Speaker 1: A short time ago, the United States military began major
Speaker 1: combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the
Speaker 1: American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.
Speaker 2: And non in LoVa and Lodi. His Eminence, Grand Ayatola
Speaker 2: Imam Komeni, we send salutations.
Speaker 3: Yesterday we eliminated the tailand Kamene along with him, we
Speaker 3: eliminated dozens of senior officials of the oppressive regime.
Speaker 4: Our forces are executing with unmatched skill, and the mission
Speaker 4: is advancing decisively. This is the kind of no nonsense,
Speaker 4: results driven war fighting that America demands.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy nine. You can join us at ricochet dot com.
Speaker 2: You really can, and you can be part of the
Speaker 2: most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James
Speaker 2: Lallox in the middle of the country in Minneapolis where
Speaker 2: it's very foggy, and I'm joined by Steven Hayward and
Speaker 2: Sunny California, and Charles C. W. Cook in Florida, who
Speaker 2: knows what the weather is, who cares, and gentlemen. It
Speaker 2: seems in retrospect that our first clue should have been
Speaker 2: renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. Here
Speaker 2: we are with one of the most astonishing displays we've
Speaker 2: seen in a long time. People were goggling over the
Speaker 2: snatching of Maduro, and now that appears to be like
Speaker 2: walking down to the corner store for a pack of smokes.
Speaker 2: This is big. This is something the likes of which
Speaker 2: I've never seen in my lifetime. And I've been around
Speaker 2: for the Desert, for the Iraqi Wars and the rest.
Speaker 2: It feels different too. It feels like weapons free, like unburdened,
Speaker 2: like the rules of engagement have changed, like there is
Speaker 2: a Marshall spirit breast puffed. Seen it in a long time,
Speaker 2: and we can attribute that probably to probably to the
Speaker 2: President and to the sec deaf. So here we are.
Speaker 2: It's been since February twenty eighth BDA BDA from you guys,
Speaker 2: Stephen go first.
Speaker 5: Well, I think not only the Department of War, but
Speaker 5: I think a bigger clue is the obvious one, which
Speaker 5: is sending so many forces over to the theater. And
Speaker 5: you know, when Trump does that, and I think this
Speaker 5: was true of Venezuela, you know he's going to use it.
Speaker 5: He's not just going to say never mind and withdraw
Speaker 5: without some kind of deal, which clearly was not in
Speaker 5: the offing. I think that, to me the most significant
Speaker 5: facts so far. It's not the scale of it so much,
Speaker 5: although that is a big thing, but it was the
Speaker 5: sinking of the Iranian warship out in the Indian Ocean
Speaker 5: with the torpedo.
Speaker 3: You mean, the war crime, war crime right for the
Speaker 3: first time since World War Two.
Speaker 5: And the reason I say that's such a big deal is, well,
Speaker 5: it's not exactly the same. But you know, if you
Speaker 5: know your early World War two history really well before
Speaker 5: we were in it, and it was when the British
Speaker 5: sunk the French war fleet in North Africa after Askton
Speaker 5: surrender and they refused and you know, Churchill didn't want
Speaker 5: to do that, but thought it was necessary because he
Speaker 5: didn't want the fleet to fall into German hands. And
Speaker 5: that's when Roosevelt and his people said, oh, they really
Speaker 5: do mean to see this thing through and to win
Speaker 5: it if they'll do that, And that was, you know,
Speaker 5: a powerful moral effect, as Churchill put it. And I
Speaker 5: think the fact that the order went out, yeah, sink
Speaker 5: that ship out in the middle of the ocean rather
Speaker 5: than just hobble it or blockade or who knows what,
Speaker 5: shows that in fact, Trump and his team are in
Speaker 5: it to destroy Iron's capabilities from head to toe.
Speaker 3: Charles.
Speaker 2: Has been a lot of talk from the usual talkers
Speaker 2: about that this was a war crime, it was an
Speaker 2: unarmed ship, it was in international waters, and so forth,
Speaker 2: most of which were wave away by people said no, actually,
Speaker 2: it's war, it's worship, it's heading where it shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it seems we have the starkest dichotomy we've
Speaker 2: had in a long time between those people who believe
Speaker 2: still that there is an internet national rules based order
Speaker 2: is that simply exists and is enforced by moral persuasion,
Speaker 2: and by those who say no, that is a fiction
Speaker 2: that is promulgated by people who wanted to bang the
Speaker 2: United States and have us all descend into a Brussels
Speaker 2: style EU talking shop where nothing ever gets done and
Speaker 2: the bad guys get to go away. Is it the
Speaker 2: end of the old international order? We exposed it as
Speaker 2: just simply something that existed because American strength backstopped it.
Speaker 6: Well, that's what it's always been. That wasn't a war crime.
Speaker 6: But I will say that the apologists for the administration
Speaker 6: do need to accept that this is a war, which
Speaker 6: many of them won't, including the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 6: It is a war that was an active war. We
Speaker 6: can tell this because if somebody did any of these
Speaker 6: things to us, we would describe it as such. We
Speaker 6: wouldn't say it was a limited kinetic action. Actually, it
Speaker 6: is a war.
Speaker 2: Because it is, as long as no one calls it
Speaker 2: a special military operation, right, I load that.
Speaker 6: I think we should own it. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 6: it's wrong. I don't think it is, but we should
Speaker 6: own that it's a war. The sinking of that ship
Speaker 6: was not a war crime, and in fact, the arguments
Speaker 6: that it was are based upon a misreading of the rules.
Speaker 6: The rule is that you have to help in so
Speaker 6: far as it is possible to help, but you can't
Speaker 6: by definition, help with a submarine. Submarines have always been
Speaker 6: considered different because they have limited space. You can't just
Speaker 6: fill a submarine with one hundred Iranians.
Speaker 2: Well, they can sit on the top and you can
Speaker 2: and you can drive the ship home at you know,
Speaker 2: without without going down.
Speaker 6: I mean, this is silly, and I've seen some people
Speaker 6: on the far left saying and This just proves that
Speaker 6: we're worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis, No,
Speaker 6: absolutely not, this was normal within the rules of war.
Speaker 6: And I think what it highlights more than that the
Speaker 6: United States is wrong in some way is the people
Speaker 6: have just forgotten, thankfully, what wars look like, because we've
Speaker 6: had a very long piece. Because even that there we
Speaker 6: are in one, now we live so far away from
Speaker 6: it that, with the exception of higher gas prices, perhaps
Speaker 6: it's really not going to affect to many people, especially
Speaker 6: those who don't have children in the services. It doesn't
Speaker 6: affect them. But the average American doesn't. So the average
Speaker 6: American is sitting watching this as if it were a
Speaker 6: TV show and thereby fixating on that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: But no, this wasn't a war crime.
Speaker 2: But this is a war when you talk about the
Speaker 2: realities of it, striking home we have seen ever since
Speaker 2: the Gulf War, a series of what are basically bloodless engagements.
