The Dispatch Podcast - Taliban Makes Gains in Afghanistan

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

As the Biden administration seeks to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September, the Taliban is already on the offensive. How should the United States respond? And how should the United States take care of the thousands of Afghans who have aided the United States against the Taliban? The gang discusses. Then, David brings up interesting statistics regarding how often each Supreme Court justice is part of the majority. Does this undermine the traditional categorization of justices along the ideological spectrum? Plus, they talk about the preliminary results in the New York Democratic primary, in which crime was the top voter issue according to opinion polls. What does this mean for the 2022 elections and beyond? Lastly, our hosts discuss the recent backlash from the left against musical actor Lin-Manuel Miranda. Show Notes: -FDD’s Long War Journal on the Taliban offensive -Thomas Joscelyn on Al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan -Thomas Joscelyn on the Taliban gains -Adam Liptak on Supreme Court justices’ proportions in majority Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and David French. This week, we are going to start with what is happening in Afghanistan, a little Supreme Court roundup, which you know David and I are excited about. The New York City mayor's race and the role that crime is going to play in the 2022 midterm elections. And we'll end with a little musical called In the Heights. Let's dive in. I want to start with a story that virtually nobody's talking about it and many, many more people should be. When Joe Biden announced months ago that U.S. troops were going to be leaving Afghanistan by September 11th of 2021, critics, including some of us here, responded with warnings that the U.S. retreat would lead to a brutal and bloody fighting post-withdrawal as the Taliban fought its way back to power. And it turns out that those critics, including us, were optimistic about what's happening. The Taliban isn't waiting.

Their offensive is underway. Afghan government forces are reluctant to fight. the Taliban is overrunning districts and cities throughout the country. There is a broad offensive taking place in northern Afghanistan, fueled by al-Qaeda fighters, aligned with the Taliban, even though we were told that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were going to split. The world has basically reacted with this kind of collective shrug, including, as I say, journalists, media outlets back here in the U.S. United States, the Biden administration are allies that have fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan

for the past two decades. My question will be to you, David, what's going on here and what does it portend for U.S. leadership? I mean, what's going on here is just a rerun of, a rerun on an accelerated timetable from what we've seen in the past. When you remove American forces, it's not just that when you remove American forces, you weaken the actual military strength of your allies. You demoralize them profoundly. And so one of the things that you see in some of these rapid collapses is that an awful a lot of people who have nowhere to go but Afghanistan are trying to figure out who's going

to be running Afghanistan and want to be on that winning side. They want to be on the side that's going to live. And so that's one of the reasons why you sometimes see these rapid collapses, because when you have the most powerful force remove itself, the force that was powerful enough to guarantee your ability to prevail in a fight if it engaged is gone. then you often have this kind of cascade effect where an awful lot of people realize, wait a minute, the person who's going to be running this place

or the people who are going to be running this place, are probably going to be the Taliban, probably going to be the most aggressive jihadists. And so that's one of the reasons why you will see these even well-equipped local military forces stand down or refuse to fight or abandon their posts is because they know which way the wind is blowing. And this often has this accelerating cascade effect.

And nothing about it is surprising. Everything about it isn't just, as was said, after the collapse of Iraq of 2014, 2015. It's not just predictable. It was predicted. The only variable is just how quickly it's happening here compared to Iraq, which had a couple of years of relative. piece after the pull-out.

So all of this was predicted. It's only surprising in how quickly it's happening. And once again, we're going to get into this position where you have this moral atrocity, where people have depended upon us for years. And who we stood beside for years are going to face horrific backlash, horrific atrocities. And then you're going to have the strategic problem of once again handing over a region of the world to the exact entity that has attacked us before from that region of the world as far away as it is. So, Jonah, are we right to be, to assume that this was going to have

happened? I'm certainly surprised that it's happening while U.S. troops are still in country, while we haven't come close to completing the full withdrawal. If you were advising Joe Biden, and getting reports from your military leaders and intelligence analysts and operatives that this was happening. And again, some of this you can read in the press. There's been good reporting from Radio Free Liberty, Radio Europe, and the reporters that they have in-country, Long War Journal, our friend Tom Jocelyn, who writes vital interests, has been reporting on this with his colleague, Bill Rogio, documenting one. district after another after another. If you were giving advice to Joe Biden, would this be enough to get you to slow down the withdrawal or reach out to the Afghan government and say, hey, we're not going to let you be

overrun by the Taliban? What's what's his play now having announced the withdrawal? Yeah, I mean, the problem is if Joe Biden were open to my military advice, which we can all concede is not necessarily like i'm not the top military advisor you would want general goldburn please um but he wouldn't have pulled out this way to begin with right so the the decision tree we're pretty far down the decision tree already if all of a sudden you wanted my advice right now you know and i couldn't pull a share and say turn back time um i would say launch a massive bombing raid on whatever Taliban assets are now out in the open

because they're doing this with impunity. Not because we're going to like re-invade or re-engage in Afghanistan, even though I think there's a good argument for that. But merely, like if you read the David Ignatius piece in the Washington Post from this week, the morale in the Afghan military is deteriorating really, really quickly. And I think for exactly reasons David lays out, It's kind of like a run on a bank.

You don't have to have, you know, if you're talking about the life of your family, you know, of your kids and your own life, perfect information is a complete luxury, right? You have to go with your best guess of minimizing the chances that your daughters are going to be, you know, you know, horribly mistreated. I don't want to get too graphic.

And your sons are going to be killed are drafted into the Taliban or that you're going to be shot. And if you see the one side basically bugging out and scurrying for cover because it's applying that same heuristic in their lives, you're like, okay, look, and the way the Taliban is doing this, which I think we talked about a couple weeks ago, is very smart. They want to seem like this is inevitable because that yields quicker capitulation every time they try to take a new territory because they look,

the other guy's caved. They saw the writing on the wall. You should too. Why put up any, why resist? And if we could do, if we could launch some sort of major counteroffensive, even if it was mostly symbolic, but had the psychological effect of showing the Afghans that not all is lost, I think that would be the moral thing to do. It might buy us some time. It might buy some better behavior from the Taliban. It might give us a little maneuvering room to get more of our, at least our advisors and our translators out of there. But at the end of day, it's very hard not to see how this isn't going to be a replay of Saigon.

And we may not have Afghans clinging to the skids of helicopters, literally, but metaphorically, we're already seeing that. And it's very depressing. And the fact that it was seen as necessary to put an end to an quote unquote endless war that really had remarkably few casualties, I mean, once too many, it's just sort of to highlights how this was mostly for domestic consumption and to fulfill a narrative rather than actually based on geopolitical or geostrategic interests. So, Sarah, taking the other side of this for a minute, we've been there for 20 years. I mean, it'll almost be 20 years. It'll be 20 years by September 11th,

a little bit after September 11th, 2021, which Joe Biden said as the withdrawal date. We have been fighting and training the Afghan National Security Forces, Afghan military, Afghan police, throughout most of that time, we have done everything we can to stand up a serious, credible Afghan government, and this is what happens. You know, all of that work, and you're seeing Afghan security forces fold in one place after another, you're seeing an Afghan national government that's still not strong enough, even to stand up to the Taliban or to rally regional partners in its defense. Isn't this sort of just the natural next steps of the end of U.S. engagement? I mean, what did we expect when we said

that we were going to withdraw? And you've got the American people, you believe issue polling, which you might not. But if you believe issue polling, they don't want to be there anymore. They're sort of done with this. So you've channeled a lot of my arguments here. Let me flip something. What did we expect when we pulled out?

