Making Sense with Sam Harris - #133 — Globalism on the Brink

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Sam Harris speaks with Ian Bremmer about the failure of globalism and rise of populism. They discuss immigration, trade, automation, wealth inequality, Trump, identity politics and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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Well, today I'm speaking with Ian Bremmer, and it's important to know that we recorded this interview before Trump's recent meeting with Putin. We talk about Trump a little bit here. Not much would change about the conversation, but it's just good to understand why we are apparently oblivious to the recent news from Helsinki. News that seems, to my eye at least, to be every bit as alarming as the alarmists say it is, though unsurprising. It is, of course, no surprise that Trump is sufficiently incompetent and so easily manipulated by his own narcissism and self-interest that he could glad hand a tyrant who kills and jails journalists and his own political opponents and take his side in a controversy that is in fact no controversy against the unanimous understanding of the intelligence communities of the United States. And we should note that serious people are using the word treason to describe this. I don't think Ian Bremmer, today's guest, would be one of them. He would be slow to make that accusation. But it'll be very interesting to see if this is yet another thermonuclear scandal that Trump

manages to weather, or if it actually matters in the end. It really does seem that for 40% of the American population, nothing he can do or say matters. There's no level of incoherency, no level of conflict of interest, no ethical impropriety, nothing that can matter. It's amazing. Anyway, I won't belabor the point. Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, the leading global political risk research and consulting firm. He has published 10 books, including Superpower, The End of the Free Market, and Every Nation for Itself. He lectures widely and writes a weekly foreign affairs column for Time magazine, where he's the editor-at-large. And most recently, he's the author of the new book

Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism. And that's what we talk about today. We talk about globalism and all of its problems, the attendant rise of populism, issues like immigration and trade. All of these things are all too relevant to our current circumstance. So without further ado, I bring you Ian Bremmer. I'm here with Ian Bremmer. Ian, thanks for coming on the podcast. Sam, my pleasure. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I recall meeting you only once. I think we met in the green room of some show. I don't know if it was a CNN show or something else. Do you have any recollection of this? This is like probably 12 years ago.

else. Do you have any recollection of this? This is like probably 12 years ago. I mean, I feel like I know you so much better from, you know, end of faith and various speeches and such that you've given. So if we met in a green room, it was so much less significant than that. It is completely lost from my memory. Well, I've appreciated you from afar as well, so it's great to finally meet you virtually, and for good reason, because you have a new book, which I'm eager to talk about. The book is Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism. This could not be more timely, but before we jump into the book, give me your potted biography. How do you describe what it is you do? I'm a political scientist, and I think of myself that way. I was trained out in the West Coast at Stanford.

Originally, I was kind of a post-Sovietologist. I started working on things former Soviet as that country slash empire was in the process of falling apart and speak Russian and lived out there for a few years. When I finished my PhD, I was an academic for a couple of years and then basically started a company because there was apparently no company for political scientists. And I really wanted to still be a political scientist. So I've done that for about 20 years now. And we have a couple hundred folks and we all look at how politics affect the markets all over the world. You've written this book, which doesn't give too many causes for optimism, at least in

the near term. Let me see if I can summarize your worries here. You have this argument that those of us who have benefited from globalization and are now worried about the rise of populism everywhere need to be very careful not to discount the concerns of the people who have voted in the populace, and in our case, who have voted for Trump. And you're making a very detailed case for the legitimacy of certain concerns about trade and immigration and this general way in which the support for cosmopolitanism and the celebration of cultural diversity and the

free exchange of goods and ideas that seems universally subscribed among wealthy and educated people at this moment is leading to a breakdown of trust and an erosion of social capital among people who are less well-off. And so people like ourselves mock the populace at our peril because there really is something that has to be understood here, and business as usual is not going to serve us well. Is that a fair summary of where your head is at at the moment? Absolutely, Sam. And I mean, you know, you would think by, I mean, if you just came down from another planet and showed up in the United States right now, you would certainly think, you turn on the media, you think the reason why we have all these problems is because of this crazy person called Donald J. Trump.