Speaker 2: We see thermal imaging footage of people running around a
Speaker 2: missile launcher and then there's a bloom and then they're
Speaker 2: not there anymore. The graphic nature, the horrible nature, the
Speaker 2: upfront nature, the mangled nature of it is just doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be is not our screens. But there was
Speaker 2: something about the sinking of that vessel that did actually
Speaker 2: drive it home to you, because when the torpedo exploded
Speaker 2: beneath the bow and cracked the spine, an awful lot
Speaker 2: of heat signatures went up in the air, and you
Speaker 2: had to look at that and say, those are were
Speaker 2: people we don't see, you know, the mangled bodies being
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that we should, I'm just saying that
Speaker 2: the sort of unreal aspect of this continues to this
Speaker 2: very day. Today. I just saw something on Twitter that
Speaker 2: said this again, this has to be confirmed that it's
Speaker 2: Israeli sorty of a large number of planes dropped a
Speaker 2: large number of bombs on what they call the remaining
Speaker 2: government figures of the Iranian regime. And you see the
Speaker 2: bunker busters, you see the blocks exploding, and it's all
Speaker 2: top down from above. And we have no point here
Speaker 2: of the to say that you're right, we don't. We
Speaker 2: don't see the consequences of our of our action. And
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that we should have our noses rubbed
Speaker 2: into it. I'm just simply saying that once again we
Speaker 2: have this sort of video game aspect to it. I
Speaker 2: suppose that's unavoidable in modern conflict. No point, no point
Speaker 2: there whatsoever. Will hand it over to Steve to perhaps
Speaker 2: find a point in what I was saying.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll just pick up on the international rules based
Speaker 5: order you brought up in your last question. Look, I've
Speaker 5: always been skeptical of that for a long time. I
Speaker 5: think you put your finger on it. It's usually used
Speaker 5: as a tool to hobble the United States and its allies.
Speaker 5: It only international law only works among nations who can
Speaker 5: be expected to abide by it, and of course that
Speaker 5: would not be Iran, right, and lots of other regions Russia.
Speaker 3: Uh so are you?
Speaker 5: Throughout the Cold War, James, I would ask people the question,
Speaker 5: why don't we need arms control agreements with Britain or France,
Speaker 5: or he might add Israel to that, since they have
Speaker 5: nuclear weapons. Well, the answer is obvious, right, They're they're
Speaker 5: fellow democracy with whom we have good relations, so we
Speaker 5: don't need it. We only need those kinds of agreements
Speaker 5: with our enemies. And even when you get them, like
Speaker 5: we did with the Soviet Union, they're not very good. Okay,
Speaker 5: that's point one. Point two is to extend your last comment.
Speaker 5: I do understand now in the press that we're flying
Speaker 5: a lot of B fifty twos because we've cleared away
Speaker 5: the air defenses of Iran and they can fly pretty
Speaker 5: much with impunity. And of course those can carry so
Speaker 5: much more ordinance than even the B two, let alone
Speaker 5: the B one whatever, they always bes right, the B
Speaker 5: one and B two the stealth ones, and those can
Speaker 5: be used to really reduce a lot of targets to rubble.
Speaker 5: And you know, I go back to the end of
Speaker 5: the Vietnam War in nineteen seventy two, when Nixon had
Speaker 5: had it and the skies were dark over handway with
Speaker 5: B fifty twos, a number of whom were shot down.
Speaker 5: Back in those days, air defenses were more effective and
Speaker 5: we didn't have as many effective countermeasures. But it sobered
Speaker 5: up the North Vietnamese that actually, we do have have
Speaker 5: to make a deal and ended up being an enforceable one.
Speaker 3: That's a problem for another day.
Speaker 5: And so the big question here is are we really
Speaker 5: going to be able to achieve our war aims with
Speaker 5: air power?
Speaker 3: And most experts say you can't.
Speaker 5: And what Hegseth has not ruled out boots on the ground,
Speaker 5: and when that happens, I think this whole thing goes
Speaker 5: pair shaped politically and may or may not succeed. I
Speaker 5: don't know, but well, I'll just end with this. Trump
Speaker 5: has taken a huge risk. He has met his entire
Speaker 5: presidency on this because if our economy wobbles, I agree
Speaker 5: with Charlie are we're the most immune from economic consequences
Speaker 5: in the near term. But that's not true of our
Speaker 5: trading partners and the European economies and Japan, even in
Speaker 5: South Korea. They could be having some serious economic troubles
Speaker 5: soon and that will spill over to us eventually. So
Speaker 5: this is a huge risk on Trump's part, and once
Speaker 5: again you've got to kind of admire him and worry
Speaker 5: about him.
Speaker 2: Well, the buffs are doing the job is supposed to do,
Speaker 2: which is taking out the missiles storage facilities. It doesn't
Speaker 2: matter if you can get your launchers out, if you
Speaker 2: can't get those and taking out the launchers too. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a very long term, calculated process going on here
Speaker 2: which seems to be proceeding correctly. But there's also something
Speaker 2: beyond that, which is China and the whole part that
Speaker 2: this fits in into an anti China, China containment strategy.
Speaker 2: That is what seems to me to be the emerging
Speaker 2: reality at the end of the day behind this. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: Iran is off the table as a terrorist force. They're
Speaker 2: no longer supporting everybody. That's great, the region stabilizes, But
Speaker 2: it seems as if Iran made a bet that their
Speaker 2: underground cities full of missiles would be something the United
Speaker 2: States could never take out like they did in the
Speaker 2: Gulf Wars because they're on the ground, And China made
Speaker 2: a bet that by propping up Iran that they would
Speaker 2: pin down the US and in the Middle East in
Speaker 2: a series of engagements that were inconsequential in the end
Speaker 2: and unresolved, and that China would prosper and flourish because
Speaker 2: of this. Am I right in saying that, I think
Speaker 2: it's easy to say that the Uranian strategy seems not
Speaker 2: to have worked out for them in the end. But
Speaker 2: am I right in saying that a success here really
Speaker 2: does not put g in a good position, and it's
Speaker 2: his own fault. Charles.
Speaker 6: I think there's a huge gap between the political performance
Speaker 6: of the White House, which I think has been poor
Speaker 6: and almost indifferent and the extraordinary performance of the military,
Speaker 6: which I assume is being watched around the world, and
Speaker 6: not just in this instance, but also in Venezuela, which
Speaker 6: was really quite impressive. So as a piece of geopolitical engineering,
Speaker 6: I am thrilled that the Chinese and the Russians and
Speaker 6: anyone else has watched this and been reminded that the
Speaker 6: US is number one and ought not to be messed with.
Speaker 6: As a domestic political matter, I think Trump has once
Speaker 6: again been his own worst enemy.
Speaker 2: Well I'll expand on that. I mean, we don't want
Speaker 2: to sit here in a a Polish tell me you
Speaker 2: think that they are domestic political soundings and statements have
Speaker 2: been insufficient or have been like a daisicle or what. Well,
Speaker 2: if you.
Speaker 6: Look at how this went down. Not that I am
Speaker 6: part of the story. I just say this is a preface.
Speaker 6: I wrote a column two weeks ago saying we needed
Speaker 6: to debate this, and it needed to go through Congress.
Speaker 6: This is a thing I write every time under every president,
Speaker 6: and I had a line in there saying I don't
Speaker 6: want to wake up one morning and be told we're
Speaker 6: at war. I would prefer, as a citizen to be
Speaker 6: part of this, and of course on Saturday, I woke
Speaker 6: up and was told that we were at war because
Speaker 6: the President had decided to do it. That's not a
Speaker 6: judgment on the merits. It's not a cover for criticism
Speaker 6: on the merits. I am agnostic on this question. I'm
Speaker 6: totally open to the argument that this was the right
Speaker 6: thing to do.
Speaker 2: But yeah, America, you're right, because every Charles C. W.
Speaker 2: Cook speech ends with and we must have a congressional
Speaker 2: resolution on the destruction of Carthage or whatever the Latin
Speaker 2: equivalence would be. Right, You're right, You're consistent, and I
Speaker 2: agree with you.
Speaker 6: Anyway, I went to my son's flag football game and
Speaker 6: people there who vaguely know what I do came up
Speaker 6: to me and said, so, what's this iran thing? And
Speaker 6: I do think that's somewhat astonishing in a democratic republic. Now,
Speaker 6: if Trump believes this is the right decision, and I'm
Speaker 6: open to being persuaded that it is, I think, at
Speaker 6: the very least, even if he wasn't going to go
Speaker 6: to Congress or have a long debate prior to doing it,
Speaker 6: and there are strategic arguments against that, he had to
Speaker 6: do more than give a very short speech in a
Speaker 6: white baseball hat from his private club and then disappear.