Let me change it to what do you expect when you lose a war? This is what happens. And you mentioned Saigon. Like, well, there are other parallels to Saigon. We were there for 20 years. We had a reason to be there. We got Osama bin Laden. There are bad places in the world,

and there are bad things that happen in those places, and there are terrible governments, and there are people who are experiencing atrocious human rights abuses. That is not our job to prevent. Now, I will say, when you go in and ask people to work with you and then don't take them with you at the end,

that actually is then a human rights. abuse that is on our watch. So I want to distinguish between Afghanistan is about to be a very bad place to live from those 18,000 or so people who helped U.S. forces. By the way, I just want to read some of the things that the Taliban has been saying. Senior leader on Tuesday, some of those people who are claiming they will be harmed, they are maybe just wanting to get out of here or get somewhere else. That is why they are saying that. The Taliban, ban will not harm them. Okay. Well, that sounded nice. But then this guy in their official statement, when they abandoned enemy ranks and opt to live as ordinary Afghans in their homeland,

they will not face any issues. That sounds less promising. And then you see that 300 Afghans out of the 18,000, who worked for the U.S. have been killed and targeted assassination since 2014. Hmm. That number is going to pick up, I fear. But I will say that I was very heartened when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said they haven't ruled anything out. And he included in that the possible evacuation of those people to a third country or to like Guam as their applications are processed. And we've talked about this before. But by a statute, it's supposed to take nine months. It's currently taking four years. Add into that a little doubt. of COVID, a little dash of bureaucratic incompetence, and boom, you've got a really bad situation. I love the idea of getting those people out now, quickly, don't wait for Kabul to fall and move them to Guam. Aside from the concern that Guam will tip, as a congressman once predicted, I think that would be the best realistic outcome right now. And from there, unfortunately, Steve, I know that you sort of, you were strongmaning the opposing argument, but I agree with that.

I think 20 years was too long. I think there were far, far too many American casualties over a very murky set of goals in that country that were unattainable. And boy, if we weren't sure how unattainable they were, just check out the last few weeks after 20 years how quickly the country is falling to the Taliban. We should have been gone 10 years ago. so that's a good argument but mostly wrong um the the problem well first on on the on the 18 thousand of course i think you're right and there's a very strong compelling moral argument that the united states owes them um everything you suggest a selfish argument on behalf of the united states that we want those 18 000 people out as well there's a bit there's a there's a

There is a selfish argument. I think it extends far beyond those 18,000 people. I think the moral argument extends far beyond those 18,000 people. Those are, those are the people that we can identify who've directly worked with U.S. troops and diplomats on the ground in Afghanistan over the years. There is a far, far larger class of, of Afghans who have also worked with the U.S. government, but not in that kind of official capacity. Tribal leaders who have encouraged their members to work with the United States, to not to fight with the Taliban, who've resisted overtures or threats from the Taliban,

who are basically sitting ducks at this point. And that number is far, far greater than 18,000. I think it'll be a tremendous moral stain on the United States if we don't actually step up to defend them. I think you have to worry beyond that about a safe haven. I mean, we, this isn't theoretical. We have seen what happens when you give jihadists a safe haven place to operate like Afghanistan. That's what was happening in the days before 9-11.

Obviously, we've become a much harder target. Our homeland is much more secure today than it was then. But we shouldn't dilute ourselves into thinking that the ideology and the bloodlust that drove jihadists, back then has abated in the 20 years since. So how long do you stay? Is it another 20? Or is it forever? I think you keep a presence as long as you need to keep a presence to keep our promises to the Afghan people and to keep America secure. And that does not mean, as Rand Paul might suggest, massive troop presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. It means a small, nimble

but fierce fighting force capable of taking out bad guys when they either attack American allies and interests in the region or plot against the United States back here, plot against plot attacks on the homeland. I think it's just irresponsible, as David pointed out. I mean, we saw what happened in Iraq when we left. There's no reason to believe that that same kind of thing won't happen in Afghanistan. And there are, I think if you talk to U.S. intelligence officials, some of them anyway, who've studied the current situation closely, you'll find that many of them believe, many might be, many of them believe that the Afghan government's going to fall,

and it's probably going to fall pretty quickly. What happens then? Then we have a country that's just run by the Taliban, given everything we know about what the Taliban has done in the past, given the fact that all of the optimistic predictions that the Taliban would, or that the Taliban would stand up to al-Qaeda, preposterous predictions when they were made look even more absurd now as we watch the Taliban and al-Qaeda continue to fight alongside one another against the Afghan government. what what happens what happens in that scenario we just throw up our shoulder and say you know what we've decided that 20 years is is too long this is the time so we got to go that's worry about it last last point i'll make and then i'll i'll zip it i'm concerned about this primarily i would say because of afghanistan itself and what happens with afghanistan pakistan in the region but we'd be crazy to think that other adversaries aren't watching this very, very carefully. As tensions

rise in Taiwan, what do you think the Chinese Communist Party leadership is thinking as they watch this capitulation? As Vladimir Putin, you know, provokes confrontations in Belarus and Ukraine, what do we think he's thinking as he watches the United States, just abandon an erstwhile ally? I say the same is true with respect to negotiations in Iran. I think the message that this sends about the United States leadership in the world is a poor one and could have grave consequences, even if you think, and I don't, even if you think Afghan itself isn't that important.

you know one thing steve i mean and this we it's so worth emphasizing this we're talking about a very small light footprint force that was more than sufficient to largely keep the taliban at bay and if you look at the you know american casualties in afghanistan the last hostile fire casualty was February 8th, 2020. And it's June 23rd, 2021. So what we're not talking about here, and this is, again, similar to Iraq, we're not talking about the kind of combat that you had seen for many years in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What you're talking about is essentially the presence of American forces represents a commitment. And once that, when that presence is there, what is really remarkable is how much better and more effectively our allies fight.

And again, keep going back to the Iraq example, when we were not there, and it was, again, a relatively small footprint. We're talking about a brigades worth of troops would have stopped a genocide. And so, but when we were not there, what it created this cascade effect that I talked about earlier, when you are there, some of the same people, who cut and ran in front of ISIS in 2014, 2015, actually fought some of the most intense urban combat in decades to eject ISIS from the country. But again, all of that was completely avoidable, completely avoidable.

