and then they can
Speaker 2: go from London to Sydney in about three hours. I'm
Speaker 2: sure it's expensive, but that sounds pretty great too.
Speaker 1: I would love to get to England faster because there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no way to avoid hideous jet lag once you
Speaker 1: get on the other side. And I know, I know
Speaker 1: first world problems. So we can do that. We should
Speaker 1: do that, he says, we could. I think we can
Speaker 1: still build incredibly tall skyscrapers. That is something that we
Speaker 1: can still do and managed to do. New York just
Speaker 1: recently opened a very very tall building for JP Morgan,
Speaker 1: which I believe is actually one of the most hideous
Speaker 1: structures to go up by the designed by the hand
Speaker 1: of modern man in years. It's appalling, but people love
Speaker 1: it and it's a new, big, huge addition. I don't
Speaker 1: understand exactly why New York continues to grow and add
Speaker 1: the office space that they do, even if the previous
Speaker 1: government was not exactly business friendly. Mundami is not making
Speaker 1: all kinds of noises about the worst sort of democratic
Speaker 1: socialist of America, nonsense equity taxes and the rest. What
Speaker 1: are your takes on this? He's been pretty explicit about
Speaker 1: what he's saying and why these taxes are supposed to
Speaker 1: be done.
Speaker 2: Somebody to me, Oh, it's certainly not constitutional at the
Speaker 2: federal level for different reasons than it may not be
Speaker 2: at the state level. The federal government is only allowed
Speaker 2: to do those things the Constitution says it's allowed to do,
Speaker 2: and there's nowhere in the Constitution that the federal government
Speaker 2: is empowered to impose a wealth tax. The champions of
Speaker 2: that tax are conveniently ignoring this and essentially insisting that
Speaker 2: it has to be done because it has to be done.
Speaker 2: But I think the Supreme Court has already been clear
Speaker 2: about this, albeit by implication, and would be again. The
Speaker 2: state question is a little bit more complicated. Certainly, it
Speaker 2: is a horrible idea in New York, and I think
Speaker 2: I'm right in saying that, unlike with the billionaire tax
Speaker 2: that is being proposed federally, which has quickly become the
Speaker 2: multi millionaire tax. You may have noticed, the one that
Speaker 2: Ma'm Danny wants is what's seven hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: or something. Perhaps that's the estate portion of the tax.
Speaker 1: Effectively, I think I think it went from five million
Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty thousand for the estate tax right.
Speaker 2: For the state portion, and the equity tax starts pretty
Speaker 2: low by New York standards, given how much it costs
Speaker 2: to live there, So I think this would be a
Speaker 2: real boon to Florida. Once again, the big trend here
Speaker 2: is toward exit taxes. Internally, we've seen ten states now
Speaker 2: proposed exit taxes. Now, exit taxes are unconstitutional. You can
Speaker 2: sort of impose exit and entrance taxes if you don't
Speaker 2: do it explicitly. So when I moved from Connecticut to Florida,
Speaker 2: we got hit on both ends because Connecticut has laws
Speaker 2: that are neutral but that charge you when you sell
Speaker 2: a house, and Florida has quite high, for example, mortgage
Speaker 2: initiation taxes and that sort of thing. So clearly Florida
Speaker 2: is aware people are moving in, and Connecticut is aware
Speaker 2: that people are leaving, and so they have taxes that
Speaker 2: coincide with those things. What you can't do in America,
Speaker 2: because of the free movement of people and capital within
Speaker 2: its borders, is literally do what East Germany did. I'd
Speaker 2: say you're not allowed to leave, or if you leave
Speaker 2: the state, we will charge you this or that tax.
Speaker 2: But that is in effect what ma'm Dini is aiming at.
Speaker 2: And I really am not trying to be hyperbolic when
Speaker 2: I say this. I do get the impression with him
Speaker 2: and some others that if they could build a wall,
Speaker 2: they'd do it. If you heard Kathy Hokel complaining about
Speaker 2: people moving to Florida and being unpatriotic recently, she said
Speaker 2: this as if it was a problem. She said, well,
Speaker 2: of course, we live in a country people could just move.
Speaker 2: I think that's a wonderful thing. I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the best things about America. It's a free trade,
Speaker 2: free people's zone. If you don't like one state, you
Speaker 2: can move to another. And that doesn't just mean in
Speaker 2: the way I would approve of. I think there are
Speaker 2: good places that have different governments than I would like.
