The Chris Cuomo Project - Noam Chomsky, Monkeypox, Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, M.D.

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

In this week’s episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, Chris explores the ongoing monkeypox outbreak and stigma surrounding the disease with Dr. Jorge Ramirez, M.D.  Noam Chomsky, the prolific linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author, also joins Chris to discuss the state of the U.S. political system. Subscribe and follow The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the project. Thank you so much for spreading the word. Please keep doing it. That's why the project continues to grow. Subscribe. It's free. project continues to grow. Subscribe. It's free. Get that free agent merch. Why? Once we get a nice chunk of money, right? And what do I mean by nice chunk? Well, we'll see. I got to see how much it grows. Then we're going to crowdsource who gets it in different ways, different charities, kind of show that together we can make something happen. So the question of the day feels like we keep repeating mistakes, doesn't it? The answer, that's because we do. Why? That's

because nothing changes if nothing changes. We are all collectively stuck in this toxic twosome of parties. They win by opposing the other side. Now, be very clear. I don't see the two parties as equal offenders, okay? But it doesn't matter because they are both contributing to a dynamic that we are deadlocked within. Nonetheless, it doesn't matter that one is better than the other or one is worse than the other. More and more of you don't want to be part of either. That's the problem. The solution is that you own yourself as a free agent, that you have more options, that you have more choices, and you make decisions that benefit you and the people that you take care of. Now, we have seen this problem go beyond politics, which is the real

problem, right? It'd be one thing if it just stayed in Washington. It's not how it is. We've seen it. It's spread to our social struggles and how we see them, to our culture, even to COVID. It all became about politics. Look at the news. How can helping veterans deal with burn pit illnesses, which, by the way, we ignored for way too long, for decades, this has been a problem. How can that be hard to pass? Don't we all support the

troops? The answer to that is no. Why? We fail them way too often. We fail to keep promises to support them despite the fact we all celebrate how they support us. They're all heroes, right? Until it gets to budgeting and then they're zeros. Nobody wants to spend money. Senator Cruz and some of the cronies there on the extreme right, they made up this notion of budget gimmicks all of a sudden. Budget gimmicks.

You know, these Democrats with their budget gimmicks, $400 supposed to be discretionary. Now it's mandatory, mandatory. Now it's discretionary. Why? He'd still be playing at that game if Jon Stewart hadn't come out and whooped his ass. If there wasn't somebody who could get the publicity

that Jon Stewart did and the respect from the media to push back on that narrative, it may still be going on. And all Stewart did was state the obvious and something the media should have been doing in his place before he ever piped up about it. The bill never changed. What changed was the optics.

The optics became not just about the veterans, but about the Democrats, about Biden getting a win. That's unacceptable to Cruz. Why? He is an expert player of this toxic game. He only wins if it is zero sum. The win for him must be a loss for the Democrats. Cruz isn't alone. He's just one of the most clever and high profile. That's why he gets the attention. But for veterans to suffer because of that game, it is a shame.

And until more of you start saying it's a shame that you won't tolerate the game, it will continue to be played. Taiwan. Now, I personally think that Ukraine should be more front and center in our politics. I certainly think it's a more urgent cause right now in terms of being connected to American interests and ideals. Not to mention that there's active shelling now around nuclear facilities in Ukraine. But with both Ukraine and Taiwan, we are cheapening them into partisan positions. Taiwan, for the right, is more about Pelosi than it is for China. I mean, just listen to him. Military moves by China just four miles away from the Taiwanese coast. But Pelosi taking that trip, she's the bad guy. Why? Isn't it because she

stokes the anger of their base more than China does? And is that all that's necessary to form a position about something as important, as existential as China's moves? All these blue and yellow armbands that we've been seeing, you don't seem as much now. Ukraine support, right? I stand with Ukraine. But now all of a sudden Ukraine is about money. Well, we spent enough. I mean, we gave them billions and billions. What else are we supposed to do? Do you know how many countries around this world we give billions and billions of dollars to? Google it.

You know, it only becomes about money when somebody doesn't want to do something in government. And for a party, it only becomes about spending when the other party is proposing it. Republicans don't complain about spending when it's the Trump tax cuts. That's not about spending, right? But when the Democrats spend, then you have to hear about it. Republicans don't complain about spending when it's the Trump tax cuts. That's not about spending, right? But when the Democrats spend, then you have to hear about it, even if it means messing with a veteran's bill. That is the petty politics of division. That is what this project has been set up to defeat, to expose, and hopefully in some way with your help and people like you to remedy. So today on the project, we're going to show how this kind of recidivism of reductionist tendencies is happening again. And it could result in a lot of people being sick.

Let me give you some cultural context to why I believe that this is something that we can do better on. KRS-One, okay, stands for knowledge. You know what? Look it up yourself. He's one of my favorite rappers, okay? KRS-One. His real name is Chris. And he rapped about how you must learn from history. The Who sang a song about not getting fooled again. Both were these anthems as a caution that you have to learn from the past. You have to learn to do better or simply just not to do worse. Insiders really can't make this change that I'm asking to be made. The game won't allow it.

Only you can change the game. Free agents, open-minded, regular people who seek solutions to problems, not merely advantage out of them. Hard times can make you strong. Just because you have a problem, just because we're dealing with challenges and difficulties, doesn't mean we have to succumb to them. You know, if you read about the Stoics, okay, there's an author, Ryan Holiday, who's writing about them very well, very effectively. You can look him up. They believed very centrally that an obstacle in life must be the way of your life. Now, what does that mean? It means that adversity can lead to a better place. Well, how? It's a problem.

It's bad, right? But often in life, it's about what you make of a situation. All right? Certain things are objective. Okay? This shirt is blue. As long as you can see color, it's always going to be blue. How I feel about wearing a blue shirt, that's not objective. That's subjective. And as long as I like it and that's what matters to me, that's all that matters.

