Angry Planet - Steve Inskeep Is Back From Afghanistan

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

It’s been a year since the U.S. left Afghanistan in disarray. We’ve spoken to a number of people who have been to Afghanistan over the years on this show. That includes journalists who walked into Kabul with the Taliban the first time, in 1996, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan throughout the war, and more recently, a man who was supposed to be fighting corruption but found it to be worse than a losing battle.Today, NPR’s Steve Inskeep joins us. He recently visited Afghanistan and spent some time with the Taliban.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Oh, and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Golt. It's been a year since the U.S. left Afghanistan in disarray. We've spoken to a number of people who've been to Afghanistan over the years on the show. That includes journalists who walked into Kabul with the Taliban the first time in 1996, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan throughout the war, and more recently, a man who was supposed to be fighting corruption,

but found it was worse than a losing battle. Today, NPR's Steve Inskip joins us. You recently visited Afghanistan and spent some time with the Taliban. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, glad to be here. I was hoping that you could do something none of the other guests have actually been able to do, which is sort of describe what you see, what you hear, even what you smell when you get to Afghanistan. If you sort of paid a picture, that would be wonderful.

Yeah, I appreciate the question. That is the thing that I most want out of international reporting or really any kind of good writing. and what I try to do in mine, although people will decide if I succeed or not. The question of like, what's it like to be there? And particularly Afghanistan. I am recalling that in 2001 I was sent to Afghanistan for the first time, a little bit after the 9-11 attacks. But I had a colleague who went in a few weeks before I did, Anne Geryl, one of our great foreign correspondence. And she began what I think was her first interview from Afghanistan on NPR in late September,

2001, by saying to the program host, I'm about as far away from you as it is possible to be right now. And she meant that in terms of physical miles, but also in terms of cultural distance and communication distance. In 2001, there were very few working phones in Afghanistan. You had to bring your own satellite phone. And you may recall that 20 years ago, a satellite phone, like a really good one, needed to fit in the backpack. I mean, it was just not a small thing. And, and, like, So they were very, very isolated. There was no TV there. You could bring a shortwave radio in and get some news, but otherwise you'd have no news.

And she was just very far away, and I was very far away. Going into Kabul these days feels very far away, but also very close. You arrive at a small international airport, and you immediately remember that it is very famous because of the evacuation of the United States one year ago from what was then Hamid Karzai International Airport. Of course, it was named after one of the presidents, one of the two presidents of the Afghan Republic, so the Taliban have renamed it. But they have not gotten around to removing all the signs. And so here and there, there's still a sign that says Hamid Karzai International Airport. I think one was missing a letter. And so the first thing I really saw was a sign saying Hami

Karzai International Airport. But you're landing in this airport in a mountain bowl. It is stunningly beautiful. It's also dry. The mountains are dry. And the valley itself is filled with dust, which you begin to feel in your lungs after you've been there for a few days. It's like you're continuously smoking. I've never been a smoker, but I'd imagine that might have a similar effect of just smoking two, three, four packs of cigarettes a day every single day. You get into the city, it is chaotic. There are lots of people on the streets. There are lots of things that are in shambles, half constructed, half deconstructed, destroyed in various ways. And some of them have been destroyed from actual combat or bombs of some kind over the years.

But many of them are just the chaos of a rapidly changing city full of poor people. The homes of the more affluent are visible to you only as gigantic blast walls. I reflected as we drove around Kabul that someone must have made billions of dollars in the concrete industry in the past 20 years. years of war because that's really all you see. I stayed in a hotel behind blast walls that covered what seemed to be about a city block. And I went to see government officials in gigantic compounds surrounded by concrete blast walls. Universities are surrounded by concrete blast walls. All government buildings are surrounded by concrete blast walls. They're just, they're just everywhere. And yet there is a degree of life in the city because there's so much traffic

