Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, and
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country. Either you were
Speaker 1: with us or you were with the terrorists and you
Speaker 1: hurt even a little bit. Time counts, So why wait?
Speaker 1: Take up bromo when you don't have the time to
Speaker 1: feel bad? If the Ricochet Podcast Stephen gone, Charles gone,
Speaker 1: Peter gone.
Speaker 2: But I'm James Lilax. I'm here, and so is Rob Long.
Speaker 2: So let's eversel's a podcast.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast, episode number seven hundred and eighty five.
Speaker 2: You can join us at I know you can join
Speaker 2: us at ricochet dot com and see why we've gotten
Speaker 2: a seven eighty five because what's at ricochet dot com Well,
Speaker 2: the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. And
Speaker 2: that interjection you just heard there was from one of
Speaker 2: the founders who was here at the episode number one,
Speaker 2: and that's Rob Long, who, if you are looking at
Speaker 2: the video stream, seems to be wearing a like a
Speaker 2: like a a leisurely rugby player who's in Peru.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I just suddenly remembered that we do this,
Speaker 3: and there's a video which I don't recommend. I am
Speaker 3: sitting outside anybody who's been through the winter and knows
Speaker 3: why I'm sitting outside. It's beautiful day, but that means
Speaker 3: have to wear a hat. And that also means that
Speaker 3: I can't work. I can't figure out how to make
Speaker 3: the microphone work on the iPad and the mic, the
Speaker 3: big nice mic, and then use earbuds to hear, so
Speaker 3: I have to have headphones, and the headphones are from
Speaker 3: the back.
Speaker 4: Now, so I kind of look, I look very weird.
Speaker 1: You do you do?
Speaker 2: And that This is why we advise people to look
Speaker 2: at the video feed, because you can seek not only
Speaker 2: does Rob Long look like he's some sort of uh,
Speaker 2: you know, astronaut from a country that hasn't quite figured
Speaker 2: out how to put a booster together, but you keep
Speaker 2: blurring in and out.
Speaker 1: Which is also interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, it's because you're fase shifting between this dimension and
Speaker 2: the other, and you are in You're in the dimension
Speaker 2: of New York. I believe correct. I'm in Princeton, New
Speaker 2: jerseyly Garden State. But you do you live in New
Speaker 2: York now or do you still do? Because you're I
Speaker 2: do not. I live in Princeton. I My life has
Speaker 2: changed radically in the sense that what I did, was
Speaker 2: I I radically and crazily, and I think probably without
Speaker 2: any planning. This is something that you cannot relate to
Speaker 2: because I know that you are an obsessive planner.
Speaker 3: I just I went from ah. I went from a
Speaker 3: basically the past ten years, went from a big house
Speaker 3: in California to a fairly large apartment but not you know,
Speaker 3: but still an apartment in Manhattan, to a large kind
Speaker 3: of townhouse in Princeton. And then I decided last year
Speaker 3: that that was ridiculous, that I'm I need to downsize radically,
Speaker 3: and I radically downsized in my mind, which is not
Speaker 3: in my will. I wanted to and I decided to.
Speaker 3: But what I didn't do is I didn't go through
Speaker 3: everything and then do the work necessary. And so I
Speaker 3: basically crammed into a very small kind of graduate student
Speaker 3: kind of it looks like like a person going to
Speaker 3: Divinity school with how they live, surrounded by books. It's great,
Speaker 3: but it's small. And I have a storage facility down
Speaker 3: a few, you know, not about two miles from here,
Speaker 3: and I'm my goal is by October to get rid
Speaker 3: of it. So I'm giving myself till October to kind
Speaker 3: of get get get manageable. And I just I did
Speaker 3: very bad job.
Speaker 2: But you're living in a month's sell and you want
Speaker 2: to get it down, so you have a single gladstone
Speaker 2: that you can use to go from place to place.
Speaker 3: I'm living my foot My physical footprint is a monk sell,
Speaker 3: but my actual number of possessions is considerably more. And
Speaker 3: so what I have is like, look, if you went
Speaker 3: into my apartment right now and you looked at it,
Speaker 3: you would say to yourself, let's call the cops because
Speaker 3: we found the guy. There's just a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: there and I need to I need to get rid
Speaker 3: of it. And what with the upside of the stuff
Speaker 3: is that you discover that you know, for instance, I
Speaker 3: have this, you know, from the Rugby seven's rugby shirt
Speaker 3: which I hadn't looked at for a million years, and
Speaker 3: it's in one of those boxes. And you know this
Speaker 3: is this shirt is thirty years old, thirty five years old.
Speaker 3: It's from ninety I don't know, yep, ninety three, so
Speaker 3: it's thirty six years old. That's time was at the
Speaker 3: Rugby Seven's in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Well, two points about this one.
Speaker 2: The Wall Street Journal had a story yesterday a couple
Speaker 2: of days ago about storage facilities and how they're exploding.
Speaker 2: The industry is just absolutely taken off because people have
Speaker 2: too much, in the words of George Carlin, stuff, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't like them. They push back
Speaker 2: on them because they are fairly inert contributors to the
Speaker 2: civic landscape. There is something hulking and silent about them though,
Speaker 2: as though they're they're they're forced to keep secrets unwillingly
Speaker 2: that they do not wish to. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: concentrated stillness to them that is part shame, you know,
Speaker 2: part you know, silence, part Yeah. Apparently there's four these
Speaker 2: that have that that caused people to get a storage locker.
Speaker 2: There's dislocation, death, divorced, something I can't forget the fourth d.
Speaker 2: Some someplaces are actually trying to make them look like
Speaker 2: they belong to the neighborhood. They're putting on facodomy shows
Speaker 2: that they have.
Speaker 1: It's like like houses, or they put a little strip
Speaker 1: mall touch to it so it doesn't look so bad.
Speaker 1: But the article was linked to something that somebody else
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal had written about how he'd spent one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars over the course of the years to
Speaker 2: rent a storage locker simply because he dumped the contents
Speaker 2: of a house in there and kept throwing things in
Speaker 2: there and then moved, moved to New York, didn't have
Speaker 2: a car one.
Speaker 3: Hundreds I'll go back and get it all that stuff,
Speaker 3: you say yourself, yeah, right, right, So, but you, unlike
Speaker 3: most people who just say, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 3: concentrate it down, I'm gonna move, I'm gonna put it
Speaker 3: into storage locker, and I'll leave it there.
Speaker 2: You actually your goal is to get is to get
Speaker 2: past that so that there's no a storage locker.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean when I looked for it, I decided to
Speaker 3: not do one of the nice ones because they're nice.
Speaker 3: I mean some of them are like have this kind
Speaker 3: of mysterious clean antiseptic quality. I drive by this that
Speaker 3: when I'm driving back from Manhattan into into New Jersey
Speaker 3: and they're on sort of the root one wherever I am,
Speaker 3: and they're beautiful. They look and they're all lit up
Speaker 3: on the inside. It looks like a sci fi movie,
Speaker 3: you know, they look like the you know, the the
Speaker 3: woman in the weird jumpsuit walking down said you know
Speaker 3: command here we've found the whatever. But I am in
Speaker 3: one that looks like sadness. It's the corner of sadness
Speaker 3: and the Princeton Airport, and it's fine for me. It
Speaker 3: is cheap, so I I just but but what I
Speaker 3: really should have done? Maybe I should have spent more
Speaker 3: money so that I would have felt stupider. But what
Speaker 3: that's my goal anyway. So the upside is I discovered
Speaker 3: that I have these cool, old like items of clothing.
Speaker 3: And the downside is that I think, oh, well, I
Speaker 3: don't want to get rid of this, and that's not that's.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean. The one to which
Speaker 1: I go grudgingly smells of fish.
Speaker 2: Occasionally it makes me wonder whether not somebody's storing something
Speaker 2: in there for a business.
Speaker 1: At the rite the other day, somebody.
Speaker 2: Moved out on the floor was speckled with glitter, and
Speaker 2: I thought, well, a stripper had this one for a while,
Speaker 2: or you know, some fashion toys as the rest of it.
Speaker 2: I had to go to it yesterday to remove a
Speaker 2: very large object that I was going to write about.
Speaker 2: Something that I found in the course of emptying out
Speaker 2: the house a family bible that was posed by my
Speaker 2: great grandfather at the end of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: These elaborate, incredible compendions of knowledge. They're just stunning.
Speaker 2: They have, for example, all the coins of the Roman era,
Speaker 2: and there would be biographies of all of these people
Speaker 2: who had nothing to do whatsoever to the Bible except
Speaker 2: one of them. One of the biographies was it was
Speaker 2: noted here because because Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth,
Speaker 2: which they also said about Paul.
Speaker 1: And there's a reference to Paul and being here.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, there's the illustrations, the plates, the
Speaker 2: wood cuts, and then also writing in it.
Speaker 3: So does somebody keep you sometimes they keep family records
Speaker 3: in it? Absolutely, absolutely genealogy.
