Speaker 1: Jagger is their own force. So I obviously did something
Speaker 1: wrong and I apologize to the sports gods.
Speaker 2: You'll note how I You'll know how I've not mentioned it, Charlie.
Speaker 3: The gods will ensure that that team loses as long
Speaker 3: as you continue to mispronounce it. The gods football gods
Speaker 3: are American, my boy, Ask.
Speaker 2: Not what your country can do for you, Ask what
Speaker 2: you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: Mister gorbachaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast. But Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 2: Peter Robinson, I'm James Linox and today we talked to
Speaker 2: Eli Lake about Israel and the effects of iddies on
Speaker 2: the election. So let's have ourselves with podcasting.
Speaker 4: We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on
Speaker 4: the landing Grounge. We'll fight in the fields and in
Speaker 4: the streets. We'll fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
Speaker 2: Now, look, my community knows who I am, and I'm
Speaker 2: a knuckleheaded times but it's always been about that. Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven to eleven. That's right.
Speaker 2: We're not brought to you by the Southland Corporation, but
Speaker 2: we are happy to be here. Anyway, providing all the
Speaker 2: things you need for your daily Internet podcast Joy. I'm
Speaker 2: James Leleax in Minneapolis, beautiful fall day, and I'm speaking
Speaker 2: again with Peter Robinson in Sonny Clement, California, and Charles C. W.
Speaker 2: Cook in Florida. Where the weather could be humid or
Speaker 2: not so much or sunny. You're beautiful or hurricane stricken
Speaker 2: or whatever. In any case, you're here, good gentlemen. Welcome,
Speaker 2: Thank you, James, thank you. So we had a debate.
Speaker 2: We indeed had a debate, and there was some stuff
Speaker 2: that had been leaked before that said that Waltz was
Speaker 2: actually kind of nervous about this, and people were saying,
Speaker 2: you know what, they're just trying to They're trying to
Speaker 2: massage your expectations, so you're really impressed when he just
Speaker 2: knocks it out of the park. And I spoke to
Speaker 2: a few people who were in Waltz's corner and came
Speaker 2: away from that the big permanent wins creased on their face.
Speaker 2: For any number of things. The moment to me that
Speaker 2: summed it all up was you can't shout fire in
Speaker 2: a crowded theater being spoken by a man who presumably
Speaker 2: is smart enough to no better run the country. What
Speaker 2: were your takeaways from that? And do you think any
Speaker 2: lasting impact on the election.
Speaker 3: The way you put that question? And it is now
Speaker 3: mandatory for us to give Charlie a moment to explain
Speaker 3: why that nineteen nineteen constitutional decision is no longer of
Speaker 3: any well, it's of relevance. I said, go ahead, Charlie,
Speaker 3: take it.
Speaker 1: You guys have just wound me up. You've put me
Speaker 1: on the floor and wound me up because this annoys me,
Speaker 1: as you know, immensely. This is a bat signal for me,
Speaker 1: because it is everything that possibly could be wrong with
Speaker 1: an American politician talking about free speeches encapsulated in that
Speaker 1: moment from Tim Wallas. First off, it's falsely in a
Speaker 1: crowded theater something while with shouting fire and crowded theaters,
Speaker 1: that there's a fire, You're just not allowed to do it,
Speaker 1: if you're lying, if you're trying to cause a stampede.
Speaker 3: Charlie, the phrase the phrase comes from give us the
Speaker 3: historical hell.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, more importantly, though, it was
Speaker 1: an analogy, and it's a horrible analogy that thankfully was
Speaker 1: overturned by Brandenburg. V Ohio in nineteen sixty nine. The
Speaker 1: analogy is with an immigrant who didn't speak English protesting
Speaker 1: against World War One. So it wasn't actually about theaters
Speaker 1: or fires, or falsehoods or panics. The argument was, if
Speaker 1: you are out on the street handing out leaflets in
Speaker 1: Yiddish telling people not to sign up for the draft
Speaker 1: because it violates their constitutional rights, because you oppose a
Speaker 1: war that is happening three and a half thousand miles away,
Speaker 1: a war that was fairly disastrous, you are the equivalent
Speaker 1: of somebody who will ran into a thing and shouted
Speaker 1: fire and caused a bunch of death, which is insane.
Speaker 1: It is insane given the American tradition of free speech.
Speaker 1: The entire purpose of the First Amendment, which above all
Speaker 1: else says the freedom of speech, which is a term
Speaker 1: of art that meant something at the time of ratification,
Speaker 1: above all else, protects the rights of American citizens to
Speaker 1: debate whether or not what their government is doing is legitimate.
Speaker 1: What could be more core to that than a war,
Speaker 1: a foreign war. So that Timwore said this at all
Speaker 1: is ignorant, but that he was saying it in the
Speaker 1: interest of justifying one of the worst laws ever passed
Speaker 1: the Espionage and Sedition Acts of the twentieth century under
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson, and a Supreme Court decision that has thankfully
Speaker 1: been made of moot and forgotten and is disliked broadly,
Speaker 1: is even worse. Awful man, awful man who proved his
Speaker 1: awfulness in that moment.
Speaker 3: But hold on just a moment. The nineteen nineteen decision
Speaker 3: Justice Oliver Wendelholmes Junior, who, even if the decision was wrong,
Speaker 3: was a pretty remarkable figure. Let's see Bill Buckley used
Speaker 3: to say, Alistair Cook, your countryman. Alistair Cook arrived in
Speaker 3: this country in the thirties, and one of the first
Speaker 3: interviews he conducted was with Oliver Wendelholmes Junior. And Holmes
Speaker 3: shook his hand and said, my boy, you have just
Speaker 3: shaken the hand of a man who shook the hand
Speaker 3: of Lincoln. And Bill would then, Bill, of course would
Speaker 3: then say, you've shaken the hand of a man who
Speaker 3: shook the hand of a man who shook the hand
Speaker 3: with Lincoln. All right, Oliver Welde Holmes wrote, quote, the
Speaker 3: most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a
Speaker 3: man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing
Speaker 3: a panic close quote in isolation. The sentence is sensible, Charlie.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, but the analogy that it draws is used
Speaker 1: to justify the imprisonment of anti war protesters. And if
Speaker 1: you go back to that series, there are three cases
Speaker 1: around that period. And it should be said, I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of Oliver Wendelholmes and Buckley savaged him in
Speaker 1: National Reviews opening issue, but he did change his mind
Speaker 1: on this question, I think because he saw it as untenable.
Speaker 1: Around that period, in nineteen eighteen nineteen nineteen twenty, the
Speaker 1: US Supreme Court upholds a whole host of grotesque imprisonments
Speaker 1: on free speech grounds, one of which involved the Wilson
Speaker 1: administration in prisoning Wilson's opponent, the socialist Eugene Debs. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a really low moment. This is the low moment.
Speaker 1: I will shut up in a moment. But let me
Speaker 1: just say this. I talk a lot about free speech
Speaker 1: around the country, and I often note that there is
Speaker 1: a great paradox, which is that free speech in the
Speaker 1: United States is now more legally protected than it has
Speaker 1: been at any point in the Republic's history. The protections
Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court has afforded the citizenry under the
Speaker 1: auspices of the First Amendment have never been this good.
Speaker 1: At the same time as we have probably less cultural
Speaker 1: respect for free speech than we've had in a very
Speaker 1: long time. And when I run through the history of it,
Speaker 1: because we've always had attacks on free speech. The slavery
Speaker 1: powers were big into this in Congress and at the
Speaker 1: state level, abolitionists were often targeted. But the worst period,
Speaker 1: without a shadow of a doubts the progressive era. The
Speaker 1: progressive era is the nadea of free speech in the
Speaker 1: United States. And if there is one case that sums
Speaker 1: it up, it's this, because it takes an entirely sensible precept,
Speaker 1: which is you can't go into a crowded place and
Speaker 1: lie and cause a panic and be held innocent. Fine,
Speaker 1: it takes that and it applies it to core speech,
Speaker 1: and thank goodness, the Court in the nineteen sixties said, no,
Speaker 1: we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 3: Charlie, you're beautiful when you're angry, James.