Speaker 6: But in the meantime talk to lots of journalists on
Speaker 6: the telephone and give them different answers as to what
Speaker 6: we were doing. There have been three four different explanations
Speaker 6: as to why we're in Iran. It's been a humanitarian case.
Speaker 6: It's been that it was an imminent threat against us.
Speaker 6: It's been that we was tired after forty six years
Speaker 6: and them targeting us. It's been that we were going
Speaker 6: after the weapons program, in so on and so forth.
Speaker 6: I think that Trump should have come out and said,
Speaker 6: ladies and gentlemen, I understand that this is somewhat surprising,
Speaker 6: but this country has been a thorn on our side
Speaker 6: for forty seven years. It has an institutional animus toward
Speaker 6: the United States. It says death to America, death to Israel.
Speaker 6: It's been trying to get a nuclear weapon. It's been
Speaker 6: killing our people for years, including in Iraq. And we
Speaker 6: were presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to
Speaker 6: do something about this. And I Donald Trump, unlike the
Speaker 6: feckless presidents who came before me, that's his line, not mine,
Speaker 6: have finally pulled the trigger, and then I think he
Speaker 6: should have kept to that line for a week and
Speaker 6: acknowledged and this is something that Trump, and it's not
Speaker 6: just Trump, lots of presidents of the same Biden was
Speaker 6: also bad in this regard. Then he should have said
Speaker 6: that he could not in good conscience pass up that opportunity,
Speaker 6: even though there would be downsides, including domestic ones such
Speaker 6: as higher gas prices. I have been arguing for months
Speaker 6: in a separate sphere that he should be saying, yes,
Speaker 6: there is pain in the economy, because there is pain
Speaker 6: in the economy, but he won't. He says we're in
Speaker 6: a golden age. And I just worry with this that
Speaker 6: this is going to have been the right thing to do,
Speaker 6: that it's going to lead to really good outcomes in
Speaker 6: the long run geopolitical and in the Middle East, but
Speaker 6: that the American public is not going to be sold
Speaker 6: and that if he isn't hurt by it, at least
Speaker 6: he will have got away with it rather than be
Speaker 6: rewarded for it. Perhaps he was never going to be
Speaker 6: rewarded for it. Perhaps he had to take a brave
Speaker 6: decision and deal with the consequences. But I don't see
Speaker 6: him doing a great deal. So I'm drawing a distinction
Speaker 6: here between the domestic political question, which matters because we
Speaker 6: have elections, and the performance of the US military, which
Speaker 6: I think has been stella, and the potential geopolitical ramifications,
Speaker 6: which I'm open to being told are solid, including that China,
Speaker 6: Russia and other countries are watching this and remembering, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's why America is the hedge of them.
Speaker 2: Steve is Charles living in an old world where Martin
Speaker 2: Sheen gives us a speech from the Oval Office and
Speaker 2: with his hands folded and starts with my fellow Americans
Speaker 2: and ends with God bless America. That is that era
Speaker 2: just gone. And now it's it's it's you. You announced
Speaker 2: to the world what you've done in a vertical video
Speaker 2: on TikTok, and then you tweet about it a little
Speaker 2: bit later, and this indistinct message, it's just part of
Speaker 2: a fractured attention span of the American public today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, if you go back to the Cuban
Speaker 5: missile crisis, when they first got the intelligence and that
Speaker 5: the Soviets were putting in missiles, the Hawks wanted to
Speaker 5: do an attack right away, just and I forget who
Speaker 5: it was and you know, I've read all the books
Speaker 5: on this years ago, but I forget who it was.
Speaker 5: Somebody around Kennedy, and it might have been Kennedy himself
Speaker 5: who said, we don't do surprise attacks. We don't do
Speaker 5: Pearl Harbor. Now this isn't quite the same, but it does.
Speaker 5: I take Charlie's point that you do it out of
Speaker 5: the kind of out of the blue like this, I mean,
Speaker 5: when you had the forces there, and we've been talking
Speaker 5: about it for a while Trump has, so it's maybe
Speaker 5: not out of the blue, but out of the purple.
Speaker 5: I don't know what the right color is. The other
Speaker 5: thing is, oh, the Oval Office address, James. I mean,
Speaker 5: in the old days you and I grew up, that's
Speaker 5: the days when the three networks had the roadblock right
Speaker 5: the state. The president would always appear on all the networks,
Speaker 5: and then the cable ones when they came along, and
Speaker 5: so everyone would tune in because you weren't going to
Speaker 5: watch anything else while that was happening. Well, of course,
Speaker 5: that world was long gone because of cable and five
Speaker 5: hundred channels and so forth. And that's why I think
Speaker 5: one of the biggest reasons presidents no longer make the
Speaker 5: formal Oval office address anymore, which I think is unfortunate.
Speaker 5: I think the way CHARTI made it out would be
Speaker 5: much to be advised. Trump as usual just improvises every day,
Speaker 5: including this morning as we're talking, saying he wants unconditional
Speaker 5: surrender from Iran, which is probably a mistake to say
Speaker 5: that or and you know, we'll see if he really
Speaker 5: means that. But your other question, you know Bridge Colby,
Speaker 5: who was a guest on this show two three years ago,
Speaker 5: he's been very open about and I think the administration
Speaker 5: has gone along with it. They would like to settle
Speaker 5: business in the Middle East so we can pivot to
Speaker 5: a more robust defense posture against China in the Pacific,
Speaker 5: and so a lot of people are saying that is
Speaker 5: what's going on. Oh, by the way, I'll add Charlie
Speaker 5: that I've been scribbling notes to myself. I do wish
Speaker 5: Pete Hegseth would switch to decaf before his briefings. Right,
Speaker 5: He's just a little bit too over the top. So
Speaker 5: it is kind of a mess. But the last thing
Speaker 5: I'll say, and here I agree with Charlie's inclinations on this,
Speaker 5: but I think we have a and enfeebled Congress across
Speaker 5: the board for years now, and it is an important
Speaker 5: project to try and unenfeeble them in so many ways,
Speaker 5: and I think the Supreme Court is helping with that
Speaker 5: on domestic matters.
Speaker 3: But second, you know, we had Bill barr On.
Speaker 5: Here about just three four or five weeks ago, whatever
Speaker 5: it was, and reminded us that before Gulf War one,
Speaker 5: President Bush thought he did not need the approval of
Speaker 5: Congress to launch that war, but they decided for political
Speaker 5: reasons to ask for it anyway. Now, the Senate vote
Speaker 5: in that was quite close. I think it was only
Speaker 5: fifty three forty seven or fifty four to forty six.
Speaker 5: Most Democrats opposed it. And remember we had moved five
Speaker 5: hundred thousand troops in the theater and all the pieces
Speaker 5: there and while trying to do a negotiated settlement. It's
Speaker 5: similar to what we've been through the last you know,
Speaker 5: several years with Iran.
Speaker 3: But if that had failed, or if Congress.
Speaker 5: Held a debate here in the last two weeks and
Speaker 5: Trump had lost in the House, which I think is
Speaker 5: conceivable that he might have lost the resolution in the House,
Speaker 5: then he's in a very weak position because I do
Speaker 5: think at the end of the day, our constitution has
Speaker 5: always been intentional on this, but I think the commander
Speaker 5: in chief powers do authorize the president to take us
Speaker 5: into into action like this. I think by the way
Speaker 5: the war powers act, most presidents, I think all presidents
Speaker 5: since then think it's unconstitutional, wanted to challenge it, and
Speaker 5: Trump is the one person who will challenge it if
Speaker 5: it comes to that.