Now, some people could call that delusion. I don't. I call it perspective. And if you have a perspective that no matter what happens to you in your life or is being done to you or around you, you can make a difference that turns it into something positive, useful, then it will be. And you see that in the Stoics, that adversity can lead to a better place if you want to make it so. Meaning, if you endeavor to make something good out of something bad, you'll get somewhere better. All of this is the positioning of this episode because we're about to go into an ugly repeat mode, I fear. There is a lie spreading.

And it is proof of something that has been killing us for decades. Monkeypox. No, not that stupid sounding virus. Terrible name, monkeypox. If you want anybody to take it seriously, they should have changed the name, okay? I'm not sounding the alarm about monkeypox either, all right? I'm not saying we're all doomed, we're all going to get it or anything like that. It is what this virus represents, not the reality of it at this point, that is a real threat. Yes, just to be accurate, it is now a national emergency according to the U.S. government. But be very clear,

that designation is more about funding than it is about legitimate fear of the spread or how pernicious it is or how dangerous it is. It's about funding and that's fine. It's an important step and it shows there's an urgency here. However, we don't have enough vaccine again. Why not? Why don't we learn the lesson? That is a legitimate question, and I think I'm going to be asking a lot more in the future, but it's not ripe for us today. Here's what is, and it really sickens me more than any virus could. This virus is being mistreated in a way that I lived through once before. this virus is being mistreated in a way that I lived through once before. No, not COVID.

COVID was and is real, by the way, as all of us know. I know you're hearing about cases right now around you, and it's going to come up again in school time, and we'll have to deal with it. However, if you want to talk COVID for a second, if you want to be in the blame game about kovat and you're on the right You better start pointing your fingers at former president trump and then another one at yourself Okay, because that's how our trouble started with kovat trump played politics with it and that made everything worse and that's just the truth Too many of you went along with what he was saying and it led to a denialism that was literally deadly Yes, there were plenty of mistakes made by democrats and clinicians at the federal and the state level, of course.

But it all followed that. And that first step in the wrong direction was a big one. So if you want to play blame game there, fine, just start with yourselves. OK, things should have been so much better. But I'm talking about something else. And again, this isn't an opinion. Go look at the other countries. Look at their case rates, what they were, when they started to come down, the timing,

how their societies came together, and then comparing them to what happened here in America, the richest and supposedly a place that's all about this interconnectedness. All right. Now, putting poison politics to the side, we have another problem that we got to address, okay? And it's absolutely about monkeypox as a symbol of this, okay? When I was a kid, the scariest thing that I had ever heard of was initially called something named GRID. Do you remember GRID?

Are you old enough? I hope not. If not, Google it. Google GRID? Are you old enough? I hope not. If not, Google it. Google GRID and AIDS, and you will see it was the original would call it. And in less polite company, what was the suggestion? As obvious as it was ugly, this is what they get. This is the price for their sinful lifestyle, unclean, unnatural. Now they're going to get this for it. My neighborhood had those echoes. I saw a gay man who lived down the street getting taunted,

as this is what you guys deserve. That was us at our worst. Now we know what? HIV wasn't about being gay. Imagine if back then we had seen it for what it was, how much faster there'd be the cures now that change people's lives, that save people's lives. Imagine. So that was the past, right? We're so much more woke now.

We're so much more tolerant, right? Nope. We are here once again. Woke is everywhere, right? Sure. But why are gays being blamed for monkeypox? Well, most of the cases here involve men who have sex with men, right? That's what we call them now. Men who have sex with men. That used to be just gay.

Okay. Here's my problem with that. Is there more expansive identity and a realization of it now? Maybe. But I think in this political correctness, we are losing substantive correctness, okay? Because I don't care what you call people in this community in that category, but you're not treating them the right way because you're making it seem as though how they act is why they're getting sick. And we don't know that. We don't know that. I don't care what you want to call the group. I want you to treat them with respect and have clear eyes about what happens to them and whether or not it can happen to anybody. Okay? Gays were blamed for HIV the same way.

The talk started the same way this monkeypox stuff is. This time, I actually believe it's more egregious. Here's why. One, we've been through it before, and we should have learned, but we didn't. And two, scientifically, monkeypox has nothing to do with sexual transmission. We don't know that. It's not designated as an STD. Comes from close contact, yeah, but not necessarily sexual contact. Look it up. So we didn't learn and we're doing it again because of this temptation to otherize. Do we know why gay men are getting it more than others or men who have sex with other men?

Is it because of the sex? Do we know that? Well, we do know that the cases are mostly in that community. Fair point. But why is that? Why do we just jump to the conclusion it's because of how they behave? Maybe it's that they're more health conscious. Maybe it's because those communities are getting tested more frequently, so we're evidencing the cases. You remember that with COVID? You remember President Trump?

Well, you only have more cases because you're testing more. Test less, less cases. Bingo! Didn't sound any better than it does now. So today we have a doctor who knows about this virus and lived what I lived with GRID, except he made a decision with his life to help those people in a profound way. And he fought AIDS and helped develop the cases and the treatments. And he's been doing it for years. He lived it and he helped deal with it. Dr. Jorge Rodriguez. He's an expert on the science with monkeypox. He's going to talk to us about what the probabilities are and what he's worried about and what he thinks can happen next.

But just as much, he has insight into a stigma which cannot happen again. Support for the Chris Cuomo Project comes from PrizePix. I got to tell you, there's a reason PrizePix is America's number one fantasy sports app. Three million members. Why? Easy, plenty of action if you're into DFS, and it's just you against the numbers. You pick more than or less than on two to six player stat projections. And if you're any good, the winnings will roll in. The big game is right around the corner.

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I know it's taboo. It's embarrassing. But it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS. And it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch.

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You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Dr. Jorge, thank you very much. My pleasure, Chris. Boy, it sure does smack familiar to me in the worst way, monkeypox. Well, it's mostly the gays, or now we say more politely, men who have sex with men.