So, you know, one of the things I think when you hear the terms, endless war, endless war, endless war, endless war, you know, a lot of Americans don't realize how small our footprint was. They don't realize how infrequent casualties had become, but they're about to realize what it means when you take that small number of people out of the country. They're about to see once again what happens. And is America safer with an ascendant Taliban and al-Qaeda having a safe haven? Is America safer?

And the answer to Sarah's question about how long do you fight is you fight exactly as long as your self-defense obligation. exists. And your self-defense obligation exists when there are people who have struck your country and have struck it as hard as any enemy has ever struck it, who are on the offensive to reclaim the territory they lost. And that, I think that that's, I don't, I don't think that's a tough formula. It's just difficult to motivate people to execute it over time. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda struck our country. I just want to clarify. Al-Qaeda is, is, al-Qaeda is. Al-Qaeda. is embedded within the Taliban. Similar leadership. I'm literally the same people in the leadership

structure in many cases. I just want to clarify. Yeah. I think there's a weird analogy to Israel, which we don't have to get too bogged down in. But, you know, defenders of Israel will say, or critics of Israel will say, look at their human rights abuses, look at their, you know, look at all of these various things that they do. It's outrageous. And we can argue about whether or not it's in fact, outrageous. But what defenders will say is, well, why aren't you pissed off about, I don't know, the Uyghurs or what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen? And part of the problem is it sort of, it's looking for your car keys where the light is good effect. We've had troops in the Sinai Peninsula far longer than we've had troops in Afghanistan to defend the Israel-Egypt

peace agreement. You know, we've had troops deployed all sorts of places. The length of time isn't, it doesn't seem to me to be really the issue. And I think, I think while Sarah does a good job, you do a good job of painting or implying that I'm a doe-eyed neocon who just wants to spread democracy around the world, the reality is, as I've been saying on this podcast for weeks now, you can make a very strong realpolitik

argument for holding on to Kabul and some other strategic parts, maintaining a base amidst this return to great power rivalry just seems to me like a smart thing to do. And, you know,

heaven for fend that I become not only the feminist ally, but the lead feminist on here, but there have been like really remarkable things happening for women in Afghanistan, or at least in Kabul and related areas in terms of returning to school, in terms of

literacy in terms of not having to wear a sack over your head, not getting burned by acid. And I remember when right before 9-11, this was the major cause-seleb of a lot of progressive feminist types. And then they got very angry that George W. Bush was using it in the context of the war on terror stuff. So I just think it's a more complicated thing. And I think the criteria of too long leaves out too much compared to other places where we've been longer. I think it does too. And you, you sing to my heart when you talk about America's

self-interest. That's where I am. That is where you can convince me. As far as, you know, the feminism part, yeah, it's incredibly bad. And there are incredibly bad places to be a woman across the freaking world. So, you know, it sucks. long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain, on top of everything else, is why life insurance indeed matters.

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Application times may vary, rates may vary. With that, uplifting note on what it's like to be a woman in, you know, probably 87% of our landmass, probably parts of the ocean. David, take us to the Supreme Court. One first street. That was a very subtle shot at Aquaman, by the way. No, I want you to know that Aquaman is committed. to the common good,

Jenna. Absolutely. The kingdom of Atlantis is in good hands. All right. So there has been an interesting response to a number of Supreme Court decisions in this term. Now, some of what I'm about to tell you is going to change to some degree because today, today we have Supreme Court opinions coming down in only 27 minutes.

We're going to have more opinions coming down for the rest of this term. But there's some interesting alignments here that Adam Liptack of the New York Times discussed. And we're not going to really break this down in legal nerdery terms. We might talk about it more in sort of political, cultural terms. But the very short answer is this. It's that it looks like the more recent, Trump appointees, justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, have been very adept at voting with the majority and that some of the older line conservative justices have found themselves, contrary to a lot of

expectations, in the minority a lot. So let me just start with this. This term, Justice Kavanaugh, has voted with the majority in divided cases more than any other member of the court. 87% of the time. Since in his entire tenure, Kavanaugh has been in the majority 85% of the time. Two other Trump appointees, not far behind. Justice Barrett is with the majority 82% of the time. Justice Gorsuch, third at 80% tied with Elena Kagan. So what you have there is you have the three justices appointed by Trump.

Now, one explanation might be, well, of course, because of Trump, there's now a majority. And since the majority is, you know, there's six Republican appointees, of course these numbers are going to be like that. But then you go down, says by contrast, Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative who might have thought that his views would be embraced by his new colleagues was in the majority in divided cases just 36% of the time. And I like this, Sarah, you'll like this. He used the wrong term to describe Alito. We know what the right one is. LipTAC says, that helps explain his aggrieved tone. No.

Should be spicy. Should be spicy. Yes. In concurring and dissenting opinions and clash between religious freedom and gay rights, Fulton v. Philadelphia case in the context and in the Affordable Care Act. So I'm going to go to you, Sarah, one part of the advisory opinion's hive mind. and ask you, is Adam, is this, are these statistics interesting to you? And if so, why? If not, why not? I mean, always. I mean, I love statistics and I love the Supreme Court. So what's not to love

about statistics about the Supreme Court? I do think that if you're a close Supreme Court, watch your statistics only get you so far because, you know, the actual opinions, each one of them is its own little stew that you have to taste and savor and it stinks up the whole kitchen. I think that what has been most interesting to me about this term with Justice Barrett on the court has been what appears to be every justice kind of trying out their own thing a little bit. And so set aside those statistics entirely. What you've seen is that it's not easy to pin down where everyone is on any given opinion, even along the ideological spectrum where I think it is pretty clear where each of them fall, you know, if you were to just chart

conservative to liberal. And I see a lot of reporters doing that, except that when it comes to Supreme Court cases, that's not a very helpful way to chart them. Because you can have Gorsuch, who's incredibly conservative, if you were to chart conservative to liberal, except then you're going to get Bostock. You're going to get criminal defense cases. cases, textualist cases, where he's going to be all over the map because the cases themselves don't chart on to the conservative to liberal spectrum very well. Kavanaugh and Barrett out there trying out some judicial minimalism. Kagan trying to just hold on to precedent no matter what.

I think, I hope, I foolishly hope, because I know this isn't going to happen. like we need to get rid of the conservative to liberal spectrum for a little while and instead talk about where each of these people's interests are in furthering the law under their own sort of legacy. And I, what's interesting to me and what I can't answer is why Justice Barrett's addition to the court freed them all up to do this in a way that you didn't see under the regime of Anthony Kennedy. Now, maybe it was just because it was the regime of Anthony.