and there's people in the streets and there are people selling and vending things. There's also very obvious desperation in Kabul these days. You are aware that the economy collapsed one year ago when the Taliban took over and when the United States withheld the governments, I should say, central bank funds and a number of sanctions immediately applied to Taliban leaders, some of whom have prices on their heads. People are so desperate. Children are desperate. They will jump up on the running board of your car and hang on. They will snatch at you if you get out and move on the street and a place where there are kids, which might be a taxi stand or the airport itself, or just someplace that they might see somebody with a few extra Afghanis. You cannot use your credit card. This was a place that was disconnected from the global financial system. The banks largely can't function in a normal way. And so everything needs to be paid in cash. This is a recent development. at the hotel where I stayed, you had to fill out a form and you were supposed to check whether you're going to pay in credit or cash because the form is from the former times, but there's really

only one option. You need to bring in cash. You need to pay in cash. People can't even send money to their relatives who are in Afghanistan. And so you get requests to carry some money in or carry various things out. And so in some ways, it's isolated. But in other ways, it is extremely, it feels extremely close. There is now a modern communications network. Your ordinary cell phone continues to work. You can be texting or WhatsApping or whatever people do with anyone anywhere around the world. That makes the place both very connected and very distant. You then drive around the country.

It's been suffering from years of drought. It's desperately dry. The mountains are brown and dusty and rocky. There is this haze of dust that hangs in the air many, many days, even out in the countryside, or I should say especially out in the countryside. side. And yet here and there, you will turn into a valley that has a flowing river and that has irrigation channels and mudwalled homes, both of which you could easily imagine have been there for centuries. And there are green fields and people are growing apricots or or are potatoes

or any number of things. And you have this sense of a calm, placid life, although, just one year ago and over 20 years, over 40 years in many cases, those valleys were the scene of brutality and combat. And today you see many shrines to the dead along the sides of the road, which would just be very simple, like piles of items and a few flags, tattered flags. And you see cemeteries with a great number of white flags in them, which is a sign of Taliban fighters who were buried there. And of course, there are very, very many dead on the other side as well. When you're in Kabul itself, this is going to maybe be a strange question. But when you travel, places often have smells associated with them. When I think of Jerusalem, for example,

the pleasant smells I remember are like the spice markets. Yeah. And horseshit when I was in Egypt, which was a long time ago. But is there anything like that for Kabul? You smell the air, you smell the dust. You smell the bread, the hot bread. It's wonderful Afghan bread. I love it. You smell that smell of like gas exhaust, you know, like a lot of inefficient cars. Surprisingly few Tesla's driving around, driving around Kabul.

And I don't know about the international auto standards there. I have a friend there who told me his car has no license plate, and I said, no license plate, he says it's Afghanistan. It's true. Like, what are you going to do? So you smell the pollution and you smell the desert, you smell the desert sand. You almost taste the sand from time to time. Once it did rain when we were there and you could smell that too. It's very distinctly different because everything had been so dry and so you smell the difference. Somewhat surprisingly, I don't recall smelling a lot of sewage because there are an enormous number of open sewers there. You step over them. They go along the sides of the streets. You probably know this from places

you've traveled. And, you know, it might be like a foot wide or a little wider and you go over a little bridge or you take a risk and hop over. But you're just constantly by this running water of sewage. And it's remarkable that you don't smell more of that. How many times have you been to Afghanistan? And I assume you were sent there every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would go as a tourist practically, but I've been there three times. I was sent right after 9-11. and was in the northern part of the country. And then it came back out for a few weeks. And then in early 2002, I was sent back to the southern part of the country.

And I want to say I lived in Kandahar. I mean, it was there like six weeks, but I felt like six months of experiences took place in that period. There was a feeling that something new was happening, that there was this new guy, Hamid Karzai, who was going to be president, and it was going to be a free country, and things were starting over again.

And then I didn't go back for 20 years. This was not exactly my choice. I had a co-host, the brilliant Renee Montaigne, who was deeply focused on Afghanistan, and she went multiple times over the years, and I decided, even though I had deeply drawn to Afghanistan, I should leave that to her and go elsewhere. And basically went everywhere else in the world. Went to Iran, went to Syria in the middle of its war, went to Libya, went to Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, China, Nigeria, a lot of different places, Djibouti.