And that's just not true, right? I mean, fundamentally, first of all, it's something that's much broader than just the United States. So you can't look at the solutions as only being limited to the American president. And much more important than Trump being elected is how you got to a place where more people didn't bother to vote than voted for Hillary, didn't bother to vote than voted for Hillary, or that so many would have voted for someone who so clearly was incapable in so many ways of actually leading the country. And absolutely, I believe that there are just way too many people that don't believe that there is complicity on the part of the globalists over the part of the past decades, myself very much included, in being responsible for this problem.

Well, let's define a few terms here because I've used several, which I think most people have a vague sense of, but I think very few will have a precise definition for in their heads. How would you differentiate, for instance, globalism versus globalization? What do those two terms mean? So when I talk about globalists, I'm talking about the Jews, right? I'm kidding, actually. I'm really not doing that. It's funny how there have been some in the alt-right that have tried to take that term and make it nefarious. Actually, when I talk about globalism, I'm talking about a philosophy, an ideology that's been promoted by

elites, leaders in the West, so public intellectuals, political leaders, corporate leaders, business leaders, media leaders, that free trade, open borders, and global security provided by the US and our allies was the way to go and further would be the best for all of our citizens. That's globalism. It's really a political ideology where globalization is something I'm a huge fan of. That's an economic process that shows that bringing goods and services and ideas all over the world is gonna create more global wealth and make our lives better.

And certainly, if you look at today's planet and the fact that we have one global middle class as opposed to a few really rich people and a lot of crushingly poor people, that's been a fantastic change. And most of the world is literate today. And most of the world lives over 70 years of age and 90% of one year olds get a get an immunization. And I mean, you know, the world is more free of suffering today than at any point in history. And I know you've talked to Steve Pinker in the past recently and others that tell that story much more refreshingly than I certainly would. But I'm sadly a political scientist. I'm not focused on the global economic trends or

demographic trends. And from the political science perspective, the advanced industrial democracies, the liberal democracies that have benefited from promoting globalism in their borders have really failed a lot of their citizens. And we see a lot of structural inequality that's only growing as a consequence of that. And a lot of people that feel very displaced and they either completely check out of the political system or they vote to break things. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. In fact, it's getting worse. I got maybe two more terms here. I used a term, I believe, that's pretty close in meaning to globalism, but doesn't have the same negative connotation, at least in many people's minds, and that's cosmopolitanism. And I don't know if you would see much daylight between those two concepts, but for me, cosmopolitanism is this sense that

humanity is a single community in principle, at least if not always in practice, and that we can have a reasonable expectation that we will all converge on the same moral and political norms if given enough time, and that therefore differences in background, you know, just the sheer accidents of birth, don't ultimately matter. And there's this phrase that sounds that it might be of recent coinage, but actually it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, this notion of being a citizen of the world. And this is an attitude that many of us have adopted because we do view ourselves as citizens of the world. Our interests are not so narrowly anchored within our own political national borders. And as you point out, the success of so many things, a reduction in violence, a reduction in war, a reduction in illiteracy,

or a reduction in basic health epidemics, the spread of infectious disease. These are tides that can, at least in principle, lift all boats. And yet, this seems to be put in peril now by the rise of another term we've used here, populism. How would you define populism? Yeah, absolutely. As the opposite of cosmopolitanism. I mean, populism, the idea that, your people are the ones that need to be promoted. And it's X first, it does America first, And it's, you know, X first. It does America first, whites first, blacks first. I mean, you name it. But it's a reduction of humanity to much smaller constituent and usually identity politics pieces.