Speaker 2: There was writing, there was and I noted the marriage
Speaker 2: is stopped at one point. But there I noticed that
Speaker 2: my cousin Bruce, is a very young boy twelve or so,
Speaker 2: had written that he was going to marry a certain
Speaker 2: woman in nineteen seventy seven or.
Speaker 1: Something in the future. He added this. He added this
Speaker 1: sneakily to the Bible.
Speaker 2: So I found, well, my grandmother had pressed wondering why
Speaker 2: this glass, seine bag of leaves, why this you know,
Speaker 2: this diamond Jubilee celebration, bookmark pictures and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Can't throw it away. I never cannot throw it away.
Speaker 2: What I have to wait and do is die because
Speaker 2: I'm the last I'm the last person who remembers my
Speaker 2: grandmother right, and well my cousin too, And so when
Speaker 2: I'm gone, there's no living person who can lay his
Speaker 2: hands on this book and know that hands that he
Speaker 2: knew and hell that helped it.
Speaker 1: It'll mean nothing to my daughter. My daughter can take it.
Speaker 2: So my goal is to reduce my storage facility down
Speaker 2: to half the size and have it be pretty much
Speaker 2: my personal archives.
Speaker 1: The stuff that I don't want, that's my mild clips.
Speaker 4: That's for you and me.
Speaker 3: I mean you, I mean, there's an argument for you
Speaker 3: because you are incredibly detailed and thoughtful and careful archivist.
Speaker 3: So your stuff isn't all jumbled, as my guess is.
Speaker 3: It's got some I mean, I'm sure you look at
Speaker 3: it think what an incredible disorganized mess, and the rest
Speaker 3: of us think, my god, what kind of weirdo has
Speaker 3: this organized by whatever? But there's something valuable about that,
Speaker 3: especially the books and the things that people touched.
Speaker 4: I think the things that people touched is kind of amazing.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have a silver baby cup that is.
Speaker 3: That for a long time, I just thought I just
Speaker 3: thought was mine. I just because it has my name
Speaker 3: on it except for my but I didn't really look
Speaker 3: at it carefully. But it's actually my uncle's and my
Speaker 3: uncle who died when he was I think, I don't know,
Speaker 3: in his five, five or six. He was very young
Speaker 3: my mom's family that were living in Mexico, and my father,
Speaker 3: my grandfather, was in the mining business. He had gold
Speaker 3: and silver mines, and so I don't know what he
Speaker 3: died of. He died of something, and and then my grandmother,
Speaker 3: my maternal grandmother, died I think a few years later. No,
Speaker 3: my uncle died it too, and I think it was
Speaker 3: childhood leukemia. And then my grand my maternal grandmother, died
Speaker 3: when she was when my mom was like five or.
Speaker 4: Six, because that's what happened back then.
Speaker 3: And I've had this baby cup, but I realized that
Speaker 3: I've been hanging on to it because I always thought
Speaker 3: it was mine, but in fact it's not. It's my namesakes.
Speaker 3: And there I know that there are three people who
Speaker 3: touched it, my grandmother, my namesake, uncle, and me and
Speaker 3: more than that, but at least those three touched it,
Speaker 3: and that's sort of a I mean, you can't get
Speaker 3: rid of that. You gotta I gotta's by the bed.
Speaker 2: At some point, probably this summer at James Alex at
Speaker 2: substack dot com, I'm going to be doing small videos,
Speaker 2: very short videos. I know people hate videos at longer
Speaker 2: than ninety seconds. You start looking at your watch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: called small things. I bought a light box and I've
Speaker 2: been photographing a lot of the small.
Speaker 1: Little objects that I've managed to accumulate over the years.
Speaker 1: They have no great value.
Speaker 2: Nobody really needs a Matt Mason action figure at this point.
Speaker 2: But there's a story behind every one of them, and
Speaker 2: I try to tell that story as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: One I recently did was like a little hatpin box
Speaker 1: at eighteen ninety three Colombian Exposition. My great grandfather had
Speaker 1: gone to the Colombian Exposition and he came back with
Speaker 1: a ticket for it too. And I know that he
Speaker 1: went to the Republican Convention in Minneapolis in the nineties
Speaker 1: as well, because he came back with the ticket for
Speaker 1: that as well.
Speaker 2: So it's this happen that's sat on my grandmother's desk
Speaker 2: for decades, and I don't know what did he buy
Speaker 2: it for her? Did he slip it in his pocket
Speaker 2: and think of his little daughter when he was going
Speaker 2: to get all of these things that you can glean
Speaker 2: from it, that you can into it, that you can guess,
Speaker 2: that you can build.
Speaker 1: And no, I can't get rid of that.
Speaker 2: But what I find interesting in you might too on
Speaker 2: the audience probably doesn't. Is that a lot of the things,
Speaker 2: when you remove them from one text to the other,
Speaker 2: they lose significance. Things in your house that you had
Speaker 2: on the mantelpiece, when you take it elsewhere, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, it's homeless, It doesn't belong and it goes
Speaker 2: in a box.
Speaker 4: Finance.
Speaker 2: The smaller your unit gets, the more the things that
Speaker 2: you have out, the more potent and concentrated their meaning
Speaker 2: is like a Matt Mason action figure. Well, that's enough
Speaker 2: of us reminiscing about downsizing, and the rest of us
Speaker 2: yours willingly mind not so much. We should probably do
Speaker 2: what the Ricochet podcast does, and that is speak with
Speaker 2: complete confidence about things that we are completely ignorant of.
Speaker 5: Generally, that's our motest I have been in the opinion
Speaker 5: that virtually nothing that I hear about what's going on
Speaker 5: in the Strait and the war in Iran is something
Speaker 5: about which I can base conclusion.
Speaker 2: And that's not because we're being lied to or fog
Speaker 2: of war or the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we are being lied.
Speaker 2: To, but part of the cycle of that we've had
Speaker 2: is what did I see the other day a political headline,
Speaker 2: political headline House fails to curb Trump's war powers as
Speaker 2: war in Iran drags on.
Speaker 4: I think that's what they said, drags on our seventy two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the latest is has to do with the
Speaker 2: Straight And I don't know why we even bothered to
Speaker 2: talk about it, because by the time this is posted,
Speaker 2: there will be something else about the Straight. We were
Speaker 2: closing it to Iranian ships. They couldn't get out. Anybody
Speaker 2: else could come in. We were telling the NATO people
Speaker 2: to come and get it.
Speaker 1: The other day.
Speaker 2: I think today, as a matter of fact, it's a
Speaker 2: tweet that said the leaders of Great Britain and France
Speaker 2: that Macron and Starmer have gotten together to talk about
Speaker 2: the Strait of horrormone situation, and the tweet commentator said,
Speaker 2: this is like me and my wife getting together to
Speaker 2: discuss the optimal landing site on the Moon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 4: Kind of what.
Speaker 1: So let's take this in the absence of Charlie C. W.
Speaker 4: Cook.
Speaker 1: Where does this leave Europe? And is that a question
Speaker 1: that nobody really cares what the answer is one way
Speaker 1: or the other. I do, but let me take your take.
Speaker 1: Get your take.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, everybody decides, you know, decided
Speaker 3: twenty years ago that we were gonna not rely on
Speaker 3: fossil fuels. So what they did was they said, we're
Speaker 3: not going to rely on fossil fuels. And what they
Speaker 3: didn't do is not rely on fossil fuels. Right, these
Speaker 3: pronouncements they made that they didn't actually fall through on,
Speaker 3: which is anyone could have told them was going to happen,
Speaker 3: because actually, fossil fuels are fantastic and fuel the world
Speaker 3: and productory. Right, you know, they're portable, they have so
Speaker 3: much concentrated fantastic and there's tons of it so and
Speaker 3: tons of it is still in the North Sea apparently
Speaker 3: and certainly the Norwegians.
Speaker 4: So so there's that problem.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's that slow I'm looking more glacier moves, right,
Speaker 3: slow moves and then there's the the slow move of NATO,
Speaker 3: which is not in addition to the sort of the
Speaker 3: their their unwillingness to fund their fair share, which I think,
Speaker 3: you know, Trump is absolutely correct to point out, and
Speaker 3: to point it out many times. There was also this
Speaker 3: kind of sense that, well, what does this do? What
Speaker 3: is this for anyway? Right the end of the Soviet Union?
Speaker 3: What are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Why are why are there American servicemen in Hamburg, Germany?
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make any sense, right, And so we
Speaker 3: petered out of that of the you know, the twentieth
Speaker 3: century in the early twenty first century.
Speaker 4: Now we're trying to figure out what it is that
Speaker 4: we do.
Speaker 3: And I suspect that part of the problem we have
Speaker 3: right now is that we have not decided.
Speaker 4: As a country really what.