Speaker 2: There's nothing more to say at all. Is said what
Speaker 2: needs to be said, And I mean Wilson said this
Speaker 2: before about the need to combat misinformation, as so many
Speaker 2: people on that side of the political equation. They would
Speaker 2: like to use the instruments of the state to influence
Speaker 2: or prohibit social media from saying certain things that fall
Speaker 2: outside the parameters of what they believe to be the truth,
Speaker 2: even though we know now later with the years of
Speaker 2: experience with COVID, for example, the things that people were
Speaker 2: being banned for saying the hammer coming down on doctor J,
Speaker 2: turns out to be the other doctor J turns out
Speaker 2: to be correct pretty much, and their efforts to stifle
Speaker 2: it only led to the erosion of the respect and
Speaker 2: trust we had for those institutions. So yeah, no, let
Speaker 2: me speak, let the marketplace decide. Let people figure out
Speaker 2: whether or not what I'm saying is BS or not.
Speaker 2: That seems to be a basic core American principle. And
Speaker 2: anybody doesn't think that's the case, well then they're full
Speaker 2: of spinach. And to help with them. Second thing we
Speaker 2: have this week dodged a bullet when it comes to
Speaker 2: the strike. There was going to be the guys who
Speaker 2: offload the containers from the big ships were going to strike,
Speaker 2: and normally I don't think that would really penetrate most
Speaker 2: people's flow of information, except that we got these interviews
Speaker 2: with the guy the head of the union, who was
Speaker 2: sort of bragging about his ability to cripple the country,
Speaker 2: and it seems to be one of those things that
Speaker 2: doesn't strike you as the most patriotic of sentiments. As
Speaker 2: he climbers off his long yacht and tells us that
Speaker 2: we're all going to have no Christmas because the toys
Speaker 2: won't be coming. Luckily, it's not going to happen. They
Speaker 2: kick the can down the road. There's good and be
Speaker 2: more negotiations. But what was illustrative about this were two things. Biden, President,
Speaker 2: and I'm using air quotes here for President Biden because
Speaker 2: we have no idea exactly whether he's involved in any
Speaker 2: of these things or whether he's just being shuffled around
Speaker 2: from one bingo session to the next, said he wouldn't
Speaker 2: invoke TAP hardly, he doesn't believe in it. And then
Speaker 2: Governor DeSantis actually stepped in and directed the Florida National
Speaker 2: Guard and the Florida State Guard to the ports to
Speaker 2: ensure that things went as they should, which made a
Speaker 2: lot of people say, well, boy, you know kind of
Speaker 2: wish that guy had been the candidate, but that's not
Speaker 2: how it's going to work out. What do you guys
Speaker 2: think of how this plays out. The unions I don't
Speaker 2: think come off very sympathetic in this, particularly when it
Speaker 2: comes to automation. Now you know, we're all looking around
Speaker 2: our shoulders saying AI is going to come and eat
Speaker 2: our jobs. But if the people had had their way,
Speaker 2: there would be no automated systems that the at the
Speaker 2: ports at all. They would be taking everything out in
Speaker 2: a bucket brigade of hands. You can understand why they're
Speaker 2: making the statement that they are, But in the issue
Speaker 2: of keeping the ports modern and the rest of us,
Speaker 2: where do you fall on this or do you just
Speaker 2: not care?
Speaker 3: I'll give you what's in my head. Not that I've
Speaker 3: come to any particularly incisive conclusions about this, but I
Speaker 3: start with, was it nineteen fifty four, maybe the Ilia
Speaker 3: Kazan movie on the Waterfront? Yes, because that shows the
Speaker 3: way shipping was handled in the United States before the
Speaker 3: advent of container shipping, or Eric Hoffer describes it a
Speaker 3: little bit in some of his work Eric Coffer, who
Speaker 3: was the term used to be Steve Ador. So if
Speaker 3: you have on your mind a picture of cargo nets
Speaker 3: coming up and big burly men walking back and forth
Speaker 3: and shouldering huge loads and carrying them from the pier
Speaker 3: up to the warehouse. That's the way it used to be.
Speaker 3: I suppose if this Union president had been in place
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies, we wouldn't have container shipping, which
Speaker 3: would of course solve all the problems with globalization because
Speaker 3: we wouldn't have we wouldn't have international trade to speak of.
Speaker 1: You know, you're actually exactly right because that guy is
Speaker 1: part of the same union that opposed container shipping, and
Speaker 1: he's on the record.
Speaker 2: Happens.
Speaker 3: Is that so okay? Because then you know more about
Speaker 3: this than I.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, carry on. I'm just wanting to know
Speaker 1: you're totally right. It's not a hypothetical that actually happened.
Speaker 1: They tried to block container shipping right right.
Speaker 3: So what's going on is, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: it's it's a version of the Hollywood Writers' strike. The
Speaker 3: writers see AI coming at them in this sense. Obviously,
Speaker 3: longshoremen and writers are different kinds of people, but the
Speaker 3: Hollywood writers saw AI coming at them. I myself couldn't
Speaker 3: quite get what they were so worked up about because
Speaker 3: I thought AI as a threat to writers was off
Speaker 3: in the distant future. And then a friend of mine
Speaker 3: who actually is in the produced director's guild. I guess yeah.
Speaker 3: The director's guild said oh no, no, no, And he
Speaker 3: sat down with me and said to AI, said to
Speaker 3: chatchebt or one of the others. Five minutes amusing Trump
Speaker 3: and Biden playing ping pong, and up popped a sketch
Speaker 3: that needed a little tightening up, but had four or
Speaker 3: five different jokes in a five minutes. In other words,
Speaker 3: writer's rooms are really under threat already. Okay, they see
Speaker 3: that coming. Likewise, the teamsters, excuse me, not the team stores.
Speaker 3: The longshoremen. Longshore people have they renamed the union, and
Speaker 3: they want to extract the sitting guys who know they're
Speaker 3: likely to be the last generation who can count on
Speaker 3: this work for a whole career as they head into retirement.
Speaker 3: They want to grab everything they can get. As far
Speaker 3: as I can tell, it's as simple as that. And
Speaker 3: on the other side, the shippers, the people the counter party,
Speaker 3: want to give them as little as possible, but for
Speaker 3: sure reserved to themselves to introduce automation as the robotics
Speaker 3: become smarter and smarter, empowered more and more by AI.
Speaker 3: So it's just a straightforward commercial conflict of interests and
Speaker 3: let him add it. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: what we saw last week was in an attempt to
Speaker 3: hold up the country's politics. That's and then of course
Speaker 3: it thinks largely to the New York Post, we found
Speaker 3: out that the president of the Union is a very
Speaker 3: rich man and a hypocrite in all kinds of ways. Anyhow,
Speaker 3: So my view is this is one more It's going
Speaker 3: to be difficult, this transition to AI and robotics, no
Speaker 3: doubt about it. But it's one more place where the
Speaker 3: government ought to stay out.
Speaker 1: Charles, I think it's Proposter's rent seeking, is what I think.