Kennedy for a very long time is the swing vote. And so everyone just got very used to what their place was, how they voted, who they voted with. And it became a little bit of intellectual laziness in that sense. But for some reason, Amy Coney Barrett joins the court. You're done with the Anthony Kennedy swing vote regime. And it's just like, it's a party on one first street. And I am here for it. So, Jonah, is this all, you know, you go through these statistics, and I do like how LipTAC did the statistics not along the sort of analysis that said voted conservative 85% of the time because, you know, what does that mean exactly in many of these cases, but voted with the majority, which was a much more interesting analysis, is, does this, is this a harbinger of a wave that said, well, you know, the justice, we've been let down again by the justices, or is all of this just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to everyone until the abortion ruling? And that's the thing that's

really going to matter. I'm inclined to say, blah, blah, blah, blah, until the abortion ruling. Just because it's, you know, these are weighted, this is, these are weighted scoring. And so abortion ruling equals like 500 other rulings in terms of the politics of it. That said, if the abortion ruling is something of a halfway to a punt, or is a modest conservative victory but so modest that it doesn't fulfill the apocalypticism of the left, I think even under that circumstance, this court packing thing is now just, it might as well be a Dungeons and Dragons Club. You know, it is so disconnected from political reality. It is, it's fun. It's interesting to talk about, you know, oh my gosh, I'm a level nine court packer, you know, that kind of thing.

But it's not, it's not real. And, and I find, I find, these days, I find, If any narrative, or I shouldn't say narrative because we're all sick with narrative talk, any series of events that lend themselves to the reemergence of institutionalists and that lend credence and support to claims that the world is not going to end tomorrow and that the living will not envy the dead, I favor. And so, like, modest, unanimous decisions that are done on small technicalities, you know, are small issues rather than broad sweeping ones, they tend to make me happy, particularly when they go my way. And when they undermine the narrative, the talking point that, you know, but for, you know, a court packed by right wingers, we could all have nice things. The more that gets marginalized, I think the better it is for the country.

And other than that, you know, I am not the court watcher. You guys are. I don't, I think those stats are interesting. I find the arguments between different flavors of originalists and strict constructionists and all those guys much more interesting and much less relevant, I have to say, to the national conversation, but that's where my geekiness expresses itself. So, Steve, there's something interesting about this article,

and that is, so you have these conservative, well, Republican appointed justices who are voting in the minority 80-something percent of the time, but there's this other person there, Elena Kagan, 80 percent of the time. And you know what? And maybe I've missed it. I don't know that I've, you know,

I could, I could, there could be some far left corners of the internet that I'm not dwelling in and that would be accurate. I don't notice a huge amount of hand-wringing over whether or not Justice Kagan is betraying the left by joining with these majority opinions 80% of the time. And I guess sort of a similar question to Jonah, would the explanation for that be, you know, blah, blah, blah, who really? cares until abortion? Or is the explanation that one side of the political aisle is just put more weight on what the Supreme, it just rests more of its heart and hopes in the Supreme Court than the other side of the political aisle? Well, I think both of those factors could be true, and there's a third that I would add, and that is, in the context of the current makeup of the court with it being dominated by Republican appointed justices, having a Democratic appointed justice

that doesn't sort of tow the line or isn't a predictably, you know, liberal, to go back into the old framing, liberal vote matters less because there are bigger issues, right? There's a bigger majority if you look at this through the prism of partisan politics. But I think, you know, the I thought the Kagan thing sort of jumped out at me in the Adam Liptack article for a number of reasons. I'm interested, and I'm actually interested in pushing this back to you and Sarah. You know, you read that article and you look at that analysis, and the thing it made me think was how poor our coverage of nominations has been. because the shorthand on every nomination is Republican or Democrat, then it's conservative

or liberal, and it's almost always through the prism of abortion, which I think is what feeds the question that you posed to Jonah and the one that you posed to me. But it's really a bad way of looking at these things. And my question to you, I mean, I go back and I, you know, I participated in some of the special coverage of the confirmation battles during the Obama administration on Fox News. I followed the subsequent nomination fights pretty carefully. And while it was evident that there were serious differences between or among the Republican-appointed justices, I wouldn't have predicted based on what I saw at the,

those confirmation hearings, the kinds of analyses that Adam Lyttec presented in this New York Times piece. And I'm wondering, back to you and Sarah, is that because I just lack a certain level of sophistication in my understanding of how to think about this as I'm watching the nomination fights? Or could you have predicted what we've seen based on how you watched the nomination to fights. I mean, I would say last point before I actually kick it back to you, the Kagan thing strikes me as not terribly surprising because I saw her as a more independent voice based on her hearings. She seemed willing to be more independent. She had a history of independence at Harvard. She had won praise from Antonin Scalia and others for her independence. So while I wouldn't

of predicted what we've seen. It's also not, it doesn't sort of knock me back with surprise. How do you all look back at the confirmation hearings in light of the statistics that LipTac presented today? She hired Kavanaugh at Harvard. Kagan did. I'm super interested. Let me, let me fling this. I'll just lateral of this over to Sarah with this question. Have you been surprised, Sarah, by any of what we have seen? Yeah, no, I mean, so I am. The confirmation hearings I find so wholly unhelpful, they are entirely political theater. They're nothing about not only how someone will rule, because that's not even the point of

them. You don't, a justice judge can't tell you how they're going to rule on specific cases, but they're not anymore remotely. about their judicial philosophy, because no one's actually interested in that or any nuance surrounding it. They just want to know, like, how Republican are you? And then you have the judge or justice trying to tell you that that's not really how they view themselves. They don't think about that that often. And then everyone says they're lying. And so, like, that's the confirmation hearing. So is any of the surprising based on, like, confirmation hearing? No, but I think if you want to

know anything about a potential justice, not watching the confirmation hearing will go a long way toward helping you understand the justice. Like, use that time and read their past opinions, and you'll learn infinitely more than anything in the colloquy with some U.S. senators on either side of the aisle. I agree with that entirely. My only caveat is it's worth listening to the introduction, because it's nice to hear the story about where they are and where they came from, and then you can turn it off, you know. So true. The one part, by the way, of the confirmation hearing, speaking of that, Jonah, is that Kavanaugh kept talking about how he was a coach of his girls' basketball team.

That has turned out to be incredibly relevant this term in two cases at the oral argument. He talked about how he was a coach. The NCAA case, he talked about it a lot, and the cheerleader, the angry cheerleader First Amendment case, whether they can punish this girl for saying F cheerleading on our own time on social media. Also, he talked a lot about how he was a basketball coach and how maybe the cheerleading. coach just isn't a very good cheerleading coach. So there, that's something you could have learned from the confirmation hearing that came up this term and actually informed his opinions. But nobody paid attention to that.

Instead, they were mocking him for his sort of self-defined narrative of who he was. He was trying to tell you who he was. Yeah. You know, two things on this. One, we have to look at Kavanaugh and Barrett differently, I think. Kavanaugh had a big record. You know, if you're going to look at his record as a judge, he had a big record. And so you could look at that, and a lot of us looked at that and said, this is a super,

and this is a, this is the kind of person who almost any Republican president would have appointed to the Supreme Court, impeccable credentials, impressive record of scholarship, impressive record, a judicial record you can unpack and examine. And one that's of, you know, there may be in the Second Amendment area he might have been more bold, but in a lot of areas, this is not a person who was a judicial revolutionary. Now, the more wildcard person was Amy Coney Barrett. But she had not been on the bench a very long time. She did not have that long record of cases.

