The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola Nicholasbuccola.com

Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisfossshow.com thechrisfossshow.com Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. And today we have another most excellent book author guest on the thing. He's going to expand your mind so largely that you're going to have to order a new cranium from Amazon. Anyway guys, be sure to go to the CBPN

or further show your friends, neighbors, relatives. Go to Chris Voss Podcast Network. As always, tell your friends, guys, be sure to go to the CBPN. Refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Go to Chris Voss Podcast Network. As always, tell your friends, hey, do you listen to Chris Voss Show? If not, you should because you're not living a full life yet. And God knows no one wants that. You can also see the video version of this interview at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything interview at youtube.com forward slash chris voss hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything we're doing uh we've got an amazing

author with us he's the author of the book the fire is upon us james baldwin and william f buckley jr and the debate over race in america which definitely is topical right now. It is Nicholas Bacola. He's a writer, lecturer, and teacher who specializes in the area of political thought. He's also the author of The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass in Pursuit of American Liberty, and he's the editor of The Essential Douglass Writings and Speeches, and Abraham Lincoln and a Liberal Democracy. His essays have appeared in scholarly journals, including the Review of Politics and American Political Thought, as well as popular outlets such as the New York Times, you may have heard of it,

Salon, the Baltimore Sun, Dissent, and the Claremont Review of Books. He is the Elizabeth N. Morris Glickson, Glicksman Chair in Political Science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. I know I should have practiced that last line there, but now I am much smarter because of it. Welcome to the show, Nicholas. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Awesome. It was a pleasure to have you on. As I talked to you about the pre-show, you sucked me into this debate, this famous debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley because of your book and having you upcoming as an interview. And it was so extraordinary to watch.

It literally consumed an hour before the show, and I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to get to the podcast. So welcome to have you on. Give us the dot-coms, if you would, so people can look you up on the interwebs. Yeah, they can find me at, uh, www.nicholasvucola.com. Uh, and I'm on Twitter at Vucola underscore Nick. Uh, and those are, yeah, I guess those are the two major places to check me out. Awesome sauce. So you've recently authored this book, The Fire is Upon Us, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. I've just been becoming aware of a whole lot more when it comes to race in America. I thought I knew some, but it turns out there's volumes I

don't know. Some of it I've been learning through the Black Lives Matter movement and this iconic sea of change moment they were in. And so your book came across at just the perfect time for us to renew this discussion on race in America. Yeah, it's really, it's one of those things that it's sadly the Baldwin-Buckley debate is as relevant as ever. So they're 55 years ago at the Cambridge Union to debate the motion, the American dream is the expense of the American Negro. And the issues that they debate and the sort of debate they were having implicitly and explicitly leading up to that night are still with us. And they're still urgent. They've always been urgent, but they're especially urgent in moments like this, when the sort of collective consciousness is really thinking about these issues of race and

the American dream and race and inequality and so on. It most certainly is. In fact, I didn't get a chance to check the demographics of what they were quoting, but they were quoting one out of nine people, I think, in America at that time in 1965 were African-American. They used different words back then that we don't allow anymore, which is good. But now the volume of minority is much larger, but it's still marginalized in how they're raised. You know, it was like, aside from some of the numbers, just listening to James Baldwin's rendition of his debate, I was like, wow, a lot of this still applies now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I try to do in the book is I start the reader out,

you know, that night in 1965, the Cambridge Union, the world's oldest debating society, these two, these two figures walking into the hall that serve Baldwin as sort of the leading poet prophet of the civil rights Revolution. And Buckley is this founding father of American conservatism. And then I go back in time. And so we go back to the 20s. They're born about 15 months apart from each other. Baldwin's born in Harlem at the margins of the margins. And Buckley is born in New York City. And he grows up as a sort of son of privilege.

And so what I try to do is kind of describe from the beginning what their lives were like, try to give the reader a sense of what the world looked like through their eyes, and then take them up to this moment in 65 when they clash. And so it's really a kind of joint intellectual biography of these two really important public intellectuals that's sort of set against the backdrop of the rise of the civil rights and conservative movements, two movements that they both did so much to shape. And I think that was really cool. I was watching your speech before some colleges that were on YouTube, and on top of getting Nicholas's book,

I encourage people to check that out as well. And you lay this foundation of their upbringing, which shapes their experience, their vision. I think James Baldwin talks a lot about that in his debate in how his experience, what it was growing up and where he was. And William Buckley is kind of just left going, what do I do with this? Because, I mean, at one point, how do you debate someone's experience of how they're raised?

I mean, that really didn't happen to you. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, and that's crucial to Baldwin's message that night. The first thing he says is, you know, he says, I'm here as a kind of Jeremiah, right? Indicating to the audience, I'm going to deliver a kind of sermon about white supremacy. And the first thing he says after that is that when we're confronting questions about race in this debate, right, framed these really broad terms about race in the American dream, he says, before we can even engage the substantive questions, we have to sort of think about our senses of reality is the way Baldwin puts it. And so he says, those are the kind of assumptions that we bring to any of these

conversations. They're assumptions that we hold so close that we hardly know that they're there. And so part of what Baldwin is getting at there is that, you know, he has these dramatically different life experiences. You know, growing up in Harlem where he says the defining fact of my childhood is that my parents had a really hard time providing us with enough to eat, right? So Baldwin describes this kind of claustrophobia and sense of want that defines his childhood and his autobiographical writings, both in fiction and in nonfiction throughout over the years leading up to the debate. He really wants to try to give the reader a sense of what the world looked like through his eyes, you know, as a kid growing up in Harlem under those circumstances. And that's really the power and one of the central powers

of Baldwin, right? To try to give you a sense of what the world looked like through his eyes and through the eyes of the characters that he's dealing with in his fiction and the subjects he's dealing with in his nonfiction. And Buckley comes at this from this totally different experience. So he's born in New York City. As I say in the book, he was born in the same city as Baldwin, but he may as well have been born on a different planet. Oh, wow. I didn't know they were born in the same city. That's amazing. Yeah. And Buckley spends most of his childhood at a 47-acre estate called Great Elm. So he ends up growing up mostly in Connecticut. And he has this, just the complete

opposite experience of Baldwin, right? Baldwin talks about, you know, his time in Harlem being marked by kind of claustrophobia and limits on his freedom and opportunity. And Buckley talks about seemingly limitless space and limitless opportunity. You know, his parents have all this money that they use to provide their kids. Buckley's one of 10 kids with every opportunity you can imagine, both in terms of educational opportunities and opportunities to, you know, to just enjoy their lives, right? They have every need met, every want met. And so that, you know, from the beginning, right, in terms of their backgrounds, I say in the book that those backgrounds don't determine how Baldwin and Buckley view the world, but they help shape how they view the world. And so from there, I kind of go into their early intellectual,