I like the way you just talked about cosmopolitanism. It reminded me of something. I mean, I'm 48 years old, so I grew up in the 70s and 80s. And I remember that when I was in high school and college, people used to always ask me my astrological sign. And I don't know about you, Sam. What are you, Sam? I'm an Aries, but Aries don't believe in astrology. Yeah, well, that's okay. You don't need, I mean, from the end of faith perspective, Yeah, well, that's okay. You don't need, I mean, from the end of faith perspective,

I'm not surprised. But, you know, I'm a Scorpio, and I liked being a Scorpio. And my mom used to read, you know, sort of the horoscopes. And what I liked about being a Scorpio, aside from the fact there were cool things you could read into Scorpio Ness, you know, serious loyalty, a little bit secretive, you know, I mean, that kind of thing, is also that everyone had a shot at one of these 12 things. And the fact that, so you're going to be different from your family members and your Venn diagram could overlap with absolutely everyone. Doesn't matter your class, doesn't matter your gender, your white or black, what country you're from, everyone gets a shot at a cool horoscope sign, right? So it's kind of, it's a good ideology for cosmopolitans, right? It's that there's a lot of Venn diagram intersection and overlappingness. You look at the world today and people think of

themselves much more as Americans or other. Nobody asks about astrological sign anymore. But if we get on social media, we've got algorithms and technology that are doing their damnedest to sort us. And I think that that really undermines civic nationalism and it really promotes us versus them ideologies. We only watch things that we like because we are the product that's being sold to ensure maximization of advertising revenue. That's an incredibly dysfunctional thing. I'll give you one more stupid example, Sam, but since I'm in the mindset for it, on Monday, I went to jury duty. And we do jury duty every six years. I kind of like it because it's one of these things in America that brings everyone together. And Lord knows in New York, that's even more true. So last time I was there six years ago, had my jury duty,

and you all listened to the, watched the 10-minute orientation video. And by the way, same orientation video that I saw this Monday, so no change. And then after that six years ago, some people watching the paper, reading the paper. Some people are sort of reading a book. A couple people go outside for a smoke. But over the course of the day, you talk to each other. You met the people.

And there were a couple people I actually stayed in touch with just from jury duty six years ago. I remember this 55-year-old woman that taught in a local community college who we ended up being in touch with each other, and her kid wanted to be a political scientist. It was kind of cool. This Monday, we finished the same orientation video, and right after the video was over, I would say with one or two exceptions in the entire room of two to 300, every single person was either on their phone or on their computer. No one was worried about how much time they were wasting. They were all engaged in their own world, engaged with people that were much more like them than the people in the room.

And no one talked to each other at all, except maybe borrowing a pen. There was no civic nationalism. It was all reverting to much more like for like. We went behind our walls. And I think that of all of the trends that are stimulating us versus them style populism, the backlash to free trade and open borders and globalization and the fact that the working class isn't doing as well as they used to in the West, the backlash to open borders and different people coming in and changing our demographics, the backlash to U.S. and its allies fighting in failed wars and sending poor enlisted men and women off to battle and coming back in pieces and not being treated very well. Of all of those things, which have been coming for decades, the one that is by far the most debilitating in my view and that I'm the most negative about are these technological transformations that we've seen just in the last five years. are these technological transformations that we've seen just in the last five years. Yeah, well, this is something that I've thought more and more about, just the effect of social media on myself personally and on society at large. I notice you have, I think, 32,000 tweets

to your name, so you are implicated in this problem. I would say you might have a problem if you sent that many tweets. What do you think about the effect of social media here? And are we in danger of exaggerating the problem of political polarization? I mean, it certainly seems like we're in a very new place, speaking domestically at the moment, with the rise of Trump and the fact that the two sides of the political spectrum seemingly cannot have a civil conversation about facts anymore. Is this an illusion of much deeper fragmentation in our society, or is it in fact real? I think it's becoming much more real much more quickly. I think that the fake news and disinformation problem is one that is facilitated in part by a media space that has fragmented away from three big networks where the personalities were different, but the news that you consumed was the same, to one where now the news that you consume if you support Trump or if you oppose Trump is actually completely different.