Speaker 3: Steps we want to take in the world to shape
Speaker 3: the world the way we want it to be shaped,
Speaker 3: what things were going to protect and what things were
Speaker 3: not going to protect, what we're willing to pay, and
Speaker 3: what we're not willing to pay, And a lot of
Speaker 3: that has been this sort of astonishing amount of failure
Speaker 3: that you know, I'm skirting the issue, the Trump issue
Speaker 3: of that happened before Trump, which is really the Iraq War.
Speaker 3: We had a war that didn't really accomplish much and
Speaker 3: was kind of there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: I think we can say that now safely.
Speaker 3: This well okay, but okay, but whatever. This is where
Speaker 3: I sort of agree with Trump. Right in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: the general understanding was that it was it was, it was.
Speaker 3: It did not unfold the way we were told it
Speaker 3: was going to unfold. And the second thing we were
Speaker 3: told in later is that it doesn't. That doesn't matter
Speaker 3: anymore because we have these precise weapons. It can get
Speaker 3: right into this thing and can actually these bunker busters
Speaker 3: and we can just you know, six months ago we said, oh,
Speaker 3: well it rans they're nuclear programs have been sent back years.
Speaker 3: Well apparently it hasn't. So apparently that was a failure.
Speaker 3: So we just have to decide what it is we
Speaker 3: want to do and who is we want to do
Speaker 3: it for, and who do we want to do it with,
Speaker 3: and who we want to do it against? And none
Speaker 3: of those dots have been connected, and none of those
Speaker 3: there's no there's no strategy you're understanding. So if you're
Speaker 3: the people and you're watching this thing unfold. It does
Speaker 3: feel like seventy two hours is forever because I don't
Speaker 3: know what the plan is. The planet is to open
Speaker 3: the Straight, it's to blockade the strait. The planets to
Speaker 3: secure the Straight. The plan is to protect the protect oil.
Speaker 3: The plan is to destroy it rans oil exporting capacity.
Speaker 3: We don't quite know. It's change the regime, it's not
Speaker 3: to change the regime. It's all sorts of things. And
Speaker 3: in absence of a very clear plan, what happens is
Speaker 3: a lack of confidence. And I think that's what you're
Speaker 3: seeing from people. Not that it's not specific to Trump
Speaker 3: necessarily he inherited a lot of it, but you know,
Speaker 3: you play the character Dill, and he's not playing them
Speaker 3: very well. It seems to me he needs and mostly
Speaker 3: because he's an erratic person and he's driven by poles
Speaker 3: and he's he speaks erratically and he doesn't project confidence.
Speaker 3: And then we have sort of Colonel Kurtz it's the
Speaker 3: Secretary of Defense. Now none of that seems like these
Speaker 3: are people who are the gray and colorless leaders we expect.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, the gray and colorless leaders
Speaker 3: took us into a rack. So we got to figure
Speaker 3: this out right.
Speaker 2: I think it's three things that work here, one of
Speaker 2: them which may be sound incoherent, but is actually probably
Speaker 2: basically it is just we are going to remove your
Speaker 2: capacity to bleep with us if you just don't get
Speaker 2: to bleep with us any We're not putting up, We're
Speaker 2: not buying, we're we're sending your palettes of money.
Speaker 1: We're we're not sitting down at tables. That's all there
Speaker 1: is to it.
Speaker 2: Before we went into Afghanistan and there were nice pictures
Speaker 2: of women holding up a blue finger outside of kabble,
Speaker 2: the culture was as barbaric and medieval. That's actually cruel
Speaker 2: to the medieval. It was irredeemable, and we waste a
Speaker 2: lot of time and money. We should have just got
Speaker 2: out and said, okay, well do what you're gonna do.
Speaker 2: We would like to make you like like you used
Speaker 2: to be in those pictures we see where women are
Speaker 2: walking run schools and going to university.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. But if you're not up to the challenge, okay,
Speaker 1: just so you know that it's a moab.
Speaker 2: Anytime anything happens and we trace it back to you,
Speaker 2: and even if we can't trace it back to you,
Speaker 2: it's a mo app ere act.
Speaker 1: Same thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, we we debathified. There was no culture to
Speaker 2: come in and do it. We should have put in
Speaker 2: in retrospect one of our guys, you know, with somebody
Speaker 2: who ran in the difficult, schismatic, fractured right.
Speaker 1: Put that guy in and if.
Speaker 2: They don't end up as a model of European parliamentary democracy,
Speaker 2: I guess you didn't have it in. You got sorry,
Speaker 2: Just don't bleep with us, or we're gonna have to
Speaker 2: do this again and the next time it might be
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger and worse.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: So don't the guys who are bleeping with us for
Speaker 2: forty seven years.
Speaker 1: You're not going to it's not gonna happen again. Second, China,
Speaker 1: China is not going to get to run the table.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna play with us. It just isn't gonna
Speaker 2: happen anymore. They're out of our hemisphere. They're gone.
Speaker 1: We now have the ability to choke off the oil supply.
Speaker 2: We're not the ability, but we have in place with
Speaker 2: the straight of horror moves which apparently we're going to run,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: And then in the agreement that we just signed, the
Speaker 1: other route through which eighty percent of their oil goes
Speaker 1: to China. We've got our hands on the Carotid artery there,
Speaker 1: and that's great. And we're not doing it because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we want to be you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we are the guardians of the Sea. But we're not
Speaker 1: doing it because we have a great love for this
Speaker 1: part of the world. No, it's a simple strategic move
Speaker 1: that puts China on the back foot. And that goes
Speaker 1: to the third point, which is you're rope.
Speaker 2: You're nice, you're great, You've got fantastic museums in great cities.
Speaker 2: You're killing yourself your economic policies and your migration policies,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing you can do about it. And you're
Speaker 2: basically over. We're going to concentrate on a North American
Speaker 2: co prosperity sphere.
Speaker 1: It's going to be us.
Speaker 2: It's going to go down to the equator in a
Speaker 2: little bit past. We got Panama. It means Greenland, it
Speaker 2: means Canada if they want to play, if they don't
Speaker 2: screw them, they'll take Alberta. And it means that's our
Speaker 2: neck of the woods and China doesn't get to play
Speaker 2: in it. And any tempt that they have is going
Speaker 2: to be pushed out. So that's that, Ohen, We'll take
Speaker 2: Cuba too. That seems to me to be the three
Speaker 2: things that are in Trump's head. You can't believe in
Speaker 2: the United States. He's been saying that about Aaransa forever.
Speaker 2: He's been talking about China forever, right, and the story
Speaker 2: is coming out about I mean eighty percent. I think
Speaker 2: now the iPhones have been moved out of China production,
Speaker 2: which is great, and talking about our backyard, the.
Speaker 1: Donroe Doctrine as they call it.
Speaker 2: All these things seem to me they don't require a
Speaker 2: great deal of brilliant thought and somebody coming out of
Speaker 2: Georgetown with a George Kennan mister X white paper or
Speaker 2: something like that. It's just basically now it's America first,
Speaker 2: and you know the rest of you.
Speaker 1: Hope you like the ride.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I wish. I mean, that's an interesting
Speaker 3: game of risk you're playing. I don't mean that, I
Speaker 3: mean that the actual game of risk. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I think this administration is incredibly soft on China, I
Speaker 3: mean amazingly soft on China. They don't make strategic choices
Speaker 3: when they have easy choices. They tend to make the
Speaker 3: easy choices really hard. They tend to treat the hard
Speaker 3: choices like they're really easy. So, you know, if you're
Speaker 3: looking at the malefactors in the world, you'd have to
Speaker 3: say it was Iran, you'd have to say it was China. Well,
Speaker 3: China maybe not so much off that you're just a competitor.
Speaker 3: You definitely have to say Russia. Russia and Iran were together.
Speaker 3: The idea of not weakening Russia when we have a
Speaker 3: sort of a willing partner in that was kind of
Speaker 3: a mistake, I think, strategic mistake born of some kind
Speaker 3: of weird, murky desire not to I guess, I guess
Speaker 3: excite Putin. On the other hand, you know, China, China
Speaker 3: economies group five percent. China is doing great, and they're
Speaker 3: doing great because we have a president and we've had,
Speaker 3: you know, not just the only president who makes a
Speaker 3: lot of noise back here and then he goes to
Speaker 3: Beijing and gives them whatever they want. There is nothing
Speaker 3: that they want that we have not given them. There's
Speaker 3: no concession to trade that we have not offered.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 3: So if that's a strategy, which is to say Okay, China,
Speaker 3: guess what you get Asia, all right, that seems fine.
Speaker 3: But the idea that that the idea that we're gonna
Speaker 3: do anything to stop their expansion if they choose to expand,
Speaker 3: anything to stop their their their takeover of Taiwan, if
Speaker 3: they choose to, it's just we're not going to.
Speaker 4: And that's that may be fine.
Speaker 1: We may we don't.
Speaker 2: We may call that Japan sailed a warship through this
Speaker 2: through the strains the other day. China was absolutely furious
Speaker 2: about it, and believe that they did that. It's provocative
Speaker 2: move Japan all of a sudden, it seems to have
Speaker 2: gotten its mojo back in a way that you wish
Speaker 2: that European cities, Europrain Pe in states would.
