The Dispatch Podcast - The Experts That Failed Us | Roundtable

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Sarah and Jonah welcome Mike Pesca, the host of The Gist, to dive into the nuances of the recent vice-presidential debate. They explore J.D. Vance’s approach of creating a likable persona in an attempt to woo voters, and discuss how, at times, the guidance of field experts has led public opinion astray. They also contemplate the potential future of the Supreme Court, examining the implications of current political dynamics and how they might shape future judicial decisions. The Agenda: —Jonah's G-File on the race to being likable —Should we continue listening to experts? —TMD: Israeli Leaders Mull a Retaliatory Attack on Iran —Advisory Opinions episode: Supreme Court litigations —Supreme Court legitimacy Show notes —Mr. Nice Guy Maneuver —Israel Ponders A “Winnable War” —The Genius of Israel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. That's Jonah Goldberg. And we have a special guest, Mike Peska from The GIST joining us. Let's start with the vice presidential debate. We've got plenty of news to get through. That's a few days old at this point. So let's start with the obvious question, Mike. Now that it's been a few days, do you care? Do you remember it? Did it matter? I do remember it. I mostly resented for taking Israel news off the air.

I think that the... What it brings up is the question of what does one mean? Because J.D. Vance performed better. He was rhetorically better. He made more sense. On my show, I talked about why we harkened to or like speakers, and he had fewer pauses and he had fewer filler words. and Tim Walls had all of those things

and would even in his first answer confused Israel and Iran and he claimed to be a knucklehead expanding a kind of non-scandal into maybe more scandalous or confusing proportions. But still, I do think, I don't see there's any reason to say that a

vice presidential debate should matter in this case, even if J.D. Vance did perform better. And the thing I'm interested in you guys, what you think is that one, and this is MSNBC, emphasized this and the more, I'm definitely going to vote for Harris Walls, no matter what, emphasize this. And they really believed it that for all of those missteps and for all of Walls not performing

well, J.D. Vans not answering the threshold question of elections kind of cuts through all that and is more important and is maybe the viral moment that people will remember. I don't know, knucklehead's kind of fun. But do you think it all evened out by a little bit of election denialism at the end? It gave the Walls voter something to move around because otherwise what would they talk about the debate? What clips could they show from the debate? And so in the

world in which you get totally separate news reports from a single event and no shared facts, that gave them the thing they could show and nothing else. And I assure you the, you know, right isn't showing that answer either. And they're not showing the knucklehead answer.

So yes, it allowed for the two realities, to be impermeable. Jonah? Yeah, I agree with that. Also, I want to salute Mike's J.D. Vance-like jiu-jitsu and taking over the moderator role so quickly and early in this conversation. I put the question to you, and I'm going to ask it again if I don't hear an answer.

And don't talk to me about the First Amendment. You can tell this guy as a podcast veteran. All right. No, I think Sarah's largely right, is that this was the silver line. and in an era where a lot of media outlets only focus on the are prioritized the stuff that's good for their priors, this gets signal boosted. I also think it is basically the substantive argument behind it is right. Like it is outrageous that J.D. Vance basically won't commit to, you know, doing what

Mike Pence did if it called upon to do it and refuses to say whether or not the election was stolen. I think it's grotesque. That said, you know, when I said that Harris won her debate with Trump, everyone, I got, people jumped ugly on me from all sorts of places. And I was like, look, she executed the things that she wanted to execute. So that alone is a, is a kind of a victory. And then, you know, forget snap polls and betting markets and all that kind of stuff. Vance did not execute. I mean, not Vance. Waltz did not execute the things that he wanted to execute clearly. Like, I think he left a lot of, he missed a lot of opportunities. The stuff about Trump saving Obamacare, they should have been ready for that kind of thing.

The idea that they weren't prepped for the Tiananmen Square question is just back guano crazy to me. And the only thing, I mean, I've written, talked about this a lot already. The only thing I think was sort of fascinating about it was I think that Vance helped himself, but he didn't necessarily help the ticket because the ticket is commensate. committed to turning up the gain on the, what I, what I wrote yesterday on the, um, uh, caddy day at the Bushwood country club, uh, block, right? The young disaffected dudes who need to be told it's the end of civilization and they're going to cosplay, you know, revolutionary people and all that kind of crap. And what I think is sort of fascinating. It's not

got on a lot of attention this morning is there's a piece in Axios where the Vance team is basically putting the word out that Vance being a nice, guy was just a strategy, which like, don't worry, guys, I'm actually the, I really am the prick that you've fallen in love with. And that act was just to throw a waltz off balance and it worked. And I think the fact that they feel the need to do that is really revealing to me. So that's a nice segue, because now that we've gotten the specifics of the debate itself out of the way, I do want to talk some larger vibey issues because, you know, you know, you know, You talk about their strategy, Jonah.