you know, development and how they kind of arrive on the intellectual scene at about the same time in the late 40s and early 50s and try to really trace out in slow motion for the reader how these two individuals thought about the world and how we can sort of watch them evolving over the course of those two decades leading up to the debate and sort of their arrival on the intellectual scene in the late 40s to this moment in 1965. And Mr. Baldwin, to get out of his, or to try and rise above the conditions he was raised under because of his race in the ghettos and stuff, you know, consumed everything at the library, correct? And then got in trouble when he started going out of his boroughs to go to other libraries. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a really important part of the story of, you know, sort of Baldwin's, you know, beginnings is that he does describe the experience of domination and the sort

of faces of domination that he had to confront, and folks like him had to confront in Harlem in those years. But he also describes the sort of ways in which he fought back and the ways in which the means available to people to fight back against this kind of domination. And so the central instrument, the central handle, the central lever Baldwin uses all these terms that he used to fight back was language, the power of words. He's somebody who's obsessed, as you just indicated, who's obsessed with books. He finds in books kind of ways to make sense of his experience. He can find this way to connect with the characters of Charles Dickens, for example. And he also, you know, begins writing and trying to get his ideas on paper and kind of figure out how to make sense of what's happening to him. And eventually he wants to use that

knowledge to try to sort of figure out what to do about it. And so, you know, as you're saying, I mean, there's something really powerful about that. You have this young guy, you know, James Baldwin, who's just obsessed with words, obsessed with books, wants to read everything he can. And one of these really, really powerful moments he gives us in his famous essay, Down at the Cross, is venturing outside, as you just indicated, venturing outside of his neighborhood to go to a better library so he could get more books and try to learn more. And he's confronted by a police officer saying, you know, why don't you stay where you belong? I mean, that really brings into relief this kind of central message that Baldwin tries to get across, which is that there's sort of these millions of details of every day,

as he puts it in the debate with Buckley, that indicated to him and folks like him that their lives didn't matter quite as much. And that's one of the reasons Baldwin's message and Baldwin's ideas are so relevant to where we are today. I was enthralled watching it. Not only the first, of course, you talking about the book, but watching the debate. I'm a lover of debates. I'm a lover of ideas. but watching the debate you know certainly Mr. Baldwin going first and seeing

his like when he got done I was just like I would just leave the room I'd just be like okay you know what he wins man like what do you do with that and I think at one point there was a bit of I mean my perception it was a bit of it was a bit of a slight when Buckley said to him,

well, or he doesn't say to him, but in the debate, he says, well, you know, what do you expect? The guy trespassed out of his area or something of that nature. But Buckley kind of had this weird way of talking down to people. Is it me or is it kind of like I'm an intellectual and you're an idiot sometimes? I don't know. Yeah, it's not you, Chris. It's Buckley.

Yeah, I mean, you're right. It's really remarkable. I mean, as you're indicating, watching the YouTube recording is just enthralling. And it really is. Me, several years ago when I first saw this recording, I was transfixed. I mean, I was really drawn in by this moment, this dramatic moment where you have these two leading public intellectuals on this international stage, the high tide of the civil rights movement, and they're clashing over these central questions about race and the American dream. And so I'm with you in terms of that feeling of getting pulled in.

And then you watch Baldwin go up there. And although the union had just celebrated its 150th anniversary, I argue in the book that no one in the history of the union had ever experienced something quite like the speech Baldwin delivered that night. Baldwin was a storefront preacher in his teenage years. And although he left the church at age 17, in many ways, he remained forever a preacher. And so he really delivers this sermon that night about white supremacy. And his speech is just, it's just so gripping and it's so relevant and it's so powerful.

And he's in this predominantly white space, right? He's there amongst university elites, you know, white, mostly white university elite audience. And he's there with William F. Buckley, this kind of face of, you know, kind of American aristocracy in some ways. And so Baldwin delivers that incredibly powerful address. And then you're right, Buckley gets up there and Buckley, you know, he talks about this later on, you know, he's confronted with the choice of how do I deal with this? You know, he says, I knew it wasn't going to be my night. And I knew I could kind of give a little and maybe come out with a few more votes. But Buckley says later that he's very proud of his performance because he refused,

and I'm quoting Buckley now, to give one goddamn inch is the way Buckley puts it in 1968. And so, yeah, as you indicated, Buckley, you know, he definitely goes after Baldwin in a kind of ad hominem sort of way, says all sorts of things about, you know, that Baldwin shouldn't even be there, right? That the sort of Cambridge students should not have even invited Baldwin. And there's a kind of way in which Buckley is trying to make this case that Baldwin does not belong on that stage with him. And so in a lot of ways, as you're indicating, it kind of communicates this kind of condescension that was sort of central to Buckley's way of being in the world. And it was very much in keeping with

everything he had said about Baldwin leading up to that night and everything he said about Baldwin in the years after the debate as well. In your book that you wrote about where in the upbringing of Buckley, did, did you, did you see tenants of him having racist notions or him having definitely, how did he fit into the whole, I mean, I know he's conservative, so maybe that tells you that, but what did you find in your book?

Yeah, well, that's a really important question, Chris. Part of what I was trying to get at here is we have to, one of the things I hope the book does is it helps us think about what racism is, right? Because Buckley himself describes, and his siblings describe, the way they were raised to think about race. And they try to think about, they try to describe the ways in which they moved on

from where their parents were. And I think that's a really important thing for us to reflect on. So Buckley's siblings, Reed Buckley in particular, his brother, says by any definition, our parents were racist. So Buckley's mother was a proud daughter of the Confederacy. And she taught her children to believe in a kind of natural racial

hierarchy. But they also taught their children to not have animus toward those who were different from them, right? So the central theme was, Buckley says, my mother, you know, taught us to believe in hierarchy, but also taught us to believe in hierarchy, but also taught us to take care of those who are beneath us. So it's this kind of racial paternalism or maternalism, depending on how you want to put it. And so for Buckley and his siblings, I mean, they basically think in their generation, they were able to break free of much of that, right? That they rejected their parents' natural belief in natural racial hierarchy. But one of the things I try to get out in the book is, is I try to really trace

out what that, what did racism mean to Buckley, right? Because Buckley clearly thinks of himself as non-racist. He says, you know, from the earliest days of National Review, you know, our goal on race and civil rights was to be, he says, extremely articulate, which is always important to Buckley, non-racist, but not dogmatically racially egalitarian. So Buckley's trying to walk this very fine line throughout this period. And what I try to do for the, you know, for the readers really trace that out in a lot of detail, maybe more detail than people want. But it's really, you know, to try to get a sense of Buckley and his crew at National Review, they end up as critics of the civil rights movement at almost every turn.

