Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - The Great Divide

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

Man on the street divides couple in a car. Your host is triggered by a flag pole and writer Chris Arnade explains why America is so polarized. PLUS Joseph Roth on the difference between great and mediocre talents. Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called The Great Divide. There's a- oh shit, we got a red. Oh. Oh my god. Can you move over a bit? What's happening here? What is going on with this- Do you see this? Yeah. Who is this person? He's losing his mind for sure.

Oof. I mean, this guy needs help. He's like, there's obviously- he's living on the street and- I think he's a businessman. He has like a- a wool coat on. Look at his shoes. You can't tell by how he's dressed. Well, I listened to this like interview with a con artist

and they were like, oh, a person can like dress whatever. But if you look at their shoes, you can tell if they're like rich or not. Something shop. Oh, you think he's saying shop? No, he's saying stop. Oh, he's saying shop. Oh, you think he's saying shop? No, he's saying stop. Oh, he's saying shop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Look, he has an apple bag. The bag? That's what you think? I mean, it's not like it's like a dirty apple bag. It looks like he just went to the Apple store and like bought stuff. And he's like hitting that on the ground. I don't think he just went to the store and bought stuff. I think he got that bag from the trash and it's filled with trash or something. I feel like a lot of people keep their Apple bags for some reason.

Okay. It's too much! It's too much! It's too much! He's saying it's too much. It is too much. He's like, this is, you know, what are... He needs help.

No, I think he's like like this is fucking way too expensive why did i buy that like you think the mac he probably got the like too much yeah i mean it is too terabyte thing instead of the like cheapo 256 gigabyte thing that they put in the new macbooks because everything's on the cloud and he's like fuck there's absolutely no computer or apple product in that bag it's like too lumpy, first of all. If you live on the street, I don't think that you're carrying around like a tiny little like baby backpack Apple bag. What is he saying?

You got paid? I got paid? You got paid? I got paid too! He said, I got paid? I got paid too! He's a rich person. I mean, obviously, you're homeless, you're not getting paid.

You don't have like resources. He said, I got pain. He has pain. He has pain. He has paid, too! He's a rich person. I mean, obviously, if you're homeless, you're not getting paid. You don't have, like, resources. Pain, pain. He has pain. He has suffering. He's struggling.

I mean, he does have pain, but I think there he said, I got paid. You're thinking he got paid, and then he had to buy this crap, and then he's broke again He just got paid, and he's like,. He just got paid and he's like... Well, that would be a first that I would have witnessed that. I've never seen... But it seems a lot more likely that this is the man who's, like, living on the street and is... I don't know. I don't know what we're supposed to do. No. There's a green light. Okay.

I spent this past Sunday lounging on my couch, nursing a hangover, reading a book. At some point in the afternoon, I catch sight of my neighbor across the street. I can see him from my window. He's standing on his balcony, hammering something onto the railing. It's Christmas time, and last year he filled all four of the balconies on his building with inflatable blinking reindeer, candy canes, and snowmen. One night, Rudolph was freed by the wind, and the weight of his luminous nose pulled him down six stories for a crash landing on the sidewalk. As far as I know, no one was hurt.

But still, it's good to see my neighbor taking precautions. But it turns out he is not banging away in the name of holiday cheer. No, this year, my neighbor is spreading something else. I watch in total astonishment as he slides a 10-foot American flag up his makeshift rod. Now, I am not anti-flag, nor am I pro-flag, but I am absolutely anti-pro-flag sentiment, especially pro-big-ass-flag sentiment, especially pro-big-ass flag sentiment. Especially right now. I slide off the couch and onto the floor, and I crawl to a spot underneath the window where I can't be seen. This ten-foot fucking flag has totally fucking triggered me.

Or perhaps it's the book. I'm reading a collection of essays by the Jewish-Austrian writer Joseph Roth called On the End of the World. I've read a number of Roth's novels, Hotel Savoy, The Radesky March, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, but I'm unfamiliar with his essays and reportage. On the End of the World collects some of the essays he wrote in Paris, where he spent his final years in exile. On January 30th, 1933, Joseph Roth boarded a train in Berlin bound for Paris, never to return. January 30, 1933 was the day President Hindenburg named Hitler Chancellor of Germany.