Speaker 1: The same guy you're referring to is very rich, actually
Speaker 1: is in favor of mandating unionized toll booths, even though
Speaker 1: we've had easy passed since nineteen eighty seven. So he
Speaker 1: wants people in them who've stopped the cars and slow
Speaker 1: down the traffic. And it seems from the studies that
Speaker 1: I've read increasingly where they do exist, still do nothing
Speaker 1: other than pay for the pensions of the people who
Speaker 1: are slowing the cars down. So you're slowing the cars
Speaker 1: down to pay for the people who are slowing the
Speaker 1: cars down. The docs are not anymore a justifiable excuse
Speaker 1: for union tactics. I am and have always been hostile
Speaker 1: toward unions. But I was born in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: My dad was born in nineteen forty seven. He really
Speaker 1: dislikes public sector unions because he lived through England in
Speaker 1: the seventies. But right, but he has always said to me,
Speaker 1: and will still say no, no, there is a good
Speaker 1: historical role in certain circumstances for unionization. And if you
Speaker 1: walk up our backstairs in their little house, you'll see
Speaker 1: photographs of my ancestors, some of whom were minors or
Speaker 1: worked in textile mills or what you will. And my
Speaker 1: dad said, it's a reasonable point. You know, if you
Speaker 1: were in a mine in nineteen hundred, you really wanted
Speaker 1: a union because it was dangerous work and you needed
Speaker 1: somebody to stand up for you. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's a fair point. But that's just not what's happening.
Speaker 1: What's happening here is they just want more money. They
Speaker 1: already make a lot of money, by the way, They
Speaker 1: already make about two hundred thousand dollars a year on average,
Speaker 1: so this is not some dangerous, low paid job. And
Speaker 1: they're trying to stand in the way of efficiency and
Speaker 1: to extort international trade so that they can line in
Speaker 1: their own pockets. And I think it's insane that this
Speaker 1: would even be debated. And if I were the president
Speaker 1: of the United States, which thankfully for everyone, I will
Speaker 1: never be, and I had the Taft Hearty Act on hand.
Speaker 1: Funny how Joe Biden believes in all sorts of laws
Speaker 1: haven't been passed, but not ones that have. I would
Speaker 1: use it in the national interest to stop this because
Speaker 1: I think that what they're doing is functionally indistinguishable from
Speaker 1: the mafia.
Speaker 3: Lovely Lovely.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any more to add to that either.
Speaker 2: So that's two conclusive denunciations by Charles today, and we
Speaker 2: can only hope.
Speaker 3: For a third or perhaps the pattern here as well established.
Speaker 3: James entertainingly puts the question, I attempt to provide a
Speaker 3: one on the one hand, on the other hand, analysis
Speaker 3: and then Charlie comes in with white hot anger beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see if we're going to go for a
Speaker 2: third or maybe a ringing endorsement. Perhaps it all depends
Speaker 2: on where we go with our guest, who's Eli Lake.
Speaker 2: Eli's a columnist for the Free Press, contributing editor to
Speaker 2: Commentary and host of the re Education podcast Eli.
Speaker 5: Thank you, welcome, Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All right, so Middle East kaboom people were expecting actually
Speaker 2: an earth shadowing kaboom by now, they were expecting Israel
Speaker 2: to strike back at I mean, after October seventh, the
Speaker 2: Gaza response. Then you have hezbe Law shooting in to Israel.
Speaker 2: Then you have Israel taking on his bolah. Then you
Speaker 2: have Iran deciding to heave five percent of their missiles
Speaker 2: over I mean, so that's where we are now. It's
Speaker 2: not it's not of a piece. It's all part of
Speaker 2: a very very ongoing kinetic exercise and sorting things out
Speaker 2: over there. Anyway, So Iran through the missiles. Israel is
Speaker 2: expected to strike back, but people were saying were thinking
Speaker 2: that there were there would be some sort of immediate response.
Speaker 2: And the more the time goes on, there's only one
Speaker 2: of two things that can happen. Either one they're not
Speaker 2: going to do anything or to do something proportional, or
Speaker 2: two being very careful to plan. What is a definitive,
Speaker 2: definitive response that up ends the status quo for good?
Speaker 2: What do you think is going.
Speaker 5: On well, I'm hoping in my sense, just looking at
Speaker 5: what Prime Minister that Y'aho has been saying, is that
Speaker 5: they are going for strategically changing the balance of power
Speaker 5: and not just a proportional response. And I think one
Speaker 5: explanation for why it hasn't happened yet is the Jewish
Speaker 5: New Year or Russia Shanna, you know that it's obviously Israel's.
Speaker 5: It's not a it's not a theolocacy or anything like that,
Speaker 5: but it is a Jewish state, and that might be
Speaker 5: one explanation. The other explanation is that I would hope
Speaker 5: that the one target that makes sense is what as
Speaker 5: much of Aron's nuclear program as possible, and that may
Speaker 5: not be just a matter of you know, bunker buster bombs.
Speaker 5: I mean, Israel is proving ingenious in its ability to
Speaker 5: sabotage and to kind of have these hybrid intelligence strikes.
Speaker 5: So my hope is that that is what's being you know,
Speaker 5: that is what is in the offering, and there might
Speaker 5: be some things that have to kind of happen, and
Speaker 5: it's not such a terrible thing for the Iranians to
Speaker 5: sort of be left in a state where they know
Speaker 5: something has come in they don't know what it is,
Speaker 5: you know, let them feel the anxiety he.
Speaker 3: Lies true or faults on. As we tape this on Friday,
Speaker 3: October fourth, in the year twenty twenty four, be me Netnyah,
Speaker 3: who is the greatest man in the world?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's Churchillian? At this point, I think, really, I mean,
Speaker 5: we have to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you couldn't ask for a more flawed man to
Speaker 3: be as great as he is. But he's changed the world,
Speaker 3: has he not? In the last three weeks?
Speaker 5: I absolutely think he has. And I'll go I mean,
Speaker 5: I've criticized him in my columns over the years at times,
Speaker 5: but the real brilliance here from Nennyahu is that he
Speaker 5: has managed to withstand efforts from his greatest ally to
Speaker 5: try to unseat him from power into box them in.
Speaker 5: I mean that, you know, the the the congratulations goes
Speaker 5: to the genius of Israel's military, and it's most odd
Speaker 5: for the pager attack and the walkie talkies and and
Speaker 5: and the pinpoint accuracy of their strikes of not just
Speaker 5: assign Nosralla, but the next two successors of assign Asrala
Speaker 5: of the News out of Israel, Lebanon was right last night.
Speaker 5: That's something that you know that a nation state has
Speaker 5: built that capability. And so but it's it's Netanyahu's ability
Speaker 5: to navigate a really difficult situation with his most important ally,
Speaker 5: because if America chooses to, it can lead to it
Speaker 5: can kind of drop a diplomatic nuclear bomb on Israel.
Speaker 5: By no not behowing a resolution that you know from
Speaker 5: the Security Council that would really hurt and and and
Speaker 5: isolate Israel. So far Biden administration hasn't done that. That's good,
Speaker 5: but it's certainly you know, the messages from Biden himself,
Speaker 5: I don't know how with it he is at this moment.
Speaker 5: Is you know, why wouldn't he want Israel to attack
Speaker 5: the nuclear program? That's the that's the that's the crown
Speaker 5: jewel at this point.
Speaker 3: As far as we know, at least as far as
Speaker 3: I've read, you follow this obviously followed hour by hour,
Speaker 3: But the number of casualties from the Iranian ballistic missile
Speaker 3: attack was as single digits, as I recall, it.
Speaker 5: Was one Palestinian, like the last salvo from April. Okay,
Speaker 5: So the regime that claims to defend the honor of
Speaker 5: the Palaestinian people is so not only felt spectacular in
Speaker 5: their missile strikes, but they've managed to kill Palestinians. Congratulations.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, they demonstrated a willingness for the
Speaker 3: second time in a matter of months to fire ballistic
Speaker 3: missiles at Israel, and this time they demonstrated that they're
Speaker 3: capable of learning in a military sense, and that they
Speaker 3: clustered them the missiles much more tightly, I presume, in
Speaker 3: an effort to defeat the Iron Dome. And to that extent,
Speaker 3: they demonstrate a certain degree of seriousness and a certain
Speaker 3: degree of military prowess. And they did get a few
Speaker 3: of those missiles through, killing one person a Palestinian. What
Speaker 3: would have happened if they hit they hit an airbase?
Speaker 3: But okay, okay, So to take their.