And 20 years passed, and I paid attention to that war and then came back the other day for my third visit after 20 years. And I felt like I just left. I mean, all these things have happened, obviously. Many things are very different in terms of the narrative of Afghanistan and the people who were alive and dead. Some of the people I knew then are alive now, but are at a different phase of their lives. but I guess I mean to say that the earlier visits made such a profound impression on me. I hadn't really done anything like that before. I'd only once before been in a conflict zone.

That it was easy to pick back up and dive back in. As a human, it's a very hard place to look around because things are so difficult. But as a human, it is also an excellent place to visit because there is a culture of hospitality and people look after you and people are happy that you're there. And this is a really weird thing to explain to people who haven't been there. But even in the older visits, in the earlier visits, I can recall sitting with some Taliban people who had just been overthrown and the guy was ranting like, why are you people here? Why don't you leave us alone? He wanted to throw out the foreigners and here I was a foreigner,

but I'd come as a guest. And so he had to serve me tea and everybody. was very courteous and it was totally fine. People welcome you and people tell you their stories. And it is such a remarkable country that as a journalist, all you really have to do at the end of the day is say, here's what I did today. And it will be the most amazing story. What were your interactions with the Taliban like? Or if you had any? Oh, I did have. And they were relatively open, I thought. I had some connections here, some people here who knew Taliban people there who were helpful to me in setting things up. But in general, the Taliban are trying to run the country now. They are aware that not a single country on earth has recognized them as a

legitimate government. They are aware that they could use international help. And they are getting some, by the way. The United Nations is helping feed a lot of people. But they would like to improve relations with the world, or at least figures within the Taliban would like to improve relations within the world. And I had a good number of meetings with people and conversations with people and the most prominent one was Muhammad Yacoub, the defense minister now, who is the son of Mullah Omar, the guy who ran the Taliban in the 1990s and early 2000s, who sheltered Osama bin Laden and had a compound in Kandahar, a famous compound in Kandahar from which he effectively ran the country. And now the sun is in that same compound. And I was allowed to come on over and sit

with the guy and he took a lot of my questions. I think we talked for well over an hour. he paused in the middle to pray and had some other interviews scheduled that had been agreed to. And then there was a drone strike. Maybe you recall the United States fired a drone and killed the leader of al-Qaeda, which was a bit embarrassing for the Taliban leadership. And I wasn't able to conclude the last big interview that I wanted to do. But with that small exception, they were very open to me. They seemed very eager to get their message out.

And it was on a basic level fine to talk with them. Now, I'm not endorsing them as people who govern their policies or anything else. That's not my business to say that things are right or wrong. But it is my business to go, particularly to people who are doing things like they're doing and ask, like, what is your plan here? What is your point? Like, when are you going to let girls back in school? How are you going to improve your relations with the rest of the world?

What are you doing here? What are your plans? It's important that someone asks those questions and they were open to the questions. Can you talk a little bit more about what? what they wanted from you, what kind of questions they asked you, like kind of the directions they wanted to steer the conversation in? Oh, I don't know that they posed a lot of questions to me, but I think that there are various figures in the Taliban and some are more ideological, and some are a little less ideological and more, let's say, pragmatic. I think that you

would consider them all to be a certain kind of conservative. And it's not exactly that there are factions, but they're differing views. And the more pragmatic ones were the ones that someone like me can reach. And they are aware of some of the shortcomings of what they've done. They had committed, or the international community had the impression that they had committed to let girls back in school at the beginning of March of this year. And they did let elementary kids in school. But at the very last minute, junior high and high school age girls were told that they could not go to school. And it was such a last-minute decision. I've heard that in some parts of the country, kids showed up to school and were turned away at the door, or even got into the classroom and sat down, and then we're told to go home the first day. And so they're weeping.

And it appears that there are various opinions within the Taliban on this question. And so they only kept a small part of their promise. Younger kids or younger girls are in school across the country. Now a weird thing has happened where in some provinces, all girls are back in school. In most provinces, high school and junior high school age girls are not back in school. There are Taliban officials, including some that I spoke with, who effectively said, we want to do this.