Changed the language, didn't change the stigma. Am I exaggerating this? Am I oversensitive? Or does this smack of the early grid days to you? And that that's what they get mentality that you and I live through. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And it's a double-edged sword, right? Because you need to know where an infectious disease is located in order to control it, but you also send the mixed message that those are the only type of people that get it. When in the early 90s and

late 80s, Chris, my practice was primarily gay men with HIV. I myself am a gay man. So this hits very close to home. And I read an interesting article, I think, in the Post, this African American woman that said, wow, the fact that it was not told us that anybody could get it was probably the reason that I got it, because I was not careful. So yeah, it smacks exactly of grid. Now, unlike HIV, right, HIV had semen to blood, blood to blood. There were different ways to get it that certainly lended somebody the option of a sexually transmitted disease. You could get it that way. Monkeypox, we don't know at all that the science supports that that's how you're getting it is through sex, do we?

No, we don't. As a matter of fact, we think that that is probably one of the minor ways that you get it. However, you know, usually in the sex act, right? If you do it right, it's like a lot of body contact, you know? We'll save those instructions for a different segment. We'll just deal with the monkeypox one first. But absolutely, there is obviously an intimacy of contact within the

intimacy of sex as well. So you can get it that way, but it shouldn't be confused with HIV in terms of that being its primary kind of transmission of semen to semen or blood to blood. That's correct. It should not be confused that way. But the truth is, like you said, they really don't know. So they're actually now looking at that to see if there is maybe an increased amount of virus in body fluids. We do know that obviously exposing yourself to the pox itself transmits it. But also, let's say that somebody has a sore throat and it's due to a pox that they can't see deep down in their throat. Well, kissing that person, you know, can also spread it. So right now it looks like person to person,

skin contact or membrane to membrane contact. And Doc, one of the reasons I'm happy to have Dr. Jorge on is he's a straight shooter on this. You know, he's a clinician first, and that's important when you're talking about scientific things. This suggestion, tell me if I'm just off base, but is it a real question that, well, maybe gay men are showing more cases in that community because they're more health conscious and they're

getting tested more. So those cases are being identified first, just like we saw with COVID. As former President Trump clumsily said, well, you're only having more cases because you're testing more. If you test less, you'll have less cases. You know, that was obviously absurd on its face, but it may ring true that, yeah, you're testing that community more. That's why they're having more cases than others. Could there be something to that? Yeah, I think there could be something to that because obviously, you know, the gay community, the men who have sex with men community is hyper aware of this. And from the moment it started to escalate, I mean, we were inundated with calls. We were inundated with people knowing where to get tested, whether we would test them. So I think, yes, that's a possibility that it's maybe

being over-reported because one community is being checked. But I think that regardless of that, just the exponential growth, even within the community of men who have sex with men, tells you that this is something that can be very scary and is probably going up eventually, if not already, in all communities. Well, the government declared it a national emergency, but that's primarily about funding. On the other side of the scale, the severity scale, convince me that I need to be more worried about this. I mean, the symptoms being largely like smallpox, you know, you have those vaccines that aren't being used as much,

but they should be able to be ramped up. I would argue they should have had more of them already, but that's a more discreet conversation. You're not gonna die from this. We're not gonna see it spread in all likelihood like COVID. And we don't believe that it's as dangerous as COVID at this point. I think the caveat that should get you to be concerned is the fact that you said at this point.

So let's take this for what it is. Usually in the world before this ramp up of monkeypox, there were maybe 400 cases a year that were isolated to parts of Africa. Now we have 28,000, 30,000 cases that we know of in a couple of months. The lesson or one of the lessons that we learned from COVID is the fact that the more infection there is, the more mutations that can occur. And that's one of the big scary issues that nobody's talking about. The more people get infected,

who says that this virus is not going to try to be smarter than it is? And that's sort of like a teleological thing where the virus doesn't really think. But when it mutates, let's say it mutates to a type or a variant that is much more contagious, that can be spread aerosolized. So that should scare or should be of concern to anybody, whether they're gay, men who have sex with men, that it is now the time, if possible, to get vaccinated and to be preventative before this thing really explodes into what could be a COVID type of a pandemic. Criticism. Dr. Jorge is engaging in that big brother scare scare you, scare you, without scientific basis. It could be this, it could be that. And this is what you guys do in the clinical community.

You make something out of nothing just because it's possible, but not probable. Fair or no? Not fair. And I'll tell you why. Well, you know what? Sometimes you never can win, right? And the retrospective scope is always 20-20.

The counter-criticism to that would be four months from now. You guys knew about this and you didn't tell us anything, which people are already saying about monkeypox. How come you didn't start earlier? Right now, I am telling people that this is escalating at a rate that should be of concern. Might it die out tomorrow? I hope so. that should be of concern. Might it die out tomorrow? I hope so. So it is better, I think, to be preemptive and to be cautious at this point than to be nonchalant and laissez-faire

and not worry about it. So say what you want. I would rather err on the side of caution than just say, don't worry about it, man. You're going to be fine. But it doesn't worry you the way COVID did. At this point, it does not worry me the way COVID did at all. It's apples and oranges in the fact that COVID is airborne. And I don't really know what's called the R-naught factor of this is. An R-naught is how many people one person can infect. COVID had a very huge R-naught from the beginning, and the variants are even higher.

We also had no vaccine. We also had no vaccine. We also had no vaccine. Right. So now we have something that we can get ready that works with smallpox, which this virus is being likened to. What do you make of my disposition at this point being more concerned about the stigma in the gay community? And not because, you know, I'm some lefty or something.

I just, living through grid, nobody knows that. We're like totally old. It's a totally old test. Gay related. I remember that. I remember how people were looking at gays and saying, this is what you get. And it was otherizing and scary and stupid.

But I'm worried about that because as woke as everybody wants to say that we are and cancel this, cancel that, here we are with monkeypox and we're right back where we were in the early 80s. I can't tell you how many sophisticated, educated, sensitive people in my life are saying, I'm not worried about this. I'm not gay. Yeah, you're right. And let me just bring forth something. And I think you're right.