Speaker 5: Damage, they didn't do lasting damage. They didn't damage any
Speaker 5: serious infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Had that missile been equipped with even a small nuclear weapon,
Speaker 3: what kind of destruction would.
Speaker 5: We know to be the end of the state of
Speaker 5: Israel at beast? Okay.
Speaker 3: So, in other words, what we have is a demonstration
Speaker 3: of a risk that is simply unacceptable. Correct, of course,
Speaker 3: obviously the.
Speaker 5: Whole thing is unacceptable. But the reason why this is uh,
Speaker 5: keep thinking of like the Steve win what song when
Speaker 5: you see a chance take it is because the decapitation
Speaker 5: strikes on Hesbelah and the fact that this organization is
Speaker 5: really that was the loaded gun at Israel's temple right there.
Speaker 5: That meant that was the Iranian insurance policy. So the
Speaker 5: reason that you know Israel hadn't done this before through
Speaker 5: subterfuge or you know, an aerial campaign, is because if
Speaker 5: they did, there were two hundred thousand rockets, missiles pointing
Speaker 5: directly at Hipen Tel even Jerusalem now not so clear.
Speaker 5: Now it's like, you know, that's why they're going in
Speaker 5: and they're trying to remove that threat because and that's
Speaker 5: why I'm on as I think you know, that's why
Speaker 5: we're seeing the Supreme Leader, you know, showing up at
Speaker 5: the ridy services and delivering in some ridiculous speech.
Speaker 3: So one more question, you Ela, before I hand it
Speaker 3: back to the remand you to James and Charlie. I
Speaker 3: have to believe that if we were in Israel right now,
Speaker 3: we would just feel so different approaching this holiday from
Speaker 3: the way the country has felt it any time since
Speaker 3: October seventh. Has it made any difference in New.
Speaker 5: York, Well, I'm I'm in d C.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're in Washington.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, I'm in Washington. But I would say the
Speaker 5: people that I speak to and other my family, other Jews,
Speaker 5: i'd talk to Enti Aspara, everybody is it's I don't
Speaker 5: want to say cautiously optimistic. I think people are really
Speaker 5: optimistic in the long run, and they know that there
Speaker 5: are difficult days they had. But this is enormous and
Speaker 5: I don't think it just starts in September. September is
Speaker 5: where we begin to see it. The change came when Netanyahu,
Speaker 5: in my view, basically told the Biden administration to pound
Speaker 5: sand and sent the IDF into Rapha and managed to
Speaker 5: evacuate this a million people, which everybody said couldn't be done.
Speaker 5: And they were getting the IDF was getting and people
Speaker 5: they would say this, but people really weren't listening because
Speaker 5: it kind of tuned out. And you know, it's a war,
Speaker 5: you believe one side. But my understanding is that they
Speaker 5: pretty much degraded the Hamas military leadership at this point,
Speaker 5: and so they went from a terror army to an insurgency.
Speaker 5: But that is an enormous military accomplishment. And then you
Speaker 5: started seeing really precise hits in the summer with Senior
Speaker 5: Could's force Iranian people in Syria, in Lebanon, you started
Speaker 5: seeing very specific kind of targeting. And that's when I
Speaker 5: think the decision was made that they were not going
Speaker 5: to allow I wrote a column basically say they were
Speaker 5: not allow there. They were no long going to play
Speaker 5: along with the American hug because it came with handcuffs.
Speaker 5: And that's when Israel started kind of acting out and
Speaker 5: and and you know, listen, I mean there's there's a
Speaker 5: sort of bittersweet side of it. I'm a very patriotic American,
Speaker 5: and as much as I love Israel, it gives me
Speaker 5: no joy to say that American prestige is plummeted to
Speaker 5: the point where, you know, a really important ally in
Speaker 5: the Middle East just basically said go screw to the
Speaker 5: White House. But unfortunately, that's where very bad leadership has
Speaker 5: led us right now. That's why all of the efforts
Speaker 5: they keep saying de escalation, We don't want to become
Speaker 5: a regional war. It's been a regional war, dummies. I mean, sorry,
Speaker 5: excuse my prespiration, it is a regional war. And yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's I don't understand. I really feel that there
Speaker 5: is a this is exposed a deeper problem than just
Speaker 5: you know, this white house, these advisors. I think there's
Speaker 5: a rot in our strategic class that we've over learned
Speaker 5: the lesson I guess of the Iraq war, and at
Speaker 5: this point we forgot that the best way to end
Speaker 5: the regional war is to have the good guys win it.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you, Eli, it's just cookkit. Whether you
Speaker 1: were in any way shocked as I was by the
Speaker 1: reactions to October seventh and the subsequent fighting, I clearly
Speaker 1: am naive because I did not expect to see first
Speaker 1: the wholesale abandonment from Progressive America of this house of
Speaker 1: cards that they've built up, which sets of fence as
Speaker 1: the highest sin. You know, we saw on college campuses
Speaker 1: people shouting at Jewish students hus were the victims right.
Speaker 1: The second, I did not expect this lazy use of
Speaker 1: the word genocide to describe what is normal war and
Speaker 1: defensive war at that And third, I did not expect
Speaker 1: the Israeli caused to be abandoned quite as quickly as
Speaker 1: it was by an international response that was at first sympathetic.
Speaker 1: Was I just living in a bubble or are we
Speaker 1: actually dealing here with something that is new.
Speaker 5: I think it's a little bit of both. If you
Speaker 5: look at like, there's an inherent problem in the idea
Speaker 5: of I mean, we talk about the intersectionality, right, the
Speaker 5: idea that you know, the struggle for gay and trans
Speaker 5: Americans as infralinked with the struggle for Black Americans interact
Speaker 5: with the struggle in their world, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And a big problem with intersectionality, to be perfectly blunt,
Speaker 5: is that if you consider Islamophobia one of the great
Speaker 5: hate that you're that is in your kind of you know,
Speaker 5: pyramid of discriminations that you're against, then you have to
Speaker 5: look at the fact that there are a lot of
Speaker 5: very devout Muslims who are racists and sexist and homophobic,
Speaker 5: and they've never been able to quite handle the dissonance there.
Speaker 5: And there are all kinds of other problems. You go
Speaker 5: back and you look at the history, say of the
Speaker 5: Black Panthers, right, there's an enormous amount of misogyny in
Speaker 5: that organization, and they did terrible things to people that
Speaker 5: they suspected of being informants to the FBI, and so
Speaker 5: in some ways, this concept of intersectionality, it was always
Speaker 5: a sham because it meant that you couldn't criticize certain
Speaker 5: protected groups. And then the whole house of cards came
Speaker 5: down because Jews, who would obviously be if you were
Speaker 5: thinking about this historically or in any kind of literate way,
Speaker 5: would be part of your group of people, well, that
Speaker 5: was the one group that was excluded, right, And so
Speaker 5: at a certain point it reminded me a little bit
Speaker 5: of like what happened in post war Europe. You had
Speaker 5: both parties that steamrolled other liberal democratic parties because that
Speaker 5: was the one part of that was willing to use
Speaker 5: violence and not play by basic rules of liberalism. And
Speaker 5: that's what I think is kind of happened on campus
Speaker 5: and among this intellectual class. And they, I think they're
Speaker 5: shamed by it, but it's it's telling in some ways
Speaker 5: that you're if you call them anti Semitic, they become
Speaker 5: very offended. They're like, no, no, no, we don't hate the Jews.
Speaker 5: We just hate the Jewish state and people who think
Speaker 5: that it should exist, which is an absurdity because most
Speaker 5: Jews obviously think it should exist. And when you say
Speaker 5: you're an anti Zionist. Well, what does that mean? There
Speaker 5: are you know, seven million Jews who live in Israel,
Speaker 5: so what happens to them? But that this is and
Speaker 5: so they're too. I think that this has been a
Speaker 5: long time coming, but it was shocking to me as
Speaker 5: well shocking coming from the international community. It was shocking.