The one exception is that they're okay with economic boycotts as a sort of legitimate form of protest. But they're critics, generally speaking, of Martin Luther King. They're critics of the student sit-in protesters. They're critics of the Freedom Riders. They're against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They're against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But Buckley says all these positions, though, are not racist positions. They're positions that are rooted in, from his perspective, a kind of principle that is not racist. Right. And so one of the things I want to do in the book is to try to think through what, you know, in Buckley's mind, I'm taking him at his word. Right. He's not, I don't think he has racial animus. I actually think that's, I think that's true of him. But, you know, if we really think about what he's up to in this period, this is one of the ways Baldwin is so helpful in providing us the lens is Baldwin says, you know, he really thinks that the kind of racism that's

rooted in animus is kind of the easiest racism to grapple with. It's this more subtle racism, this kind of genteel racism, that is in some ways much more deadly from Baldwin's perspective. And so I try to use Baldwin as a kind of lens through which to view Buckley. And that's a really powerful lens. Baldwin's a powerful lens to view anything. But I want readers to reflect on that. I mean, as you think through, as you watch Buckley kind of adapting to the civil rights revolution, you know, what in this, in this adaptation do you find to be morally defensible? And, and what do you find to be problematic? And I want, I'm hoping readers will find, you know, that will reveal things to readers about themselves in the process of reading the book. That's been the discussion we've been having with a lot of people. I had a gentleman, Dr. Chatters, on earlier this week. We talked about, you know, he talked about some of the same sort of echoes that I saw in James Baldwin's debate today was how he was raised.

Like one of the things he early was he became aware of was that one in three African-, ended up in prison. He had three brothers. I mean, it was him and two brothers, I guess. And so he, he, as a child, he looked at the three of them and went, which one of us? Um, and, and, you know, we talked about some of the different, uh, red lining, the things that you would discover as a child and realize, you know, I'm, I, how discouraging, I mean, for me, it would be discouraging. I deal with enough depression as it is without having some other issues. And you can see how it affects people, their outlook on society, where they want to go.

James talks about that in his debate and what he feels. Was this, and forgive me for not knowing this, but was this debate before the passing of the Civil Rights Act or after? It was after. So the Civil Rights Act is adopted in July 1964, and the debate happens in February 65. So it was kind of a period in which, you know, Baldwin, in many ways, was, you know, kind of his side, so to speak, in this argument was winning, right? You had the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You know, Barry Goldwater had voted against it, and he's the Republican nominee in the election of 64 in November. And he's trounced by Lyndon Johnson, you know, who, you know, of

course, championed the Civil Rights Act. So there's a lot of reasons why Baldwin, you know, could have been in a celebratory mood, but he wasn't because one of the things Baldwin is there to do is to always, always as this kind of prophetic poet prophet figure is to say, this is an important step. It's yes, it's important that we get the Civil Rights Act adopted. Yes, it's important that Johnson defeats Goldwater, but he's always there to say, yes, but what's next? What are we going to do to really change the lives of folks at the margins of society fundamentally? And so Baldwin is this kind of radical figure in that regard. He's always there. He's a radical moral imagination. He's always there to ask us to look at the world through the eyes of somebody at the margins and to think about what is morally required of us if we think about the world through those eyes. And so that's really a

crucial, and I think the point that sort of lead up to the question is precisely, you know, is precisely right in terms of how Baldwin wants us to think about. As you just said, Baldwin really, you know, wants us to sort of try to imagine the world, you know, through the eyes of folks, you know, who are growing up in circumstances like, you know, in which he found himself, and to sort of think about what it would look like to have a world in which every life mattered to us, right? A world in which, you know, the sort of your racial identity was not going to determine all those outcomes you just described in terms of your, your educational opportunities, your economic opportunities, the likelihood you're going to have clashes with law enforcement likelihood,

you're going to be incarcerated. I mean, Baldwin says throughout his, his life, you know, we, we cannot, you know, he says race is my primary subject because this society has made it my primary subject. He says, I'm trying. And what one of the things he's trying to do throughout his writing. And I recommend to all listeners, they, they check out James Baldwin, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, he's trying to really, you know, ask us to sort of probe deeper, right? What lies beneath the surface of that? Why is this necessary for us as a society to have these kinds of exclusions, these marginalizations? What is it that we need, or we think we need, that leads us to treat some human beings as if their lives don't matter? And so that's Baldwin's central question. Whatever his primary subject, whether it's a civil rights struggle or questions of sexual identity,

he's always asking us to go to what lies beneath because that's where he thinks the roots of our problems are and the roots of a solution or our salvation is the way he might put it. And he's definitely, I think he's right. We need to look inside of ourselves. I mean, like I said, the conversation I was having with Dr. Chatters earlier this week, we talked about, he talked about inclusion and then also how kind of the America was built with this entitlement, if you will, and this, this, this right to, you know, we sold the country from Indians, starting off and slaved them into reservations.

And this entitlement that we just, that is like the core of our culture, sadly. And, you know, it's so amazing that this happened in 1965, and here we are 55 years later in the same conversations about marginalized minorities and making sure that everyone has access to the American dream and everyone does not. And I think it's good what's happening right now, whether cities are bringing their statues down or they're being torn down because the cities are refusing to act in a way. The Mississippi state flag I thought was just awesome to see that removed. And I grew up with the rebel flag thinking, well, I was a rebel. I grew up in religion, so I left uh that i'd grown up with and so for me being a rebel was

that's what that flag represented but you know over the years i learned that it represented something much different it was you know the confederate flag and and i think it's great the discussions we're having today the things we're learning about i think it's horrific you know what has led us to this moment of you know this darkness of of white supremacy and kkk that was brought in by by um donald trump and his election i i in 2015 i was screaming at everything that i could possibly scream at and been screaming for three or four years and people were just like what's the big deal chris it's not that big and now now everyone's with me.

They're like, yeah, that guy is freaking racist. Holy crap. And so I think it's great what's going on. I think the protests in the streets are undeniable. I'm hoping that all those young men and women and people that are out there register to vote and please show up to vote. But it's amazing that we're still struggling with

this. One thing when you're talking, I realized is in California, we went through busing in the late 70s, which was only 10 or 15 years removed from the Civil Rights Act of 64. I didn't ever think about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, so yeah, so much of what you just said resonates. I mean, one thing about, you know, this moment in which we find ourselves and some of these, you know, the sort of history that you're talking about, I mean, one of Baldwin's central themes, and this runs through, you know, again, his fiction and his nonfiction is this sort of he demands of us that we come to terms with our history, that we quit living by lies is kind of the way he puts it. And he really thinks that we can think about that on an individual level and a

societal level. He says that, you know, at the core of his thinking is kind of, he thinks we're in a state of identity crisis, right? We lie to ourselves about who we really are and we create delusions that are falling into this sort of delusive mentality because we want to avoid coming to terms with reality right and so um and so you know if you look at his fictional characters he traces that out a lot of really fascinating and important ways and then he thinks about it in terms of our you know our national history as well and i think that's what

we're coming to terms with right now baldwin says that you know societies tend uh to live by sort of a certain mythologies right certain mythologies that kind of hold the society together and give people a sense of meaning. And so Baldwin says that in the case of, you know, American history, this idea of whiteness and this idea of white supremacy in many ways has been central to that mythology, right? Whether it's the sort of question of genocide of indigenous peoples or the institution of slavery. Baldwin says that we create mythologies around those things. Right. In order to make ourselves feel justified and to make ourselves feel safe.