Classifying something serves a purpose. So for example, classifying it right now is an infection where it is mostly men who have sex with men transmitting it lets you focus on trying to stop it spreading from that community. And like I said before, it's a double-edged sword where other people think, hey, it doesn't affect me. Let me bring some things to light. I think yesterday there was a worker at a daycare center with children who had monkeypox. School is starting. College is starting. You know that college kids have sex, right? So there are now, starting in the fall, Right. So there are now starting in the fall areas where there are going to be potentially huge sections that may have social habits that worsen this, you know, and make it go even more sky high. So to think that it's just gays right now is a very, very dangerous thing. Now, looking at the numbers from the World Health Organization, you're absolutely right that they are seeing what would mathematically be considered a spike right now.

Over the last month, it's up almost 20 percent, certainly north of 15 percent. So in terms of scenarios and what you're hearing about trajectory, where is the kind of DEFCON scary factor about this right now heading into school season? I think the scary DEFCON number is not going to be necessarily the total number. But if we start seeing an increase in subgroups that we don't expect to see it in, that's the number. I mean, right now, it isn't so much the number. But when you map this out, it is the slope of the line going up. It isn't tapering off. It is just going exponentially straight up. So until you see a taper, and I hate the flattening of the curve thing. We talked about that

ad nauseum with COVID, and you don't want to flatten the curve when it's really high. So what would me be scary? A, if this keeps growing week to week to week at the same trajectory, or we start seeing the slope even greater. And that includes coming from other sub culture, subgroups of our population. You know, with COVID, it was politicized. With monkeypox, it's actually a deeper, more pernicious obstacle to entry, no pun intended, which is going to be, well, I'm not gay. I'm not getting that vaccine. That means I'm gay. You know, and as much as people want to say, I don't have to tell you this, you live it. But when you're a member of a community, as a gay male, you know who says the right thing versus who actually feels the right thing about you as a human being. And that's my concern here, is that's the last thing we need is a stigma on top of a political bias. And then nobody's going to want to act. No, for sure. Listen,

us. And then nobody's going to want to act. No, for sure. Listen, when you were on the Bill Maher show recently, and I love Bill, you know, and he irritates me, but sometimes he has such insight. He said one thing though, that showed me that even the most aware people don't get it. And he made a joke about the fact that now it's like, it's called men who have sex with men, as opposed to the gay community. There are a lot of men who have sex with other men, whether they're married or on the down low or in the closet that don't identify as gay. So therefore it's been found that if you say it as men who have sex with men, all right, that more people will actually go to get treatment. So that's something that's very subtle, right?

And it was like, oh, we know what that community is. Not really. That community is very broad. My feeling is I don't care what you call it. I want those people treated with respect. And my concern, and this is what really has me talking about monkeypox, I'll be honest. I love having you on the show. I hope I get to talk to you often here on the project, but I'd rather it be about something else or until this gets to be more critical, because for me, what bothers me is this stigma, you know, and everybody, all the reporting is men who have sex with men. Yeah. But they're all still reporting that that community

has monkey pox, like it's supposed to. And I just don't buy it. And it's not because I'm some snowflake. I don't buy it because I lived it. And I remember my father and Tony Fauci, you know, who made his name fighting AIDS early on saying it's not just gay men. It's the same as it was then. So how much better are we today? there's a problem. You always tend to point those fingers at the boogeyman. Let me just tell you another statistic. I think two or three weeks ago, for the first time since the beginning of HIV, the largest number of new HIV cases was in heterosexuals as opposed to gay men. The virus does not discriminate. That's all we can say. So when I talk to you again, when we are now somewhere between back to school, college, and Halloween, what do you think the range of probabilities is? I think we'll be talking more about this. I think that will be spread in primarily kids who will bring it to their parents and college kids.

The only reason we wouldn't be talking about that is because the men who have sex with men community has been so vaccinated that it really hasn't spread anywhere else. But I think we're, what, at 30,000 now? Probably in a couple of months, it'll be way above 100,000 cases throughout the world because not everybody's vaccinating like we are. Spain, the UK, they're exploding with this also. So I think we'll still be talking about this.

And I think hopefully we'll be talking about the new COVID bivalent vaccine that'll, you know, really cut things down quite a bit. If you take it. Yeah, if you take it. Listen, medicine doesn't work unless you take it. You know, that's the old rule. You know, I can write the prescription, brother, but if you don't take it, it does not work. That's deep, Dr. Jorge. That's some deep stuff. Is that what Magna Cum Laude gets you? Medicine doesn't work unless you take it.

Unless you take it, right? You would think that anybody would guess that. Unfortunately, one of the upsides of illness is that when people are sick, it's something we can relate to. And hopefully we see more of that with this virus and what happens with COVID and all the illnesses yet to come. And Dr. Jorge, I look forward to welcoming you here. I'd love to have you as part of the family. Count on it. Thank you so much, Chris. It's a pleasure. And you really, I hope, are opening a lot of eyes. Thank you. A little bit of this is we'll wait and see, right? And we'll have Dr. Jorge back. We'll see what happens when we're back to school. We're going to have plenty of health issues. There always are, but we have active viruses that are difficult to treat and

spread very quickly. Where will monkeypox be and who will it be among? What we can deal with right now is to not judge a group of people and otherize them, especially when it's about health. If that doesn't trigger our instinct to care about one another, we got way bigger illnesses to deal with than any virus. Now, another question in understanding why we struggle takes you to fundamental and deep questions, suggestions, criticisms about how our system came to be this way.

Binary, power versus powerless. Does it have to be this way? Has it always been this way? You're about to be engaged with one of the best thinkers in our society, Noam Chomsky. He's got a million titles. He is a thinker. He is a philosopher. He's a political scientist. He is a professor. He is a linguist. But more importantly,

he is an observer with an intelligent eye and mind of what has happened over the decades, over the generations now at this point, to get us to where we are. If you really want to take on the questions of how we get to a better place of where we are. If you really want to take on the questions of how we get to a better place of where we are right now, you must understand how we got here. And nobody has watched it with a more discerning eye than Noam Chomsky. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be.