And then the other thing is, but because she was on what you might want to call the Federalist slash academic slash judicial career track, which an awful lot of folks are, you are, one thing that's interesting about that career track is it's almost designed from the ground up to get you confirmed. it's it's just from the ground up so if you're going to write about a hot button issue it's going to be from an interesting academic angle you're going to be very careful with your words and so for the standpoint of conservatives what ends up happening is you then look to other things to sort of like a judicial signal are they a member of the federalist society yes they're a member of the federalist society wait a minute let's go back even earlier than that did they volunteer for a pro-life charity. Yeah, they volunteered for a pro-life charity.

Or is there, you know, what area is their scholarship emphasize on? Oh, they've written about originalism. Okay, these are all signal flares shooting up in the sky. But they don't necessarily tell you a whole heck of a lot. And so everyone is sort of groping around making guesses. And with Kavanaugh, your guesses were less guessy. because he had such a long track record. With Barrett,

a lot of people had a lot of confidence that she was going to be a bold jurist not necessarily based on the, not her judicial record or her record of scholarship, but more based on identity markers. Do you think that's fair to say, Sarah? I'm not sure, David,

I would use groping and Kavanaugh in the same sentence or you're going to set off a bunch of additional rumors and lies from the law. left, you know? The left will take that and run with it and find new people to make stuff up about Kavanaugh. Well, David, before we move to the next topic, my long form piece on the Chief Justice just published. And so perhaps we can talk about it on A.O. tomorrow, because I think it's the next, like, it carries on nicely from this conversation if people want to hear more about it. I'm just going to read you, like, maybe my favorite sentence in the piece. Roberts has few

allies among the people you might expect to champion him. I don't mean in a behind. his back front of me sort of way. It's more of an all-out. You can't sit with us, Regina George, in Mean Girls' way. So if you want to hear more about the Chief Justice and what the court is now, tune in.

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and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca. slash yanex. All right. Next topic, New York City Democrats voted in their primary for mayor and a bunch of other things last night. We have the first round results. We will not know who the next mayor of New York City is going to be for at least one week and potentially into July.

So it's not that my topic is on what this election told us and what the new mayor is going to be, like, and frankly, I don't care that much about New York City. I don't, of all the cities in the U.S., not anywhere close to my top. But there were some really interesting things going on in New York and the fact that this was a Democratic primary, you know, are there some things we can take away to 2022 about it? So, Jonah, I'm going to start with you. Crime in New York City, homicides have gone up 53% in the last two years. shootings up at least 100%. in the last two years. On the one hand, New York City is not representative of the country, certainly,

but it's not even representative of the Democratic Party. And you have very few even New York City Democrats who voted in this election. So I don't want to oversell what this means, quote, unquote. But it was an issue poll, but nevertheless, I think it was meaningful because of the wide gap. New York City Democrats said that their number one issue going into the polls was crime, rising in the city. And the first round results, 30% voted for Eric Adams, the former NYPD officer, who basically said he was going to crack down on crime. That was going to be his top priority as mayor. Does this spell doom for the progressive movement inside the Democratic Party coalition going into 2022?

Or can they explain this away? and does it matter what the end result is between Eric Adams and Maya Wiley and Catherine Garcia? A lot there. Doom, I think, is overstated because when you have as many institutions grading you on a curve

as the sort of progressive base of the Democratic Party gets, you're never truly down and out. So this has been something... Put it this way, because it'll dovetail a little bit with my topic next. I've been sort of obsessed by this idea that a sliver of the Democratic elite activist base

combined with journalists and some politicians like AOC, they've managed to convince other journalists and the broad majority of the official Democratic Party that because they talk a lot about black and brown communities of color and marginalized people and they use all the right shibbolists about diversity and equity and all these kinds of things, that they've convinced an enormous number of people that they actually represent the views of black and brown communities

when in reality the average African-American democratic voter in this country is way to the right of the Democratic Party. I'm not way to the right, but to the right of the Democratic Party. And I think that this is a great example of that. You know, this is all, I think, started with AOC, who did not do particularly well with blacks and Latinos. She beat Crowley in a very small turnout primary because she did well with this group I've been calling the barista socialist white boys. You know, these very woke, white liberal. voters in queens who you know have open-toed shoes and closed minds and the um but they've convinced

everybody else that they in fact speak for these groups and you know whether it's defund the police or latin x or any of these kinds of things it turns out they don't and so in a in a city that has really long institutional muscle memory even among immigrants of what crime was like in New York, you have a black mayor. And I think the fact that he's black is hugely important because it doesn't allow you to say, oh, this white guy is promising to crack down on black people. You know, instead, it's a black guy saying, I'm going to crack down on crime, which most black voters in New York are very sympathetic to. And, you know, and as we were sort of discussing in the green room, I think this also confirms another longstanding argument of ours, which is that

primaries can be really distorting. And if you have very low turnout in primaries, you're boosting and amplifying, highly motivated voters who tend to be more ideological, unless there is a prevailing issue like crime that swamps that effect. And that seems to me maybe what is happening here. It's a little too soon to say that turnout was very low.

But you asked if this, is the doom for the activist sort of left, I don't think it does. I think it really complicates the picture for them. You know, I was saying to my wife the other day, there was a little off topic, I just would love to imagine if Rahm Emanuel were the chief of staff in this White House and the Biden budget comes out that has scrubbed the word mother and replaced it with birthing persons, what he would have said, right? Because this is going to get to the point. no normal, even very liberal, black and Hispanic people refer to their moms as their birthing persons.

And this disconnect between the ideological lingua franca of this tiny elite group of people who have this outsized influence on the debate and the actual facts on the ground is a huge problem for the Democrats. And I think the New York mayor election is ground zero for that. So, Jonah, I have a follow question. I'm looking at the heat map of where each candidate did well.

And I don't know a lot about New York City, but Eric Adams crushed it in Brooklyn and the Bronx, with the exception that Maya Wiley, and really her only vote, is in Williamsburg and Astoria. I don't know much about those places. Manhattan was all Catherine Garcia, which is fascinating. Yeah. And Queens, Andrew Yang, crushing in Queens. Interesting. So does that back up what you just said? You know, I don't know for sure.

I mean, I would like to get more granular on some of that because, I mean, Manhattan is the least surprising because Catherine Garcia is basically the Bloomberg candidate, as far as I can tell. Highly competent. To the New York Times endorsement. Yeah. Highly competent, technocratic, liberal, but not angry about it kind of person, you know, literally for New Yorkers, if you ran the Sanitation Department, well. That is as close as you get to sort of the Mussolini argument about making the trains run on time. And I think that's sort of where that explains that. But I don't know.

I should have someone on the remnant who just does New York politics come on and explain it all for me. Like it. All right. Steve, this is not just New York City. Crime has risen in 63 of the 66 largest metropolises in the United States. We're looking at about a 30 percent rise in homicides over two years, extraordinary. It's hard to even put that in perspective of how quickly that number has skyrocketed. But from a low base, we should be clear, right? I mean, it's 20 years.