Speaker 1: So we don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the point is to be unpredictable, and the
Speaker 2: idea that, as I said before, about being able to
Speaker 2: severely influence their oil amounts and you know, removing their
Speaker 2: influence from Venezuela, which is a good thing to do.
Speaker 2: I'm more concerned about stuff like that, which seems to
Speaker 2: be broader stroked, than whether or not we let their
Speaker 2: TMU crap in in the same quantities as it was
Speaker 2: before again, I look at iPhone production, reshoring of technology
Speaker 2: fabric you know, chip fab all that stuff counts more
Speaker 2: than what the tariff is.
Speaker 4: Hasn't the chip fab thing has not happened. That's just
Speaker 4: on paper, and that's a lot. That's more.
Speaker 3: That's less about trade and for us, and more about
Speaker 3: our willingness to put up with. I mean, look, chip
Speaker 3: fabs are incredibly dirty. They're incredibly dirty, and they don't
Speaker 3: Nobody wants to have one in their backyard. So you
Speaker 3: do want to go to one of those countries where
Speaker 3: you can build anything and dump anything into the rivers.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons why we don't have chip
Speaker 3: babs in this country is because.
Speaker 1: Just there until most build one, until MSK build one,
Speaker 1: build one.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, you can build one or two, but the
Speaker 3: amount you need to build, I mean, the numbers aren't there.
Speaker 4: I mean, they just aren't.
Speaker 1: I Mean.
Speaker 3: The my problem in general with this administration is it's
Speaker 3: leadership by anecdotes. So you tell a funny story and
Speaker 3: everything nods go, oh that's great, and we know we
Speaker 3: send in the drones and the missiles and we destroy
Speaker 3: Iran's nuclear research facilities. But actually we don't it's a
Speaker 3: story we're telling, and it lasts for a couple of months.
Speaker 3: That we've got to tell a new story. And that
Speaker 3: works and politics certainly works in American politics. But I
Speaker 3: don't mean I think that when we're talking about real,
Speaker 3: three dimensional things moving through a straight and actual real
Speaker 3: oil prices, I think it's time to get serious. And
Speaker 3: I just don't find that. I'm just not confident in
Speaker 3: the leadership that they're serious, and I don't see anybody
Speaker 3: at the horizon.
Speaker 4: Who's serious either.
Speaker 3: I think I think it's a to me, and I
Speaker 3: don't think I certainly, I know I'm not alone because
Speaker 3: I am. You know, there's sixty percent, seventy percent of
Speaker 3: the country thinks the same thing. That is a leadership
Speaker 3: failure in a time of war, which they keep talking
Speaker 3: about a time of war. That is a leadership failure
Speaker 3: that needs to be addressed. And I just don't see
Speaker 3: anybody in Washington addressing it.
Speaker 1: Well. Yes, the Democrats, of course would be worse.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I'm sure horrifies them is
Speaker 2: the sight of all those oil tankers that were steaming
Speaker 2: towards the United States to fill up the United States
Speaker 2: is now just pumping out a lot, selling a lot.
Speaker 2: That's great. The Democrats would shut down, you know, construction
Speaker 2: or even the existing LG export plans in the Gulf
Speaker 2: because they don't like natural gas going to Europe.
Speaker 1: They don't want anybody to use it. We've got to
Speaker 1: use renewables.
Speaker 2: And yes, that that piece of American prosperity would be
Speaker 2: crippled under a democratic administration, as we see in New
Speaker 2: York where the Mandami administration is going by the playbook.
Speaker 2: And I kind of would like to go there because
Speaker 2: you're close to it, and I'm sure that you don't
Speaker 2: regard Mondami with the particular enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Or affection or do you are you are you secretly
Speaker 1: thrilled that he's finally going to going all full DSA
Speaker 1: and everybody, because that's the thing to do.
Speaker 2: You know, we won't vote for a Republican because we'll
Speaker 2: get a Democrat in there, and then when people see how.
Speaker 1: Bad it is, they'll vote for you. That that never works.
Speaker 1: To text day he was doing, he did a little
Speaker 1: real on Instagram or somewhere TikTok.
Speaker 2: He leaned into the camera and said, it's tax state,
Speaker 2: and we're going to tax the rich and he taps
Speaker 2: the taps the lens. I find him one of the
Speaker 2: most abhorrent, repellent people on the political stage. But he's
Speaker 2: got that big, broad beaming smile, so he's got so
Speaker 2: he's got to be good.
Speaker 3: It's weird because I actually, I mean, I don't. I've
Speaker 3: never met him. I mean, just like seeing him. It's
Speaker 3: a strange politician because seeing him in the news or
Speaker 3: seeing him on the news, I find him less annoying
Speaker 3: then the people who support him, Like it's a very
Speaker 3: strange thing where I find his supporters to be absolutely
Speaker 3: I mean, and pretty much everyone around him, I mean,
Speaker 3: everybody in the corridor is a power in the city
Speaker 3: to be absolutely unacceptably terrible. And his policies are terrible too.
Speaker 3: He just when I see him, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't get that, Like I don't get the kind
Speaker 3: of rage I got with with the Deblasio. So maybe
Speaker 3: that's just that's just a personal thing. The weird thing
Speaker 3: about all these guys is they seem to think they're
Speaker 3: entitled to rich people, like, well, rich people are going
Speaker 3: to be here, right, It's a very New York thing
Speaker 3: to think, well, I mean, where you're.
Speaker 4: Gonna go, Well, where am I going to go? I mean,
Speaker 4: like a million paces rich people can Yeah, they go Princeton,
Speaker 4: they can go to Miami.
Speaker 3: And so there's this attitude that well, we're gonna we're
Speaker 3: going to tax people who are rich.
Speaker 4: Well, the.
Speaker 3: Problem in New York City, if you're in New York resident,
Speaker 3: is that only rich people can afford to live there
Speaker 3: because the taxes are so high. Most you know, young
Speaker 3: people have to move out because they you know, the
Speaker 3: payroll taxes, the payroll taxes on your you're in your
Speaker 3: if your city dweller are incredibly high, you know, you
Speaker 3: get rid of rich people, but what do you have left?
Speaker 3: And and and then I heard just this happened just yesterday.
Speaker 3: I was listening to his housing policy being described and unfolded.
Speaker 4: On public radio likes w NYC actually.
Speaker 3: And it just felt like, wait, this is stuff that
Speaker 3: you know, Mayor Lindsey talked about. This is a housing
Speaker 3: policy from the early seven late sixties, early seventies. This
Speaker 3: is the We already know how this movie turns out.
Speaker 3: This is not even rebooting it, it's actually just re
Speaker 3: running it. And we know how the ending is, which
Speaker 3: is like this housing collapse none of this feels like
Speaker 3: which had becomes very strange to me. I mean, not
Speaker 3: strangely in New York City because there's no appetite, appetite
Speaker 3: for change, but none of this feels like a regeneration
Speaker 3: of the left, which is kind of what the marketplace
Speaker 3: seems to demand.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was watching an interview with Rob Emmanuel.
Speaker 3: And and he, you know, whatever he did in Chicago
Speaker 3: is sort of separate, but he he understands the problem, right,
Speaker 3: you know, he understands what the problem is for the left,
Speaker 3: for the Democratic Party. I'm not gonna do an thing
Speaker 3: about it, but he understands that he can articulate it.
Speaker 3: And and I he even he has this kind of
Speaker 3: he's incredulous that there hasn't been there hasn't been a
Speaker 3: movement to do this. There hasn't there's nobody on the
Speaker 3: on the horizon. The biggest star right now in the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders. That that tells you something.
Speaker 3: Whereas it should be somebody, it should be Bill Clinton.
Speaker 3: Find it, Bill Clinton, find a southern conservative Democrat governor
Speaker 3: and run him and you'll win. But you then you've
Speaker 3: got to find a southern conservative Democrat and that that
Speaker 3: to me is the is what I find astonishing. I mean,
Speaker 3: what I found weird. I guess I understand that this
Speaker 3: is that this is a free market argument I'm making, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're Milton Freedman, You're like, well, this
Speaker 3: is obviously market failure, so the market will correct itself.
Speaker 3: Like there's an addressable market in the Democratic Party for
Speaker 3: people who are basically patriotic, basically pro business, you know,
Speaker 3: basically normal, right, normal Americans? And why is there nobody
Speaker 3: selling a product about those people? And you can say
Speaker 3: the same thing Republicans in a way, perhaps.
Speaker 1: They don't have to, perhaps because they know that these
Speaker 1: people will vote Depocratic no matter what, because to vote
Speaker 1: the alternative is to vote for a bunch of xenophobe, islamophobe,
Speaker 1: phobe phobes, transphobe turfs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Lindsay may have
Speaker 1: Lindsay may have tried these things and it led to
Speaker 1: a housing collapse. But I don't think that Lindsay intended
Speaker 1: or wanted a housing market collapse.