Speaker 5: And the genocide thing is absurd. I mean it's hardcore,
Speaker 5: like Palestinian activists have set genocide for a long time,
Speaker 5: but it was just taken up like overnight, and now
Speaker 5: you have TNAG easy it's you know, joining in with it,
Speaker 5: which I guess no one should be surprised about either.
Speaker 5: This is you know, he steeped in this kind of ideology.
Speaker 5: But you know, at this point, my view is like
Speaker 5: the only way out is through, and I'm glad that
Speaker 5: I've been on the right. I think it's much harder
Speaker 5: for Jews after October seventh, who kind of saw themselves
Speaker 5: as being in good standing with the left, and they're saying, oh, well,
Speaker 5: we were with you for me too, we were with
Speaker 5: you for Black Lives Matter, and where were you for us?
Speaker 5: And my views like, well, I could have told you,
Speaker 5: but I don't want to play that game. I just
Speaker 5: feel that the right is better equipped to kind of
Speaker 5: deal with it because they've been making this critique for
Speaker 5: a longer time and we sort of understand what's happened.
Speaker 3: Kingsley Aim has told Bob Conquest that when he published
Speaker 3: his new edition, and after the fall of the Soviet Empire,
Speaker 3: when he published his new edition of Harvest of Sorrow,
Speaker 3: he should retitle it. I told you so, you fing idiots.
Speaker 5: I love Conquests and Quest book was the archives incredible?
Speaker 3: Just this could into a seminar in its own, but
Speaker 3: just as a kind of mental experiment to show why
Speaker 3: the anti Zionism stuff is crazy. So here's the question,
Speaker 3: wouldn't we all be better off if somehow or other
Speaker 3: the United States has just given the Jewish people Delaware?
Speaker 5: No what no, no.
Speaker 3: In other words, it's the notion that if if Jews
Speaker 3: need a country of their own, why did it have
Speaker 3: to be right in the middle of a hostile Arab populations.
Speaker 3: That's sort of desionist impulse I have.
Speaker 2: I've heard and this this may be just Brumer fact,
Speaker 2: but that there actually is an ancestral connection to that
Speaker 2: part of the world could be wrong more so than
Speaker 2: Delaware or Rhode Island. No, yeah, yeah, yes, of course
Speaker 2: the Jews would love Delaware because of their their their
Speaker 2: money grubbing tactics would lead them to love a place
Speaker 2: with liberal corporate incorporation Delaware. Why would they want Delaware? No?
Speaker 2: I mean that the create the idea somehow that that
Speaker 2: they are a colonial imposition, that that a bunch of
Speaker 2: white Europeans, all of a sudden, under the the the
Speaker 2: the poisonous intellectual fumes of Hertzel decided all, let's just
Speaker 2: go steal this land right there. It is absurd, the
Speaker 2: number of stud the amount of things that I've seen
Speaker 2: paraded around on Twitter work. They're pointing to a manhole
Speaker 2: cover that says Palestine, as if there's is proof that
Speaker 2: a nation existed.
Speaker 1: It's well, the British Empire gives them that fig leaf.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it's not true. It's a bit like the Second
Speaker 1: Amendments saying the word regulated in it is. It didn't
Speaker 1: mean that at all, but people point to it and
Speaker 1: they go a haa, it says regulated. Well, so there's
Speaker 1: all these quotes from British imperialists and they think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm an anti imperialist and so that must be bad
Speaker 1: and it's just but that that was sort of part
Speaker 1: of my question.
Speaker 3: Eli was, well, there's so much.
Speaker 1: Nonsense that has been latched onto by people who should
Speaker 1: know better, and I've been shocked.
Speaker 5: By It's it's shocking. I'm in the middle actually finishing
Speaker 5: a script right now titled one hundred Year Into Fada
Speaker 5: for my next podcast, and it's basically about the history
Speaker 5: of Palestinian nationalism and Palstin. It wasn't like there was
Speaker 5: this land of Palestine and the British came and conquered
Speaker 5: it and then gave it to the Jews, which is
Speaker 5: the simplistic and false story that is told by anti Zionists.
Speaker 5: It was a possession of the Ottoman Empire, quite cruelly,
Speaker 5: i should say, by various pajas. The British then acquire
Speaker 5: it at the end of World War One because the
Speaker 5: Ottoman Empire has collapsed. So they are there with the
Speaker 5: remit from at the time the League of Nations to
Speaker 5: create a Jewish homeland. Because lots of people believe that,
Speaker 5: and there was at one point in the maybe you
Speaker 5: could say the first two or three decades of the
Speaker 5: twentieth century, there were Palisity and leaders who got along
Speaker 5: very well with the early Zionist leaders, but it really
Speaker 5: was the rise of a British invention. A guy by
Speaker 5: the name of Paja Minal Hussein even was the first
Speaker 5: Palestinian leader, but the British made this Grand Buffy. They
Speaker 5: created a position for him in Jerusalem, and he became
Speaker 5: the kind of recognized world leader. And he did not
Speaker 5: have a vision really to create an independent He called
Speaker 5: for independent Palestine in the thirties, but what he really
Speaker 5: was focused on was driving the Jews out and stopping
Speaker 5: immigration of Jews into you know, the Palestinian mandate during
Speaker 5: the rise of the Nazis, which eventually, of course, those
Speaker 5: of us who know our history age I mean almost.
Speaker 5: And he really liked Adolf Butler and joined their cause
Speaker 5: in World War Two, much to the shame and of
Speaker 5: Palestinians today, which they've totally forgotten him. But that's the
Speaker 5: history of Palestinian nationalism. It is not a very nice history.
Speaker 5: And we can play this. I love historical counterfactuals. What
Speaker 5: if the British had not appointed this guy, who by
Speaker 5: the way, already shown that he was a vicious anti
Speaker 5: Semite when they made him the Grand Mufty, he was
Speaker 5: the leader of what was known as the Nephew Lussa
Speaker 5: Riots of Jerusalem in nineteen twenty What if they had
Speaker 5: not appointed him, What if they had not done that?
Speaker 5: And it gets back to a problem with that America
Speaker 5: has inherited from the British Empire, which is a belief
Speaker 5: that the more violent a local leader is, the more
Speaker 5: extreme a local leader is, the more authentic they are,
Speaker 5: and which demands that the great power has to sort
Speaker 5: of accommodate them and bring them inside of the tent.
Speaker 5: And this is seen as a great strategy. The British
Speaker 5: did this all the time, and oftentimes they ended up
Speaker 5: kind of empowering really violent monsters. Not all the time,
Speaker 5: but a lot of the time. And this was certainly
Speaker 5: the case when it came to the policy Threndy and
Speaker 5: I would argue was the case in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 5: when the United States embraced Yaser era fat as a
Speaker 5: sort of peace partner. And I have to say, as
Speaker 5: much as I appreciate the initial policy from the United
Speaker 5: States after October seventh, the speech that Biden gave in
Speaker 5: Israel was really to be commended, but I think that
Speaker 5: the way it was going with his constant, incessant droning
Speaker 5: on of a ceasefire discussion, when every single time Hamas
Speaker 5: wasn't even participating in the talks. It would have ended
Speaker 5: up with some representative of Hamas, possibly even Yahwa Sinemar,
Speaker 5: being elevated as a peace partner, and we would have
Speaker 5: another round of these kinds of negotiations. And it's like
Speaker 5: enough already. Sometimes you have an enemy that is implacable
Speaker 5: and it is good for the world, and it advances
Speaker 5: the cause of peace to utterly defeat them, and that's
Speaker 5: what Israel is doing. That's why, in my view, he
Speaker 5: is Churchillian and unlike Churchill, although I mean, obviously nobody
Speaker 5: touches Churchill. I'm a huge fan obviously, But unlike Churchill,
Speaker 5: he didn't have an American partner like FDR or Truman.
Speaker 5: He adds Joe freakin' Biden, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: He's got He's got a Chamberlain in Washington. So it's
Speaker 5: really that's the part of it that really I think
Speaker 5: history will judge him so well.