Speaker 2: Massachusetts is a nice place to live, and if that's
Speaker 2: your worldview, then you probably get on pretty well there,
Speaker 2: So it's good that you can move there. But I
Speaker 2: think that the Blue states are starting to freak out
Speaker 2: about this and actually would like to see it be different, Oh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. The problem is, though, is that every time they
Speaker 1: do this for the name of equity and the rest
Speaker 1: of it, they make the golden goods which they fat,
Speaker 1: which has been fattened up for their convenience, scronnier and
Speaker 1: less healthy. The result of all these policies is an exodus.
Speaker 1: Minneapolis is considering a tax on the rich, wealth tax.
Speaker 1: Minnesota legislatures considering I believe a wealth tax as well.
Speaker 1: Minnesota's not a low tax state. Now. Minnesota used to
Speaker 1: have a great bargain with its people, which is, we're
Speaker 1: going to tax you a lot. We are, but you're
Speaker 1: going to get good schools and good roads, good governance,
Speaker 1: no corruption. It's going to be a fair play, and
Speaker 1: we're all gonna benefit. And local corporations pitched right in
Speaker 1: and promised to give five percent of the pre tax
Speaker 1: profits and the rest of it. And for a while
Speaker 1: there it all worked, and everybody talked about the Minnesota miracle.
Speaker 1: Mary Tyler More was perfectly happy to move here. But
Speaker 1: consequently what happens, of course, is you get a lot
Speaker 1: of people to move in for the benefits and don't contribute,
Speaker 1: and then you have an elected class of people who
Speaker 1: just continue to take inciphon more money out of the
Speaker 1: productive call class until you've got Well. I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: living in a healthscape here. I'm in a Dina, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: which is a nice part of town. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there was a shooting right around the corner
Speaker 1: at the La Fitness there by some miscreants who had
Speaker 1: moved in. And yeah, people tend to look at places
Speaker 1: that are safer and cheaper. Why wouldn't they. The exit
Speaker 1: tax just makes me think that they're going to have
Speaker 1: state troopers on the freeways heading out and if they
Speaker 1: see a car with a U haul or too many
Speaker 1: boxes piled on its roof, they're going to haul you over.
Speaker 1: Check your fillings for gold you may be trying to
Speaker 1: smuggle out, or some jewels that you've sown into your clothing,
Speaker 1: like the romanops when they were taken off. Here's some
Speaker 1: more of Mundami's racial equity plan, according to The New
Speaker 1: York Post and accordeit to Perry, who's cheerfully provided it for
Speaker 1: me here in the rundown. You're going to increase the
Speaker 1: number of city teachers who quote receive professional learning in
Speaker 1: implicit bias and culturally relevant pedagogy. Now that's interesting because
Speaker 1: it means we're going to pay more professional lecturers to
Speaker 1: teach the professional lecturers about implicit bias. Charles, do you
Speaker 1: think that the school system of New York is riddled
Speaker 1: with people who themselves are absolutely shot through with implicit
Speaker 1: bias and that's the reason for the poor test scores?
Speaker 2: No, I think these people are maniacs. And although the
Speaker 2: consequences of it are slightly different, and although it is
Speaker 2: less frowned upon, and it's lack of a direct connection
Speaker 2: to the bad parts of our nation's history, I think
Speaker 2: at route this sort of thinking is no different than
Speaker 2: was routine in the clan. I think that if you
Speaker 2: spend your time obsessing over the immutable characteristics of your
Speaker 2: fellow citizens, then you're a bad person and about American,
Speaker 2: and you're going to lead us down a dark path.
Speaker 2: And I see this as being not so much an
Speaker 2: overcorrection but an inversion of that ugly habit. I really
Speaker 2: do find it revolting. I saw in the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: I've been on vacation, but I saw in the Washington
Speaker 2: Post there was a piece slamming the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 2: just the piece was that this ultra conservative Trump appointed
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is for the first time in years, refusing
Speaker 2: to uphold civil rights. And I thought, that's very interesting.
Speaker 2: That sounds bad.