And so that's why I mean, one of the reasons why we continually, as you said, 55 years ago, many of the things Baldwin says in the Cambridge debate, many things he's writing about in his heyday, they could have been written yesterday, right? Because I think from Baldwin's perspective, we still haven't really come to terms with these things. And so I think that that's central, that sense of entitlement you're talking about. Baldwin would always say, until we can stop relying on this myth of white supremacy, we're never going to be able to come to terms with who we really are, our true, the true history of this country. And until we can do that, we can't take responsibility. And one thing Baldwin always emphasized is he said, look, you know, I often, you know, I get confronted by people who say, you know, you're just trying to make me feel guilty. This is what

Baldwin said. He said, I'm not worried in your guilt. He said, I'm not worried about your guilt. I don't have time for your guilt. What I'm asking for is your responsibility. He says, I know you didn't do it. I didn't do it either, but we are human beings and we are fellow citizens. So we have a responsibility. We have an obligation to do something about it. on the sort of issue of folks like Trump and other sort of really obvious manifestations of white supremacy that we see in our politics, Baldwin was always there to say, yes, we need to call those people out and we need to challenge them in whatever way we can. But he always was there to remind us that those sort of really nefarious political figures are always manifestations of us, right? They're manifestations of something deeper. And so, you know, he's always there to say, yes, we need to defeat the demagogues when they arise and so on. And we need to change our representatives and pass the right legislation and hopefully get the right court decisions and so on. Baldwin says that really, I mean, what's radically democratic about Baldwin is that he really calls on all of us to reflect on the

millions of details of every day that helps kind of maintain this fortress of white supremacy. And a lot of that stuff is more subtle, right? And this is where, you know, the last point you made about housing law is a great example of this. In 1964, Johnson has that landslide victory, right, all over the country, most spots of the country outside of the Deep South and the state of Arizona, which Goldwater barely wins. But one really fascinating thing is 1964, in the state of California, you have this overwhelming majority for Johnson, but you have an even more overwhelming majority of folks who vote to overturn California's Fair Housing Law, right? And so you have a lot of people, you know, let's assume maybe most of the Goldwater supporters, maybe all of them in California, vote to overturn the Fair Housing Law. But then you have a considerable number of Johnson

supporters who are simultaneously showing up to pull the lever for Johnson and to overturn Fair Housing Law. And for Baldwin, that's an extraordinarily powerful, that brings into relief a really powerful issue, which is that for a lot of folks in the North, right, so to speak, it was easy for them to morally condemn what was happening in the South. But when it starts to come into their backyard and they have to confront the sort of economic structures that are keeping folks marginalized on the basis of race, they start to get a little bit nervous, right? And that's true. And Baldwin says, that's something that we have to come to terms with.

And until we do, we will not see fundamental change in this country. And you bring up a lot of great points there. I think it's, why do you think people have such a hard time? I mean, you actually just explained why people have a hard time understanding Black Lives Matters and the aspects of what we're talking about it was it was uh one thing that Baldwin brings up in his uh debate is is that you know black men fill most of the prisons and here we are 15 years later we're still in the same problem in fact what's I've I've often railed against the you know the the giant megaplex of prisons and and all that crap that goes on with the police unions and stuff that fight to keep those prisons filled. And, you know, now what we see with, with, with, you know,

what's going on with police brutality and police racism and, and a lot of white nationalism in the police departments. We're seeing there's a reason those prisons are filled. It starts from the streets. And, well, we knew that a lot of it was there. In fact, Dr. Chatter brought up, he said basically the reason we were in so much shock over the George Floyd murder

was it was a modern-day lynching I mean that's basically what we all watched on TV and were horrified most of us that had you know decency were horrified by it and and the realization that this dish it's so out of control on it of course it didn't help that the the police went oh yeah police brutality? What? Hold my beer. We're just like, seriously, you guys didn't get the first message? But, yeah, it's definitely extraordinary.

And I'm glad your book is here because it's a read for the times of what we're going through and understanding. I had to go through the same thing in 2015 2016 because I I started going okay so what's this Trump Stephen Miller white national what the hell is this oh it's rebranded KKK well what the fuck is going on um and uh and so then I had to start looking inward because I had to start under trying to I was trying to understand what the fuck happened with Donald Trump and because it was so obvious what he was and and i started seeing it uh in the run-up to the election i started having friends that were just constantly cracking on obama and and it just became so pervasive that finally i wrote this blog

post i need to find it in 2015 or i just called him out on i go you guys are fucking racist that's really what it is all this fox news and this pervasive bashing of the man. I mean, I, I voted for Obama's first term. I kind of, I believed in change and I said, buddy, if you don't bring change, didn't have anything to do with a skin color. I'm like, you don't bring me change because I'm sick of politicians. I'm not voting for you again, but he was a good, he was a great president, probably the best president we ever had,

especially on ethics and not having crises. But, you know, I had to have that internal conversation with myself. And I had to start, I would see the Q words that Trump was using, like our culture, you know, and learning that when he says our, he doesn't mean like all of ours. He means like white his. and then i'll never forget somebody from one of my friends in alabama sent me this the billboards they were starting to put up about fight white genocide i was like what the fuck is white jenna what the fuck and then someone

explained to me i'm like are you goddamn kidding me um but i had to go through a journey and i'm still on this journey this is why we're having these discussions of looking inward, like James talked about, and going, what hangups do I have? What causative racism things that I have? I didn't realize that, you know, like I don't like rap music. I'm not a rap fan. But I also don't like Christian music music and i don't like country music so it's not racial but people you know i'd be you know people say hey you want to listen to rap

music no i don't like rap music and you know that's a culture and i didn't realize how how that's racist you know i i'm because there's white people that do rap but but but the way that trump would use the word culture and and the white nationalists and learning about all these different things i'm like holy shit there's some implicit bias there that's that's put inward uh you know one of the things that even made me uncomfortable was when uh mr buckley and i and i always hate this when i see this in these old videos when they go the negro and you're like, you just can't say like the person you have to call it's the, it's the, it's the separation of, of humanity,

I guess, if you will, or, or from, you know, one person to another, the, you're the problem sort of thing. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, there's a lot there, Chris. I mean, I think that, yeah, that's, that's, there's a couple of really important issues. I mean, one is that, you know, I think that like a lot of folks, and I've certainly had a lot of folks in my own life, you know, I think it's some of my high school buddies who were prior to 2015, 2016, you know, not especially politically engaged, maybe would vote occasionally when they had a chance, but that kind of moment brought a lot of people into a state of political consciousness that they previously had not had, for one reason or another. And I think that there's something

about that that's really important. But there's also something that we, you know, we don't want to make the mistake, right, of saying because Trump and Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and this crew sort of emerge, and they're so overt, they're so explicit about, you know, their politics and sort of this kind of ways in which they are, in some sense, you know, unapologetically, you know, white nationalist in one form or another. There's a kind of way in which I think somebody like Baldwin reminds us that that's always been there, right? It's been there in American political culture in one form or another throughout time. And one of the things that you see is how it's evolved, right?