Speaker 2: I believe that Mandami and the rest of the idiots
Speaker 2: around him, the Democratic Socialists of America, want a housing collapse.
Speaker 2: Because property is theft, because landlords are evil, and the
Speaker 2: whole point is for the state. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: The point is for the state. You could be right,
Speaker 1: because I mean somebody has to sit them down and say,
Speaker 1: all right, if you tax the Pieto tares of these
Speaker 1: people who live out of town, here's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: First of all, they're just they're going to sell them
Speaker 1: the market.
Speaker 2: You know, the price is going to go down, and
Speaker 2: whoever buys them, if somebody does, will pay less than
Speaker 2: property taxes because you crash the market on that. Secondly,
Speaker 2: these people are a net gain to the city because
Speaker 2: they pay taxes and they don't consume services.
Speaker 1: The cops aren't coming to their house. They're not going
Speaker 1: to the food shelters, they're not going to the hospit
Speaker 1: they're not going to school right school. So they pop
Speaker 1: into town, they spend money on tax fifth Avenue, they
Speaker 1: walk up and down, they go to the restaurant, and
Speaker 1: they go back to Miami and you get the tax revenue.
Speaker 1: If you get rid of those people, you have. But
Speaker 1: what they seem to believe magically is that once these
Speaker 1: units are empty, into them will flow the deserving roles.
Speaker 1: Now if you want the team or her family will
Speaker 1: move in.
Speaker 2: Precisely, rent control means you've got I don't know what
Speaker 2: percentage of rent control departments aren't aren't occupied in New York,
Speaker 2: but it simply isn't worth it for the owners to
Speaker 2: fix them because they can't because they can't make the money,
Speaker 2: so they sit unoccupied. They want to get rid of
Speaker 2: that so that eventually the city put people in there
Speaker 2: at their will. If you sell a building, the city
Speaker 2: will now have the first right of refusal, and the
Speaker 2: city will be able to say, well, we want to
Speaker 2: buy it for this and the next step, of course,
Speaker 2: is to crash the value so the city could take
Speaker 2: it cheaply. Somebody takes the offer because nobody else is buying,
Speaker 2: and then fifty sixty seventy percent of the housing stock
Speaker 2: and ends up being in the hands of the state,
Speaker 2: which hands it out to its patrons at little or
Speaker 2: no cost whatsoever and secures itself a permanent voting base.
Speaker 1: This is not crazy talk.
Speaker 3: This is like, well, this is mendeurism Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is stiffly what happened.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: This infuriating me yesterday when I was listening to this.
Speaker 3: I was listening to somebody talking about this is Hokeels tax,
Speaker 3: is the Piana tear tax? And it was NPR, and
Speaker 3: I don't know what show was on, and somebody, the
Speaker 3: woman who was doing who was the anchor, was interviewing
Speaker 3: the reporter had this tone of voice that you just
Speaker 3: instantly hate and you don't even know why. It's just man.
Speaker 3: But then she said something that really really got me.
Speaker 3: She said, so, you know, what is a pieta tear?
Speaker 3: I mean, I hear that, what is one? I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't I don't even know if I know what
Speaker 3: one is, she said, questioning what a pieta terear is. Now,
Speaker 3: I will pay you one million dollars in gold if
Speaker 3: that woman did not know what a piaa tear was.
Speaker 3: And that is that is a definite problem I think
Speaker 3: with people in the media, and I mean in general,
Speaker 3: probably on the right too, but on the left for sure,
Speaker 3: which is this pretending to be somebody pretending this sort
Speaker 3: of like aw shucks, just us folks, quality, the the
Speaker 3: the and that that is what gets up my nose
Speaker 3: with Momdannie, is this kind of Hey, I'm just like
Speaker 3: normal New York well, no, your mom's a filmmaker and
Speaker 3: your dad's a trendy of professor, and they're all on
Speaker 3: the l far left, and you grew up in this
Speaker 3: very very very very very rarefied atmosphere. I mean, Bloomberg
Speaker 3: actually made money and built a business and had employees
Speaker 3: and made zillions and zillions and billions of dollars because
Speaker 3: he had a better idea, not because he was a
Speaker 3: rich kid. And there is something that just sticks to
Speaker 3: my craw about that about people who have been for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, in whatever way, the benefits of a great
Speaker 3: country and a great culture and a great economy and
Speaker 3: free market capitalism which managed to generate enough money. There
Speaker 3: was so much money generated by a country that it
Speaker 3: built a great university in the Upper West Side of Manhattan,
Speaker 3: and in doubt it was zillions enough to pay a
Speaker 3: guy a lot of money to do nothing and to
Speaker 3: raise a kid who's now going to mess up the cities. Like,
Speaker 3: there's something really wonderful about that, right, And that to
Speaker 3: not wake up every morning in absolute sheer gratitude that
Speaker 3: there was an economy and there was a country that
Speaker 3: did that, I just find and then to pretend that, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know it was all terrible, like.
Speaker 1: Give me a break, Come on, that's the word ingratitude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I get omar here in Minnesota as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'll go into a record to say this as
Speaker 3: as I as everyone who listens to this podcast, even
Speaker 3: on the semi on irregular Nos. Not a fan of
Speaker 3: our president, not a fan of the administration, not a fan,
Speaker 3: not a fan, not at all. But uh, if he
Speaker 3: goes after Illinois, if he goes after her, I will
Speaker 3: be cheering. I mean, if he if he really goes
Speaker 3: to the you married your brother's stuff, which he mentioned
Speaker 3: like I saw him like a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: He's just kind of been passing. But if he digs
Speaker 3: in on that man erybum, I might actually I'll buy it.
Speaker 3: But I don't think I'll buy a bag of hat
Speaker 3: but I might.
Speaker 4: I might.
Speaker 3: I might price them well.
Speaker 1: Also in the news there's the swall walled downfall.
Speaker 2: Which I am police to see, I guess, but I
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what there is to say about his actions.
Speaker 2: The media's actions are more interesting to me. Everybody's striking
Speaker 2: their forehead V eight like and wondering exactly boy, boy,
Speaker 2: is this gosh? When it seems to be also common
Speaker 2: knowledge amongst a lot of people that this fellow was
Speaker 2: a creep. There was there was one guy I remembered
Speaker 2: on Twitter it was saying, well, it wasn't my beat
Speaker 2: to right, you know, I've.
Speaker 1: Been hearing these things for years. You know, I'm glad
Speaker 1: it's finally coming out.
Speaker 2: And Stephen Miller over in our set, why didn't get
Speaker 2: hell anybody? So it's not my beat? I cover international affairs. Well,
Speaker 2: he was sleeping with a Chinese spy at that count.
Speaker 2: So and a lot of people are saying who did this,
Speaker 2: who exactly.
Speaker 1: Executed this particular hit and why?
Speaker 2: And that's the sort of Vallas intrigue in the likes
Speaker 2: of which I suppose some people are fascinated by.
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm not. So.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say about that. I don't
Speaker 2: know what to say about Trump versus the pulp, except you,
Speaker 2: as a man who is taking studies in that nature,
Speaker 2: might be able to speak on exactly the relationship. I mean,
Speaker 2: the I thought that Vans is a point about the
Speaker 2: pope should stick to talking about issues of morality was silly,
Speaker 2: given that war often involves hannoply calledite a scopic number
Speaker 2: of issues about morality, but people have criticized the Pope
Speaker 2: for not realizing the Marshal's spirit that exists in portions
Speaker 2: of the Bible, and also for being silent on what
Speaker 2: many are saying is a concerted effort to remove Christianity
Speaker 2: from certain parts of the world, be it countries in
Speaker 2: Africa where there have been constant schisms, or in Algeria
Speaker 2: or Egypt. When you can look at the map and say,
Speaker 2: there used to be eight hundred thousand Christians living in
Speaker 2: Elebanon and out there are five and why is that?
Speaker 2: Is that not something that the Pope should speak up
Speaker 2: about or would that be too divisive.
Speaker 1: In the spirit of ecumenical handholding.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I think that I think that the
Speaker 3: Christian world is waking up to the fact that there's world.
Speaker 3: There's a great big parts of the world where that
Speaker 3: are not hospitable to Christians, and there's also a lot
Speaker 3: of Christian I mean, there's huge Christian growth too.
Speaker 1: By the way, in Africa.
Speaker 4: So it's hard.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're the pope, it's like hard to
Speaker 3: you don't really see Africa as a problem as a
Speaker 3: place where Christianity is on the wayan It's actually that's
Speaker 3: the fastest growing place.
Speaker 1: Algeria is part of that Luxuria.
Speaker 3: Yes, Algeria, it may be. Algeria is a complicated place
Speaker 3: too because the Algerians, I mean a little bit about Algeria.
Speaker 3: The Algerian government have been fighting Islamic radicals since the
Speaker 3: early nineties. It's a it's a not a democratic government,
Speaker 3: but they their argument is if it was a democratic government,
Speaker 3: it would they in al Kada, it would be an
Speaker 3: Islamic republic.