Speaker 2: I'm like Charles. I agree with all of his positions
Speaker 2: about what should be done and the processes that we
Speaker 2: have that have served a swell in the past. I
Speaker 2: can't just disagree with any of this positions. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, I feel as though I've got one
Speaker 2: foot on the dock of the twentieth century and the
Speaker 2: other on a boat of the twenty first, and they're
Speaker 2: drifting apart. And if you've ever been out of the
Speaker 2: lakes and found yourself in that situation, you know at
Speaker 2: some point you have to make a choice or you're
Speaker 2: in the drink. And so I don't I mean, I
Speaker 2: put it this way. If we had had and I'm
Speaker 2: not saying well, if we'd gone ahead and asked Congress
Speaker 2: and done the whole thing by all the rules, I mean,
Speaker 2: but if we had, you know, that answer code pink,
Speaker 2: everybody would have ramped up the pre printed signs and
Speaker 2: the big demonstrations, and there would have been this sort
Speaker 2: of faux show of moral superiority in every city in America.
Speaker 2: That would give the spineless people in the House in
Speaker 2: the Senate reason to say, I'm decide with those who
Speaker 2: are protesting, because as we know from the sixties, anybody
Speaker 2: who gets out in the street and waves a placard
Speaker 2: is indeed themselves on the moral high ground, and that
Speaker 2: might have affected what happens. And then at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, eventually Iran scoots and scoffs at us
Speaker 2: and the Chinese solidification of the solidification, the Chinese tightening
Speaker 2: of their own hegemony is unabated. So I mean, that's
Speaker 2: not an answer for anything. I'm just saying that I
Speaker 2: feel sort of intellectually confused to the point of useless
Speaker 2: inaction by what I'm drawn towards and new realities that
Speaker 2: seem to be in our politics and society at the moment.
Speaker 2: And nobody answered my China question. By the way, somebody
Speaker 2: take my China question, did she make the wrong I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just open ended softball, But did she make the
Speaker 2: wrong back? How does this redound in Chinese politics, especially
Speaker 2: since he just killed about two hundred of his top generals.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean I think it was a traditional
Speaker 5: alliance where you want to make links with the enemy
Speaker 5: of your enemy. So the alliance with Iran looked good.
Speaker 5: I think the bigger problem for or at least one
Speaker 5: of the bigger problems for gi right now is, at
Speaker 5: least from what you can read in media sources, which
Speaker 5: maybe isn't everything or even correct, but a lot of
Speaker 5: the Chinese technology has proved to be ineffective.
Speaker 3: And there's a broader point about that.
Speaker 5: I mean, China is more technologically available and has a
Speaker 5: more robust economy than the Soviet Union ever had, and
Speaker 5: so we worry about you know, they build more ships
Speaker 5: in a year than we have in thirty or something
Speaker 5: like that, you know, those figures. But there's also I
Speaker 5: know a lot of people who really know their Chinese
Speaker 5: history and they say, yeah, they can build submarines and
Speaker 5: aircraft carriers, but you know what, they have a really
Speaker 5: bad record of fighting wars over the years, unlike the Russians, right,
Speaker 5: they're not very good at it, and what they had
Speaker 5: a submarine that sank at the dock, what two three
Speaker 5: years ago, you know, brand new submarine and somebody didn't
Speaker 5: close the screen door or something that sank at the dock.
Speaker 3: So I think there is some doubt.
Speaker 5: That the Chinese military capacities are all that good. But
Speaker 5: we're making this Texas now back to run. We are
Speaker 5: making the bet and have now at the same bet
Speaker 5: we did during the long Cold War of the Soviet
Speaker 5: Union that our quality of armaments would overwhelm their quantity.
Speaker 5: And okay, that's fine, but we have a lot of
Speaker 5: really expensive stuff in the whole new frontier drone wars
Speaker 5: we've learned about in the last few years. It means,
Speaker 5: you know, we're now shooting down what you know, I'll
Speaker 5: just say a five hundred thousand dollars drone with a
Speaker 5: five million dollar missile. That doesn't pencil out very well
Speaker 5: over time. And I think we're learning a lesson from that,
Speaker 5: and we'ren have to figure that out pretty soon because
Speaker 5: I think we the old American way of war of
Speaker 5: overwhelming them with our wealth and technology has got its vulnerabilities.
Speaker 6: It's interesting on that because we went from World War
Speaker 6: Two where we overwhelmed them with our ability to produce
Speaker 6: to the Cold War where we overwhelmed them with our
Speaker 6: ability to think, and now we're probably going to need both. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I agree with Steve. I don't have too much to add.
Speaker 6: I think it makes sense for China to ally itself
Speaker 6: with other countries that don't like the United States, given
Speaker 6: that China wants to become the global hegemon and believes
Speaker 6: that it's been embarrassed for a thousand years and that
Speaker 6: it is destined to rule the world once more. I
Speaker 6: of course oppose China in that aim and hope it loses,
Speaker 6: but I don't think it made the wrong bet. I
Speaker 6: think it should in this game behave accordingly. I'm just
Speaker 6: glad that we were once again able to thwart them,
Speaker 6: and I hope that if they are planning on going
Speaker 6: into Taiwan next year, this has had an effect on
Speaker 6: them and reminded them. As I say that it's not
Speaker 6: just theoretical, we can apparently do incredible things. I've been surprised.
Speaker 6: I'm not a military expert or a foreign policy expert
Speaker 6: by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have
Speaker 6: a very rosy conception of America's military capacity in my mind,
Speaker 6: and I was surprised that the share brilliance of operations,
Speaker 6: So I hope the Chinese were too.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, in reference to what Charlie
Speaker 2: said about China and then looking at our technology, yes,
Speaker 2: I mean we've seen lasers in this war. Israel has developed,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of an iron dome system that doesn't
Speaker 2: need actual missile but you know, just can pew pew
Speaker 2: pew them down or when you see the laser beams
Speaker 2: striking into the sky, you think, well, this is a
Speaker 2: different level. And if I were China, I would I
Speaker 2: would not be surprised if they massed forces to go
Speaker 2: into Taiwan and then looked up into the sky and
Speaker 2: there we had a death star, you know, with Peter
Speaker 2: Cushing behind the the consoles, you know, making it fully operational.
Speaker 2: What do we have in the quiver? Yet still ought
Speaker 2: to keep them interested? Three gorgeous damn for example. It's
Speaker 2: not a military target, but it sort of puts them
Speaker 2: behind the eight ball. Anyway, you're going to say.
Speaker 5: About her own well, are you saying, Marjorie Taylor Green's
Speaker 5: right about the Jewish space lasers?
Speaker 3: James?
Speaker 2: Well, boy, I let it out of the bag, didn't
Speaker 2: I Yes, the air control the weather. They control the
Speaker 2: weather as well. Oh, let me just sell my dreadlugs
Speaker 2: are twitching an embarrassing materials. Go.
Speaker 5: Well, that's a quick observation about Iran and we'll see
Speaker 5: how this plays out. But it's one thing for them
Speaker 5: to shoot missiles at the American bases in the Middle East,
Speaker 5: but they seem to have been somewhat indiscriminate about it
Speaker 5: and arguably wanting to punish the other Arabs who have
Speaker 5: been hosting our bases in are friendly the United States
Speaker 5: and hostile to them. And they've done an amazing thing.
Speaker 5: They have united most of the Arab world against them.