Yeah. For 2022, did Republicans just see in New York how to defeat Democrats on this issue? Yes, I would say to a large extent they have. I mean, you know, one of the things I appreciate about you, Sarah, you're writing in the sweep and the way that you talk about this on the podcast is you always caveat it by saying, let's not take a small slice of a small slice of a small slice of a small slice and reach broad conclusions. So we should be careful not to do that here. Having said that, this is not the only data point, right? I mean, if you look at 2020 and you look at the effect of the defund the police argument there, you talk to Democratic consultants and they will tell you it had a tremendously negative effect,

and it drove away some of the erstwhile stalwart Democrats from the sort of democratic base. And I think you look at that, you look at what happened in New York City, you look at the crime numbers that you suggested, and you look forward to 2022, it would be political malpractice for Republicans not to do this. this and not to engage in nutpicking and elevate the arguments.

I'm making this as a strictly political case, not that it's the right thing to do necessarily in a broader sense because it will be distortive, but elevate the arguments of the people making the defund the police case. And it goes beyond defund the police. I mean, you know, you've had in recent weeks these viral videos. of shoplifters and Walgreens in California, making out with a trash bag full of things eventually caught, but basically not stopped as he was doing it. You have prosecutors who have said, in effect, we're not going to prosecute people engaged in that kind of petty theft and smaller crimes because, you know, in some cases, it's understandable that they're committing

these crimes. In other cases, it's not worth our time. Those are the kind of things that Republican strategists around the country will and I think, or should and will pick up on and blow up and say, this is what Democrats are saying about crime. You're experiencing crime in your community. If you're not, you can be sure that Republicans will say it's coming to your community. And the way to be safe is by voting Republican. It's a very, simple message. I think it's likely to be a pretty effective message. And one way you know that it's coming and that Democrats are worried is you have President Joe Biden giving remarks later today. This is we're recording Wednesday morning about crime, trying to get ahead of the issue because I think

Democrats understand that this is very potent. And it would be most interesting to see how, how it exacerbates the existing schism between the progressive, hardcore, you know, woke base, as Jonah describes them, in more moderate Democrats. You know, Democrat, I'd say Democrat divisions don't usually get the kind of media attention that Republican divisions do. I suspect that that will change in this particular instance as we go forward to 2022 and then to 2024. So, David, on the one hand, of course, I entirely agree with Steve. You don't take a small sliver of a small sliver of a small sliver and predict voter behavior. But there is one

thing. I like how you absolutely agree with Steve who was saying that he agreed with you about this very point. It's good, right? But now she's going to contradict the one place I went a little bit away from her. Where he's wrong and a moron was. The butt was coming. That was absolutely coming. This was the with all due respect part of it. And then to be sure. When it comes to predicting voter behavior, Steve is exactly right to say that I'm exactly right. Stop.

Okay, David. React to that, please. But this was also the only major election that we're going to have, you know, in the next until November, basically, when we have some of these off-year general elections in a few states. And so it can be very influential on sort of elite behavior, party behavior, representatives' behavior. So my question to you is, if this is seen as a referendum on how you run in a criminal justice-minded

electorate, how does this affect conversations about criminal justice reform on the Hill? That is a very good question. I mean, I do think there is a, there's a strong perception that they, air is going out of that balloon a little bit. There's a huge difference between an atmosphere of negotiation right after the murder of George Floyd and the negotiation fast forward more than a year in the face of these skyrocketing murder rates. And I do think that that has an impact.

However, one thing that's important, so there's sort of two, there's two aspects to this. One is the political discussion that we've been having, which is, you know, which is, you know, is very important because it helps determine who runs the country. And I do think it's very interesting to see what happens in a mayoral race in New York City, not because I live in New York City, but because it's an interesting test of the strength of the far left of the Democratic Party. If the far left of the Democratic Party can't win New York, how strong is it? Is I think a fair question to ask. But the most consequential question, is what the heck is going on with the murder rate in the United States of America.

And one of the things that I think is important for folks to realize is that this is not just a phenomenon that is happening in the big cities that have had the defund the police arguments. This is not just a phenomenon that is happening in the big cities, period. This is a phenomenon that is sweeping all over the United States of America. murder is up big in every single American region, every single one of them. It's up in red states, it's up in blue states, it's up in all, you know, it's not just up in big cities. And so this is something that I think that we've got to wrestle with that is beyond the defund the police argument, which is in the annals of political slogans, one of the least effect, one of the most, one of the most,

most destructive slogans for a political party's fortunes that I can think of, but let's put that to bed. That is an argument that is lost by the far left. Now, what do we do about this murder surge, which contrary to a lot of perceptions, is not just the product of crime surges or murder surges in a few big cities. This thing is across the country. Why is that? Even in places that back the blue, murder's going up in places where you had to defund the police arguments. Murder is going up. So what do we do about this? And mainly the conversation has been a political conversation about it. It's time to have a conversation that's much deeper than the political conversation. So very quickly, two quick things. One, I highly recommend people, if they're interested in this,

go back and listen to my conversation with Sean Bushway of Rand about crime. That's a great conversation. Really interesting stuff. And two, I have a partial theory, not a complete theory. But there's all this psychological stuff, these reports coming out about how being in the pandemic is one of the reasons why you're having this really bad behavior on airplanes. You know, I kind of think it's analogous to the inflation argument about the pandemic. The lockdowns kind of just caused all sorts of dysfunction and pent-up stress that, you know, you have you have teenage girls being admitted to ERs for attempted suicide or suicidal thoughts skyrocketing as well. It'll be interesting to see if in a year from now

we still see the same increase or whether or not this is partly a result of just what happens to human beings coming out of a pandemic. The problem is that when you have widespread crime, it tends to beget more widespread crime because it creates a permission structure and a copycat effect. So it may be very hard to tease out in the data. I also think that this is an interesting moment for the two-party system and all of its critics

because Republicans will be the party, making the law and order case. And so if you are concerned about crime in your city, you sort of are going to end up with not much choice. And so you may loathe what the Republican Party is turned into, two-party system, you may well vote on the Republican side

in 2022 in the midterms despite what else might be going on. And Jonah, this brings us to your topic. It is a culture topic for a musical that nobody on this podcast has seen but me. So again, it's not, I'm not going to do

a close analysis of the actual musical. I will leave that to Sarah. I know you will. That's what I just said. I'll leave it to Sarah. Just for a quick background, the movie, based on the musical where they made a lot of changes to the movie, apparently, and Sarah can explain them, to make it more sort of woke and whatnot, which is a funny thing to do to a musical like in the Heights in the first place. Lin-Manuel Miranda, you know, maker of Hamilton, a very liberal Democrat, but it was also sort of a very good navigator

of political waters, has gotten a lot of heat because the move, based on, I think this started on some fringy blog, and of course, the way the nervous system of internet works is that it immediately becomes a thing. He's been castigated for the erasure of, African Afro-Latino Dominicans because the Dominican Republic ethnographically is

it is not it is not majority black but it is majority mixed race with a lot of people of mixed African descent and this became something that made a lot of people angry or pretend to be angry and and Rita Moreno one of the most sort of a legendary past heartbreaking Puerto Rican actress, who was in the original West Side Story, came to the defense of Miranda, and by the next day, had to publicly announce her struggle session, had been successful, and she apologized for defending her friend. This is an 89-year-old woman who doesn't need to be dragged like this. Anyway, so my theory, and I'll put it this way, is there are two things going on. One is a lot of professional jealousy.