We hope to get around to it. But we have disagreement within our own ranks. and we are fearful that if we go too far too fast, some of our own ideologically trained fighters will turn against us. This is a thing that they say, and of course anything that anybody says, you try to check it out and vet it, but they do face, in an interesting way, a political problem

because their competition in the militant space in Afghanistan includes groups like ISIS. And they express the fear that some of their people would go over to ISIS if they betray what some of the more conservative people consider as their ideology. So even though it is not in any way a democratic institution, and even though a lot of its politics are taking place out of sight, it seems that there are politics and there is a debate. and it is a little bit of an open question as to whether the more ideological or the more pragmatic people will win at the end, although analysts who are far more expert than I seem to think that the ideologues are tending to win out at the moment. What's a rude question to a host at the Taliban? I mean, there's stuff in some ways they don't want to talk about.

I suppose. I mean, what's a rude question? In some cases, they duck the questions a little bit, but they were there to take the questions, which I respect. I mean, they knew what my purpose was. They had checked me out. They were aware what I did for a living that I was going to ask them questions. I've had a lot of different interviews and a lot of different reactions all over the world to asking unpleasant questions. I mean, I had a former president hang up on me. I had a, of the United States. I had a member of Congress once tell me to get the F out of my office. that was, and he used the actual word, and it was on tape. So I've had people get upset about questions, but I generally find that if you are frank about why you have come and what the point is, and you phrase your question frankly but diplomatically, that people will often engage.

Sometimes they won't answer as fully as you wish they would, but they'll take the question. And I didn't find any particular difference there. I'm thinking of some Taliban guys who feared that they were being rude to me. I went into this valley, the Tangi Valley, and there had been brutal, like, just terrible conflict. Many, many, many people killed, and the Taliban guys claimed that they had dismembered American soldiers. And there was a famous incident in which the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter with dozens of people, mostly Americans on board. I mean, just terrible, terrible incidents in this valley. And I was brought in and I was brought into the guest rooms of a couple of different homes to talk with people.

I guess I should explain that Afghans want to keep women separate from visitors who are male. And so they will have an entirely separate guest room with an entirely separate entrance to the house so that they can receive visitors while you never see the rest of the home. So I was in a couple of guest rooms and sitting there talking with people. people. And in one of them, the guy says, I'm sorry to be speaking so frankly about the Americans, I don't want to make you uncomfortable because you're a guest and I want you to be comfortable. And I had to say, no, I came here to hear what you had to say. So speak freely. And then they gave their opinion of the American troops, which was in many ways very negative, as you would imagine, since they fought them in a war. And, you know, that's fine. I will vet what they say and

figure out what is the proper way to bring it along. They worried about offending me by speaking frankly, but nobody admitted to being that offended by my questions, even though I had some very real question. Aside from the concrete, which we've talked about, I'm wondering if there are, if you see

any physical manifestations of America's legacy there? Oh yeah. Yeah. We tried to and sort of managed to do a story on something called the American University of Afghanistan with a lot of international and American aid, this English

language university that was supposed to build a new Afghan civil society or train a new Afghan civil society was built up. It had a campus that was nice. And then they got a nicer campus across the highway. Then it was attacked and had to be surrounded by giant blast walls. And then it was abandoned around August 15th as the evacuation began of last year. And the president of the university told us how one of the last things that they did was stand around a giant bonfire in which they burned the records of the university so that no one could come after the students and professors. I wanted to go visit that campus, but it is, as I mentioned, surrounded by blast walls, and it seems, according to various sources, to have been taken over by Taliban figures,

like education-related figures, who are like living in the campus housing for the professors and the administrators, and so we weren't let in. It's still there. There is a desire among the Taliban had turned it into something called the International University of Afghanistan. And what is, to me, more amazing is that the university itself has continued in exile. There still is an American university of Afghanistan. It still has many hundreds of students. They have gone to other countries. They are being hosted on other campuses.