Speaker 5: And the reason this I think this is really significant
Speaker 5: is you might remember Independence Day from thirty years ago,
Speaker 5: you know, the remake of World of the Worlds, and
Speaker 5: there was a scene towards the end after a Jeff
Speaker 5: Goldbloom was going to send a virus to the you know,
Speaker 5: the motherships where and then the whole world was going
Speaker 5: to coordinate by Morse code to attack, and there was
Speaker 5: a scene, a scene is maybe ten seconds long, and
Speaker 5: it showed Israeli in Arab troops getting together to prepare
Speaker 5: their attack. Now that cost a huge controversy, and Arab
Speaker 5: Nations wouldn't show the movie unless that scene was removed.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you remember this, you know it
Speaker 5: made some press at the time. So I mean that's how,
Speaker 5: you know, how the politics have fallen out since then.
Speaker 5: We've had the Abraham Accords and so forth, and now
Speaker 5: you're having Arab nations saying we're going to fight alongside
Speaker 5: the United States and Israel against Iran. And I think
Speaker 5: this would have been unthinkable even twenty five years ago,
Speaker 5: and yet here we are, and you know.
Speaker 3: We'll see I mean, it looks to me like this
Speaker 3: is arguably Iran just lashing out.
Speaker 5: If they're going to go down, they're going to go
Speaker 5: down and take as many people with them as they can.
Speaker 5: And so and by the way, I mean, the other
Speaker 5: thing is is what when are we going to see
Speaker 5: Kamakazi style nine to eleven attacks on targets in the
Speaker 5: Middle East, including you know, the Burj Khalifa, right.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't put that.
Speaker 5: Past the Iranian crazies to do something like that just
Speaker 5: to make a statement to all of their neighbors that
Speaker 5: you're not putting you're not taking us down without you
Speaker 5: having a lot of hurt.
Speaker 6: James, I just move on that. We know that the
Speaker 6: Jews can't control the weather, because if they could, there
Speaker 6: wouldn't be so many of them moving to Florida. And
Speaker 6: if you could control the weather where you live, you'd
Speaker 6: stay and do it right, you wouldn't moved down to
Speaker 6: Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker 2: Well, that's just the dodge, the cover story, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Just though? Yes, well, I mean when it comes to
Speaker 2: what Stephen was talking about, are they going to hit
Speaker 2: the Birch guy? I think you know, they tried. They
Speaker 2: did some stuff beforehand. They it seemed as if they
Speaker 2: had their own Samson option, that long rumored story about
Speaker 2: if Israel was attacked by a nuke, that they just
Speaker 2: simply hid everybody in the neighborhood. And now it turns
Speaker 2: out it's Iron doing it. But it is kind of
Speaker 2: funny to say, knowing the history, that Iran has done
Speaker 2: something quite astonishing. They've united the Arabs in hatred of
Speaker 2: the Persians. That's the same time you have the Greeks,
Speaker 2: who are you know, dealing with the you know, the ancients.
Speaker 2: It's nothing changes, nothing changes, nothing is new under the sun.
Speaker 2: But what we do know is the sun is getting
Speaker 2: warmer because the year is getting longer. You know, the
Speaker 2: days and the rest of it. And you know, the
Speaker 2: resolutions that you made on January first, they seem like
Speaker 2: a long time ago, but that doesn't mean they're not
Speaker 2: pertinent and they're not important. So you've done all your resolutions,
Speaker 2: you know, probably not Well. A good thing is there's
Speaker 2: nothing stopping you from making another go of your resolutions
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Speaker 2: Faber responsoring this. The regaget podcast. So the next question
Speaker 2: is because I had something else about the Samson option,
Speaker 2: I never mind Europe, Ah, how relevant are they to this?
Speaker 2: What are the saddest stories? Charles? And I'm sure you
Speaker 2: might agree, or you might not think it's sad at all,
Speaker 2: you being an expat and come here to be an
Speaker 2: American citizen, for which we are always grateful. Is the
Speaker 2: sad decline of the British Navy, the inability to put
Speaker 2: anything out. It seems to see what once spanned the
Speaker 2: globe is, you know, a bunch of rusty buckets, dry dock,
Speaker 2: without enough sailors to go on. And it's it's dismaying.
Speaker 2: So let's start there and talk about where Europe finds
Speaker 2: itself in all of.
Speaker 6: This has no ram, no sorto mean, no last left.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that very thing.
Speaker 6: It's astonishing, isn't. I don't find it sad. I find
Speaker 6: it predictable. Perhaps it's sadly predictable, but it's astonishing. The
Speaker 6: British have slowly slipped into irrelevance. I was thinking about
Speaker 6: this yesterday, back in twenty thirteen, when President Obama announced
Speaker 6: that he might like to go into Syria, and I
Speaker 6: James said, the thing I always say, which is you
Speaker 6: need to go to Congress, and he said, no, I don't,
Speaker 6: which was a complete reversal of his promise in two
Speaker 6: thousand and eight when he was running, quite explicitly a reversal.
Speaker 6: The American public revolted such that he backed down and
Speaker 6: said I could do it, but I'm not going to.
Speaker 6: And there are a couple of things that happened that
Speaker 6: led to that backing down. One was that there was
Speaker 6: a bipartisan sentiment against going into Syria. It wasn't just
Speaker 6: the Democrats, the Republicans also were hostile to the idea.
Speaker 6: And the second thing that happened was the British Parliament
Speaker 6: met debated whether they would join the United States in
Speaker 6: Syria and said they wouldn't. Now that wasn't just positive,
Speaker 6: and it was perhaps less important than the British thought
Speaker 6: it was at the time, but it did have an effect.
Speaker 6: It made big news in the press, and it was
Speaker 6: by all accounts processed by President Obama. And I was
Speaker 6: thinking that if that happened today, no one would care
Speaker 6: or even report on it. Could you imagine caring whether
Speaker 6: the British Parliament was on board with this? Iran adventure
Speaker 6: or not. The idea is almost silly. And that was
Speaker 6: only thirteen years ago. Forty years ago, it would have
Speaker 6: killed any plan. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were close
Speaker 6: because they shared a political worldview, but also because they
Speaker 6: had to be. Britain really mattered in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 6: It mattered in the nineteen nineties we joined in Kosovo,
Speaker 6: and it matted in the early two thousands. Getting Britain
Speaker 6: on board with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was crucial.
Speaker 6: Now it's not It's not just that the British don't
Speaker 6: have a navy and that their military is weaker than
Speaker 6: it should be. But Britain as an economic power is declining.
Speaker 6: Britain as a cultural power is declining. Britain as a
Speaker 6: member of Europe. I don't mean the European Union solely,
Speaker 6: but as a cultural member of Europe is declining. I
Speaker 6: take no joy in that, but you're absolutely right, it's true.
Speaker 6: And to look at the state of the British military,
Speaker 6: which is a choice. All that money, I'm afraid has
Speaker 6: gone on welfare. This is not me being a mean
Speaker 6: right winger. Just look at the books. They've spent it
Speaker 6: all on welfare. They have cut everything except welfare. They
Speaker 6: now are at their highest tax rates as a percentage
Speaker 6: of GDP since nineteen forty five. That is to say,
Speaker 6: the British public is now being taxed more than it
Speaker 6: has been since the end of World War II, and
Speaker 6: they have this pathetic military to show for it. Why
Speaker 6: because all they spend their money on is welfare, and
Speaker 6: that has been a choice. It has been a disastrous choice,
Speaker 6: and it has led to them being irrelevant to the
Speaker 6: point at which now they are less important to world affairs,
Speaker 6: not regional affairs, to world affairs than Israel.
Speaker 2: Well, it's gone from a special relationship to a special
Speaker 2: ed relationship. Stephen. You have in the background, if I'm
Speaker 2: seeing it correctly, way in the corner of your room
Speaker 2: there back by the door, I think you have a
Speaker 2: poster of and it says, if I recall deserve victory.