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Let me begin by saying it is a true privilege to have this time to talk with you, Noam Chomsky. Thank you very much. Let's start with where we are as a society in America. How would you describe the current dynamic in our society? Well, the major and crucially important fact is that the social order is close to collapse. There's a breakdown in the political system, which seems almost irresolvable. The judiciary is acting in ways which are undermining the possibilities for decent survival. There's a large element in the society that really doesn't think that we can even continue on the current lines, is thinking of violent civil war. It's a very dangerous moment. And the political system is

simply frozen, can't respond. Why do you think that is? Why is the system frozen? Why do you think that is? Why is the system frozen? The underlying issue, I think, is that for 40 years, the population of the United States, reliable quasi-government corporation, recently did a study of the transfer of wealth from the general population, working class, middle class, lower 90% of the population, transfer of wealth from them to the top 1% since Reagan the past 40 years, roughly $50 trillion. That's not small change, and it's had an effect on all aspects of the society. There's extraordinary wealth accumulated. Most people are just about surviving.

Majority, in fact, say they get from paycheck to paycheck. Very little reserve. There are jobs, but little security. A lot of it's precarious. There's no sense that things are getting better. In fact, getting worse. Real male wages are about what they were in 1979. While at the same time, private wealth in very few hands.

At the same time, private wealth in very few hands has simply exploded. The ratio of wealth between CEO and a worker has changed. What do you make of the primary pushback to that argument, which is basically two-pronged? One is capitalism is about creating success through opportunity and effort. And people making money isn't a bad thing unless you're a socialist. And the reason that more workers aren't doing well is because of too big of a government with too many regulations on business that make it too hard to run a business in a way that you can pay people more. What do you make of those arguments? Well, it's very easily refuted. We've been through two phases of state capitalism since the Second World War.

The first one was what's sometimes called regimented capitalism, high taxes on the rich, a lot of regulation, no financial crises. Financial systems were regulated. The fastest growth period in American history. Now we've been through a second period, the neoliberal period. the neoliberal period. Incline in regulations, move towards monopolization, lower growth, lower productivity. People were wealthy in the first phase.

They're super wealthy in the second. It has almost nothing to do with effort. It has to do with government policies, which have changed in such a way as to punish the general population and to reward the super rich in the corporate structure. And we see the results. Instead of a period of fast, relatively egalitarian growth, we've seen lower growth, radically inegalitarian. lower growth, radically inegalitarian. No, it's not because of more regulation, because of less regulation, which in fact increased the move towards monopolization,

by profits, less creativity, enrichment of the super rich. You have been experiencing our society since the Depression. You grew up in the Depression. You understood the need and the desperation of your own family. You watched society climb out of it all the way up until today. When were things better in America than they are today? Oh, lots of things are better. So go back 50 years and say, at that time,

the United States had laws barring miscegenation that were so extreme that the Nazis wouldn't accept them. There was federally supported housing, but it was segregated by law, which blocked Afro-Americans from the growth period of the 1950s, which was largely poverty-based. Women did not have the rights of persons, wasn't granted by the Supreme Court until 1975. court until 1975. There's been enormous changes which have civilized the society. Things that were considered normal in the 1960s would be unspeakable today. That's all progress, but not on the economic front. That changed. There was a change through the 1970s, took off with Reagan, Thatcher in England, which instituted a new array of state policies, which have had deleterious, harmful effects on the vast majority of the population and enriched a tiny few. majority of the population and enriched a tiny few and it has not led to economic growth in fact it's loaded started with Reagan but it was picked up by the his successors so during the Clinton years the specific form of neoliberal globalization was instituted which is called free market, but that's a joke.

It's highly protectionist. A core part of the World Trade Organization rules is exorbitant patent rights, intellectual property rights, they're called, which are designed to maximize basically monopoly pricing rights, one of the reasons why drugs are out of sight. All of this followed the Reaganite policies amplified by Clinton, continuing up to the present. Do you think that socially we are at a pivot point where this society is going to decide to continue moving forward or maybe to have a renewed conservatism, which will be seen as moving back to many? Well, we have to be careful about the word conservatism. In my view, the last significant conservative in the United States was Dwight Eisenhower. He argued that anyone who questions New Deal reforms

doesn't belong in our political system. Anyone who questions the rights of working people to organize, we don't want them in our society. He sounds to the left of Bernie Sanders. That was conservatism in the 1950s. What's called conservatism has moved to radical reactionary statism. Doesn't reduce the state, in fact, increases it. But it's a big change.

So if there's a move to conservatism, well, I think Bernie Sanders could be in the lead. How would you describe this current move that we've seen in the Supreme Court, rolling back Roe v. Wade, maybe taking on other social policy jurisprudence, the cultural discussion we're having about the understanding of diversity, the racial inflammation that has come up in these inflammatory segments that surround policing and other shootings in our society? How do you understand where we are? I've mentioned many of the civilizing effects of the 1960s activism and their aftermath. The Supreme Court is trying to roll those back. And in fact, it's even more dangerous. So one of the most dangerous decisions of the court was the West Virginia, the EPA decision.

It was an interesting case because there was no reason for the court even to pick it up. It was about a statute that has never been implemented and is inoperative. No reason to take it up at all. But they took it up because they're trying to make a point. We have to move to undermine what is called the administrative state, the state that the state that undertakes measures to deal with current critical problems, and does institute constraints on the industries that want to increase their exorbitant profit-making. Look at their reasoning. Their reasoning is that the EPA efforts to reduce emissions are what they call a major decision problem, changes the course of the way the economy functions. Yes, that's what regulations are supposed to do.

The economy is functioning now in such a way that will race us to a precipice that which will be destroyed and will bring the world down with it. Global warming can't be talked away. It's right in front of our eyes. It's getting worse. We'll pass irreversible tipping points unless we do something pretty significant, move along the lines that the International Scientific Commission, the IPCC, has recommended, a systematic reduction in fossil fuels every year till we basically eliminate them within a couple of decades. Otherwise, we're lost. we basically eliminate them within a couple of decades. Otherwise, we're lost. Now, how does Congress deal with this?

Well, Congress made general regulations. The one in question was never even implemented because of congressional blogging. But Congress makes general regulations, assigns to regulatory agencies the task of investigating them, bringing in scientific analysis, economic analysis, doing careful studies, trying to decide what the best way would be. Congress can't possibly do that. It's not the task of Congress to carry out such studies.