Speaker 1: So I read the headline. Was the headline literally was
Speaker 1: the meme women and minorities in this word?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I read dan and the first and
Speaker 2: really only substantial claim that civil rights in America have
Speaker 2: been undermined was a reference to the Supreme Court finally
Speaker 2: refusing to sanction affirmative action, which is quite literally color blindness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You can argue if you want with the reasoning in
Speaker 2: that case, I was probably more of the view that
Speaker 2: the Civil Rights Act was being violated than that the
Speaker 2: Fourteenth Amendment necessarily was, although there are good arguments against that,
Speaker 2: one made by Clarence Thomas. But irrespective, it is absolutely
Speaker 2: preposterous to suggest that government stopping discriminating on the basis
Speaker 2: of race is the civil rights violation. And yet, and yet,
Speaker 2: there's a certain class of people, and our fortune, there
Speaker 2: are far too many of them in our media and
Speaker 2: academia and government who think that the way that you
Speaker 2: achieve the values that are inherent to the Declaration of
Speaker 2: Independence is to bring people into a room to be
Speaker 2: lectured by those who cannot see human beings but for
Speaker 2: their skin color, or sexual orientation or what you will.
Speaker 2: And I think it's tragedy.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, yes, we'd like to be color blind,
Speaker 1: but there's a disparate impact to that. I mean that
Speaker 1: flipped at some point, gone into the character was what
Speaker 1: they wanted, and that flipped in order to make the
Speaker 1: numbers better and to achieve better results now and all
Speaker 1: the rest of it's an inversion, of course, as we've said,
Speaker 1: of what the original objections were. But you're right, color
Speaker 1: blindness is a violation of civil rights because because you know,
Speaker 1: as Mendeimi says, because of systemic racism. Now, the idea
Speaker 1: that there is systemic racism endemic in New York institutional
Speaker 1: educational structures at this point is preposterous. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. As somebody pointed out, there are all
Speaker 1: these systems, interlocking and such that do these things as opposed,
Speaker 1: and it's it's never no bad outcome is ever the
Speaker 1: fault of the people who are experiencing and manifesting the outcome.
Speaker 1: It's all these institutions operating in seamless meshing behavior. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about culturally relevant things as he did.
Speaker 1: That's one of those phrases that makes you think back
Speaker 1: to the sixties when everybody was protesting about what they
Speaker 1: were being taught in school because it wasn't relevant. Man,
Speaker 1: it wasn't relevant to be It wasn't I can't feel that.
Speaker 1: So what they're saying, and what they've been saying all along,
Speaker 1: is that we can't teach the American story. We can't
Speaker 1: teach the American experience the exceptionalism moment. What we have
Speaker 1: to do is to find a way to pluck out
Speaker 1: some narrow little things and give those to people, because
Speaker 1: they are incapable of understanding anything beyond themselves in whatever
Speaker 1: particular clan that may happen to be part of, which
Speaker 1: is which is grossly insulting. But the only history they're
Speaker 1: going to teach them is sixteen nineteen. They're not going
Speaker 1: to teach them anything else, because how culturally relevant is that?
Speaker 1: Culturally relevant is the expansion to the West and the
Speaker 1: rise of the railroads and industrialization and the rise of
Speaker 1: communications and the rest of it. To somebody in New
Speaker 1: York in twenty twenty six, I mean, please come on,
Speaker 1: get out.
Speaker 2: Of here and that he's an immigrant James, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: that means that he came to the United States and
Speaker 2: that's what he picked up, and that's a failure. I'm
Speaker 2: afraid that is a failure of the system, speaking of
Speaker 2: systems to inculcate and I use that word quite openly,
Speaker 2: newcomers with the foundational values of the United States. If
Speaker 2: we have immigrants who are obsessed with that, that's a failure.
Speaker 1: It is a problem. But I don't think it was.
Speaker 1: It was stuffed into him, like he's a goose being
Speaker 1: fattened up for the FOI gras. I think I think
Speaker 1: that that's what he naturally gravitated towards. And in this country,
Speaker 1: there's a big in a New York there's a lot
Speaker 1: of juice that account that you can get by going
Speaker 1: to that side, because that's the side with virtue, and
Speaker 1: that's the side where everybody's gonna praise you. So for
Speaker 1: him to plug into that as classic grifter mode really is.