and career manipulation and in career advancement by trying to take out somebody in front of you by getting attention and tearing them down and punching up. And two, I want to make an analogy here that in the heights should be compared to the U.S. Constitution. The argument from the left about the U.S. Constitution is that it falls short of some utopian standard in the future. And the American founding falls short of some utopian standard versus slavery and whatnot. and the conservative defense of the founding and the Constitution is that, yeah, it's not perfect,

but compared to what came before it, and what came before it was much worse. So it was an enormous advance in human civilization in every way, even including the stuff about recognizing slavery. It was a huge advance in human civilization because slavery had been everywhere in the world. Lynn Manuel Miranda has done more to mainstream Latino and Hispanic artists and performers than anybody in American history. He is compared to what came before, he is a massive advance. And yet the backlash against him is all about some utopian standard that is utterly ideological in nature,

about what the future, what an ideal, you know, representation of Afro-Latinos or whatever would be. And I think it is a careerist cudgel that they're using to, you know, sort of like, as I was saying before, about these activists in the Democratic Party who use these arguments to accrue power. I think it is mostly a power play, an intra-political, intercultural power play. And it is incredibly shabby, I would argue, to say a guy who can, successfully got another movie um uh

got another movie starring latinos out there to say it falls short of some utopian standard compared to what an improvement it is on the past now sarah you can come sweeping in like a you know a flock of vultures pick apart what i said defend the movie for its representation of afro latinos have at it i so uh i

actually find myself agreeing with most of what you said, which is concerning on several fronts. But the thing I most agree with is that a lot of this represents an attempt to grab onto someone else's coattails so that you can get your own name ID up and burnish your own credentials by attacking Lynn Manuel Miranda, someone who's incredibly famous and well regarded. It's basically the, like, tallest blade of grass idea. Now, okay, that being said, I do understand people's frustration with Hamilton. I loved Hamilton.

But the idea of having a musical that kind of skips over the problems with slavery at the founding, and then you're claiming that this is a musical for people of color, I get some of that tension. and I think it's an interesting conversation to talk about that tension. I don't mean that you then boycott Hamilton or Hamilton's the worst, but like there's a place in between

Hamilton is the best thing ever and it did wonders for people of color and hey, isn't it kind of weird that it didn't discuss slavery more? And so that brings us to In The Heights. So In The Heights was his original musical that won the Tony way before Hamilton. It was revolutionary when it hit the scene.

Now, it was also kind of the precursor to Hamilton in a lot of ways. If you are a big Hamilton fan and go watch in the Heights, I think you'll be like, hey, wait, but that kind of sounds like, yes, it does. As many great artists do, they're sort of building on what they're creating as they figure out where their voice is. And it's amazing to me that Lynn Manuel Miranda won a Tony for his draft, you know? That's how revolutionary. that's how cool what he has done to the world of musicals is.

A world that is so incredibly white, not representative, not representative in the audience, not representative on the stage. Okay, does in the Heights have problems? I think it has big problems. It has big problems to me, though, because they changed the whole freaking plot from the musical to the movie in a way that I actually think undermines the movie.

I don't think the movie hangs together well as a movie. I think that's why it will not do particularly well with the Jonah Goldberg crowd. Like, Jonah, if I told you this was like Hamilton-esque, I think maybe I could convince you to go watch it. But instead, I'm like, you know, if you like people who dance together in the street while singing, then this is the movie for you. There were major fun. I like musicals. I mean, and also, you don't hear me complaining about Jewish erasure from one of the most famously Jewish neighborhoods. in America.

It's where Yeshiva University is. I mean, you know, because the guy made a movie about the community that he remembered. I mean, it just, anyway, I'm just, I'll stop. You have Fiddler on the roof, so that's what you get. That's your community. Those are my people. Yeah, I hope that's representative in every way. The major plot changes, I think, are a weird choice.

So just to pick out two, for instance, but there's a lot. So one of the major plot changes is that there's a girl and her boyfriend who is black and there is tension about that in the musical. That tension is largely erased with Jimmy Smith's as her father, sort of like pumped that his employee, his black employee is dating his daughter.

Set aside any of the racial stuff there. Like, I don't know. That's not usually how that goes down. That's totally gone from the movie. And then the one that more people are talking about is there's like a young kid who looks up to our main character and our main character is a mentor to this kid. And in the musical version,

he's just sort of doing everything he can to help out that kid and there's a lottery plot to the whole thing. In the movie version, the kid is actually here illegally, which you find out about halfway through the movie, that he wants to be a dreamer. And so it changes the whole plot because now the lottery ticket is going to go to pay for his legal fees where he's told he basically has no chance of ever having legal status in this country, which was weird because you're inserting this plot point that has no basis in the rest of the plot or any of the songs. And so then you don't get the chance to explain it at all. So it kind of does a disservice to the political issue, but also does a huge disservice to the plot.

of the movie. And there's things like that throughout. The abuela character dies totally differently. I mean, yeah, I've ruined this for everyone, by the way. But you don't watch musicals for the cliffhanger, folks. So I don't want to hear it. There, I've said my piece. All right. So, David, how pained and strained is my analogy to the U.S. founding and the Constitution? No, I don't think it's pained and strained at all. Look, I feel really having not seen it and vowing that I shall never see it. Why? Why?

You liked Hamilton. You were a Hamilton fan. Were the incestral Frenches wrong by Dominicans? No, the Hamilton's about the founding, you know. I'll see musicals when they're like set against a war. Like Lay Miss, you know, Hamilton. but I can't think I don't think I've voluntarily seen a movie musical not set against the background of some armed conflict in my life

I guess you can count sound of music it's sounding me yeah yeah that's true well that's the Nazi takeover of Austria right my point yeah arm conflict and let the record show Austria kind of wanted to be taken over sorry it's a different argument but but not the von traps not the von traps they're good people Yeah, you know, one of the reasons why I love the movies that I watch is I pre-screened them. Okay, so David, here's what I'll tell you. Here's my, go, the main character's name is Uznavi, and it's spelled U-S-N-A-V-I. And the reason he's, his name is Uznavi is because when his dad came here, he was so pumped to be coming to America that he named his son after the first thing he saw, which was the

ship passing by Ellis Island, which said U.S. Navy. That's a nice factoid. It doesn't quite get me in the theater. It doesn't quite, I mean, but... So more broadly, like, why, why, I mean, I have a theory why Rita Moreno caved and all that kind of stuff, but what, in general, what is the argument for why you have to fall on your sword and apologize because a bunch of people on Twitter yell

So that's, to me, that's the really interesting thing here. And I want to bring up something that a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago about some of the odd behavior you've seen on the right within the Southern Baptist Convention, I promise you there's a linkage here. And that is when you have people who have spent most of their lives as heroes to one side of the political spectrum. So Lynn Manuel Miranda, not just, you know, love. across the political spectrum. I mean, you know, in rural Tennessee, people are quoting Hamilton lyrics. But sort of a particular, particularly adored on the left, center left in the U.S., one of the most appreciated

and respected people in entertainment, but when you've had a lifetime of feeling a deep degree of comfort in one political tribe, it is very disorienting. to get strong attacks from within that tribe. And that came up in the course of why did certain people act the way they did in the Southern Baptist Convention.