Trump or if you oppose Trump is actually completely different. And, you know, I usually I try to run outside if the weather's nice, but if it's not, I'll be on the treadmill. And I try to watch a little Fox and a little CNN or MSNBC in the morning when I'm doing and it's obvious that the headlines are different planets and and have very little to do with each other. And the ability as a consequence to really change the narrative, I mean, you know, getting Trump supporters over the course of literally just a year to go from law and order, we love the FBI and the Department of Justice to these guys are complicit and they're in the tank for the Democrats and we want to undermine them. And that's a dramatic ideological change that's facilitated by getting the same news from a filter bubble all the time and only listening to people that agree with that and push you

in a more extreme direction. And if you combine that with our own neuroplasticity, the fact that, you know, sort of our brains rewire pretty damn quickly in response to changed environments, whether it's losing sight or losing a hand, or whether it's starting to, you know, sort of develop sympathies for our kidnapper or our hijacker. I mean, our brains have effectively been hijacked by a much narrower slice of political understanding, fealty, and community, and we are adapting to that. And our kids are adapting much more quickly because, of course, they're growing up with nothing but 24-7 online. And once that moves towards augmented reality, I really do fear that it's going to be

much harder for us to be cosmopolitans ever again. Yeah, some of the changes in ideology on the right post-Trump have been fairly bewildering. I mean, the fact that Putin is a celebrated figure among Republicans now. This is the party that imagines it won the Cold War, you know, and to some degree, validly imagines it won the Cold War. This is the party that you would expect would be the last to lose sight of the problem with someone like Vladimir Putin. And yet, it seems like he has a better reputation among Republicans now than certainly any Democrat. There's one fact you cite in your book that's just straight up terrifying, the fact that there's a Washington Post poll that found that a majority of Republican voters, a majority, said they would favor postponing the 2020 election if Trump

suggested it. One can only hope this is one of those poll questions where many people just didn't understand the implications of the box they were checking. But I mean, that's just patently insane to think that a majority of Republicans would favor that. Yeah, I hope you're right. But I also feel that a lot of people believe that democracy isn't a good system because they don't think we live in a democracy. They think the system pretends to be a democracy and it's rigged. It's in reality a Potemkin democracy where you get fundamentally different types of policing or jurisprudence and lawyering or educational opportunities and all the rest if you're from a privileged class. And that's not the America that we were brought up to believe in.

But I do think that's a concern. My mother's not with us anymore, but if she were, and I say this in the opening of the book, she would have voted for Trump. My brother did. And that's because they fundamentally believe that the system is rigged against poor folks that don't matter. And as much as I consider myself a cosmopolitan, strongly, I mean, you know, only by accident of history do I happen to be an American or was I raised Catholic?

And if I was raised Buddhist or if I was Japanese, would that make me think that, me think that the American system was still better than the other ones? Probably not, right? So, I mean, I have a hard time being less than ecumenical about these things personally, and yet I'm really sympathetic to people that want to blow up the system. I'm really sympathetic to the anger of people that look at the role of money in American elections and look at the failure of the American dream for so many Americans and say, you know what, this system isn't working. So if you give me something else, irrespective of what it was, I mean, Brexit was such an obviously stupid thing for the future of the UK. I mean, just on every count, it was obvious to anyone with any sense in their head that

the only deal that would be made possible for the UK with the EU after leaving would be one that was worse for the UK than the status quo ante. Like that is on its face obvious. But if you are someone that feels like the system has been lying to you for decades and that no matter who you vote for, what you do, it's going to continue to find a way to screw you and benefit them. Then voting for Brexit simply to make the establishment pay attention to you suddenly becomes a rational thing. Yeah. Let's talk about a few of the pieces here that are relevant. I guess immigration and open

borders within the EU might be a good place to start. So, I mean, immigration is often described as something that has no downside. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, along with other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs and the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app. The Making Sense Podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at SamHarris.org.