Many German intellectuals, artists, and writers took this as a worrying sign. But Joseph Roth, well, he got on a train. He wasn't just pressing in about the coming violence and terror. He knew. A few weeks after he arrived in Paris, he wrote a letter to his friend, Stefan Zweig. Do not fool yourself. Hell reigns.

But let's return to my story. I want to tell you what I was thinking as my neighbor climbed out onto his balcony. Lost in the world of Joseph Roth, I was wondering what particular event or incident might telegraph to me that it was time to get on a train, get the hell out. And just before my neighbor unfurled his big-ass flag, I thought to myself, well, since I live in a filter bubble, New York City, there's a good possibility that I might miss or misread any potential sign. Obviously, I'm aware that the polarization is bad, but a sign of impending civil war? I'm serious my dear listener, this is

exactly what is running through my mind as my neighbor runs his 10-foot flag up the pole that now juts out from his balcony like a Nazi salute. After my panic attack subsides, a wave of anger rushes in. I imagine getting a drone and attaching a flamethrower to it. Or perhaps I'll get a flashing neon sign that says, Big Flag, Tiny Dick. Or perhaps I'll just install blackout curtains. And yes, I know that sounds like I'm totally ready to concede before the battle's even started, but well, I don't have the time or stamina to engage with something like this on a daily basis. I've got stuff to do.

Writing. Reading. This is why I decide to continue with my book from my position on the floor, underneath the window. And this is where I read the essay which begins on page 24 of Joseph Roth's On the End of the World, an essay called Pityless Combat. Let me share it with you. Response to an Inquiry

Ever since there have been writers, the only duty asked of them has been to create their works. As long as there are writers, they will have no other mission. But your question on the moral obligation of the writer in our time brings about a further inquiry. Should a writer take a stand against the cruelty, the baseness, the sheer inhumanity of the world today? To that, one must respond that the writer has no more right than anyone else not to take a stand against the inhumanity of the world today. The writer has never, and no more so than now, had the right to take refuge behind his vocation and his so-called calling to devote himself to eternal subjects. Talent and genius cannot provide any of that moral engagement which issues from the self

to combat evil. For example, a writer today who doesn't cross swords with Hitler in the Third Reich will surely be a minor pathetic figure and clearly an author of the second rank. The task of the writer in our time is to respond precisely to your question, to engage in pitiless combat. A writer cannot possess genuine worth if he is not in possession of the following traits. 1. Compassion for oppressed peoples. 2. Love of good.

3. Hatred of evil. 4. Courage to proclaim in a loud and clear voice unequivocally his compassion for the oppressed, his love of good and his hatred of evil. Whoever does not possess these characteristics and cannot show visible proof of them is clearly a mediocre talent or a dilettante. I decided not to order the blackout curtains. In the daytime, I work at the desk next to the window.

But I will confess, the nights are harder. In order to illuminate his 10-foot flag, my neighbors also installed floodlights. Floodlights that cast shadows every evening into my apartment. Demonic shadows that creep along the walls and march into my dreams. Sometimes it's really easy to see the fault lines in this country. Sometimes they're as clear as the street outside my window, the one that divides me and my neighbor. But there are many others. Republicans versus Democrats.

Urban versus rural. Black versus white. There are so many fault lines now, it's difficult to come up with a unifying framework. But a couple of weeks ago, I took a bus upstate to talk with a guy who's got one. A unified theory about how this country is divided. This physical table is where I literally wrote my book.

This exact spot. This is Chris Arnotti. He's written a book about America called Dignity, and he wrote it at the McDonald's near his home. Good coffee. Very good coffee. Surprisingly good. Dignity draws from seven years of road tripping.

So Chris spent a lot of time in McDonald's. They had Wi-Fi, had bathrooms. I could work at night. It's a space that just allows you just to be yourself, man. Like it's no judgment zone. For many of the cities Chris visited, McDonald's had become the default community support center, especially the ones open 24-7, like a McDonald's in North Carolina he told me about. One of the women who worked the overnight shift would bring a child, like a six-year-old, maybe five-year-old, who would sit in a booth closest to the counter playing on a cheap-ass laptop. He'd be in his pajamas, and the other employees would basically babysit him. And then he would lay down in the booth and go to sleep overnight while his mom worked. And she could