And we're certainly in this moment now where the kind of Trump brand, such as it is, brings that stuff out into the open in a way that maybe it wasn't conscious for a lot of folks. But it's been part of our political culture, part of our political institutions, part of our economic institutions, our social institutions for a long time. And so it's important that we recognize that and that even if Trumpism as a brand goes away, or Trump himself goes away, that's still going to be there, right, until we address these kind of structural questions. And so I think that's really, really, really significant. And I think that part of what you're describing, right, of this kind of sense in which you were invited to engage in a kind of introspection, all of us are invited by

various political moments or various political moments demand of us to engage in a kind of introspection. I think that's absolutely crucial, right? If we're really going to change, we have to think about the ways in which we are attached to particular conceptions of ourselves that are really rooted in, you know, again, I think Baldwin's so right on this, you know, a lot of our sort of racial identity is really has its roots in a kind of desire, sort of a desire that we have to feel a particular kind of status in our society. And Baldwin said again and again, the question that white people have to ask themselves, those who imagine themselves to be white, is why was it necessary to have a quote unquote Negro problem in the first place, right? He says, this has nothing to do with me. This has everything to do with you,

so to speak, is how Baldwin would often put it when he's asked this question about the Negro problem. And I think you see Buckley, the example you just gave with Buckley, I think is a really, really powerful one, because Buckley at the debate, there's this really powerful moment toward the end. And I tend to play this, you know, when I'm out on the road, when I was back before the pandemic, I was on the road talking about the book, I play this clip from the debate, which Buckley says, you know, he sort of has this kind of explanation of the quote, unquote, Negro problem. And what he says is, it's the product of an unfortunate conjunction of two things, right? And he says that on the one hand, there are individual racists out there who need

to be, who we need to deal with, right? And so he uses that phrase, individual racists. And then he says, on the other hand, there are failures of the Negro community. So you have individuals on this side and you have the community on the other. And I think it gets to this point you're trying to describe. And I recommend to everybody to this point you're trying to describe. And I recommend to everybody that read the books of Ibram X. Kendi, who's a really wonderful scholar who's writing How to Be an Antiracist is one, A Stamp from the Beginning is another. And what Kendi tries to draw our attention to is the varieties of racism that exist in American culture, right? You have the kind of George Wallace type of racism, the KKK type of racism out there, but there are a lot of other varieties that are out there. And until we can come to terms with those other varieties, then we're really not going to be able

to make the sort of progress we need to make. And I think Buckley, by framing things in that way, individual racists and the quote-unquote Negro community, he's really trying to, in some ways, whether he's doing it consciously or subconsciously, he's trying to draw our attention away from the structural basis of racial inequality in our society, right? He wants to say there's some bad apples out there and yeah, that folks over here,

the folks in the community need to take advantage of the opportunities that exist. There's a kind of cultural problem, which is still very much an argument we see in our politics. There's something going on there that we need to grapple with, right? And if we don't, then we're going to continue to stay stuck in this cycle, and we need to break out of this cycle. Yeah, I feel like I'm living in George Wallace part two. And I love what you said there, because at that point, he kind of started laying into Baldwin, and he made a comment that the community, the black community takes and, I forget how exactly he said it, but basically resorts to violence. And he's being very dismissive at that point.

And it's an interesting point that he makes because you're like, oh, you went there. But here is James Baldwin being an intellectual, being a man of nonviolent means, you know, putting forth this incredible argument. And it just, he like defeats himself on that merit alone. I think if I had been watching it at that time, that was what I took from it.

And I think it got worse for Buckley when he started trying to go after Ball. When he realized he was kind of dancing around it, it seemed to my mind. And he was kind of trying to go after James more than the concept or the idea. Was that your takeaway or am I reading that right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and again, we see this playing out, you know, like a broken record. Here we are again, in which we, and we see that one of the tendencies of those who are trying to preserve the status quo is to attack the messenger, right? To say, to sort of go engage in this kind of ad hominem attack that avoids the

central issue, right? And that's precisely what you see Buckley doing in the debate. He tries to convince the audience that Baldwin is this dangerous radical who's hell-bent on overthrowing Western civilization, wants to, you know, tear apart the Constitution, the Bibles, and so on and so forth, and burn the library around here, is the kind of argument that Buckley makes in the debate. And then, as you said, like kind of concludes his speech with this sort of threat of race wars, the way Buckley concludes his speech. And that, you know, is just in so many ways reveals, and Buckley ends up being a very useful, you know, foil for kind of demonstrating what Baldwin is trying to show us, is that,

you know, Buckley is unwilling to really engage Baldwin in a serious discussion of what it means, what it really means to try to conserve what is best in our society, right? This idea of a conservative. I mean, Baldwin says from a very early point in his career, he says, you know, he's sort of thinking about this idea of what it means to be a patriot, right? In autobiographical notes that he writes in 1955, early on in his career, he says, you know, I love this country more than I love any other country. And it is for that reason that I reserve the right to criticize it perpetually. That's what Baldwin says.

And for Buckley, that's not patriotism, right? Patriotism for Buckley is this kind of devotion to this idea of America, even if we're failing to live up to that idea. It's the kind of way I read Buckley. And so, I mean, I say in the book that, you know, one of the things that's so powerful about Baldwin, and he says this a couple of times really powerfully, you know, he debates one of Buckley's go-to guys on race,

this guy, James Jackson Kilpatrick, this leading salesman for segregation in 1962. And I think this is a central theme of Baldwin in that moment. And also later in life, in the 70s, Baldwin, he says, I am a kind of conservative in terms of the things I'm trying to conserve. And what he's always there to ask conservatives like Buckley, quote unquote, conservatives like Buckley and Kilpatrick is, what is it really that you're trying to conserve? And he says, I think what you're trying to conserve more than anything else is your own power. And so I say that, you know, in the contemporary moment where you have this kind of idea, right, if we take the Trumpy, the Trumpian idea of make America great again, there's this really great line in one of Baldwin's most famous pieces, My Dungeon Shook, which is

1962. And Baldwin says as a letter, he a letter to his 14-year-old nephew, trying to give his nephew a sense of how to navigate the world and where to find hope. And Baldwin says, not make America great again. He says, we must make America what America must become. So I'm thinking about making hats that say, make America what America must become. And I'll send one to you, Chris.

I love that one. I love that one. In fact, the make America great America must become. And I'll send one to you, Chris. I love that one. I love that one. In fact, the make America great, to my understanding, comes from original white nationalist KKK, or does it come from Wallace? Yeah, the precise history, I mean, the idea, right? And I can't remember the, yeah, I think that make America great again,

I think was maybe the second coming of the Klan used that phrase. And it's America first thing is, of course, got a history in this country. But yeah, Baldwin wants that idea, make America what America must become. And this is something that's a theme in Baldwin's writing, especially in the lead up to the debate with Buckley, when he's Baldwin is trying desperately to to get people to take responsibility. I say that Baldwin's most famous book, The Fire Next Time. The Fire Next Time is not a wish, it's a warning. Baldwin wants to avoid the fire next time.