Speaker 3: He back to American politics from more, Yeah, does all
Speaker 3: this lead to cognitive dissidents among American Jews who have
Speaker 3: been for so many decades such firm supporters of the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party. Is that all we get a little discomfort?
Speaker 3: Is or at the other extreme, is there a serious
Speaker 3: realignment going on if you go by age, Is it
Speaker 3: the case that older jewsers are more Democratic and younger
Speaker 3: more open to Republicans supporting Republicans? Or I mean, what
Speaker 3: are the political repercussions?
Speaker 5: I mean, this is talk about counterfactual. Imagine if the
Speaker 5: Republicans have nominated Nikki Haley, how many I think you
Speaker 5: would have a majority of Jews voting Republicans. I think
Speaker 5: the problem is is that even though I believe that
Speaker 5: Trump's policies were very good for Israel, and I don't
Speaker 5: really think that that's debatable, his rhetoric, his indiscipline.
Speaker 3: Just can't stomach him.
Speaker 5: It's not even that you can't stomach him. He has
Speaker 5: said incredibly anti s things, even though I believe he
Speaker 5: would be much better for Israel and therefore the Jewish
Speaker 5: people than Kamala Harris. But he can't help himself but
Speaker 5: saying ridiculous things like if I lose, I'm gonna blame
Speaker 5: American Jews. What the hell is that?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 5: I just don't know, you know, in my own family.
Speaker 5: There is a sense that there. I think the way
Speaker 5: this is how I interpreted this is not scientific. I
Speaker 5: think almost every Jew understands there is a faction of
Speaker 5: the repult of the Democratic Party that are highly educated
Speaker 5: anti Semites, and they're a real problem, and they are
Speaker 5: a problem in big institutions. They're a problem in the
Speaker 5: institutions that a lot of American Jews care a great
Speaker 5: deal about, like universities or published houses, and boy, it
Speaker 5: would be nice to have a Republican Party that also
Speaker 5: didn't have an element at least that sometimes catered to
Speaker 5: a different kind of anti Semitism, kind of like know
Speaker 5: nothing anti semitism, the sort of anti semitism of you know,
Speaker 5: ranks in their basement. But in my view, at least
Speaker 5: the elites of the Republican Party, the policy makers of
Speaker 5: the Republican Party, have their head screwed on straight. And
Speaker 5: I have questions thought about every and there are plenty
Speaker 5: of very good and there plenty of Jews in the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party. We should say that, but it's the fact
Speaker 5: that are you trying to have a coalition with at
Speaker 5: least a faction of people that want to see the
Speaker 5: only Jewish state in the world destroyed, and that is
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party today.
Speaker 2: There's also a coalition on the far right that I
Speaker 2: wouldn't characterize them as no nothing anti Samites. They're actually
Speaker 2: they think they know something and they're not just the
Speaker 2: you know, you're not just drooling morons who are out
Speaker 2: there talking about the views and coming up with crude memes.
Speaker 2: I find this stuff infesting my Twitter feed all the time.
Speaker 2: There will be a discussion, for example, on Great Replacement,
Speaker 2: which itself is a fraud issue, but I think it's
Speaker 2: one that we had to discuss and tease out what's
Speaker 2: true about it and what's wrong about it, and what's
Speaker 2: idiotic and what actually is worrisome and look at the demographics.
Speaker 2: It's a discussion to have. But the other day, just
Speaker 2: this morning, when I was following a Twitter thread, what
Speaker 2: followed after the main point that the person was making,
Speaker 2: and it had to do with imagery in European public
Speaker 2: service messages, we'll set that aside for a second. The
Speaker 2: person posted a whole series of comments and remarks about
Speaker 2: the white race, its need for destruction, the need for
Speaker 2: a genocide, and every single one of them was Jewish.
Speaker 2: And it was pointed out that every single one of
Speaker 2: them was Jewish. So you will have people on that
Speaker 2: sort of intellectual just speaking the truth here, just you
Speaker 2: know who will gleefully embrace and lean into the worst
Speaker 2: sort of anti Semitism. And that's worrisome. But it isn't
Speaker 2: as characteristic of the right as the anti Zionist stuff
Speaker 2: is of the progressive elements of the left. And that
Speaker 2: would seem to me to be bobbyous to me, to
Speaker 2: anybody who's looking at this situation. But you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 5: This is how I look at it. If you say
Speaker 5: I'm a fan of the great replacement theory and you
Speaker 5: have a position of some kind of authority, again at
Speaker 5: a university or a media outlet, you might fire that
Speaker 5: you that's a fireable offense. If you say I don't
Speaker 5: think the Israel should exist and it's committing a genocide,
Speaker 5: then you are just mouthing conventional wisdom in the most
Speaker 5: institution that is true, because it's a different kind of threat.
Speaker 5: It's like again, it's the threat of you know, I mean, listen,
Speaker 5: I understand, I don't want to you know, like I'm
Speaker 5: not trying to say, I'm sure what is the name
Speaker 5: martyr made the people's historian who doesn't think Churchill, who
Speaker 5: thinks Churchill's a villain, that moron. Okay, I'm sure he
Speaker 5: has some sort of level of intelligence where he's able
Speaker 5: to read quickly or whatever it is. But I'm not
Speaker 5: worried about that guy taking over Princeton University history department.
Speaker 5: But there are people on the left who have just
Speaker 5: as lunatic views of history and are themselves like very
Speaker 5: serious ideologues masquerading as academics, who have already taken over
Speaker 5: these institutions. So it's a different kind of a threat.
Speaker 5: And the waere politics are now is that Trump is
Speaker 5: the populist, he is the you know he channels, He's
Speaker 5: the tribune of a kind of rage at a system
Speaker 5: that I think is totally fair to say is often unfair.
Speaker 5: It is unfair, and how it actually a junicates what
Speaker 5: isn't isn't racism, So it's this is a complicated question,
Speaker 5: and unfortunately it feels like both sides have different kinds
Speaker 5: of threats to Jewish people in this country. So it's bad.
Speaker 2: Eli. One last question before we let you go. You're
Speaker 2: always wearing some good band T shirt. Could you stand
Speaker 2: up a little one? So we can see what this is.
Speaker 5: Get the reference.
Speaker 2: It's a nod that goes up to eleven. It's spinal
Speaker 2: tab very very very good, which is a reminder that
Speaker 2: I should have.
Speaker 5: By the way, if I know Charlie was here, I
Speaker 5: have a great T shirt that's just John and Yoko.
Speaker 1: Ah, just to upset me on this shore.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, we'll get onto the lyrical profundancy profundities of
Speaker 2: Imagine after you've left.
Speaker 5: But oh no, I hate Imagine. But that album is
Speaker 5: superb and I think Imagine is a completely overrated, terrible anthem.
Speaker 5: But I found out is incredible.
Speaker 2: Out there, I suppose. But I regard anything that Yoko
Speaker 2: is involved in as as I don't know. It's just
Speaker 2: it's it's like adding a dash of aromatic bidders too.
Speaker 5: John's very unhappy before he met Yoko. She really gave
Speaker 5: him happiness, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's very nice for a millionaire heroin attic. But I
Speaker 2: don't really have to pay attention to his to his
Speaker 2: music for that anyway. Well, the Beatles. The Beatles with
Speaker 2: Eli Lak is another show that we'll do down the road.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, we keep our powder dry and we
Speaker 2: wait for the inevitable response, and perhaps we'll speak to
Speaker 2: you after that.
Speaker 5: Shallow Shalloon.
Speaker 2: Thanks the ELI next year in Jerusalem. So the last
Speaker 2: thing before we go here and you is that getting
Speaker 2: to the hurricane. And again, this is one of those
Speaker 2: things where if you get most of your news from
Speaker 2: social media, and I don't mean Instagram, and I don't
Speaker 2: mean TikTok, I mean from I'm going to say X,
Speaker 2: aren't I. I'm going to give in at some point
Speaker 2: and just say X. But I'm at knowing it's Twitter.