It was very clear that both had a strategy of being likable and that I think was very different than the presidential debate that we saw, but also the debates that we've been seeing, the vibes in our elections for the last many, many cycles. And I guess I watched it. It was like, well, that's interesting. If that's their strategy, look how quickly our politics could pivot back to not just, I want to be likable, but something even kind of beyond that, frankly. They were like, you know, if you win, I'll pray for you.

And, you know, it was sort of extra, extra magnanimous. Can we just switch that flip? Flip that switch in 2028, you know, that easily, Mike, that this will all be a, this was really a reminder of that it is Trump distorting our politics and that it will all change the second Trump goes away, which has not been my thought up till now. Well, no, because politicians have acted in various ways, and they come with all different valiances. I think that Cheney, Edwards' debate was mostly congenial, except that I think Edwards confronted Cheney on, you know, your own, your own sister disagrees with your gay rights

policies. And then Cheney said, yeah, your own daughter, right, and says, well, I thank you for that. He did say that. And then he shot him in the face. Oh, that's something else. I forgot. Right. Revenge. This is in the context of Donald Trump and all of our siloed media injecting so much animosity into what we do.

And that's seen as, and it's probably true, that's necessary for, you know, playing with the spirits of the electorate and getting a lot of attention. So there is a little bit of a niche. There's a market opportunity to zero. a little bit from that overall sideguise. I don't know that that is the mood of the country. I don't know that a non-vis presidential candidate will nice their way to electoral success. I mean, we see the candidate who always comes along.

There's always one whenever the field is crowded. Tim Scott, nicer than the next. And everyone says, well, he's a nice guy. A nice guy doesn't play. And that's usually true. I think what it really shows is that it's mostly how Walls is, or at least what his affect is. And with fans, it is a clever strategy.

everything about Vance was clever in this debate. And by the way, I do think that, I agree with all your analysis, but I think the electoral denialism is something of a threshold question. So maybe it actually substantively evens out isn't just a thing for partisans to say. But my point with this is that Vance is so very clever. And he saw that there was an opportunity for this. And he knew what his persona was. And so the fact that he is able to code shift, probably a phrase he wouldn't use,

shows how good he is at this. And the fact that he in the moment says, well, I didn't know that your son was shot and I pray for him. I mean, either that was he did know that and he pretended he didn't when he pulled it off or he really didn't know that in credit for being in the moment and just being a human being.

So I think it mostly says not where our politics is going, but just that J.D. Vance is skilled at much of what we call politics. All right. And just a quick correction, you said his son was shot. he witnessed a shooting. I screwed up like Walsh said. Walsh also said someone was shot when he meant. Yeah, he saw him.

He said he became friends with school shooters, which was a thing. But anyway. Okay. So, Jonah, here's my question to you then on like larger vibes question. There was a really interesting exchange in the debate about expertise. And this goes to something that you and I talk about and we give sort of the larger history of American politics going back to the progressive era that, you know, Yuval Levin has talked about the progressive era, and I mean the one from a hundred

years ago, the progressive era being impatience with the constitutional structure and its delays and forced compromises. And so the creation of the administrative state and bringing in all of these experts was a way to skip that and get to the good part, so to speak, because the experts know better. We don't need these Yahoo's from Bumble wherever in Congress, better to just bring in the people who really know what they're talking about. No compromise needed. We can move very quickly. And I think for the last 40 years or so

in that sort of Reagan era of conservatism, the debate between the left and the right was on the size and scope of government. It felt to me from that vice presidential debate and this one question in particular that it encapsulated what the new debate really is and it goes back to that progressive era debate. What is the role of expertise in,

government and in our larger lives. And you had walls, for instance, saying, if you need heart surgery, go to the Mayo Clinic, not Donald Trump. Duh, okay. And then J.D. Vant's answering, sure, but these economists told us that offshoring jobs would help our economy. And instead, here we are. Jonah, where are we on the expertise debate?