Speaker 1: But he also said he wants a public school curriculum
Speaker 1: that reflects the diversity of families and communities. Okay, we
Speaker 1: just don't with that, And he's demanding anti racism training
Speaker 1: for city government staff to help workers quote combat racial
Speaker 1: discrimination in the workplace, which again, apparently New York is
Speaker 1: just a healthscape after I mean, granted, he's the first
Speaker 1: person on the left to govern New York in what
Speaker 1: a hundred years? How under these previous under adams, under
Speaker 1: these previous administrations, was that was racism allowed to fester
Speaker 1: to the point where he's got to bring in some
Speaker 1: to read them Ibraham Candy books. Every time I use
Speaker 1: here to see the phrase anti racism, I know that
Speaker 1: somebody's drunk all that flavor rate, because that doesn't just mean, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm against racism. It's a whole set of behaviors and
Speaker 1: thoughts and things that you have to do to combat
Speaker 1: racism and every single manifestation. And Candy is not a
Speaker 1: deep thinker. Kendy is not particularly the guy your go
Speaker 1: to guy for heavyweight analysis or heavyweight to intellectual liftings.
Speaker 1: But you know, I thought his free ride was over,
Speaker 1: but apparently he's got a new book out and people
Speaker 1: are paying attention to him again for that. Finally, he's
Speaker 1: requiring the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development to quote
Speaker 1: insure racial equity is considered in evaluating one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of new proposals for construction one hundred percent. Now, what
Speaker 1: that usually means is using small firms that are cutouts
Speaker 1: for other people to say that we've got ten twenty
Speaker 1: thirty percent minority contractors on this one. Actually it's kind
Speaker 1: of a shell game where they got a guy up
Speaker 1: front and they got other guys in the back. So
Speaker 1: that's more I mean, that's just more money. All the
Speaker 1: stuff that he talks about, none of it is going
Speaker 1: to achieve anything except the enrichment of the class that
Speaker 1: comes in and tells you how to think and how
Speaker 1: to behave and what not to do. None of this
Speaker 1: solves changes anything. Have you ever been through implicit bias
Speaker 1: training journals?
Speaker 2: I have not, and in fact I have made it
Speaker 2: a point of principle to refuse to work anywhere where
Speaker 2: they would put me through that or with any organization
Speaker 2: that would require it. Now, obviously this has not been
Speaker 2: a problem my National Review, which.
Speaker 1: Is institutionally a bit of racist, though it is yet.
Speaker 2: Oh exactly no, but its institutionally against this. But it
Speaker 2: has crossed my mind that if I lost my job
Speaker 2: or what you will, and I went in a different
Speaker 2: direction and I was told to do this what would
Speaker 2: I do? And I think I would just have to
Speaker 2: say I'm sorry, I'm not doing that. But of course
Speaker 2: maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I would see my children's starving
Speaker 2: mouths and say I better sit through it. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I feel you see, this is why I think that
Speaker 2: DeSantis was right in Florida when he signed the bill
Speaker 2: that effectively outlaws this. And I think that those with
Speaker 2: whom I usually agree, who said ah butt the first
Speaker 2: Amendment were wrong. I'll tell you why, because I am fortunate,
Speaker 2: I have a nice life, and I work somewhere that's
Speaker 2: never going to ask me to do this. And I
Speaker 2: am not typical in that respect because most people, increasing
Speaker 2: this is the case, work for large companies. More people
Speaker 2: now than ever work for large companies. The number of
Speaker 2: people who work for small businesses has declined and declined
Speaker 2: and decline, and large companies are much more likely than
Speaker 2: other companies to put their staff through this sort of nonsense,
Speaker 2: and that makes those who work within those large companies
Speaker 2: somewhat powerless. If you're a middle manager at Unilever, you
Speaker 2: don't have a huge amount of say as to whether
Speaker 2: you have to sit through this. Now, as a general rule,
Speaker 2: I am a First Amendment absolutist, and I think that
Speaker 2: those companies should be able to do whatever they want.
Speaker 2: And that means that if they want to be conservative
Speaker 2: or progressive, or Christian or not Christian, find their private institutions.
Speaker 2: But we do have civil rights laws in this country.
Speaker 2: And if you suppose this goes back to our earlier conversation,
Speaker 2: if you said to someone, look, middle manager at Unilever,
Speaker 2: you need to sit through a presentation as part of
Speaker 2: your job that tells you why black people are inferior,
Speaker 2: it would be abundantly obvious to everyone, given our civil
Speaker 2: rights precedence, that that was illegal. You wouldn't say, ah,
Speaker 2: by what about the First Amendment? You'd say, well, in
Speaker 2: this case, the civil rights laws control and unless we
Speaker 2: change that, then that will continue to be the case. Well,
Speaker 2: I do not see any difference between that hypothetical and
Speaker 2: what was going on, especially during and after COVID and
Speaker 2: some of George Floyd, where people were being asked to
Speaker 2: sit through presentations that effectively said white people are racist,
Speaker 2: the United States of America is racist, and you, white
Speaker 2: middle manager at Unilever are the problem. And Dessantis said,
Speaker 2: we're just not doing that. If we're going to have
Speaker 2: civil rights laws. They're going to be applied in both directions.