Speaker 2: I was always I was always caught up by the
Speaker 2: phrasing of that. My correct deserve victory be a people
Speaker 2: who deserve it and earn it. Are the British public?
Speaker 2: They are they still that people?
Speaker 3: Is there still something?
Speaker 2: Is something there that you can blow on the dying
Speaker 2: embers and find find the lion's spirit, the bulldog spirit
Speaker 2: that got them through the blitz and the rest of it,
Speaker 2: because I don't see it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think the full quote that
Speaker 5: that's taken from is Churchill said something like it's not
Speaker 5: possible to assure or guarantee victory. It is only possible
Speaker 5: to deserve it, which again gets back to the phrase
Speaker 5: I used earlier about the destroyer being stun the moral
Speaker 5: effect of the people, the moral I mean, you know
Speaker 5: that crucial period that's dramatized in you know, the Darkest
Speaker 5: Hour movie that came out three four years ago with
Speaker 5: Gary Oldman as Churchill. The calculation then was the morale
Speaker 5: of the Everything depends on the morale of our fighting force,
Speaker 5: which have now evacuating without their weapons from France, right,
Speaker 5: and consequently the morale of the people.
Speaker 3: And if we start saying.
Speaker 5: We're going to have backdoor negotiations for a deal with Hitler,
Speaker 5: everything will collapse. And yeah, it's hard to see. I mean,
Speaker 5: we made jokes about France forever. Well, you know, we
Speaker 5: want the French to teach the Iranians how to surrender, right,
Speaker 5: but boy.
Speaker 3: This is not good.
Speaker 5: Although Charlie's right, and it's very significant that we can
Speaker 5: stand alone without them if need be, it would be
Speaker 5: much better to have them. I think, by the way,
Speaker 5: I thought you were going to say, Charlie when you
Speaker 5: mentioned the Thatcher and Reagan, I am not sure if
Speaker 5: Argentina invaded the Falklands again, if Britain could muster the
Speaker 5: military might to fight back.
Speaker 3: Absolutely be veryonymous, right, No, of course not.
Speaker 2: I'm convinced their entire culture decided that the Falklands were
Speaker 2: was wrong because Elvis Costello wrote a mean song about it.
Speaker 6: Well, she was exceptional even within that era for willing
Speaker 6: to do that. I well, No, the idea that this
Speaker 6: was a reflexive British response, that the island was consumed
Speaker 6: by Churchillian fortitude, It's just not true. The institutional response,
Speaker 6: the establishment response, what we would call the swamp today,
Speaker 6: said leave it. Because Britain had been through decades of decolonization,
Speaker 6: that was its reflexive mode, and the British public initially
Speaker 6: and certainly the bureaucracy, thought that this was just another
Speaker 6: example of our dismantling the empire. And she said no,
Speaker 6: and she was right, of course, she said not literally,
Speaker 6: but I'm paraphrasing that there was no meaningful difference between
Speaker 6: the Argentinians invading the Falcons and the Argentinians invading London
Speaker 6: in that they were British citizens who wanted, almost to
Speaker 6: a man, to remain British citizens. It was British territ
Speaker 6: and you can't allow it to stand. And this was
Speaker 6: regarded in the same way as Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire
Speaker 6: speech that we all love was regarded as sort of
Speaker 6: the black and white maniche and thinking of a jingoistic roube.
Speaker 6: But she won and having one, the public loved her
Speaker 6: for it. But I think the point you're making is
Speaker 6: the right one, which is not really about the resolve,
Speaker 6: but is about the ability to project force, which the
Speaker 6: British at that point could still do quite easily. We
Speaker 6: sent an ar martyr of sorts down to the Falklands.
Speaker 6: We just couldn't do it now. Also, it's not just
Speaker 6: the lack of ships and modern weaponry. It's little things.
Speaker 6: For example, did you know that the aircraft carries the
Speaker 6: British have They don't have the catapults on them, they
Speaker 6: don't have any of the stuff that American ones have
Speaker 6: had since.
Speaker 2: The atl They have to be vtol the French have catapults.
Speaker 2: The Charles de Gaull can show more and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: The Brits invented, if I'm correct, the angled airstrip on
Speaker 2: the aircraft carrier, but we don't need that anymore.
Speaker 6: American roller coasters have catapults to launch them, but the
Speaker 6: British aircraft carriers done well.
Speaker 2: Speaking as a jingoistic rub who believes in Menechean dualism,
Speaker 2: I sided with the Thatcher view of the world alas,
Speaker 2: but now people are saying that one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that Britain seems politically and culturally paralyzed in a leadership level
Speaker 2: is because Kirstarmer can't alienate those people who are really
Speaker 2: mad that the Molos got pounded. And that's a different
Speaker 2: element now than existed back in the Falklands War. That
Speaker 2: the idea of British and the idea of monoculture, the
Speaker 2: idea of what it means to be English and all
Speaker 2: the rest of these things have been defined differently in
Speaker 2: different ways without the consent of the people who previously
Speaker 2: fit under that definition. So that's our little bit for them. France, however,
Speaker 2: seems to be using this opportunity to look muscular Macron
Speaker 2: sending thels to gall I believe didn't Macron recently say
Speaker 2: that he was going to extend the French nuclear force,
Speaker 2: you know, force frape or whatever it is, to England
Speaker 2: that he would he would, he would was willing to
Speaker 2: include them in the nuclear umbrella. Did I did I
Speaker 2: get that correctly? Well?
Speaker 5: I missed that if he did say it. But I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, we love to throw a lot of shade
Speaker 5: at the French. You know, why do they plant the
Speaker 5: trees because the German army likes the margin a shade.
Speaker 3: All those great old jokes.
Speaker 5: But the truth is is, you know it's I think
Speaker 5: it's still true today that when the French get their backup,
Speaker 5: they're not hesitant to lash out quite effectively. I mean,
Speaker 5: my favorite moment, it's now back in the eighties, but
Speaker 5: you know, they blew up a green Peace ship that
Speaker 5: was trying to interfere with one of their nuclear tests
Speaker 5: in the South Pacific.
Speaker 3: I kind of admired that, right, And.
Speaker 5: You know, they they they rummaged around a bit in
Speaker 5: the last few years in Africa and some of their
Speaker 5: former colonies and some governments that are allied with them now.
Speaker 3: They often had to borrow I think ten years ago.
Speaker 5: As I recall that maybe more, they had to borrow
Speaker 5: transport capacity from Russia. So they do lack certain complete capacities.
Speaker 5: But you know, when the French want to do it,
Speaker 5: they can still do it, which amazing I think. I
Speaker 5: like to think Macron has a sense of humor saying
Speaker 5: we'll defend England now, which I.
Speaker 3: Can see him doing that just to be mischievous and annoying.
Speaker 2: He did four days ago in Brittany speech in Brittany
Speaker 2: saying Macron said, quote, the next fifty years will be
Speaker 2: an era of nuclear weapons. I guess we're past the
Speaker 2: old days of the freeze and the rest of that stuff. Yeah. Right, so, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: if you could talk amongst yourself. I'm seeing a huge
Speaker 2: amount of smoke coming from outside my eyes. I just
Speaker 2: want to make sure nothing's on foot.
Speaker 3: Oh go ahead, Yeah, Well, good grief.
Speaker 6: Well I saw.
Speaker 5: Well, well, we should ask James about this when he
Speaker 5: comes back, if we have time. I just saw some
Speaker 5: figures yesterday from a friend of mine. Mark Perry used
Speaker 5: to be an economist to the EI, but he's from
Speaker 5: Minnesota and he's moved back to the Twin cities. Apparently,
Speaker 5: auto thefts are soaring in Minneapolis St.