Speaker 2: It's Twitter. It's always going to be Twitter. They will
Speaker 2: call it something else my entire life, but it'll be
Speaker 2: Twitter anyway.
Speaker 3: If you get in very strange hills to die on, James,
Speaker 3: that's all I can say.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sorry, but I X is a stupid name.
Speaker 2: X means nothing. Twitter is the historical name of it,
Speaker 2: that sums up all of.
Speaker 3: What Man paid forty four billion dollars for it. He
Speaker 3: saved freedom of speech. He can call it what he wants,
Speaker 3: and he has.
Speaker 2: I just don't have to go along with it, That's
Speaker 2: all I'm saying. I don't.
Speaker 1: I find it hard to I can't call them the
Speaker 1: Cleveland Guardians, and I can't call them the Washington Commanders,
Speaker 1: and I can't call it act just it's it's not
Speaker 1: even a principle. I just feel odd doing it, a
Speaker 1: bit like if I started to say Yule, I would
Speaker 1: just sound weird.
Speaker 2: You would don't so you'd like me affecting a britishism,
Speaker 2: which I won't. But the Guardians, the Cleveland Guardians, though,
Speaker 2: I think they're named after statues on a bridge. I
Speaker 2: think I think there's the interest, yeah, which is an
Speaker 2: interesting thing. So they might be the only football team
Speaker 2: named after statues.
Speaker 1: I don't say I see that.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, Jennyway on Twitter. The conversations about the
Speaker 2: female response in the and the Appalachians has been remarkable,
Speaker 2: And some of these stories you just have to cock
Speaker 2: a skeptical Scott Spock like eyebrow because too many priors confirmed.
Speaker 2: But then when the legitimate news organization start running with
Speaker 2: the story of helicopter pilots who are told no, you
Speaker 2: can't go up there, you can't go save those people,
Speaker 2: and then you have other people talking about FEMA coming
Speaker 2: in and taking some of the supplies, supposedly so they
Speaker 2: can do a better job of coordinating the distribution and
Speaker 2: the rest of it. You think that perhaps the organizations
Speaker 2: responsible for going in and fixing things are finding themselves
Speaker 2: flat footed because they a. Not very good at it
Speaker 2: and b don't want to be shown up by people
Speaker 2: who do. You would think that this would be one
Speaker 2: of those stories like you see in a movie or
Speaker 2: a television show where you've got some Tommy Lee Jones
Speaker 2: character who arrives on the scene, parachutes in comes in
Speaker 2: in a helicopter, and immediately snaps everybody into one coordinated
Speaker 2: effort that solves everything. But no, and it makes you
Speaker 2: wonder if FEMA, which we'll all recall, of course Martin
Speaker 2: Lando telling Molder in the first X Files movie, was
Speaker 2: the secret government that actually controlled things. Wonderful moment that
Speaker 2: shows you how deep the paranoid and stupidity of nineties
Speaker 2: was FEMA. The shadow government that FEMA may join the
Speaker 2: other institutions in which we have lost a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of respect, because well, they've been more interested in handing
Speaker 2: out hotel coupons to people don't ought not to be
Speaker 2: here than figuring out what they ought to do when
Speaker 2: something like this strikes or am I wrong?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, there's no I mean, there's no doubt
Speaker 3: we can't. The federal government cannot control the border. The
Speaker 3: Secret Service cannot ensure the physical safety of a former
Speaker 3: president and now presidential candidate. Israel can hit back at
Speaker 3: the who theis, but the United States Navy it cannot.
Speaker 3: Why should we even expect FEMA to prove even minimally competent.
Speaker 3: The failure of the federal government and agency after agency
Speaker 3: after agency is comprehensive, and.
Speaker 2: None of these are a failure of ability. It's a
Speaker 2: failure of will. It's not because we can't actly things.
Speaker 2: It's just that we decided not to, and that decision
Speaker 2: not to becomes this paralyzing venom that seems to just
Speaker 2: cause everything to lock up.
Speaker 1: The Jarman Well, I am impressed by a man who
Speaker 1: I've seen described as president of the Southeast Rondo Centers,
Speaker 1: who I think has shown the way. This is one
Speaker 1: thing Florida is very good at. Had to get very
Speaker 1: good at it. And when you have to get very
Speaker 1: good at something, you do as the British learned in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, nineteen forty and I think that FEMA
Speaker 1: is really not set up in quite the same way
Speaker 1: because it's less important to the people who run it.
Speaker 1: And that's one reason I'm a free market here, and
Speaker 1: it's one reason I'm a federalist is I think people
Speaker 1: who have money in the game or affected themselves tend
Speaker 1: to do things better. And I just cannot see a
Speaker 1: better example of it than the difference between the responses
Speaker 1: from the states in North Caro, Liner in Virginia and
Speaker 1: Florida here and Florida has sent National Garden State God
Speaker 1: troops to help, and FEMA. Of course, because the president's
Speaker 1: a Democrat, we hear a lot less about it. We
Speaker 1: don't get the calumny that we've got against George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: which is desperately unfair. But what matter is most of
Speaker 1: the people who have been affected is whether or not
Speaker 1: they're getting help, and if they are, it's likely to
Speaker 1: have a state emblem on it rather than a FEMA logo.
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons that Bush got more
Speaker 2: trouble than Harris is getting today, aside from, of course,
Speaker 2: the natural leaning aspect of the people covering the event,
Speaker 2: is that you had New Orleans, you had a concentrated
Speaker 2: example of human misery. This to the people, perhaps in
Speaker 2: the medium, perhaps in the government just seems sort of
Speaker 2: like a spread out area of the country where for
Speaker 2: all they know it's done. But jet clampet shooting, it's
Speaker 2: some food and it doesn't really going on there, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to wrap your brain around. There's
Speaker 2: a road out, there's a town gone. It's not the
Speaker 2: same as having the you know, the New Orleans Dome
Speaker 2: up to its gun whales and water, or seeing blocks
Speaker 2: and blocks of flooded school buses. It's just there's there's
Speaker 2: no visual thing that they can quite get their hands
Speaker 2: on or their eyes on their hook. It doesn't explain
Speaker 2: why the coverage has been what. It doesn't justify where
Speaker 2: the coverage has been what it is. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I find appalling things in my Twitter feed with photographs
Speaker 2: and stories and the rest of it, the occasional AI
Speaker 2: photo designed to get clicks, yes, but appalling things. And
Speaker 2: then when I go to my main news sources, I
Speaker 2: get dribs and drabs and it seems to be all
Speaker 2: over and we've moved on to something else, just like
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm looking at the news and it's just
Speaker 2: like we've moved on beyond the Iranian attack on Israel.
Speaker 2: Already we've moved on this desperate need to keep moving on.
Speaker 2: As a last question, why is that? Is it because
Speaker 2: you know the things aren't going well, and a general
Speaker 2: sense of things not going well is not helpful towards
Speaker 2: the general project of electing his historical presidential candidate and
Speaker 2: taking that box. I think that's part of it. I
Speaker 2: that's a lot of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's almost all of it. And I would
Speaker 1: just note that we don't move on when not moving
Speaker 1: on is useful to the press's broader political projects. The
Speaker 1: assassination attempt, the first one on Donald Trump, disappeared quite quickly.
Speaker 3: That was not helpful. The killing of.
Speaker 1: George Floyd lasted an entire summer. And that's because one
Speaker 1: allowed the advancement of a negative narrative in the eyes
Speaker 1: of those who control our newsrooms, and the other a
Speaker 1: positive narrative. And I think this is a huge problem
Speaker 1: in this country that massively skews our political conversations.
Speaker 3: Does it ever? Speaking of not moving on, Jack Smith
Speaker 3: is given permission to really or releases I don't know.