So they delegate it. That's the administrative state. Supreme Court is putting that as its target to eliminate, which will destroy the society and, in fact, bring the world down with it. What does it mean, Noam, that there are so many people in our society who believe that global warming is grossly exaggerated, that the move towards renewable fuels is being rushed, and that people are having electric vehicles forced on them when we still have plenty of fossil fuels that we can use? And this is about a crazy lefty

push towards a green economy. The crazy lefty push is virtually 100% of the scientific community. They're not lefties. This is scientists studying the climate. They have strong evidence. There's overwhelming consensus that we're moving towards destruction of the conditions for organized life on Earth. today, for example, saying exactly what you said. We're rushing it. We want to make sure that we maximize the use of fossil fuels. We'll have more tomorrow. And our grandchildren will have nothing. Okay? Those are the choices.

There's no lefties. It's virtually all scientists of any competence. Now, you're right about public opinion. So there was a major study that came out a couple of days ago. Yale University does regular studies on public opinion on climate warming. They came out with their latest one a couple of days ago. It's worth looking at. They divided it into Republicans and Democrats.

The study that they carried out was to give people 29 issues and ask them, how do you rate these in importance in your voting for the next election, November election? Well, among Republicans, what they called moderate Republicans, ranked global warming 28th. Among the rest of the Republicans, 29th out of 29. It's only the most important issue that's ever arisen in human history. Unless we deal with it, we're finished. Yes, we can have more SUVs tomorrow, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be facing total catastrophe. That's the first step to make.

What issue that is future-oriented has ever received consensus in the present? The New Deal. In the 1930s, New Deal policies were aimed for the future. Took a long time. Actually, they were on hold during the Second World War, pretty much implemented after the war. But weren't they meant to address the crisis of the Great Depression

and create shovel-ready jobs, as FDR called them, and prop up the society in that moment? The Roosevelt policies did smooth some of the rough edges, but didn't end the Depression. You look at the figures, it wasn't very different in numbers in 1939 and 1932, was the war that ended the Depression. What the war did was create a large government that massively intervened in the economy, controlled wages and prices, led to enormous creativity, industrial production virtually quadrupled,

many new inventions. In fact, the basis for the high-tech economy of the future was largely laid in. And people were poor. Like, you couldn't drive if you could even get a car. If you wanted to drive, you had to go less than 35 miles an hour and try to save gas. It was rationing. So it wasn't that it was easy, but people were working together for the common good and to create a better future. Well, that better future came in the post-war world.

It's not the same as today. Today, we are faced with a question of whether we care enough about our grandchildren, great-grandchildren, to ensure that they have a world not only in which they can survive, but a better world. A world based on renewable energy will be a much better world than this one. But can they get a world at all? Or are we going to insist that we want to sit with our SUV in a traffic jam? How important is it to change the two-party system to get something done in this country? Meaning, do you think it's time for more parties? You're not going to get rid of parties altogether. But do you think that the two-party system is exacerbating the tensions and that we need more parties?

We need functioning political parties. Right now, it's more like a no-party system. The Republican Party pretty much stopped being an ordinary political party many years ago. Two analysts for the American Enterprise Institute, not lefties, 10 years ago described the Republican Party as a radical insurgency that has abandoned parliamentary politics. We can see it in Congress right now. The Biden programs, you can debate them. I think many of them were pretty constructive. 100% Republican opposition to anything.

Anything that could benefit the country, stop it. 100%. That's the McConnell Republican Party. And in fact, he says so. He said it during the Obama years. He said our task is Obama years. He said, our task is to make sure that nothing is implemented. Same thing in the Biden years. Make sure that nothing is done. Reason, country will be harmed. People will blame the Democrats.

We can come back to power. That's not a political party. That's something else. But it's also the nature of the game now, isn't it, Noam? I mean, you know the expression, don't hate the player, hate the game. When you have two parties, the easiest way for me to win against you in an election is Chomsky's a bum. That's new. That's not the way it was.

Go back pre-neoliberal, 50 years, there was virtually no difference between moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats. I mean, I voted for Republicans. The parties cooperated. Take a look, say, at the Nixon terrorists. Parties cooperated on that a look, say, at the Nixon terrorists. Parties cooperated on that. Republicans didn't try to claim that Nixon didn't do anything.

It was not like today. What changed? Neoliberalism. They started in the late Carter years, went on, took off under Reagan. The enormous, the policies designed to enrich enormously the super rich and the corporate sector spilled over to the political system. The more you concentrate economic power, the more you undermine political functioning because of the power of concentrated capital over the political system.

So it kind of grows out of itself. Like Clinton, for example, was a kind of a centrist Democrat, but he followed basically the Reaganite policies and exacerbated the situation. Pretty much the same with Obama. How do people get convinced to be in favor of policies that work against their own personal interests? They want tax cuts for the top when they don't even benefit from those tax cuts, and they're against tax increases for the rich when they would benefit. How did we get to that place? Well, first of all, it's not that people are like that. Let's go back to the 1930s, the what you call ready shovel work. People didn't oppose that. They supported it because

they were working for the common good. You wanted people not to sell rags at your door. It's better to have them do work that the WPA is setting up for them. You're talking about the neoliberal period, which changed attitudes. So when Reagan made his outrageous racist speeches about welfare queens, that hit the population. Yeah, I don't want some black woman driving in her limousine to pick up my Social Security check. So there's tremendous propaganda from the increasingly racist right, which did have an impact. striking to see. Notice what happened to the Republican Party since Nixon. Richard Nixon, as you recall, introduced what was called the Southern Strategy. The idea was, it was understood by the Nixon administration that they couldn't possibly win votes on their actual policies any more than Trump could. You can't come to the population and say, I would like to rob you blind and transfer your wealth

to a tiny sector of super-rich vote for me. That doesn't work. So what you have to do is cover it up somehow. It was instituted by Nixon with the Southern strategy. Democrats were voting for civil rights laws. His strategists figured out immediately that they could pick up the Southern vote, Southern Democratic vote,

if they gave racist dog whistles. You didn't come out and say, I'm racist. They just made it clear that you were opposing these measures. In fact, if you look at Haldeman's diaries, it's pretty explicit. Then goes on to a broader understanding. If we can shift attention away from economic issues to what are called cultural issues, we have a chance.