Speaker 3: Paul right now, eighteen a day on average job this year.
Speaker 5: And that's while crime and auto thefts are falling everywhere
Speaker 5: else around the country.
Speaker 3: So what's this about.
Speaker 5: I get the feeling that, I mean, you may know
Speaker 5: this that the number of deportations by ICE are much
Speaker 5: higher in California and Texas other bigger states, but that's
Speaker 5: not what we're seeing the protests in the trouble we're
Speaker 5: seeing in Minneapolis Saint Paul. And I don't know, I'm
Speaker 5: never going to understand that crazy place. It's sort of
Speaker 5: worse off even than Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 3: That's one thing.
Speaker 6: I think There's two things going on there. One is
Speaker 6: the lack of enforcement, which is how you stop car thefts,
Speaker 6: as the National Guard showed in Washington, d C. I
Speaker 6: don't want the National Guide outside of Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: Necessarily because Washington, d C is a federal city and
Speaker 6: Minneapolis is not. But you do stop this with preventative measures,
Speaker 6: and on the immigration front, California, it's very interesting that.
Speaker 6: But Texas is explained by the cooperation of the state
Speaker 6: with the federal government, because once you have it makes
Speaker 6: it very difficult for people to get in the way.
Speaker 6: If the state's handing over the people that it wants
Speaker 6: to the federal government, it's easy. But that's interesting about California.
Speaker 6: I wonder why that is.
Speaker 3: I don't really know.
Speaker 5: I actually drive by every Sunday a anti ICE protests
Speaker 5: with maybe one hundred people with signs on highway one
Speaker 5: on one outside the county jail and Sheriff's office. So
Speaker 5: because I think my local DA is cooperating with ICE,
Speaker 5: because he's very concernative, Okay, But I think it varies from.
Speaker 3: Place to place.
Speaker 6: The topic times is why is Minneapolis crazy?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: So many reasons, so many reasons. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I'm not on fires in the excess of water vapor
Speaker 2: coming out of the heating system since we're selling soon,
Speaker 2: I'm a little Actually, I would prefer for the place.
Speaker 2: I would prefer for the place to go up in
Speaker 2: absolute fire and just collect the check and walk away.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't that. Why is Manylos?
Speaker 5: Remember Rob Long always said that if you're in California
Speaker 5: where you can't afford earthquake insurance, right, I mean, just
Speaker 5: it's off the charge to go offer to me every
Speaker 5: year and I forget it. And he said, if you
Speaker 5: have an earthquake and your house falls over, what you
Speaker 5: want to do is send it on fire.
Speaker 3: Because of the fire, insurance will cover it.
Speaker 2: Minneapolis. Minneapolis is crazy because it decided that it had
Speaker 2: solved everything and that the thing to do to make
Speaker 2: things better was to keep expanding every single instrument of
Speaker 2: the state that it thought had solved everything. And there
Speaker 2: were a couple of instances where things weren't solved. So
Speaker 2: it just spend more. So that's it. So the process
Speaker 2: naturally pushed into politics people who believed in strong status intervention. Now,
Speaker 2: the thing which is not unusual, but what made Minnesota
Speaker 2: unusual was that we had a high Scandinavian northyn European
Speaker 2: culture quote, which gave us a lot of social capital.
Speaker 2: One of those high trust societies all the people are
Speaker 2: always entering about on X. We were that you paid
Speaker 2: a lot of taxes, but you got good government, you
Speaker 2: got clean streets, you got no potholes. You had expectation
Speaker 2: that the corporate leaders were their money as well. The
Speaker 2: big companies will pledge to get five percent of their
Speaker 2: stuff to charities and whatnot you and it all produces
Speaker 2: wonderfully civilized society. Those generous with its benefits. Generous benefits
Speaker 2: attract people who do not desire to contribute, and then
Speaker 2: that gets more of that, and eventually the social capital decreased,
Speaker 2: the trust decreased, and the people who stayed in Minneapolis
Speaker 2: in particular were generally, you know, hardliners, I mean just
Speaker 2: dead enders. Or there are people who had not changed
Speaker 2: their politics at all ever since college and believed these
Speaker 2: things with increasing fervor, and it never really examined the
Speaker 2: whole intellectual constellation in their head that made them both
Speaker 2: the way they did. And so the city sort of
Speaker 2: self selects, and it's a smart city, highly educated people,
Speaker 2: but it's those highly educated you know, liberals and progressives
Speaker 2: who have a moral certainty attached to outmoded, unworkable ideas,
Speaker 2: and so that's what gets you crazy and alias and
Speaker 2: a lack. So I am going to be moving, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to be about twelve blocks from the city limits.
Speaker 6: So I was going to ask you. I was hoping
Speaker 6: I might have a new neighbor.
Speaker 2: No, Alast Florida isn't on the table yet, but it wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I have sort of a year here where I'm figuring
Speaker 2: it out and we will see I you know, the
Speaker 2: or Alabama for that matter, I.
Speaker 6: Should be on commission, I think. And my prostizement for Florida.
Speaker 2: I just I want to go to Alabama so I
Speaker 2: can lord it over the Canadians. I was thinking of
Speaker 2: going to a Winnebeg.
Speaker 6: But you know, but it's Alabama.
Speaker 2: I know, that's the thing. That's a great thing. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, so are we alone in this? I mean
Speaker 2: we seem like an outpost of what you take to
Speaker 2: be southern California or just California crazy liberals and transplanted here.
Speaker 2: I mean des Moines isn't like this, And I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say that des Moines is necessarily historically all that different
Speaker 2: from from from Minnesota. Iowa was not settled by a
Speaker 2: bunch of you know, raging individual lists who like to
Speaker 2: do any form of collective I mean, it's the Midwest
Speaker 2: is generally sensible settled places.
Speaker 3: Why we are that.
Speaker 2: Shanker of red In or shanker of the well No, no,
Speaker 2: shankers don't Why why we're crazy?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: But you know what else is interesting about this? James?
Speaker 6: And you can tell me if I'm wrong, because I'm
Speaker 6: making comments on your state, but if you look at
Speaker 6: say the presidential election results in Minnesota, it's really close.
Speaker 6: So yeah, you've got a strange phenomenon here where the
Speaker 6: Democrats win, and they win most of the time, and
Speaker 6: then they're completely crazy as if they were winning in
Speaker 6: say Oregon, where they win by twenty points, which is unusual.
Speaker 6: And Wisconsin is in some ways a progressive state, but
Speaker 6: that is much less so than Minnesota, and it's a
Speaker 6: swing state two or it's close to being one. So
Speaker 6: there's something about this that really pushes the people who
Speaker 6: are in charge to go for it in a way
Speaker 6: that they don't seem to in other states that are
Speaker 6: divided by five or six points. California is a bit different.
Speaker 6: I mean, California is what was it like sixty one
Speaker 6: to thirty in the last presidential election. It's not even that,
Speaker 6: but I yeah, yeah, they can just they can run
Speaker 6: hog wild, as you might say. And now in Florida,
Speaker 6: maybe this will change, but I mean the last gubernatorial
Speaker 6: election in Florida was decided by twenty points. Of course,
Speaker 6: they came back and did constitutional carry in the school
Speaker 6: choice and tax cuts and so forth. But I'm just
Speaker 6: fascinated by Minnesota because it's actually not that democratic. It's
Speaker 6: just that the Democrats who are there are wild.
Speaker 2: It is and it isn't. I mean, you're right, it's
Speaker 2: the metro core that is the throbbing blue out state.
Speaker 2: It's red and it's purplish as you go out here
Speaker 2: and there. But there's also a strong socialist tendency when
Speaker 2: you get up north to the Iron Range and places
Speaker 2: that were settled by people who said, now we're going
Speaker 2: to bond, to get bond together for for union reasons.