Speaker 4: So we put a stop to that.
Speaker 3: So you know, there's huge portions about I mean, Algeria's
Speaker 3: is the biggest country in Africa, is the biggest country
Speaker 3: in Africa, and most of it is just desert, sand
Speaker 3: and warlords. Algiers is a beautiful city, and it's a
Speaker 3: French city, and they grow wine and they drink wine.
Speaker 3: And the idea is that they are sitting on a
Speaker 3: powder cake. So I think too, I mean Algeria is
Speaker 3: I mean, are the pope. I would go and be
Speaker 3: friends with them. I wouldn't go and make trouble for
Speaker 3: them because they have trouble enough. And I suspect that
Speaker 3: they would say, yes, we know trust me, we're here.
Speaker 3: We know we have trouble. But you go a country
Speaker 3: like Tunisia, a country like eat Well, you know, actually
Speaker 3: living eachypt's harbor. He has been really tough on the
Speaker 3: cops Genesis. You know, Chinese has a it's not a
Speaker 3: thriving Christian scene, even though it was the home from
Speaker 3: of Saint Augustine.
Speaker 4: But it's.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not unfriendly, and Morocco is very, very friendly.
Speaker 3: So that those those North African Arab countries aren't where
Speaker 3: aren't really where there's trouble. There's trouble in China. I
Speaker 3: think there's trouble for Christians in China. I think there's
Speaker 3: trouble in parts of the Middle East for Christians. But
Speaker 3: I think if you're looking for the country right now
Speaker 3: that is the most anti Christian, it's got to be China.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. What the country where they're burning down the churches,
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of torched churches, godless Canada. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's been going on for a while now,
Speaker 2: and what people are People generally assume that it's people
Speaker 2: who are reacting to the false story of the you
Speaker 2: know what, hundreds of thousands of indigenous children were buried
Speaker 2: beneath church schools eventually debunked by doing by sounding the ground,
Speaker 2: but the story still persists. Or it's people who just
Speaker 2: don't like the apparitions of Christ, who don't like the
Speaker 2: manifestations of Christianity. We ever did find Did we ever
Speaker 2: exactly find out who burned Notre Dame?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know if we did.
Speaker 1: Was it was it a donkey that kicked over a
Speaker 1: candle into a pile of oily rags?
Speaker 3: It might have been, and might I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was a person who did it. It might be
Speaker 3: I'm not qualified to say.
Speaker 2: An immigrants who decided that that this, this this tootemic
Speaker 2: symbol of the western of Christianity was an ufront.
Speaker 4: The problem is that you can't meet in Notre Dame.
Speaker 3: If i'm I'll go with the thought experiment that it's
Speaker 3: Notre the Notre Dame was like it was artisan. The
Speaker 3: problem in France is that the people who believe, who
Speaker 3: are believers, who have faith, are Muslims. The people who
Speaker 3: are secular and who do not believe are the French,
Speaker 3: which is an incredibly secular country. You can't beat faith
Speaker 3: with no faith, really, you have to. There needs to
Speaker 3: be sort of an awakening of faith, and that that
Speaker 3: seems to be happening.
Speaker 4: I mean anecdotally.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it is really happening statistically, but it
Speaker 3: is happening in some places. I mean, I see it
Speaker 3: in the news and people talking about it. I think
Speaker 3: there's a little too much happy talk about it. But
Speaker 3: look that that that. You know, Look, we've been running
Speaker 3: an experiment. I'm sixty years old, right, and we've been
Speaker 3: running experiment as for as long as I have been
Speaker 3: alive pretty much. It started in the sixties, maybe late fifties,
Speaker 3: early sixties in this country, which is what would be
Speaker 3: like what would a culture in a country be like
Speaker 3: if it was entirely secular? Right, So what if we
Speaker 3: had lived in a secular world? And so America just
Speaker 3: kind of secularized itself for the past thirty forty fifty
Speaker 3: sixty years, took you know, religion basically out of the curriculum.
Speaker 3: I mean not only mean just prayer in school, I
Speaker 3: mean just out of the curriculum. You can get a
Speaker 3: prestigious degree, a get a fantastic education in America and
Speaker 3: never ever in the Bible or read a part of it,
Speaker 3: or even as a piece of history. It's just kind
Speaker 3: of it's been, you know, siloed off in some weird
Speaker 3: for some weirdos on Sunday morning. But the problem with
Speaker 3: all that is that we haven't managed to secularize the
Speaker 3: human life. Your life is not secular. Your life is,
Speaker 3: whether you like it or not, is deeply embedded in
Speaker 3: moments of faith, of your birth, of your death, of
Speaker 3: your marriage, of your children, of your life choices. Like
Speaker 3: your life human life cycle is anything but secular. And
Speaker 3: so you know, you're now fine, you see. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: you talk about young people a lot, and I'm fine,
Speaker 3: But you're a lot of a lot of thirty forty
Speaker 3: fifty sixty year old people in America anyway, who are
Speaker 3: one hundred percent unchurched, totally unchurched, but are now curious
Speaker 3: because they've been going through enough life and have had
Speaker 3: some knocks and some things to celebrate, somesgiving, moments of
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving and moments of intercession where what happens on a
Speaker 3: Sunday in church is suddenly interesting to them. And so
Speaker 3: I think that if there is a movement back to church,
Speaker 3: maybe it'll it'll look like young people, but I think
Speaker 3: it'll be middle aged people who were raised without this
Speaker 3: wondering how And problem with middle aged people is when
Speaker 3: they go to church, it's embarrassing because they don't really
Speaker 3: know anything, and so they have to learn. And most
Speaker 3: people who are in their thirties or forties just don't
Speaker 3: want to be embarrassed anymore.
Speaker 4: Anyway, that's my that's my rant.
Speaker 3: So so I'm less, I'm less concerned or less. I
Speaker 3: go to where I can find moments of optimism, and
Speaker 3: so I find optimism in that, and I think that
Speaker 3: is that that That's what I would focus on, and
Speaker 3: where I the pope, that's what I would be operationally
Speaker 3: be absolutely laser focused on. It's like, how do I
Speaker 3: get people to know what it is that we have here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The people who go in their sixties in the middle
Speaker 2: age who didn't go before don't know when to stand
Speaker 2: and when to sit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is if you grew up in a
Speaker 2: church and you went through all of that, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's in your bones and your marrow and your DNA.
Speaker 1: And yes, there is a lot that and it's not
Speaker 1: just however, old folks I know some.
Speaker 2: Young I know some young people who are actually and
Speaker 2: I don't want toy returned with a Roman V. But
Speaker 2: they got they got pretty trad They actually went from
Speaker 2: Lutheranism to Catholicism because they appreciated the rigor. And you know,
Speaker 2: I imagine, I mean, you can get back if you
Speaker 2: started doing it Latin again. And I get that, and
Speaker 2: it's it's it's wonderful to see that in people who
Speaker 2: are absolutely normal. And it used to be absolutely normal
Speaker 2: for people to do that period. It was just simply
Speaker 2: part of the culture. Now, you know that a lot
Speaker 2: of people were culturally Christian in the sense that they
Speaker 2: you know, grew up in it. Theyit the basics.
Speaker 1: They went you know, Eastern Christmas, but they didn't particularly
Speaker 1: grapple with Christianity.
Speaker 2: And they you know, if you if you oppressed them
Speaker 2: to it, they might not really believe it. But it
Speaker 2: was just it was the it was the atmosphere, it
Speaker 2: was the water in which we all swam. Now in
Speaker 2: France for a long time was culturally Catholic as well,
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent still is.
Speaker 1: People will take their kids to their newborns to be christened,
Speaker 1: to get married in a church, et cetera. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the faith is dead and the people who believe it
Speaker 1: the people who are coming from elsewhere, and that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a problem, except that those people are profoundly antithetical
Speaker 1: to the fundamental underpinnings of the society in which they
Speaker 1: now find themselves.
Speaker 2: So they want to transform it. Same thing in Britain,
Speaker 2: and at a certain point it happens.
Speaker 1: It happens. There's just enough of them, and they used
Speaker 1: the advantages of a democratic system to gain power.
Speaker 2: And and then that's it. And then the call to
Speaker 2: prayer has played over loud speakers.
Speaker 1: In what was, you know, a c of b neighborhood.
Speaker 2: You have a king who was the head of a
Speaker 2: religion who a lot of people think is actually probably
Speaker 2: more inclined to Islam than he is to Christianity, you know,
Speaker 2: conquered without firing a shot at the last thing that
Speaker 2: Charles does and say, oh, by the way, all.
Speaker 1: You know, all the akbar.