And he says at the end of that book that we need to unite. We need to try to figure out a way to see one another's humanity so that we can remake the society and make it what it must become. So Baldwin's really challenging us to kind of expand our political imaginations, expand our moral imaginations. And Baldwin says that really there's something very simple yet profound about what he's asking us to do. He says, I'm asking you to view us, to view the other as a human being. That's all I'm asking you to do. And if you, Baldwin says, and this is something that's been going around, going viral on the internet nowadays,

clips of Baldwin saying this, Baldwin says, I'm asked in interview after interview, what does the black man want? And Baldwin says, I say to my interlocutor who asked me that question, what do you want? There's your answer. That's all, you know, we want to be treated like human beings. All we want is to be treated like human beings. And Baldwin, that critique, right, is so powerful, right? It's a simple yet powerful critique is to say, what does it mean really to treat another human being as if their life matters as much as everybody else's, right? What does that really mean? That has radical implications. If we really care about the dignity of a human being, that has radical implications.

Now, precisely what that looks like in terms of our economy and our politics and so on, that's a really complicated question. But Baldwin says, you know, that's something we need to sort out together as a community. But we cannot really get to the point of even having serious conversations about how our structures need to be redesigned until we really recognize the humanity of those around us. And Baldwin says, we have not done that. And we still recognize the humanity of those around us. And Baldwin says, we have not done that. And we still have not done that 55 years later.

Do you know what's amazing? Prior to the conversation you and I just had after my interruption, you were describing the Buckley demonizing the violence and then talking about Baldwin being a patriot by protesting. And you literally described when you were talking, I was thinking about where we are now with Colin Kaepernick and his protests. And then, of course, how people demonize the black lives matter, you know, and Trump tries to keep painting them as rioters and people are destruction. And, and, and, and for the large part, I've been, I'm really awesome that they've been largely peaceful protesters, but the way of demonizing them, so they don't have to deal

with that sort of thing. One of the things i got into with the 2016 election was they started researching everything because i was like how the fuck did this fucking happen and i was researching who voted uh why the black vote didn't show up this time well you know all the failures of of what ended up being a very, I guess, I don't know what you call it, subconscious voter suppression by being so toxic, by being so racist that people wouldn't even show up to defend themselves by vote. And, of course, he won. There's a lot of reasons he won. What was interesting to me was Van Jones or somebody, they said one of the problems that Americans are having, especially these Americans in the Rust Belt that voted for Trump, is they're experiencing being poor and suffering realize that this is the first time they're

suffering but that minorities have been suffering in the inner cities ghettos all this time with the same thing so but but their entitlement is is that they feel that they're entitled to it first in line and so and so that's one of the reasons they embrace trump is because trump is going to give us back our quote-unquote our american dream that you know we are entitled to and of course it's the dying of light of a population that knows that very soon it's going to be overrun by minorities and it's doing this last gasp which is just, what's the old line from No Country for Old Men that I love so much? You can't stop what's coming. That's, oh shit, I can't remember the line.

That's vanity. Yeah, you can't stop what's coming. That's vanity. But the psyche of these steel workers and the people in the Rust Belt that voted for Trump this time with their attitudes of job entitlement over other people, it was interesting because I would have arguments with friends early on in 2016. They'd be like, it was about jobs. It wasn't about racism. I'm like, I don't think so. And you'd see interviews of people and they'd be like, well, yeah, we voted for Trump because of jobs. Yeah, we kind of always racist, but it was over jobs.

But the longer you talk to them, the more it would start, it would seep out. There'd be like either racism or misogyny against Hillary. And like you say, until we really resolve these in our psyches, we're still going to have these fucked up problems because people are going to still think it was about jobs and it wasn't. Yeah. And I mean, I think one thing that is, I think, clear is that those things are all, you know, bound up together in some ways. Right. So it's not an either or proposition. Right.

There's no question about it. And this is, again, you know, to lean on Baldwin because he's far more wise than I ever will be. I mean, Baldwin says that there's something happening, right, in the mind of this kind of Trump voter, just to sort of generalize for a moment, that is, we really need to understand, right? Baldwin says it's easy to be dismissive, right? And one of the things that he says, going back to the 50s, he writes these really powerful pieces in which he really tries, we need to try to understand what's happening. And one great example is 1956, he writes an essay about the great writer William Faulkner. And he starts that essay by saying that every change, right, and this is one

of my students put it this way recently, every change in a human being's life is a kind of death, right? Every change is a kind of death, and it's a threat. Everything as you've known it is changing, and that is terrifying, right? So one of the things Baldwin says is that we often in politics have a tendency to think about those who disagree with us as evil, right? That they're fundamentally operating out of these kind of evil motives. But Baldwin is there, and don't get me wrong, Baldwin says, there's plenty of evil to be found in politics. But he says that at the root of a lot of what's happening in our politics is fear, right? Folks are feeling displaced, right? They are feeling a kind of squeeze economically, for example, they're feeling a kind of threat culturally, like what I've known as America, in my mind, is under threat by this development or

that development. But Baldwin says that all so much of what's happening there, right, is a kind of betrayal of those folks, these folks that you're talking about. Baldwin says one of the most powerful moments for me as I was working on the book was Baldwin is sitting there in 1962, just after the riots at Ole Miss, right? Ole Miss, University of Mississippi, you have the integration of the attempted integration of that university and white mobs go crazy and you have all this violence. And in just the weeks after that,

Baldwin is sitting in a television studio in New York across the table from this guy, James Jackson Kilpatrick, leading salesman for segregation. And he says to Kilpatrick, he says, you know, you think there's a difference between the mobs in the streets who are out there committing acts of violence and somebody like you who's sitting in a fancy suit, who writes these books about indefensive segregation. And he says, Baldwin says, there is no difference. In fact, I hold you far more responsible

than I hold those people because those people in those streets, they are acting in accordance with a kind of delusion that you have perpetuated for years and years. You have convinced those people that their economic lives are threatened by black liberation. You have convinced those people

that their sense of self is threatened by black liberation by allowing one person, James Meredith, an African American Air Force veteran to attend this university, that that is a threat to your entire quote unquote way of life, right? And that's exactly what folks like Trump tap into that, right? They say this, you have been threatened, right? You are, you should feel a sense of threat from this, from the immigrant, from this person, from that person. And, and I am here to save you from that. And what Baldwin says is that is a betrayal, right? Not of the other, right? But it's a betrayal of those people he claims to be trying to support. Baldwin says the most powerful thing for him, 1965, he says this in the debate, is, you know, in that moment that the sort of most infamous racist is the sheriff Jim Clark in Alabama, who's using his cattle prod and his billy club to victimize, you know, men, women and children in the streets of Alabama who are trying to get the right to vote.