It was talking about, well, these are people who had spent much of their lives defending the SBC from the left, and then suddenly they're attacked from the right, and it was deeply disorienting. And I think that that is something that we forget in a lot of this is we're dealing with human beings who have lived in a particular lane, and they're suddenly taking a surprising amount of fire from a direction they don't expect.

And they want to make it stop. It is painful. They don't like it. There's nothing fun about it. It kind of, it makes you, it knocks you from your moorings a little bit. It makes you feel like, where is my place? I want to get back in my place.

And so, you know, a lot of the folks who are sort of on Twitter and I know Bill Maher ripped Linman, well, Miranda, for apologizing. But these guys aren't sitting there going around thinking, I can't wait to have a culture war here with my own team. And so I think what often happens is a lot of these guys in Hollywood or whatever who are ripped and for unfair reasons from maybe their left, it's a deeply disconcerting, deeply disconcerting experience.

And they don't dive deep into it and go, wait, how big was the account that was attacking me? You know, is this article in The Cut or Jezebel or whatever based on like a real groundswell or six angry tweets they found? They don't think of it in those terms. What they know is they're being attacked from friends or people, a group that has been their friends, and it is a deeply disorienting, distressing thing to actual human beings. And I think that that's why you see a lot of their reaction.

that you see, especially when these actual human beings have really identified themselves as people of the left for a very long time. And I just wish people would have more appreciation for the human side of it as opposed to thinking that these are sort of like automaton's who can sort of figure out how real this criticism is and then realize the important stakes of trying to fight against cancel culture and then sort of deliver the decisive statement that you know, gives the people what they want, that's just not the way human beings work in these circumstances and an awful lot of behavior in response to cancel culture from the left or cancel culture from the right can be traced to how deeply disorienting and distressing it is

to face these kinds of things. Now, when Steve goes, I just want him to like rank his favorite musicals, like which Broadway stars he likes the most. I think he's a chitty, chitty, bang bang guy. Almost certainly. Yeah. I do like musicals, actually. Maybe surprise you. I like Hamilton.

I know many of the lyrics. We listen to it a lot in my family. Could you give us a little number just so we can test you? Like, let's prove that. I'm not going to waste my shot here. I'm just going to throw away. Throw away. waste my shot you know um the prosecution rest we're we're we're we're all doing this remote so

we're not in the room where it happens you want to keep going oh okay going because i think this is the kind of this is almost bordering on clickbait when we tell people that this is in the podcast yeah um they click on something else yes so my i think that's technically it's called click bait and switch because like when they actually hear you do this, it's going to be much less thrilling. But anyway. So my, I think there is a clear through line

between what we discussed in the context of the New York mayor's race and the arguments about defunding the police and where we are with this discussion here. And it is the power of a relatively small, but vocal minority inside the progressive left, the Democratic Party, and how distanced some of those arguments feel for people who aren't a part of that community. So you stop and you take a step back and think about the attacks on Lin-Manuel Miranda. And I think Jonah's right. It's probably

done more to sort of elevate Latino arts and culture than maybe anybody. in U.S. history. And the guy of whom it was said in the context of Hamilton by Michelle Obama, the best piece of art in any form I have ever seen in my life, deeply credentialed, progressive, someone, you know, who is a true believer, but for the sort of woke, identitarian left, it's not enough. And you hear these arguments. There was a reviewer at Refinery 29 who claimed that this was reflective of sort of Lin-Manuel Miranda's capture of white supremacy. And you just stop and you just think, like, that is so so bonkers, I think to most people who are not counting by,

race and are not looking at everything through the prism of race, that it, you know, again, it's a powerful minority. We're seeing with the left grapple this. We're seeing how the right grapples with this. We're seeing in some ways that elements of the alt-right and the identitarian right are feeding some of this. But I think for most people, that just clangs off the ears and makes no sense that Lynn Manuel Miranda is the product of white supremacy because didn't have the right representation that, you know, this particular reviewer wanted in this particular piece of his work. And, you know, if you go back and you look at what the guy who directed this adaptation, John Chu said about it, he said, in the end, when we were looking at the cast,

we tried to get the people who were best for those roles. That seems to me a very logical thing to do. And the more we have to sort of look at everything through this prism of race, I think the more that conversation becomes fraud. You know, this goes back to, and Joan had tweeted this out earlier this week, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about, and something Sarah's actually talked a lot about, which is what a incredible ideological bubble that Twitter is.

If Twitter was a state, it'd be the most democratic state in the nation. If Twitter, if politically active Twitter was a congressional district, it would be one of the two most democratic congressional districts in the United States. So I could make one correction on that point? Because I've been thinking about this a lot. It's not a correction. It's just a clarification. Not only would it be the most Democratic congressional district, but the minority of Republicans

would be the craziest most right-wing Republican, which you don't get a normal congressional district. It's not like hardcore woke-left majority and then like hardcore right-wing, you know, minority. Anyway, go on. I'm sorry. Well, you're previewing my newsletter because what you're having is some of the dysfunction you see in these one-party states where you have like the hardcore left has a disproportionate

an amount of power and then the GOP in that state has slowly gone insane and so that's that's kind of the dynamic and you can intellectually you can intellectualize that and say this is not real life this is not real life this is not real life but if that's where you are and therefore that's the voices you hear again human beings tend to respond to the voices they hear, not the voices they don't hear. So there's, so people are kind of trapped in this Twitter doom loop, which is on the one hand, they can say, this is not real, this does not reflect something real, but at the same time, it's the voices they hear all day. And, and that's one of the reasons why Twitter, that Twitter mentality seems to, after every single reality check, whether

it's like the Biden, the rise of Biden in the primaries or the Adams win in New York, it's only a matter of time before that disproportionate Twitter impact comes back in because that's where people are spending their time and those are the voices that they hear. All right. With that, we're going to wrap things up and I will just recommend a third Lynn Manuel Miranda musical that is oft overlooked in these conversations. And it might be the best of all. And that is Moana. Go enjoy your weekend. Is it set against the war? This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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