Speaker 2: They're not going to be employed. And he got student
Speaker 2: students sutent and I'm not quite sure what the status
Speaker 2: of the laws. And a lot of people I really respect,
Speaker 2: to a big free speech guys like me, said well,
Speaker 2: he can't do that. Well, why can't he do that?
Speaker 2: Why is it the case that only in wonder because
Speaker 2: if you read the Civil Rights Act, it doesn't say
Speaker 2: in one direction. It doesn't say white, Black, Asian, Mexican,
Speaker 2: or whatever. It just says discrimination on the basis of race.
Speaker 2: It just says hostile work environment. It just has these terms.
Speaker 2: So I was very strongly in favor of that because
Speaker 2: I think it was supposed to protect everyone, which is
Speaker 2: what it did. And it also prevents what you're talking about,
Speaker 2: which is this circular grift where the people who are
Speaker 2: obsessed with this high the people who are obsessed with this,
Speaker 2: and they transfer my money, usually between themselves, and then
Speaker 2: pat each other on the bag.
Speaker 1: I've said this before, but it's a good thing. Nobody
Speaker 1: remembers what I say. I have gone through this kind
Speaker 1: of training, and three things stuck out in my mind. One. First,
Speaker 1: they were asking us all to identify ourselves. What we
Speaker 1: identified as? I said, and I said, un North to Cotin,
Speaker 1: because that's the culture in which I was brought up,
Speaker 1: for which I got my ethics, ethos, the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And so they smiled indulgently and also chucked me up
Speaker 1: to Oh, you're going to be one of those, aren't you.
Speaker 1: The second thing we had to do was play with lego,
Speaker 1: and they just gave us a bunch of lego and
Speaker 1: asked us to build something. So of course you're on
Speaker 1: your guard right away. What I'm good? How am I
Speaker 1: going to be? Jut? What? So? I designed? I built
Speaker 1: a little house. I did, and then when I looked
Speaker 1: at it at the end, I said, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I grouped all of the colors together. There was a
Speaker 1: red wall and a blue wall and a yellow wall
Speaker 1: because to me, that seems to be more aesthetically appealing thing.
Speaker 1: And there's a chimney. I've built a segregated crematorium. And
Speaker 1: I was terrified They're going to look at that and say,
Speaker 1: this guy's built a segregic gated crematorium. But they never
Speaker 1: explained what that was about. Anyway. Finally they showed us pictures,
Speaker 1: and we're supposed to have reactions to these images. And
Speaker 1: they showed us a guy with facial hair can think
Speaker 1: of me like a biker and leathers, and he's holding
Speaker 1: in his hands, he's holding a dowel of sorts like
Speaker 1: a truncheon, and so it was a little circular picture
Speaker 1: around him, and we're supposed to ask what we thought
Speaker 1: about him, and you know, generally people said, well, he
Speaker 1: looks like he looks mean and dangerous. I would avoid him.
Speaker 1: Well then they pulled out on the image and it
Speaker 1: turns out that this biker, the trothal that he was
Speaker 1: holding was actually the handle of a pram. He was
Speaker 1: pushing a baby cart. And we're supposed to think, oh,
Speaker 1: aren't we silly for having made the assumptions that we did.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, who walks around in the world with,
Speaker 1: you know, look through the life through a toilet paper
Speaker 1: tube where they can't see the entire thing. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be scared of a man in
Speaker 1: leathers who's pushing a baby cart. But this was meant
Speaker 1: to show us how we make assumptions that don't turn
Speaker 1: on to be true. You can't assume. Remember when you
Speaker 1: make an assumption, you make an ass out of you annumption.