So let's pretend we're in favor of abortion. In the mid-1970s, Republican strategists, Paul Vara, recognized that if the Republicans shift from their, what we now call pro-choice position, to anti-abortion. They could pick up the evangelical vote, which wasn't much organized at the time, and the Northern Catholic vote. So they switched. You go back to the 60s, Reagan, as governor of California,

passed strong pro-choice legislation. Late 70s, passionately anti-abortion. George H.W. Bush, the the same, guns, let's talk about guns, let's talk about anything except our policies. So let's not talk about the one legislative achievement of the Trump years, the 2017 tax bill, what Joe Stiglitz called the Donor Relief Act of 2017. Huge tax cut for the corporate sector and the very rich. Stab everyone else in the back. Let's not talk about that.

Let's talk about guns. Let's talk about abortion. Anything else will try to mobilize people on cultural issues. And there's an extra element here. The population is being undermined. Transferring $50 trillion of wealth from the working class and the middle class to the 1% has an effect. So they're angry, resentful, dislike institutions. Faith in institutions has declined very sharply.

For the benefit of Republicans, that's great. If people are disillusioned, hopeless, disorganized, then we can mobilize them on cultural issues and ram through our radical pro-ultra-rich corporate policies. If these ultra-rich corporate policies originate from the right, then why is it that people on the right believe the elites and the super-rich are on the left? Is that the way it works? Yes, they do believe that. That's part of the propaganda. Yes, they do believe that that's part of the propaganda. So the Republicans have very effectively presented themselves as the ordinary guy, the working man's policy, which means we want a Christian nation. We want to stop these Democrats who are grooming young children to be sex slaves, 50% of Republicans.

Let's stop that. That makes us the working class party. While at the same time, we ram through legislation which totally undermines them and benefits our real constituency, the super rich and the corporate sector. It's right in front of our eyes. Just take a look at the legislations. Take a look at the Republican Party position in Congress right now. Right now, they have two red lines. One of them is can't touch Trump's tax cut, the huge giveaway to the super rich. Can't touch that. Second red line is you can't fund the Internal Revenue Service. What's that about?

What does the IRS do? Catches tax thieves. Who are the tax thieves? The working man who hands in his tax bill, no, not him. It's the super rich who are robbing like mad. So we've got to cut back the IRS so they can't catch robbers. If it's all so naked and the left has a registration advantage, why is there such a deadlock in terms of political power?

Well, first of all, I haven't said anything about the Democrats, so let me say something about them. Sure. In the 1970s, the Democrats essentially abandoned the working class. The last move was the Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act, 1978. Carter was president. He was quite anti-labor. He didn't veto it, but he watered it down so it had no teeth. And he began the moves that Reagan then escalated. By then, the Democrats were becoming a party of affluent professionals, Wall Street

bankers, the guys in the Clinton management, people who show up at Obama's fancy parties and so on. Almost nothing for the working class. In fact, you could see it in the way the TARP legislation was implemented. The working population basically has no representative. Well, now that's changed. It changed with the Bernie Sanders movement. Sanders did succeed in mobilizing a huge part, mostly young, but couldn't get through. He did get an important position, the Budget Committee. And in fact, the pretty reasonable Biden proposals were coming out of the Sanders Budget Committee, but they were killed by 100% Republican opposition and a couple of right-wing Democrats. But isn't all of this symptomatic of a toxic two-party system that can only be remedied by increasing the value of compromise. Right now,

there's no upside to compromise. You win by beating the other side. It is certainly zero-sum. And whether it was always like that or no, and I'll accept your premise that it wasn't, it is now. And wouldn't more parties give you a chance? and wouldn't more parties give you a chance that's not what happened take a look at the current congress the democrats who i don't like as you can tell but the democrats have been trying to compromise all the way along republicans are 100 opposed to anything. That's the McConnell principle. So it's not that the two sides can't compromise. One side can't compromise if the other's blocked it. I don't see it as one-sided as you do, because I see the Democratic Party as two parties in one. You know, Joe Manchin will say to you, I haven't changed. The party has changed. And there are Democrats there that have nothing in common with each other.

And I know we always then use the big tent thing. I've never bought the big tent thing. And I feel like that party is two parties. And the Republican Party is two or three parties. And if you had three or four parties, you would then need coalitions in order to keep your seats. First of all, let's be clear about the facts. I'm no great lover of the Democratic Party. I think I just described, I think they've been... I have not accused you of being as such, Noam Chomsky. But the fact is that the Democrats have consistently tried to compromise. Take Biden's legislative program. A large part of it came out of Sanders's budget office. They proposed it. Republicans opposed it. They cut it back. Manchin opposed it. They cut it back. More and more cutbacks, more and more efforts to compromise. Nothing. No matter how much you compromise, the other side plus Manchin are going to block anything. And finally, it ended up with nothing. So they tried. In fact, there's debate in the Democratic Party. Should they have ever tried to compromise?

Absolutely. They're having that debate. But even if it's one-sided, it still proves the weakness of the system, doesn't it? They did try to compromise, but they were wrong. I agree. And you can't, when you have a radical insurgency that doesn't want to play parliamentary politics, can't compromise. that doesn't want to play parliamentary politics. Can't compromise. Unless the system compels coalition in order to keep your seats.

Doesn't compel. How does it compel it? The Republicans are perfectly willing to harm the society, to destroy the country, destroy the world, just like the Wall Street Journal editorial said today, in order to make more profit tomorrow for the very rich.

That's their commitment. Now, it's possible to compromise. So back in the 50s and 60s, there was plenty of compromise. This was the period of regimented capitalism. Now, I don't approve of that. I think there's a deeper problem. When you say there should be more parties, I think there should be a first party.

We don't have political parties. What we have is candidate-producing organizations, bureaucracies that produce candidates. The population is allowed to pick among them. I mean, take what we call a primary. So there's a town in New Hampshire, Iowa or somewhere. A political candidate comes to talk there. He says, this is me.