Speaker 2: So that's why I mean for Europe, simply because it
Speaker 2: made it made a suicidal decision to replace its not
Speaker 2: well place. Is that a loaded word to augment its
Speaker 2: population with people from another place believing in this preposterous
Speaker 2: post Christian transnational everybody's fine and equal thing that if
Speaker 2: you just simply transplant people to the society that took
Speaker 2: thousands of years to construct, they will absorb in a
Speaker 2: trice it's institutions, it's believes, it's guardrails and the rest
Speaker 2: of it, and they will become like us.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people that say that.
Speaker 2: It culture matters, is what I will say. And people
Speaker 2: from a culture steeped in it are not going to
Speaker 2: fit like a lego piece into another one period, sorry,
Speaker 2: unless they.
Speaker 1: Really want to try, and unless unless it's.
Speaker 2: America America, which has a different sort of civic identity
Speaker 2: than Norway, it's Ireland.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a funny thing though about this national identity and
Speaker 3: all that stuff, because you know, you can't beat something
Speaker 3: with nothing, right. I mean, that's sort of my larger
Speaker 3: going back to the foreign policy issues, like you know,
Speaker 3: you know, we can't want something more than they want it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what's happening inside Iran right now,
Speaker 3: is that we've been told and we promised for the
Speaker 3: past thirty years that there's this big independence but I
Speaker 3: mean a revolutionary movement or that they want to kick
Speaker 3: out the Islamic radicals who run the country, and yet
Speaker 3: it never quite seems to happen.
Speaker 4: It's like we want it more than they wanted.
Speaker 3: And I feel like that maybe that that is that
Speaker 3: is the question for Europe. The European monuments, the europe
Speaker 3: the Great European Cities, the Great European monuments, the great
Speaker 3: European cultural artifacts are entirely religious, or they are or
Speaker 3: they're based in, if not religion, religious war, you know,
Speaker 3: like they were fighting religious war, you know, nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: So once you throw that out, like you don't, you
Speaker 3: can't replace it with sort of this neutral, you know,
Speaker 3: intellectual shrugging you It gets replaced by people who believe something.
Speaker 4: So if you, if you, if you, if you.
Speaker 3: Don't like the call to prayer and you don't like
Speaker 3: that stuff, well what are you offering? And what what
Speaker 3: europe and European Western in actual values offered was this
Speaker 3: kind of shrugging nihilism that we put up with for
Speaker 3: one hundred years, and a lot of that was maybe
Speaker 3: after World War One it seemed nihilism seemed like a
Speaker 3: pretty good option. But you know, at some point you
Speaker 3: have to decide if you if you believe any of
Speaker 3: this stuff, and it can't you know, I mean, I
Speaker 3: I like all this return to.
Speaker 4: Church. I mean that's you know, listen, that's my job now.
Speaker 4: But you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't go back to faith out of spite or
Speaker 3: because you're going to show the other side or because
Speaker 3: you have some partisan believe you have.
Speaker 4: It has to be you have to be drawn to it.
Speaker 3: And I suspect that that a younger generation, and I
Speaker 3: think an older generation is looking for something may go
Speaker 3: back to it. Look, there's a reason why these things last,
Speaker 3: you know, there is a reason they last speak.
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you're not out of spikee part. But there's
Speaker 2: a certain energy that combines the religion with nationalism too.
Speaker 2: And you saw that a lot in Great Britain, when
Speaker 2: all of a sudden the old flags are coming out.
Speaker 2: I don't think that was necessarily a return to religion
Speaker 2: as much as you, as much as I you know,
Speaker 2: might like in the culture, but it's all bound up, it's.
Speaker 1: All part of it.
Speaker 3: Well in England especially right It's like but I would
Speaker 3: just say, like the Dutch had a very the Dutch,
Speaker 3: who were super super rational, have a very complicated relationship
Speaker 3: to religion. I've had a complicated one for five hundred years.
Speaker 3: They had this great you know they have they had trouble.
Speaker 3: They are they are out of it now they are
Speaker 3: they're they're Their culture is a little I mean every
Speaker 3: now they are flare ups. But as as a Northern
Speaker 3: European or European nation, they seem to be having they
Speaker 3: seem to have a policy now about immigration. It's a
Speaker 3: little bit more, a little bit more sane you and
Speaker 3: I would think it's sane, not perfect, but it's on sway.
Speaker 3: And they made a video years ago that if you
Speaker 3: you want to come to Holland, yeah, and you want
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 4: A Dutch citizen, you have to watch this video.
Speaker 3: And the video was like people eating bacon and cheese,
Speaker 3: sitting around at the park, women bathing topless, uh dogs, yeah, dogs,
Speaker 3: a guy smoking weed, and two men making out. And
Speaker 3: it was like, if any of this stuff bothers you,
Speaker 3: Holland is not your place. Because we are tolerant about everything.
Speaker 3: And although Dutch are weird about tolerance too, I love
Speaker 3: the Dutch for that reason. And I think that was
Speaker 3: that was a statement of values that the Dutch could
Speaker 3: the Dutch people could get behind because it that is
Speaker 3: kind of their modern way, right, and I think that
Speaker 3: needs to be The unapologetic, full throated assertion of your
Speaker 3: great values is perfectly legitimate, and I just think you
Speaker 3: spent one hundred years trying to make it knowledge of it,
Speaker 3: and some of those countries are just exhausted for war,
Speaker 3: and I understand it. I'm not going to point fingers,
Speaker 3: but there there is nothing to be ashamed of in saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you know we you know, we're in Norwegians. We were
Speaker 3: like the Vikings, we were like the we were marauding,
Speaker 3: like the Danes. We were pagan warriors.
Speaker 2: You know, we were tough, you'd think, but that's that
Speaker 2: that video that you just described, you say that that's
Speaker 2: a sign of tolerance. It would be viewed now as
Speaker 2: a sign of intolerance because it specifically suggests that people
Speaker 2: who do not share these cultural values are not welcome
Speaker 2: and cannot become Dutch, which is which is true, but
Speaker 2: it's a ridiculous idea now because you have this arrangement
Speaker 2: between between between Islam and Marxists, which is just makes
Speaker 2: you scratch your head. But it's a temporary alliance of
Speaker 2: convenience I guess where the more you are in this country,
Speaker 2: the more you're on the left, the more you side
Speaker 2: with Islam because you believe somehow that it's a race.
Speaker 2: I mean, the tenets of it are irrelevant to you.
Speaker 2: What it has done to the various societies along the time,
Speaker 2: how it was spread by the sword, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Et cetera, et cetera. You could almost call it, why
Speaker 1: a colonialist enterprise decolonized. It was Spain ever decolonized, I
Speaker 1: believe it was.
Speaker 2: It's the reconquista that it's so you have this arrangement
Speaker 2: whereby it's progressive now to side with these people because
Speaker 2: they are viewed as the as the victims of your
Speaker 2: preferred oppression. So you can't say, in the name of tolerance,
Speaker 2: the Dutch would would insist that people follow these values,
Speaker 2: because it would be intolerant of the people who are
Speaker 2: primarily now at the top of the intersectionality pyramid.
Speaker 1: And that's it's just it's bizarre, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: The Dutch for Dutch, like, I don't want to dump
Speaker 3: on them. I read this thing last night and so
Speaker 3: I didn't have a chance to check it. So it
Speaker 3: may not be true. It may not be It may
Speaker 3: not be accurate, although it has all of the ring,
Speaker 3: all the ring of truth and the ring of accuracy.
Speaker 3: It was a sort of history of the seat of
Speaker 3: the church and church movement, ecumenical movements of the you know, sixties,
Speaker 3: mostly sixties and seventies. Well, you know the world counts
Speaker 3: of churches happened after World War two, all these things,
Speaker 3: you know, and a lot of them happened as a
Speaker 3: result of World War two as a result of a
Speaker 3: European Christian churches wondering how it was that they let
Speaker 3: the Holocaust unfold, Right, So that's where its kernel is.
Speaker 3: And you know, by the sixties it was kind of
Speaker 3: you know, nutty fruitcake stuff, but.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: There was a paragraph that was simply a characterization of
Speaker 3: the sort of moral world, the broader church movements.
Speaker 1: In the world.
Speaker 3: Right, So, and I mentioned Malcolm X, and Malcolm X
Speaker 3: it was characterized as saying, so, I don't know if
Speaker 3: he said this, boy, it sounds like he did. Malcolm
Speaker 3: X said that he was drawn to Islam because in
Speaker 3: Islam he found none of the racism that he found
Speaker 3: in the Christian West. And I just I kind of laughed.
Speaker 3: It was like it can't be. I mean, he couldn't
Speaker 3: have said something so dumb about the people who invented slavery,
Speaker 3: African child slavery based on race and actual skin, like
Speaker 3: the actual not just skin, Coller, but the precise you know,
Speaker 3: the value of the dark, you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 3: the intensity of it.
Speaker 4: But I think, and so I have chance look it up.
Speaker 4: But I'm almost.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent certain he said that and thought that.