Speaker 1: And it was miserable and nobody learned anything, and everyone
Speaker 1: just sat through and endured it because the company made
Speaker 1: us do it, and then they could check a box
Speaker 1: and move along. I almost got sent to sensitivity training
Speaker 1: towards the end of my tenure at the Star Tribune
Speaker 1: because I committed a gross racial insult that I had
Speaker 1: to grovel, I had to go through. I had to
Speaker 1: go through a struggle session in slack I did. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've spoken about this. I had used a
Speaker 1: phrase I said, in many cafes, small town bars in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: you'll see a sign that says Tipping is not a
Speaker 1: city in China. And those signs used to be everywhere.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, they still are. When I
Speaker 1: did a Google search for it, the phrase came up
Speaker 1: and ABC story, but it was regarded as racial insensitivity
Speaker 1: and making fun of the act. It was making fun
Speaker 1: of the accent of Asian people. And what's more, it
Speaker 1: was Asian American Journalist Month or something like that, and
Speaker 1: that compounded my sin. And there was something else in
Speaker 1: the piece that was not to the liking I mean
Speaker 1: I generally sort of kind of made fun of everybody,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really think that I couldn't anyway. So
Speaker 1: the piece got yanked from the paper, scrub from the internet.
Speaker 1: The print version was still out there. The paper apologized
Speaker 1: for the insensitivity in its correction space, and people were
Speaker 1: writing I was following this on local creddits and other stuff.
Speaker 1: People were saying, I have no idea what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: I read that thing. I have no idea what he said.
Speaker 1: That was so bad. It was a mystery ahead scratched
Speaker 1: of all, probably the beginning of my downfall there, So jams.
Speaker 2: What was the piece replaced with? Was it replaced with
Speaker 2: an editorial explaining why it's important for social justice to
Speaker 2: give Asian people out of colleges, which is the literal
Speaker 2: position of IDs who were torturing you.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know
Speaker 1: it was absurd.
Speaker 2: I can't say Tipping is not a city in China
Speaker 2: can systematically discriminate against stations in college admissions. That's the
Speaker 2: that's the social justice rule.
Speaker 1: Right, So that I guarantee you that the walk that
Speaker 1: I got a little bit with people at the Washington
Speaker 1: Post and the New York Times did were anybody any
Speaker 1: gray head there, any veteran journalist with experience found himself
Speaker 1: dealing with these these maoist red guards and just I mean,
Speaker 1: I got a mild version of what some guys do.
Speaker 1: But we're told this is crested. We're told that in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, woke is over, it's in retreat. We're
Speaker 1: told that me too is spent. We're told that the
Speaker 1: that the trans mania has subsided has peaked and subsided.
Speaker 1: Do you think these things are true? I think they are,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean they're gone. Ah.
Speaker 2: I think they are in one sense or not. In another.
Speaker 2: I think they are in that the public, which never
Speaker 2: had much time for them, has even less time for
Speaker 2: them now. I think that one of the manifestations of
Speaker 2: that was the victory of the Trump campaign in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, and that we are likely to get some
Speaker 2: Democratic victories in the midterms and probably in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight presidential election. And when we do, many of
Speaker 2: the people who don't care that the positions that they
Speaker 2: espouse are on popular will once again have control of
Speaker 2: the leaders of power, and they will push this stuff
Speaker 2: irrespective of public opinion. So I think that it has
Speaker 2: peaked in its popular form. We probably won't see as
Speaker 2: much of it from private companies. But I would be
Speaker 2: surprised if we get a democratic president twenty eight come
Speaker 2: mid twenty nine, if we're not looking at the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice starting all that stuff up again.
Speaker 1: But I don't see it with a trans issue. I
Speaker 1: think everybody's backed off that one and realizes that there's
Speaker 1: no gain in it anymore, and that it is no
Speaker 1: longer the vanguard of human thinking and transformation, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and that the lawsuits will start coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, that one. The lawsuits is
Speaker 2: a big part of this. That's how things change in America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, and good for us. Good for us,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, speaking of the future. Let us conclude
Speaker 1: with this. I think you've made a bombshell announcement the
Speaker 1: other day in Rickshet that five point oh is en route.