Some of them are taking courses online. It appears that a fair number of them are within Afghanistan and still studying quietly in various places. They intend to set up a new campus in Cutter for however long it would be before they could return to their roots. And so there is this facility that's being used in some way and has some kind of future and is still sitting there. And there is this university that's kind of floating on the Internet and is still there. And I think that that maybe is representative of the American legacy. There's all this physical infrastructure still sitting there. And there's all these people who've been affected in different ways by the past 21 years now.

We talk about what's left of the opposition. I'm on the suit. His father was a fascinating figure. We actually had someone on the show who was there when he and Dostom came together to try to make an alliance many, many, many years ago. You were actually able to meet him. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Ahmed Masoud is the son of Ahmed Shah Masood, this figure who kept the Afghan opposition together in the 1990s and early 2000s until his own assassination in September of 2001. The son is pretty frank that he doesn't have a lot going for him right now, that he doesn't have, he doesn't admit to any international support. He has some limited number of fighters, but they claim to be starting a guerrilla war.

and there is some evidence that they have managed to stage attacks in the Panshir Valley, which is Amicham Soud's historic base. They don't claim to control any territory. It is very hard to confirm the claims made by anybody. My former NPR colleague, Susanna George, now a correspondent for the Washington Post, was able to travel in the Panshire Valley a couple of months ago and found some signs of conflict, but clearly the opposition doesn't control any territory. They're a long way from being a serious, serious threat, although we know from decades of experience

that a limited number of guerrillas with a little bit of support if they get it can cause a lot of damage and trouble. I want to mention another kind of opposition, which is just the civilian political opposition. The former president, Hamid Karzai, is still in town per force. They won't let him leave, but they also don't seem to bother him. And he is allowed to talk to people like me and speak out and give opinions. and he says what he thinks they're doing right and he says what he thinks are doing wrong. There are former legislators who were in the parliament that has been abolished by the Taliban,

but they're around. There are figures who did not flee for whatever reason, Afghanistan, and are still there and want a different kind of country, a more inclusive country. And the international community is essentially said to the Taliban, there's a handful of things we need from you, for you to be a legitimate government. and the most important thing is to somehow be inclusive, and it's not clear how that's supposed to work. Ahmed Massoud, the guy that fascinates you,

told us that he'd been offered a cabinet position by the Taliban, which I was fascinated by. Of course, that offer, it's not confirmed, but I haven't heard from Taliban figures that they offered it to him, and he said he refused, but it would be a very different-looking government. if Ahmed Massoud was one of the cabinet members, if Hamid Karzai was somehow attached to the government, things would look very different. But Ahmad Massoud said the reason that he declined is that there would not be anything authentic, that there's still no democratic structure, there's been no election,

the Taliban are just in charge, and he says that's unacceptable to him. So he and others are effectively in the wilderness. All right, angry, great listeners. We're going to pause there for a break. We'll be right back. All right, Angry Planet listeners, thank you for sticking around. We are on with Stevenskeep talking about Afghanistan. I have a weird existential question to take us out on Afghanistan, if that's all right. Sure. Okay, so this is America's longest war. Was America's longest war.

We've been out for a year, but that war changed the country, both Afghanistan and America. When you as a reporter go and you're telling these stories, what is your sense of responsibility as a Western journalist going in. You mean, am I responsible for Afghanistan's troubles? No, no, no. More like, is that a consideration at all? The perspective you're bringing to it as an American journalist. Well, I know we have a little level of objectivity and detachment from these things, but it's a big war, you know, and it's one that America, I mean, MPR certainly didn't, but large portions of the population ignored.