And is that the new size and scope of government dividing the two parties? Time will tell, I think, because we are in a populist moment, and by definition, in populist moments, elites broadly defined, narrowly defined, are unpopular. And you're particularly coming out of the COVID stuff, where it is now an article of faith that the medico-industrial complex or whatever we're supposed to call it is no greater hive of scum and villainy has ever existed, and that Fauci should be jibbid and all these kinds of things. So I think some of that fever will go away. My problem with the debate is, like, I've been on this hobby horse for a very long time

about, you know, the role of unelected experts and the administrative state and all these people who think that, you know, Walter Lippman had figured out the key to everything, which is to create platonic guardians who just can be completely detached from politics a long time ago. I think that's all garbage at the same time. I also believe in a thing called experts, right? And so the problem is... I believe in a thing called love. We can get rid of that in post.

And so in a weird way, they're talking past each other, right? So, J.D. makes this point about economists when he really means politicians, right? Because the economists didn't, you know, make those decisions. Politicians made those decisions. And his characterization of the last 30 years of economic history are debatable and all that. but that's fun. Walth's example was about heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic. I still believe that heart surgeons are more qualified than plumbers to do heart surgery, right? I mean, so we can have... In some ways, though, don't you think Vance gave the wrong

example, to your point? Like, a commonness and whether politicians made those decisions, like, yeah, that gets really muddy. He should have given the COVID mask example or something like that that was more of a immediate and memorable fight over the. role of experts in forming government policy without, frankly, the input of Congress at all. Look, I agree. And I agree with that. And I think, but for coming up with something on the fly that might appeal to Michigan voters, it wasn't terrible either. My only point is, is that I don't like categorical arguments. It's like, oh, these experts over here were wrong. And therefore, through the power of the transitive property of wrong expertise, therefore, I no longer.

need nuclear engineers to run nuclear power plants. I mean, that logic just doesn't work, but that's the kind of BS you get in a populist moment. It kind of worked on a stage. And so I just think they're talking past each other. It's not like, it's not like J.D. Vance's, his wife doesn't go to an obstetrician when she's pregnant, right? I mean, like, he believes in experts, and it's not like Waltz doesn't necessarily disagree with, you know, free market economists. It's, it's kind of a boob-bait argument, but I agree with you, it's perfectly dumb enough and seemingly smart enough to be the new divide in American politics. Mike? Yeah. Well, aren't Caitlin Carrico and Weissman who invented the MRI virus? They're experts too. So they had chosen a different example. It

perhaps would have not been as clear from political purpose, but it is true that there's subjectivity that some experts are wrong and some experts have been so right that they've saved our lives and all of them are associated with the government. You could always, are we, we're probably in an era of more bad expertise than we ever have been, even including phrenology, but just because we're in an era of no gatekeeping of expertise and people claiming expertise and anyone getting to opt in for who else is the expert. So I can see why that argument flies a little bit, but I don't think we've gotten, I don't even think that the, I mean, it might seem this way to most people, but does the pandemic indict the status

of our expertise, or does it tell us that we have wizards and scientists who saved millions of lives through mechanisms that the average person or even an order of magnitude above intelligence of average person could possibly fathom. So it becomes, you know, to me, a little bit of a proxy of the Republican is going to say my experts are right and yours are wrong and the Democrats are going to say the difference and the exact opposite and the battle lines are pretty much what everyone knew beforehand. That's an interesting point about gatekeeping. So when I think of the most egregious example of experts undermining their own authority, I think of the public health experts, which, to your point, Mike, are actually different than the people who develop vaccines or the people who do heart surgery, Jonah, right?

Public health is a totally different degree. A much softer science, if you will. A much softer science. And so, you know, when we had all of these public health orders of, you know, keeping churches closed or places where people congregate about how they couldn't, you know, vote even outside, we needed it all by ballot. But then the George. But, you know, I was going to say. But do go outside and protest this one thing because we're experts. So then when the George Floyd protests happen, you have the public health experts saying,

well, this is an exception because racism is a greater threat to public health than COVID. And that was sort of the end of more than half the country listening to public health experts, which I think is a bad thing. And yet there was no sort of self-critical analysis of why it may not be helpful for you to weigh in every single thing in the country that could be going on just because there's a pandemic. But to your point, Mike, there were plenty of people who thought that was a stupid thing to say, who are public health experts, who are doctors, who are epidemiologists, et cetera. And they can't stop those morons from being quoted in the New York Times.