Speaker 1: Now those of us who have been with us thing
Speaker 1: since they plugged it in, and I've been here since
Speaker 1: the original day. I remember when Robin Peter came to
Speaker 1: my house as a matter of fact, at one point
Speaker 1: for a party, and I said, why didn't I write
Speaker 1: for you? And they said, yeah, why don't you write
Speaker 1: for us? And then the next thing, I know, I
Speaker 1: am doing this for years. So I was there at
Speaker 1: one point. Oh, I've been there for the various iterations
Speaker 1: of the logo and the typeface and the style and
Speaker 1: the rest of it. But it's been static for some
Speaker 1: time and out comes five point Oh. I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of occasionally shaking everything up and redesigning. Charles, what
Speaker 1: have you done? What have you done to our beloved Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Well, it will be a big shake up because this
Speaker 2: will be the first time in Ricochet's history that Ricochet
Speaker 2: is an app, by which I mean to say not
Speaker 2: that it will run immediately on your mobile or though
Speaker 2: there'll be a mobile version in a browser, but that
Speaker 2: it is not going to be built on something else.
Speaker 2: My understanding is that Ricochet has historically been a top
Speaker 2: a CMS and other infrastructure. Currently it's word Press. It's
Speaker 2: no secret, and it won't be. This is going to
Speaker 2: be like Twitter or Facebook or anything else, its own thing.
Speaker 2: It will be built from the ground up as a bespoke, custom,
Speaker 2: self contained piece of software. I have taken that decision
Speaker 2: despite the fact that it is something of a jump
Speaker 2: after a lot of thought. As some people will know,
Speaker 2: my business partner passed away six weeks ago, and I
Speaker 2: reviewed everything, and I came to the view that Ricochet
Speaker 2: is not best suited to being crammed into someone else's
Speaker 2: software or working within its confines. So there'll be two stages.
Speaker 2: Stage one is the launch of Ricochet with all of
Speaker 2: its legacy data, everything up until the point at which
Speaker 2: it is Ricochet five will be there. And then the
Speaker 2: second step will be pretty aggressively adding new features to
Speaker 2: the new system.
Speaker 1: Well, you're gonna have to go to big Share to
Speaker 1: find out what those are. And the release date is
Speaker 1: when is it this weekends at next not this week?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, it will be no later than September thirtieth
Speaker 2: of this year.
Speaker 1: Ah okay. Good. So we're not going to tease you
Speaker 1: with things that might not appear. We're not going to
Speaker 1: wet your app Well, we will wet your appetite. But
Speaker 1: I tell you what, right now, Ricochet four point zh
Speaker 1: it's still a great place to be. I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm there several times a day. We should also add
Speaker 1: that I understand the trials of building something on top
Speaker 1: of something else, using somebody else's platform. I my site
Speaker 1: has had code so simple for so long that when
Speaker 1: some people look at it, they just they it's like
Speaker 1: they feel young again. It's like twenty years never happened.
Speaker 1: I have tables, I have image maps, I have spacer gifts.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this thing. It is just is ancient.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: I may change it up at some point too. But you,
Speaker 1: the listener, can go to Ricochet, as you probably already do.
Speaker 1: But if you don't go to the member feed, you're
Speaker 1: probably always wondering what is behind the curtain. And the
Speaker 1: answer is everything from lots of amusing memes, to discussion
Speaker 1: of the unanities of Canadian politicians, to things to arguing
Speaker 1: about the war, to arguing about literature, sports and the
Speaker 1: rest of it.
Speaker 2: Movies.
Speaker 1: There's nothing really that isn't discussed open the member feed
Speaker 1: at Ricochet. So I advise you to part with a
Speaker 1: few shekels, tenari lira whatever, you please go there, join
Speaker 1: and you'll find that four point zero is pretty good,
Speaker 1: and then you'll be amazed when you see what five
Speaker 1: point zero is. I got to go because I got
Speaker 1: to have a guy come over here and put a
Speaker 1: table together or a desk together. I could do it myself,
Speaker 1: but I am tired of assembling furniture. I nearly wept
Speaker 1: with the last Ikia thing that I put together. It
Speaker 1: took me days. I had to actually find a guy
Speaker 1: who just silently put it together, holding out his hands
Speaker 1: and showing the parts, pointing to what to do. It
Speaker 1: was brilliant. I actually was so grateful that guy. I
Speaker 1: sat through all of the ads and didn't skip them,
Speaker 1: so we got However, little revenue came about from that anyway. Charles,
Speaker 1: glad you're back from your trip your home. Have a
Speaker 1: great weekend. Have a great weekend everybody else. I hope
Speaker 1: Stephen will be with us as well next week. I'm
Speaker 1: Jamie Lelex here in a dynam Minnesota cake eater now
Speaker 1: that I am, and we'll see you all at Ricochet
Speaker 1: four point whatever. Bye bye