keep an eye out for him. And then the other employees would rotate and basically babysit him because she didn't have anybody watch her child. So she was using McDonald's. Chris Arnotti's journey into the heart of America began in 2008, when the financial crisis upended his safe, cushy, New York City, Wall Street trader life. What happened was this realization that we had driven the car off the cliff and we had fucked up. And I wanted to know exactly why we fucked up. I was doubly motivated by the fact that nobody else was seemingly admitting we messed up. There were some jaw-dropping conversations on the trading floor. My firm, Citibank, was literally bailed

out. I think our stock reached one and a half. I mean, we were a week away from losing our jobs, which we should have done. The government stepped in and we didn't. And there are people who, four days later, were bad-mouthing Obama, bad-mouthing welfare recipients. And it was just like, are you fucking serious? Chris Arnotti is the only banker I've ever met whose response to the financial crisis was to change his life. The way I thought up until that point was always data-based. I was a PhD in physics, so it was very much about trying to figure out a different way

of thinking. Most of the cities and towns Chris visited on his road trips were devastated by the financial crisis. But these communities weren't bailed out. These communities are still suffering from factory closings and opioid addictions. These are the communities that got Chris to think differently. It's not Republicans versus Democrats or urban versus rural or even white versus black. For Chris, America is divided into the front row and the back row. When did this framework

first come to you? Actually, sitting in McDonald's in Bristol, Tennessee. It was racially integrated McDonald's where there was as many blacks as there were whites, and seeing what the people shared in common was a lack of education versus what the people I had spent most of my time with in banking and academics were very educated. So realizing that was the division that really mattered. As a credential, a good education is basically an elite status card. A good education guarantees you a seat in the front row, and it guarantees you a good place to live and a good job in any one of America's front row cities. This is why even the rich are committing crimes to get their kids into the best schools.

When you have an education or you go to an elite school, it really changes who you are. It is the pathway to wealth, and it's how you learn to navigate the successful world. It's how you learn socially to navigate. It's how you learn all the cultural ticks. It's how you learn everything. It's hard to argue against education. Even though the average price tag is now in the six figures, life in the back row is just too cruel, too harsh. And it's only getting worse, because as all the front row people aggregate in front row cities, back row communities are sinking further into despair and disrepair. The way I see it, education might be an expensive ticket out,

but at least it's a way out. Chris Arnotti told me that he used to think like this too before he started driving around America. Look, I'm never going to tell anybody not to leave. I mean, I love my town, and there's a lot of really good reasons to leave. But at the same time, the sense that you have to leave to be successful is a problem. There are a lot of people I respect who put on their pragmatic hat and said, you know, here's my policy solution to you all, which is about as arrogant as you can get just to assume that people can get up and move like you did. Place really matters to people, and it doesn't require a resume. And to devalue the meaning of that is offensive, but it's also elitist, because often the people who get the most value out of place are low-income. If you're born in Appalachia into a town where you really, you know, just the beauty of the hills,

the legacy of your family here really matters. And that really brings value to you, and that really brings meaning to you, and we shouldn't just assume that that has no value. So many of the solutions we have is stripping people's dignity away. One of the reasons I find Chris's front row back row framework so appealing is that it reveals that for most front row Americans place and localism. These are more aspirational values. Not only are we ready and able to move when opportunity knocks, we push it as I still, as a solution for those we believe should flee. And Chris's framework also reveals why people in the back row are so pissed.

The people I spent time with know they're being made fun of, and they feel it very much. These non-credential forms of meaning that I speak about, like family, community, those things. I feel like we in the front row devalue those things and demean them and even mock them. People know that. They know that people think they're dumb or that people think that them staying in the same place is parochial or they're a loser. The opposite of dignity is humiliation. Chris Arnotti is a writer and a photographer, and dignity contains a number of portraits from his travels. On my visit, Chris opened up his archive for me.

I was especially drawn to some of his early work, from when he was hanging out at a McDonald's in the South Bronx photographing addicts. There's one image that really got me, a shooting gallery inside a bridge that goes over the Acela train tracks. You have to crawl along a water pipe for about 30 yards, all littered with needles, literally over the Amtrak. There would be times when, you know, we would all pause in our conversations to watch the Acela go by. After the election of 2016, numerous intellectuals, journalists, artists, writers argued that if the elite ever hoped to understand the other America, they first need to escape the Acela Corridor,

which stretches from Washington DC to Boston. Well, the way Chris sees it, you just have to look out the window. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called The Great Divide. This episode was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. And it featured Chris Arnotti, author of Dignity. Christopher Allen and Alison Kobayashi

were the couple in the car. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.