Speaker 3: The judge Chuck whatever, releases the new indictment against Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and the New York Times uncovering it. I give them
Speaker 3: this much. They put it in the very first paragraph
Speaker 3: that it contains no new information. Now no real I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 3: no new charges, no new information, but richness of detail
Speaker 3: and texture. In other words, there's nothing new here. They've
Speaker 3: just padded it out with some additional anecdotes, and the
Speaker 3: New York Times, literally years after the event, now puts
Speaker 3: this on the front page, and it will be there.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that I haven't looked again today. I'm sure
Speaker 3: there are follow on stories. This will go on for
Speaker 3: between them on the election, for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: I think it isn't not that it isn't an important
Speaker 3: event that needs to be taught, blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: but if you put it in the moving on category,
Speaker 3: it's time.
Speaker 2: I think at this point it strikes the public imagination
Speaker 2: as Jim Garrison coming up with some more charges to
Speaker 2: file against somebody in New Orleans about the Kennedy assassination,
Speaker 2: or strikes them as interesting as Lenny Bruce sitting on
Speaker 2: his stool at the end of his career and reading
Speaker 2: the Warren Commission report. I just your eyes glaze over.
Speaker 2: He becomes added to it. It's like, yeah, he's a crook,
Speaker 2: he's a criminal, again and again and again. I get
Speaker 2: I get it, I get it, I get it. I
Speaker 2: don't care. Is what most is what the people uh
Speaker 2: in Trump's corner will say, And I don't think it
Speaker 2: persuades the people in the middle. I think what persuades
Speaker 2: them are arguments such as VANCE made about the policies
Speaker 2: that they would enact, or as we said a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago, the policies that they wouldn't. I don't
Speaker 2: think people are worried so much about what Donald Trump
Speaker 2: would do as concerned that, you know, he wouldn't do
Speaker 2: things about what am I trying to say here? Let
Speaker 2: me let me rewind that and be more coherent. People
Speaker 2: aren't worried about what Donald Trump was going to do.
Speaker 2: They're just happy that he won't be doing the things
Speaker 2: they expect from Maharis and Walts administration.
Speaker 3: Exactly. You put that beautifully. What was it last week, James?
Speaker 2: I did, and then I said, inexpertly and tumbletongue today.
Speaker 3: Stumbletongue today because I haven't had enough stillating five hundred,
Speaker 3: So could I post one one last question myself here?
Speaker 3: And it is this What do you two make of
Speaker 3: the polls? They just don't seem to move. Donald Trump
Speaker 3: has a very bad debate performance in any way you'd
Speaker 3: care to score it. She seemed more coherent, calmer, so forth,
Speaker 3: and she got maybe half a point benefit out of that.
Speaker 3: Vance has a terrific debate performance. Doesn't seem to be
Speaker 3: showing up in the polls. She seems to be retaining
Speaker 3: I'm looking. I look every day at the real clear average.
Speaker 3: She seems to be retaining a national lead of about
Speaker 3: two percent, and in the battleground states, he seems to
Speaker 3: be maintaining his lead in several including an Arizona. It
Speaker 3: just is this very to me, very strange sense of stasis.
Speaker 2: Well, Hillary was going to win two. I believe a
Speaker 2: lot of the polls said, I don't know anyway, Charles,
Speaker 2: go ahead, I am I'm not. I'm not a poll watchers.
Speaker 2: Polls annoy me. They just do. I'm annoyed that I
Speaker 2: have to keep up with them. I annoyed that I
Speaker 2: have to parse them. I'm annoyed that I have to
Speaker 2: keep them in my head. It's my failing, But I
Speaker 2: just I'm bored with poles polls. They have allergies to them.
Speaker 1: Charles, go ahead, Well, I have a theory that makes
Speaker 1: people very cross when I say it, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: expressing it here will yield more angry emails and charges
Speaker 1: of squishiness and elite detachment. But I nevertheless think that
Speaker 1: I might be onto something I don't. I think the
Speaker 1: American public particularly cares about the selection. That is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as saying that people aren't hurting, there
Speaker 1: aren't real issues. It's not the same thing as saying
Speaker 1: that the election doesn't matter. I think there is a
Speaker 1: disconnect between how much people who work in politics and
Speaker 1: think about politics all the time and volunteer in politics
Speaker 1: care about this election, and how much people who are
Speaker 1: living normal lives who only start thinking about such things
Speaker 1: in late October care about this election. And I think
Speaker 1: that the reason for that is in part because both
Speaker 1: candidates are god awful. People are tired of Trump, even
Speaker 1: if they like it, They're tired of Trump. People do
Speaker 1: not like Carl Harris or know who she is, or
Speaker 1: find any inspiration or joy in her candidacy. And although
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people hurting and the world
Speaker 1: is on fire, in many ways, assay historical matter please
Speaker 1: don't write to me and saying I'm saying this because
Speaker 1: I'm some super rich guy living in a scrooge McDuck castle.
Speaker 1: I say, historical matter. Relative to where we were in,
Speaker 1: say two thousand and nine, or where we were in
Speaker 1: say nineteen eighty, or where we were in say nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, America is still pretty rich and prosperous. And
Speaker 1: because of that, people are not out on the streets
Speaker 1: waving signs. And I think that the election is just
Speaker 1: not looming large in the imaginations of the public in
Speaker 1: the way that those on both sides think that it should.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why the polls are hovering at
Speaker 1: around fifty to fifty, because we're a fifty to fifty nation.
Speaker 1: People have removed themselves back into their usual political, partisan
Speaker 1: and ideological postures. And maybe something will break that down
Speaker 1: in the end, but maybe it won't, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get the closest election since two thousand.
Speaker 6: Now, go jump in your golf cart and drive off
Speaker 6: to the course, your tail finned golf court golf cart,
Speaker 6: no doubt, no, this little am radio set to an
Speaker 6: all Elvis done.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I think that's the uh that's
Speaker 2: the most insightful thing I've heard in the last hour.
Speaker 2: And you know that's with Eli and Peters. So you
Speaker 2: got two screeds out of Charlie and then a third
Speaker 2: one which I wouldn't say was screedy, but it certainly was.
Speaker 3: That was pretty screedy. That was pretty screedy. I think
Speaker 3: Screen Adjacent.
Speaker 6: Seen has greenish elements of a philipic but but it
Speaker 6: also had anyway.
Speaker 2: So we are moving along, we are going away. We'll
Speaker 2: be back next week, of course with podcast number seven twelve.
Speaker 2: We'll be back all through the election and beyond. Because
Speaker 2: we're ricochet dot com. I'm not going anywhere. And you
Speaker 2: if you haven't been there yet, if you've been listening
Speaker 2: to me talk for seven and eleven episodes, I don't
Speaker 2: know what's going to do to take you to go
Speaker 2: to ricochet dot com. But once you do, you'll be
Speaker 2: happy because you will find the place you've been looking
Speaker 2: for all these years on the internet, same civil mostly
Speaker 2: center right com, mostly center right conversation. It's a great place.
Speaker 2: I love it. I'm there every day. I'm there five
Speaker 2: six times a day checking it. We just I had
Speaker 2: a great conversation with one with Gary McVeigh about what
Speaker 2: are you thinking, oh, about demographic shifts in the Southwest,
Speaker 2: about increasing trade problems with Canada, about immigration in southern
Speaker 2: Now we're talking about Sergeant Bilko. Phil Silver Is a
Speaker 2: great movie he made, and how that inevitably wound into
Speaker 2: a conversation about television and mid century culture and it
Speaker 2: was just great. It was so Ricochet and it's waiting
Speaker 2: for you. So go there, sign up and join the
Speaker 2: member feed and give us those five stars at Apple
Speaker 2: Podcast if you don't mind. And I can't think of
Speaker 2: anything else except we'll see you in the comments at
Speaker 2: Ricochet four point oh Next.
Speaker 3: Week, guys, next week, boys, Ricochet join the conversation