Right. And and trying to get their civil rights. And Baldwin says during the debate, he says, when you see Jim Clark use his cattle prod and put it against one of his victims, what's happening to his victim is ghastly, but in some ways what's happening to Jim Clark is much, much worse. His moral life, that's the term Baldwin uses, his moral life has been destroyed by the plague called color. Everything that Clark believes about his value in the world is attached to this delusion of whiteness, right? He sees his role in the world, his purpose, his vocation is to protect the fortress of white supremacy. And Baldwin says, what could be more pathetic than that? This human being, this is not just about black liberation, right? This is about the liberation of Jim Clark, or if not Jim Clark, then his children, right? Because there might not be

hope for Jim Clark. We have to think about his children. And Baldwin says in 1964, that's what I'm thinking about is the children, right? I'm trying to figure out how in the next generation can we learn to treat each other with more humanity? That's what it's all about. Sorry to go on, but that's. No, no, this is great. I love this. This is awesome. And I know we're going a little long here, which is fine with me. Let me ask you this in your perception to my my perception is is that trump has tried to drag us back to 1950 and bring out the worst of us to become a more racial nation and um and i think what we're seeing now is that our nation has woken up and gone no we're not doing that today. What's your perception of that?

Yeah, well, you know, I... Because he can't keep ruling unless he can keep doing the race war thing. Yeah, I mean, I think that I'm kind of of two minds about that. I mean, one is that I do think that there is a kind of danger in treating, you know, in viewing Trump as this extraordinary thing, as I was talking about before. In some ways, Trump is a manifestation of something that's been there all along, right? And in some ways, we shouldn't have been surprised, as many of us were, including my discipline of political science. You know, we revealed how unscientific our study of politics really is, and not really coming to terms with

the rise of Trump. So yeah, I think in one sense, there's a kind of way in which we can't imagine that this could go on. From some level of analysis, there's a kind of way in which clearly, and we see this in the polls, right, where there's 37% or whatever that are just rock solid Trump supporters. And then, you know, there seems to be most of the population is sort of realizing there's something either very, very wrong, or there's people in the middle who are kind of waking up to what's wrong. But I think what's dangerous, right, is, and this is where I think Trump has tapped into something extraordinarily powerful, and therefore, extraordinarily sinister sinister is that people,

human beings haven't changed, right? Human beings are fundamentally fearful, right? We're fearful and we are desperate to cling to some sense of reality, right? Some sense of identity that makes us feel safe. And so what I think we can anticipate, and this is where I've had, you know, folks, you know, just friends and colleagues and family members who are feeling this kind of sense of confidence about the political future in this moment. And I definitely feel my inner Baldwin saying, hang on a second, because what's going to happen over the next few months, and we know this, right, is it's going to get ugly, as you talked about before, there's a kind of obvious ways, explicit ways in which voters, voter suppression will happen. And we have to be, we have to combat that in whatever way we

can. But there's less obvious ways in which voter suppression is going to happen. And that is precisely to kind of lower our politics even lower than it's ever been, in order to kind of just give people this sense of despair, right, that will ultimately, you know, serve Trump well, right, in those, because what our system structurally comes down to thousands of voters in a few states, right. And so what we need to recognize is that those folks are going to be made to feel scared, and they're going to be made to feel fearful that Biden could somehow be worse than Trump, right. And so and I think, and for folks on the left who are disappointed in the choice that, you know, they're confronted of sort of Trump or Biden,

I think one of the things that Baldwin would remind us of is that yes, the election matters, absolutely. But what's happening at the grassroots in terms of really changing our moral lives, of expanding our moral imagination, of imagining what America might become, that work needs to go on. Folks cannot feel satisfied if in November the outcome that folks are hoping for happens. The fight needs to go on because

structurally, fundamentally, in our moral lives, our economic lives, our social lives, and the basic structures of our politics need to change in order for us to really move forward. And so I think that's going to be, that's the kind of central Baldwinian argument that I think is a kind of radically democratic argument that calls on each of us as individuals, as citizens, and as human beings to really care more deeply about the millions of details of our lives that are really make all of us complicit in structures of power that are fundamentally unjust. That was awesome. What you just said. Uh, it sounds like Baldwin was in touch with the inner ego. You know, if you've ever looked at some of the stuff that was put out on, uh,

ego and ego self and then scarcity, of course, and struggling with that thing and that self image. Um, but yeah, I, I, I'm going to read a whole lot more about Baldwin. You've turned me on to him, of course. So when you get a copy of your great book. And it's just so amazing. My brain is just broke right now going 55 years later and we still have this problem. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, just really quick, Chris, I think that Baldwin, you know, he's many things, right?

But I think this idea that, you know, you just connect him to like the field of psychology, right? He is, he's a kind of moral psychologist. He wants us to try to make sense of what it is that really makes us tick because he thinks that again is the root, that'll get us to the root of our trouble. And it also is the key to our salvation and salvation. I should say for Baldwin is not something that we will achieve. We'll wake up one fine day and we'll be saved. It is perpetual challenge for us to challenge for us to try to grapple with who we really are and try to figure out who we want to be. And I think we're still going to have these problems hundreds of years from now. I mean, I've had a lot of discussions with my friends over this and on Facebook and, you know, there's some people that are like, well, we just really need that 1950s

generation to pass away. That would really help because younger generations don't have the sort of thing. But I still think people get picked up on it. I think when historians look back on this era, they're going to see the Obama years where we all went kumbaya. We went, OK, well, we fixed that racial thing. There's a black president, you know, and he did his job. But it drug out the closet racists it it it festered these people that had these closeted feelings and interracial bias that hadn't been

cleansed yet i thought i cleansed most of mine but i even discovered you know there were tropes that i still had that that i'm like hey whoa that's not cool cool anymore. And just kind of unconscious biases and stuff. We're seeing this in the laws that have been written. We're seeing this in the statues that were built. You know, I've learned so much. Even recently, I've learned a lot. Like someone was talking about how, you know, these Daughters of the Confederacy,

a lot of the street names that they named in the South were after Confederate generals. And one gentleman, I don't know if it was Eddie Claude Jr. or I think it might have been the Rev Sharpton, but they were talking about how their fathers wouldn't drive down those streets because of the way they were named. And then it occurred to me that that was a form of redlining because that would keep black people from moving into your area because the way the streets were, I'm like this, this, the, the sadistic sort of just, just the way that was, the whole thing was've that's got me through this is uh president

obama's speech uh in the in the rose garden before he left office and he said you know the american democracy it takes a zig and it zags and sometimes we're gonna zig and hopefully we zag back and that's that's been the log yeah yeah absolutely. And I think, you know, one thing about, you know, the, the, this is one of the things that I admire about Baldwin is that, you know, in terms of the zigs and the zags, right, he, he would encourage us, you know, again, as I said before, to recognize that the zag if Trump, you know, is the zag, right, that that is a manifestation of something deeper, but also not to get too wrapped up in particular political personalities that we identify as heroes or saviors, right? So, you know, Baldwin, you know, very famously, throughout his career, and even in the night

when he debates Buckley, he goes after Robert Kennedy, right, who is this kind of progressive hero. And part of what Baldwin is arguing is that not, you know, that Kennedy is, you know, from Baldwin's perspective, is certainly politically preferable to Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. But he does also see in the Kennedys, you know, he's there to critique them. And he would, I think if Baldwin were alive, I can, you know, this is always a dangerous thing to do. If Baldwin were alive during the Obama administration, he would have been there to be a perpetual critic of Obama and to call him out in ways in which he was falling short. And that's not to say without taking,

getting that whole nother argument going about whether or not that's justified. But Baldwin would be there to say like, look, these politicians, you know, who we have in office and these laws that we pass and all these things are, are absolutely crucial.