Right. Yeah, I will acknowledge that's part of the reason that I went. When I told people around me that I was going to Afghanistan and not places that are more on people's radar, Ukraine, Pennsylvania, Nevada, wherever there's a swing election this fall, people's like, why are you going to Afghanistan? Like, what? Why? And that's fine. I realized that Afghanistan has fallen off people's radar, that people had dropped the subject of, Afghanistan years before the last American troops left. And as soon as the last American troops left and we had the horrible evacuation, people dropped Afghanistan again, presumably feeling that all the people we cared about had gotten out. I recognize that people are overwhelmed with greater concerns in their own lives. People are overwhelmed with COVID. People are overwhelmed with inflation. People are overwhelmed with fears for democracy in this country. People are overwhelmed with the constant, constant, constant grading demand for attention and emotional manipulation of our partisan political discussion, I recognize that it's gotten to the point where even Ukraine, I think, has largely

dropped off people's radar. They can't pay attention. So why are you going to Afghanistan? And that's why I'm going to Afghanistan, damn it, because it meant I do feel connected to that story, to that story. I have known people there for 20 years. I did pay attention. when people were trying to get out. We've continued to pay attention. I had a couple of colleagues, the most prominent being David Gilke, the photographer who were killed in Afghanistan in 2016. Amazingly, miraculously, those are the only people working for NPR who were killed in this entire two decades of wars and uprisings and other calamities around the world. It's just amazing. I feel a personal connection to that place, and I feel a connection as an American, and I do feel a responsibility to pay attention to this place where we had such an influence and such an impact.

And the most common response that I got, even from Taliban figures, but I mean mostly from like ordinary people and other people who are disconnected and trying to live their lives, is thank you for covering this. Thank you for coming. Thank you for paying attention. Thank you for listening to us. It's good to hear, frankly. We've tried in a very small way to do what we could to. Like I mentioned at the top of the show, we have had soldiers on. A lot of soldiers have become journalists. Yeah. And it's just a fascinating dynamic. Now, to completely change the subject, because, you know, even though we like to go out in a sober, if not somber note.

You like to go out on a sober note? You like for the listeners to be just kind of a little depressed. Yeah, yeah. That's what we do here. Yeah. It's kind of a hallmark, believe it or not. I see. I see.

Can we talk a little bit about some of your other projects? Sure. Because it's really, really cool. I was reading about a book you wrote not long ago at all. I think it was 2000. It came out called, sorry, I haven't. 2020 is probably what you wanted to say. 2020, that is what I meant to say.

And the book is called Imperfect Union. And the union that you're talking about, it's sort of not just the country, right? It's also these fascinating characters. Could you talk a little bit about those characters and why you brought them back to life? Oh, yeah. John Charles Fremont and Jesse Benton, Fremont. John Fremont was one of the most famous people of his story. time because he connected himself to the expansion and change of this country in the 1840s and 50s. He was a

Western explorer. He was a mapmaker. He traveled through the mountains and deserts. He also took part in the American conquest of California, the United States conquest of California from Mexico in the 1840s. And he was this gigantic celebrity national hero who also cultivated his celebrity. He wrote bestselling accounts of his adventures. And the accounts themselves were like a guidebook of how to go west, and settlers used it as a guidebook as they settled places like Oregon. So this guy was absolutely at the center of the most important national narrative of his time, and then became a presidential candidate, an anti-slavery presidential candidate, the very first Republican presidential candidate in 1956 when it was an anti-slavery party.

His wife, Jesse Benton-Fremont, was probably smarter than he was, was better with people, was the daughter of a senator, was politically astute, became his political advisor, often his representative in meetings he could not attend, his publicist talking to newspaper editors and getting the story out about him and was a huge figure and a celebrity in her own. Right. When he ran for president in 1856, it was almost as if they were running for president in 1856. She was a big part of the campaign and of the imagery of the campaign. I was interested in them because I've been really compelled by that period, that period before the American Civil War. I've now written three books, two of which are out and one of which is coming on that subject. One is called

Jacksonland, and it's about the development of the American South, the eviction of native nations from the South to make way for cotton plantation slavery. And the book is about Andrew Jackson, a central figure and all of that, and his 20-year fight. with John Ross, a Cherokee Chief, who resisted in a democratic way, a peaceful way, in a political way, and endured for many years before finally being sent west on the famous Trail of Tears in 1838. The second book is about the Fremonts who were engaged in America's westward expansion to the Pacific and then engaged in this northern anti-slavery movement. So you've got all these big social movements in America, plantation slavery, westward expansion, anti-slavery movement, and they clash in the

third book that I am just finishing up, which is a biography, a short biography of Abraham Lincoln. Just to ask one question about the Fremonts in particular. You bet. Okay. So it does sound like they were very important. Why are they not in my textbooks when I, I mean, I only have the normal, basic, you know, American high school education and, you know, and a little popular interest. Other than that.