This is my policy. This is what I want to do. Maybe he's lying. Maybe he's telling the truth. Then comes vote for me. There's an alternative, which would be called democracy. So far from our consciousness, you can't even imagine it. What would happen is somebody comes to a town in New Hampshire,

in Iowa, population gets together. A person comes and says, I'd like to hear what you want. You make your decisions among yourselves. Tell me what you've decided. I'll try to see if I can handle that. That would be democracy. We can't even imagine that we're so far from democracy. We're in a situation, it's been for years, where we basically have a one-party

system. The business party has a couple of factions, Democrats and Republicans. The population are supposed to be spectators. Okay, we'll pick one of you, but we don't participate. That's not functioning democracy. We have a long way to go to get to functioning democracy. We have elements of it, like town meetings and so on, but only bare elements. And it doesn't affect the party system. What makes it better? An actual democratic society in which primaries work the way I just said. The population decides, debates, discusses, decides what they

want. Somebody comes along and says, I'd like to be your candidate. The population says, here's what you have to do. Do that, maybe we'll vote for you. You don't do that, we don't vote for you. That's what Joe Manchin says his situation is, that in West Virginia, they're telling him this is what matters. This is what doesn't matter. Don't take away our jobs. This is what matters to us culturally. And then he's going there to try to do it to his best ability. What he's doing is destroying West Virginia. He's destroying it. It's very clear to everybody with their head screwed on that coal mining is not going to last. In fact, the United Mine Workers Union in West Virginia has already accepted a transition program

in which there would be government support to help workers move out of the dying coal mining industry, which is going to die, and move to cap the mines, carry out a transition to renewable energy, better jobs, better societies. Actually, the mine workers actually accepted it. Manchin wants to destroy it. He wants coal miners to continue to work under miserable conditions until they finally, the coal mine, and he makes plenty of profit. He's a coal baron himself. He'll finally, the mining ends, which it's going to do. It's economically impossible to continue. He knows that.

So there are alternatives, but they're not being presented. So there are alternatives, but they're not being presented. If the Democrats were a popular party, a party that was really engaged with the public, they'd be organizing in West Virginia to tell people things like this, to bring it out as an option. They don't do much of it. And you think the media is part of this mismessaging? They're just a total part of the system. What are the media? Major corporations selling people like you and me, readers, to other corporations, advertisers.

All deeply embedded in the system. I'm not saying it's dishonest or anything. It's just the way the institutional structure works. It doesn't have to. But it winds up being the same thing any way that you want to qualify the criticism. I mean, you don't believe that the American media has been fairly robust in terms of challenging policies and going after corporations? At a very fringe level. They'll sometimes go after corruption, but they never talk about the kinds of things we're talking about. And if you look at, I mean, I've written thousands of pages of documentation, others have as well, showing how on major issues they simply kowtow to power, state and corporate power. Even with what you saw in how the media responded to Donald Trump and his truth abuse and everything that followed? Well, that was so extreme that even

the conservatives opposed, go back to the so-called conservatives, go back to the 2016 primary, the last Republican primary, every single person there strongly opposed Trump. Every one. Well, that was the cream of the crop of the Republican leadership. They're the ones who denounced Trump. Then when he took over and developed a worshipful following, they all fell in line. All that cream curdled, Noam. I watched it in real time. And I got to tell you, people will say that they voted for Trump as a cure.

I don't believe that. I think they voted for him as a virus to insert into the political corpus to make it sick because they wanted to force a fever that would make it change. And to this day, I have people who really believe that I was against them and against this country because I would chase after Donald Trump, you know, lying about everything except how to spell his name. I agree. That's his appeal to the population. But what does that say? What does that say that it mattered to them

and that they were willing to forgive his flaws in favor of putting in a change agent that seemed to hate everybody they hate? Right. And he did institute a change. He made it worse. His one legislative achievement, one, was the 2017 tax cut, which stabbed everyone in the back and enriched the rich in the corporate sector, the people he

works for. That's who he works for. To the public, he says, oh, I love you. Meanwhile, he's stabbing in the back with the other hand. That's an effective demagogue. But we're going back to the question of how he was treated. The Republicans opposed him strongly until he won power. Then they're all shining his shoes. It's not because they liked his policies. It's after he won over the mass with effective demagoguery, while stabbing them in the back at every chance, that they all fell into line. Now he owns the party. Of course, his constant lies and everything else, yes, the government, the press, and everyone else made fun of those. But that's not the point.

else, yes, the government, the press, and everyone else made fun of those. But that's not the point. On major issues, the media went along and continued to. Incidentally, I'm not criticizing the journalists. Journalists do a very good job. They're courageous. They're honest. First thing I do in the morning is read the New York Times and Washington Post. But you have to decode it. It's all within a framework of deep indoctrination. So simple things like the fact that we don't even have the beginnings of democracy, as you can see from the primary system and everywhere else, that never gets discussed. Well, that's why I started this show, Noam Chomsky. Professor, I'm happy to have you. You are the definition of a free agent. You're not about team or tribe or, you know, hidden agenda or advantage or animus. You're up front with your opinions. I appreciate you for it. And you're

always welcome here. And I hope we get to continue to talk. Great. I'd like to very much. Interesting. When it doesn't really matter what party you care about, but that the dynamics seem to have affected both to one extent or another over time the same way. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let me know. Come after me on social media. I want to read the comments. I want to see what we can glean, and I'm going to answer some of those questions. We'll start putting out my responses in a little extra episode for you. You can also call me. I often benefit from hearing you. Get your tone right. Okay? 516-412-6307. Call, leave your email, and leave your comment. And in all these things, leave your email because eventually I'm going to start sending out more information for you guys.

And again, the free agent merch. Maybe I should wear it on the show. I don't know. I don't want to get too typecast. It feels a little bit like Wayne's World. But again, it's merch that once we get money together, we'll start giving money to different causes and we'll do it together. Isn't that cool? Thank you so much for being part of the Chris Cuomo Project. See you next time. Bye.