And we need to, we need to stay focused on those things. But he, he ultimately does think we have to turn back and think about ourselves, right? The rise of Obama is significant in American political history. But Baldwin would be there to say, yes, but this is important, but not the end of, you know, it's not a post-racial era to be sure. The kind of delusions by which we live are still there. They're still there. And we saw them manifest themselves in the reaction to Obama and Obama's election and Obama's service in office, whatever they did to sort of,

you know, sort of make dents in the fortress of white supremacy. They certainly did not take down the fortress of white supremacy, which is what we really need to do. That's our responsibility fundamentally. And so I think that's a really crucial thing to keep in mind as well i and i don't know maybe this is for a whole other topic but you know it's it's become obvious to me that you know i remember being a kid in the age where they had to start putting warning labels on everything like don't jump off the bridge and we had to realize there are people so stupid in this world that we've got to put up signs, tell them not to jump off the bridge. Um,

and we're seeing, our argument has been with the social media platforms that, Hey, you know, there's some shit that's so vile. It just needs to be taken off. You can't trust people with it. Um,

and of course then free speech comes in and everything else, but it'll be interesting this journey Ron. And I'm just amazed by your book and the content of it. And man, I'm learning a whole lot of good stuff. Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, and this is where, as we're confronting, as you're pointing out these issues of speech, you know, how we think about our commitment to speech and our commitment to inclusion and equality. Those are, those are debates that we need to have and we absolutely need to try to, to come to terms with, with what it reveals that people are willing to,

this is what people are thinking. They're willing to say these things. I mean, one thing about Baldwin that I think is, you know, might be out of step with our times in some ways is that he actually, in some ways, was happy to see people reveal what they really thought. Baldwin said, I would rather have a conversation with a Southern segregationist than I would a lot of white liberals. And Baldwin said, the reason is the Southern segregationist will be honest with me about what he really thinks, and then we can have a conversation. Baldwin was really, one of the things he criticized more than anything else is a kind of evasion of the truth about who we really are and what we really

think about these very, very difficult issues. And so I think that there's something in that that is, and I'm not saying Baldwin is absolutely right about this. I don't know what Baldwin would think about so-and-so being banned from Twitter or whatever. But I mean, Baldwin was somebody who was willing to engage, as we saw on the night that he debated Buckley and he debated Buckley once more, that his agents didn't want him to do it. You know, his friends didn't want to do it. They didn't want him to dignify Buckley with, you know, he did, there were individuals he refused to engage. And he said, you know, there's there's something about, you know, if you refuse to recognize my humanity, then there's nothing that you and I can really talk about. Right. And, and so I think that's a really big, a really big challenge. And one thing that Baldwin said that was really powerful that the Cambridge debate is he says, what concerns me most is that we are unable to

communicate. We're so unable to communicate in our politics that the very authority of reason, the very authority of discourse, loses its basis in our society, right? And that is where, you know, where reason ends, war begins. And I think about when I sort of remind people of that line when I'm talking about the book, again, 55 years ago, you have Baldwin saying that in 1965, a kind of moment of actually high political consensus in the United States. And now we look at where we are now with these alternative realities and alternative facts and the crazy world of social media. And it's horrifying, right?

But I would say just to sort of end on a moment of hope, right, is that Baldwin does call on us to not feel despair, right? Even at the end of his life in 1987, when he's feeling, you know, a lot of a lot more despair than he was in the mid 60s, where I'm, you know, focused the end of the book. He says that, you know, each of us has a responsibility to to have hope so long as we're breathing. We have a responsibility each and every day, each and every moment, to try to make the world more human than it was yesterday. And that's something Baldwin is constantly calling on us to do. And he had moments of despair, don't get me wrong.

And certainly by the late 60s, after Martin Luther King is assassinated, he's much less hopeful. But he does call on all of us to feel that sense of hope and not really hope, but responsibility. Again, we are all in, we all have a responsibility to do everything we can to examine the ways in which we are complicit in structures of power that are unjust, and not only to recognize that, but then to do something about it. And, and you know, I think you're right of what Baldwin would say today. I remember early on in Trump's thing when, when,

you know, he was discounting PC and just say whatever you think and feel. Uh, there was an African American gentleman. I apologize. I don't remember who it was. It might've been, uh,

Van Jones or somebody, but they, but they wrote that it was actually good. What was happening with Donald Trump? Because people were saying the quiet part out loud. And he was like, I would rather know that you're an explicit racist and that these are your true feelings than have you smiling and lying to me like you have been with PC all these years. I'd rather know because you've come out. Well, it's been great to have you on, Nicholas. I'd love to have you on again. We could probably talk for hours and debate this. And it's so great that it's topical. And I'm just glad the change is starting to go in the right direction. And that whatever, and you're it, the dying racist white national movement that reared its ugly head

and hopefully acts as a wonderful mirror that changes us. And I hope everyone goes through the journey like you described, where they look inward and that James Baldwin did. Check out the book. It's The Fire Upon Us, James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr.

and the Debate Over the Race in America. I encourage you to get the Debate Over the Race in America. I encourage you to get the book and watch the video. It's definitely – it riveted me and shocked me. In fact, one of the things that stuck with me was the cattle prod comment that Baldwin made. Nicholas, give me your.com so people can check you out on the interwebs. Yeah, so it's www.nicholasbucola.com. And then my Twitter handle, I'm getting better at Twitter by the day, I guess, is bucola underscore Nick. And yeah, check me out there. And if you're

interested in audio books, the book is available on audio for a very reasonable price. I think it's about 50 cents an hour. And so of audible listening and a really great reader reads it. And the audio, I should say, has the full debate, the full audio of the Buckley-Baldwin debate as an appendix to the audio, which is, so the BBC recording that folks definitely should watch online

is incredible. It's edited down to fit within an hour, but on the Audible, you'll get the full recording of the debate, which is definitely worth checking out. And yes, read James Baldwinwin absolutely everybody should should get go out and get the collected essays of james baldwin edited by tony morrison um it's i think it's only under under 20 bucks and you get about 800 pages of baldwin and it's uh it's definitely something

everybody should check out i'm a big study of faces and psychology and when when uh james sits down and william gets up he has this look on his face and his eyes are turning back and forth like this is going to be interesting and then when buckley sits down you can tell buckley is just gone fuck this isn't yeah i'm just a train wreck and and he gets the he gets the uh you know the he doesn't get the standing ovation. He gets that limited ovation. And right then, Bucky's looking around going, yeah, okay. And then they flip to James, and James has this look on his face like,

is this really happening? Like, holy shit. So, yeah, it's great. Magic for the ages and stuff to learn. Anyway, thanks to my audience for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys as well. Go to thecvpn.com or Chris Voss Podcast Network. You subscribe to all nine podcasts.

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