So why haven't I heard about them? Two things. One is, I think that part of their. importance was their celebrity, and so it was manufactured. And celebrity, surprisingly, does not last forever. But the other thing is that I think that they were deeply involved in regarded as heroes for doing things that we now today feel ambivalent. Should we have taken over a large part of Latin America, which is effectively what the United States did in taking California, New Mexico, was that a just war? Should we have settled the West in just the way that we did? And he is by no

means the worst figure that you could name in that universe. But he was, his men did, did like attack villages in California from time to time, masquer people. He did have a very weird role in, in the war against Mexico. He also was a very brave guy and industrious guy who, you know, willingly suffered for months or even years at a time out in the willingness by himself. He was a creative person. He was a good writer. He inspired a lot of people, but we as a country don't know how we feel about the movement that he was involved in. And so I think he's dropped off the radar. The other thing I should mention is that he lived long enough to be in the civil war and had a very bad civil war and had a conflict with Abraham Lincoln. And there is literally nobody in

history who had a conflict with Abraham Lincoln who came out well at the end. Lincoln prevailed over everyone and has prevailed over everyone in history. In his history, in his history, history, people love Lincoln so much that anybody he had a conflict with is a punching bag, almost. All right. I have a, I have a way to bring us back to an angry planet style ending, end on a somber note and wrap up the conversation, I think. Okay. All right. Okay. So you've said, we're talking about these books. You said you're kind of a scholar

of this period of America that this turmoil that happens right before the outbreak of the Civil War. Are you seeing or feeling any parallels in our current? moment. Yes. In both periods, there is a time of demographic change that leads people to a fear of a permanent, permanent defeat. In the mid-1800s, the demographic change was the population growth of the North through immigration and other factors. The North got to vastly outnumber the South, and the South had slavery, and the North had gradually abolished slavery. And when one time, an anti-slavery party, without even a particularly extreme platform, won a presidential election in 1860. That one election, the South chose to regard as their permanent defeat and concluded that they must

leave the country, and that is what triggered the civil war. Demographic change was a big factor in leading to that civil conflict. Again, in our time, there has been tremendous demographic change, which people have associated with politics. And also, interestingly enough, it's linked with race, of course. There is this constant, constant, constant and explicit fear. I mean, I'm telling you what is on Fox News. I'm telling you what Donald Trump has explicitly said. Immigrants are going to come. They're going to overwhelm our side, and they will permanently change the country. And Donald Trump said in 2016, again, I'm just quoting, I'm not being critical, I'm quoting, this is your quote last chance

to save the country. And the country will be destroyed by this demographic change. This is a thing that he has said and that a lot of people continue to believe. And all the stuff about all the lies about stolen elections and everything that they've been unable to prove and that was dismissed by dozens of courts is really about that. It's about this fear of illegal votes, which actually just means votes against my side, that that will permanently change the country and that I will lose forever. I will say that people on the left also have that fear of permanent defeat, that fear that Republicans, once back in power, will continue these authoritarian tendencies and destroy institutions and gerrymander things, as in fact they have done in some

states so that they can just about always win and install judges who have a fairly explicit partisan idea of how the Constitution just happens to favor their party all the time. And that anxiety is analogous to what I see in the period leading up to the Civil War. I'm not predicting another Civil War. A lot of things are different, but that fear is what drives people to extremes. Thank you both Matthew and Stevenski for bringing us back to exactly the note we want to leave on. It was really a lovely conversation and now I'm bummed out anyway. But Stevenski, thank you so much for joining us this morning. You're welcome.

Really appreciate it. Happy to do it. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Adele. It's created by myself. Jason Fields.

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We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. There is just a plane just right overhead right now. Anyway, stay safe. Until then.