Speaker 3: And I'm also one hundred percent certain that people they
Speaker 3: still think that, because everything must be seen through the
Speaker 3: prism of my personal animosity towards the blessings of my life,
Speaker 3: right to get back to gratitude again, and so everyone
Speaker 3: who hates my you know, forebears must also be an
Speaker 3: ally and must be free of sin.
Speaker 4: And I just find that so weird.
Speaker 1: And that's.
Speaker 2: It's the I wrote a piece for my weekend column
Speaker 2: for NRO. There was a story saying that Germany and
Speaker 2: will now forbid seventeen to forty five year olds from
Speaker 2: leaving the country because of military service. And I looked
Speaker 2: a little bit deeper into it and it's like, no, now, actually,
Speaker 2: you just have to tell the military you're going abroad.
Speaker 2: If you're going abroad for more than three months, and
Speaker 2: the top of it was forty five. Forty five year
Speaker 2: olds could be conscripted. And I thought, so, they're going
Speaker 2: to cut right to the stage of taking the shopkeepers
Speaker 2: and the and the accountants and putting a sharp stick
Speaker 2: in their hand, and they're going right to that fit.
Speaker 1: But the idea is is that, you know, the conscription
Speaker 1: and the posture now having to increase their military is
Speaker 1: so our culture is bad, or our history is racist,
Speaker 1: our values are wrong. Everything that we stood for is
Speaker 1: soaked in blood. We are uniquely as being part of
Speaker 1: the West. Here go defend us. There's nothing they've failed
Speaker 1: to construct anything.
Speaker 2: No one is going to go to war for bike
Speaker 2: lanes or for for wind farms off they just aren't.
Speaker 1: They just aren't.
Speaker 3: And eventually that to this forty five year old German infantrymen,
Speaker 3: you know, they're look look like German tourists, like the
Speaker 3: little incredibly short shorts, those like dangerously short shorts, and
Speaker 3: then the the birkenstock with socks like oh no, like
Speaker 3: you're not going to win the war.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I mean the problem with
Speaker 1: all that is that like over that I see is that.
Speaker 3: The opposite of thinking that your culture is the worst
Speaker 3: thing in the world is unfortunately, the reaction to that
Speaker 3: is thinking is the best thing in the world, and
Speaker 3: rather than what you really should be thinking, which is
Speaker 3: that it's yours and it's a mixed bag, like everybody's legacy,
Speaker 3: like everybody's inheritance.
Speaker 4: It's mixed bag.
Speaker 3: And we all try to be better, and we try
Speaker 3: to be proud of the people who are grateful of
Speaker 3: the I think grateful is better word than proud, grateful
Speaker 3: of the people who sacrifice to get us to this place.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sitting there in Princeton and Princeton, New Jersey,
Speaker 3: and you know this is a great pivotal you know,
Speaker 3: depending on I mean, everybody who lives your revolutionary war
Speaker 3: battlefield always says.
Speaker 1: This is a pivotal war.
Speaker 4: But people, you know, this is the pivotal war. And
Speaker 4: all these things are true.
Speaker 3: And so the opposite of or I should say, the
Speaker 3: proper bromide or proper response to to your culture is
Speaker 3: drenched in blood and sin is well, it's mine and
Speaker 3: it's not and it's not perfect. But I'm grateful for
Speaker 3: the things that brought me here, and I'm hoping to
Speaker 3: make it better, and so I sometimes I find the
Speaker 3: reactions to it even, you know, like not this right,
Speaker 3: but on the heading of well, actually, you know, slavery
Speaker 3: was good for them, you know, slaves, which is sure
Speaker 3: and ridiculous and not necessary to say, to make the
Speaker 3: argument that flawed people at a flawed time belatedly realized
Speaker 3: the mistakes they had made.
Speaker 4: And okay, it's twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: You know, I got to move on prey quick points
Speaker 2: to wind up one. I agree with you to be
Speaker 2: proud of your culture. I also would note that there
Speaker 2: are hierarchies of cultures. Some are worse than the others,
Speaker 2: and we actually don't have much to learn from the
Speaker 2: ones that are demonstrably worse. We have munch to learn
Speaker 2: from the ones that are better.
Speaker 1: But you always got to keep your eye out for
Speaker 1: the one that is completely secure, that absolutely.
Speaker 2: It is the best and they're going to show it
Speaker 2: to everybody. Uh So, yeah, there are hierarchies too. You
Speaker 2: said the word bromide, and I think we would all
Speaker 2: be happier if you could get commercial bromides like you
Speaker 2: used to be able to do. There's something, there's something
Speaker 2: called nervine I never saw it, but Bromo Seltzer, for example,
Speaker 2: was alca Seltzer with a little bromide.
Speaker 1: Right, and so now the term bromide has come to
Speaker 1: me sort of you know, a cliche to you know,
Speaker 1: to call them somebody or something like that.
Speaker 2: No, it actually sort of worked nerves, the nerves if
Speaker 2: you could just goggle, if you could grab your afternoon
Speaker 2: so to diet free one.
Speaker 3: And you know, going up in Baltimore, right, it was
Speaker 3: born in Baltimore. There are two famous factories in town
Speaker 3: in the center of towns Domino one of them. No,
Speaker 3: uh no, that was across the harbor. Yeah, h McCormick,
Speaker 3: the McCormick spice factory was in downtown Baltimore. And the
Speaker 3: Bromo Seltzer Tower and the battlem my Celter towers I
Speaker 3: think might still be there. This long sort of big,
Speaker 3: big tall, sort of Italianate looking, you know, plots of
Speaker 3: styles skyscraper of the time with a kind of a
Speaker 3: light blue clock. You know when they when they all
Speaker 3: had clocks and it said Bromo Seltzer on the clock.
Speaker 3: And I remember, I don't even know if you could
Speaker 3: buy Broman Seltzer on I guess you probably could buy it,
Speaker 3: but that you know, these are great patent medicines. And
Speaker 3: then on McCormick, if you were downtown, you knew what
Speaker 3: spice they were packaging that day because you could smell it.
Speaker 4: And that was just normal.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, I know, I'm playing the
Speaker 3: James YleX violin here, but that was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, it was great.
Speaker 2: I mean you would tell people, hey, buddy, take a
Speaker 2: Bromo and Bromo Seltzer ads on the radio had the
Speaker 2: sound of this of a of a.
Speaker 1: Train, promosil, promosils, promostils.
Speaker 2: Which actually made you more nervous and made you want
Speaker 2: to take a Bromo and McCormick. McCormack's one of the
Speaker 2: biggest spice companies in the country, and they later bought
Speaker 2: Shilling and so for a while it was McCormick in
Speaker 2: the east Shilling in the West that would be their ads.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they had to tell this that
Speaker 1: until they eventually combined it, but they sort of had
Speaker 1: split up the country the way companies did in very
Speaker 1: odd ways. There was Asians and Hellman's right right. There
Speaker 1: was a chain called Cress. There was a chain called Kreskey,
Speaker 1: and they managed to split up the country in Niclely
Speaker 1: you find Crest all over the South. You'll never find
Speaker 1: a Kriskey down there. And yes, well we could get
Speaker 1: into retail history. That's another podcast I'd love to have
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: The third thing I was going to say in this
Speaker 2: list was that you should go to Apple Podcast and
Speaker 2: give us five stars.
Speaker 1: Give us six because Rob's back, and say more Rob,
Speaker 1: more Rob.
Speaker 2: It's kind of odd everyone drifts in and out, yet
Speaker 2: I'm the only loadstone here we get star. I am
Speaker 2: the circus tent pole around which the elephants and the
Speaker 2: monkeys gaper. I would consider yourself the ring master. Well
Speaker 2: your top hat. Somebody has to keep an eye on
Speaker 2: the clock and pretend he's an old radio hand. Anyway, Rob,
Speaker 2: it was great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It always is. Don't be a stranger, come back more often.
Speaker 3: Love to Yeah, And I apologize to listeners who wanted
Speaker 3: us to talk about current events, but aren't you exhausted
Speaker 3: by current events?
Speaker 4: Like let's you know, I have talked to you in
Speaker 4: a long time, so it's nice to catch up.
Speaker 2: And I often also want to remind people in the
Speaker 2: comments that if I don't respond necessarily to a thing
Speaker 2: that Robins said or an assertion, it is not because
Speaker 2: I agree with it, maybe that I don't agree with it,
Speaker 2: but I cannot refute it instantaneously with the amount of
Speaker 2: information I need or I want to move along, or
Speaker 2: such and such and touch. So you can argue with
Speaker 2: Rob all you like, an economics and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Next week, I believe it'll be Stephen Hayward and Peter Robinson.
Speaker 1: No, it'll be Charles C. W.
Speaker 2: Cook as well, the gang back together. I don't know
Speaker 2: where I'll be. It could be my last from here,
Speaker 2: who knows. It's uncertain.
Speaker 1: Off we go, Off we go, things in storage and
Speaker 1: eyes to the horizon. Rob it's been great and we'll
Speaker 1: see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point one
Speaker 1: point seven three five two anyway, bye
Speaker 4: Bye, good to see you.