Speaker 2: For the rest of it, you have that old early
Speaker 2: twentieth century sort of leftism that still is part of
Speaker 2: the character. And so you know, they may vote this way,
Speaker 2: they may vote that way, but they're culturally not on
Speaker 2: board with the whole progressive twenty first century agenda, just not.
Speaker 2: But they find themselves ruled by a party that is
Speaker 2: I mean Peggy Flanagan. You know, the Tenant governor shows
Speaker 2: up with a shirt that says protect trans Kids has
Speaker 2: got a big knife on it. Who much supposed to stab?
Speaker 2: I mean, when they had a trans Day of Visibility
Speaker 2: or a trans Day of Remembrance, I can't remember what
Speaker 2: it was they had this drag guy queen dancing in
Speaker 2: high heels in this sort of demonic costume. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that lightly. I mean I think he had
Speaker 2: horns in a tail on the star which is this
Speaker 2: in the rotunda of the Capitol building. There's this beautiful
Speaker 2: inlaid star, symbol of the state, and it's roped off
Speaker 2: so that nobody walks over it, like the you know,
Speaker 2: the flame of the Unknown Soldier to the Unknown Soldier flame.
Speaker 2: There he was clopping away at it, and everybody's clapping
Speaker 2: away to and you know, the guys out of state
Speaker 2: in the Range Farmers sitting there at the VFW Club
Speaker 2: looking at this is thinking what a bunch of weirdos.
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with them. But then, but
Speaker 2: then you know, coming election time, they may pull the
Speaker 2: letter from the lever for the d Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is a peculiar place. It it is. But I
Speaker 2: don't misunderstand all the things that you hear from Minneapolis
Speaker 2: and all the things that you've seen. It is still
Speaker 2: a beautiful city and a fantastic city. And I leave
Speaker 2: my neighborhood with regret against my will, and the state
Speaker 2: itself is beautiful and the people are good, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's mad in spots, it's deft, but damn, it's
Speaker 2: still home.
Speaker 6: You sound like a Californian talking about California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's it's it's it's a Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 2: It really is. Well, gentlemen, we're on the way out here,
Speaker 2: just got a few minutes before we come to the
Speaker 2: end of our arbitrarily decided to time package here and
Speaker 2: he notes, Stephen, anything you'd like to tell us that
Speaker 2: we talk about that we haven't mentioned in our in
Speaker 2: a basis around the world.
Speaker 5: Well, there's a whole lot. I mean, we could go
Speaker 5: on a CHRISTI nom. I'll just say I won't tell
Speaker 5: a story because in the time, but I just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's from South Dakota. Those people are old.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 5: I did see her once, only once up close and
Speaker 5: in person, where I formed two impressions.
Speaker 3: One is, wow, she's really pretty in person.
Speaker 5: But second, I came away from what should have been
Speaker 5: a slam dunk easy command of the room where she
Speaker 5: was very stiff and didn't read the room that was
Speaker 5: terribly sympathetic to her, and I came away thinking, you know,
Speaker 5: she really hasn't.
Speaker 3: Got it at the high level that she aspires to.
Speaker 5: This is five or six years ago now that she
Speaker 5: really has not got the talents and political knows for
Speaker 5: the levels that she aspires to, and I think that's
Speaker 5: what we've seen over the last year with her.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, because I'm inclined otherwise to want to like.
Speaker 6: Her, she should never have been chosen. And it is
Speaker 6: one of the great and possibly fatal flaws in the
Speaker 6: MAGA movement that they have this absolutely fervent conviction that
Speaker 6: if they don't win on every issue they care about,
Speaker 6: many of which are the issues I care about the
Speaker 6: country's over and yet they put in positions of administration
Speaker 6: people who are simply not up to the task. And
Speaker 6: you can see the difference between the results when they
Speaker 6: find good people, say Marca Rubio or Scott Besend, than
Speaker 6: when they find not good people, say Christynome or well,
Speaker 6: we nearly got Matt Gates, which would be the worst
Speaker 6: of all, but Pam Bondy, who I was open to,
Speaker 6: but it's not up to the job. And I think
Speaker 6: that the Trump administration ought to be aware that if
Speaker 6: it had filled itself with Edwin Meese types, it would
Speaker 6: be further along in its goals, then it is now.
Speaker 6: I have nothing particular against Mark qwain Marlin. I think
Speaker 6: some of the criticisms of him are deeply unfair. But
Speaker 6: the border and scurity in general was Trump's issue. Why
Speaker 6: can't they find someone who is boring but unbelievably good
Speaker 6: at running an executive department that well, for better or
Speaker 6: for worse, be in charge of deportations for the next
Speaker 6: three years. I don't understand this. You could get me
Speaker 6: going about how the fact that Malon wants to leave
Speaker 6: the Senate is an indictment of the state of our legislature,
Speaker 6: because no historical senator would be caught dead leaving for
Speaker 6: anything other than the Secretary of State. But the Trump
Speaker 6: administration just has a problem in this regard. If it
Speaker 6: could fill every position with someone excellent, which it could,
Speaker 6: I think it would be better off. But it doesn't.
Speaker 6: And so yet Christine known of all people at DHS.
Speaker 2: You get the feeling that Mark Graccorreon is checking his
Speaker 2: phone settings to make sure the notifications are turned off.
Speaker 6: He should be. That's exactly who they should pay for.
Speaker 2: Someone like that, right, yeah, exactly, or us for that matter,
Speaker 2: we who convene here weekly and have all the answers
Speaker 2: we'll actually know we don't, but we just like to
Speaker 2: talk about the things that we think that we know.
Speaker 2: And I hope that you've enjoyed hearing the things that
Speaker 2: we've said, because otherwise what's the point. But as ever,
Speaker 2: Stephen and Charles, you have been a delight and interesting
Speaker 2: and fun to listen to. And I always come away
Speaker 2: from this glad I've spent this hour with you, and
Speaker 2: you folks at home. If you haven't been a member
Speaker 2: of Ricochet yet, what the sam touton hell are you
Speaker 2: waiting for? It's cheap And the thing about it is
Speaker 2: it's not just one of those websites where people post opinions.
Speaker 2: It's about everything, and there's a member site that has
Speaker 2: just It has a community and a breadth of topics,
Speaker 2: the likes of which you have not seen on the internet.
Speaker 2: It will not drive you mad like Facebook. It will
Speaker 2: not waste your time like Twitter. It will not be
Speaker 2: as a scrolling, endless time suck. It is a place
Speaker 2: to sit down and actually expand and be calm. I
Speaker 2: get a little head up when somebody says this, but
Speaker 2: it's a community waiting for you. The likes of which,
Speaker 2: as I said, you haven't found and if you remember,
Speaker 2: you get to post, and if you're not, you don't.
Speaker 2: And that's why it's a civil, samee place to be.
Speaker 2: If you could go to Apple podcast or whatever it's
Speaker 2: called these days and give a five stars, we'd really
Speaker 2: appreciate that. Somewhere around episode one thousand, I'm gonna stop
Speaker 2: saying that, but since it's seven to seventy nine, that
Speaker 2: gives me a little how many more On the two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty one we thank fabric Fabric by Gerber,
Speaker 2: which will provide you with insurance in like ten minutes.
Speaker 2: And if you've been putting it off, there's absolutely no
Speaker 2: reason you should. It's easy, sit down, open up your laptop,
Speaker 2: a couple of questions, and bang, there you are. Peace
Speaker 2: of mind. Gentlemen, it's been great and we'll see everybody
Speaker 2: in the comments, said Ricochet. Four point whatever, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Bye, Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Peah, join the conversation