That's just how expertise now works for the lack of gatekeeping. The problem isn't experts. The problem is institutions. We have institutions have lost, I mean, we can go on gatekeeping, the editorial function, right? This is a hobby horse among. What do editors do? Good editors, when the reporter comes in

with something that is just explosive, but not nailed down, they say, slow down, check your facts, go call the people who disagree with you, get a better quote, do your math, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? That's what, that editorial function

is the role of basically every institution. My favorite analogy for this is it's the role of Dalton and Roadhouse, right? Hotheads, radicals, he tries to calm him down, doesn't want violence, but when he has to have violence, he has violence, right? It's an editorial function where you are editing, you are slowing things down. They're circuit breakers in a system, and that's what they're supposed to do in government. That's what they're supposed to do. You know, it's like at the FDA, they're like, let's make sure we've checked all the boxes

before we approve this drug. That's the problem we have with our institutions. We have institutions where people in them are using those institutions for their own personal engendizement to say, look how against racism I am. I know I told you you couldn't go to Grandma's funeral, but I am saying you can protest George Floyd. They get the virtue signaling credit.

They undermine the credibility of the institution, and they're by getting out of their lane, and they're violating their, you know, brother, you've all of them, you know, his first rule for, anybody who's in charge of anything at any institution, he says, the first question you have to ask is, what is my role here? And the enormous number of people aren't asking that question, and that's why we can't have nice things. Not 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

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For 21-day ceasefire, there must be an immediate ceasefire. What I'm calling for is for the Israelis to just call for ceasefire. With that, let's head over to what Mike was mad about the vice presidential debate existing in the first place, that it distracted from Iranian missile law. launches on Israel. But Mike, just to push back before you even get the chance to talk, I don't know. Like there's a reason that news cycle moved on pretty quickly. I saw a meme and it said Israel before Iran's attack and it was like this beautiful beach. And then it said Israel after Iran's attack and it was this beautiful beach. Like the Iron Dome worked. If Iran actually wanted

to attack Israel, that's not the way they would do it. So was this just Iran saving face so they could move on. I don't think they saved face. I think they lost face. I think their entire foreign policy is now how much face can we convince ourselves that we need to save. And did you see the footage of that one poor guy who got in the West Bank who got a fuselage just dumped on him that had to, that's what I, I guess that's what I wanted. I wanted confirmation that that wasn't a deep fake because it seemed like the world's worst wily coyote cartoon. This is what's interesting to me about this entire situation. The Iran strike was a redux of the April Iran strike. At the moment, the information that I wanted was, in April, there was, it is true that Middle Eastern allies

of the United States plus the Great Western allies, France, the UK, even Jordan, probably the Saudis, definitely the Saudis, but they won't admit it. They participated in the defense of Israel. And in April, it was clear that they wanted credit for that. And I was wondering, all right, they've been a little silent, or maybe so do Voce. Are they still participating? is it's still a bit of a seen as a rallying cry among those countries and less so, but they did participate in the defense of Israel. So that's the actual news that I was searching for that day. I think it gets back the entire issue to me.

I've been wondering about expertise and the Middle East and not in, there is expertise among the Israeli intelligence and the Mossad and shinbet and to pull off the Pager attack and the walkie-talkie attack, and also to know where all these guys from Hezbollah are and to be able to destroy half their arsenal. And I have just begun to wonder, maybe every single expert who told us as a mantra, there is no military solution to this

and told us whenever you cut off the head of the hydra to grow in place and told us that when you're dealing with a homegrown terrorism party, you'll never be able to defeat it, it's never been able to happen. They're just wrong. And if they're wrong about that, what else are wrong about? So experts are Israeli experts. We're right about the vulnerabilities or the capacities of what they could do. But everyone in the West, from president on down, has said, this is, by definition, an unwinnable war. I'm even picking up on the idea that maybe they're saying war,

as we know it, is unwinnable. And they're wrong. They're just so fundamentally wrong that That's the kind of discussion I think we should be having. I think we, I'm not ready to say, oh, this is over, and Hezbollah has, by the way, they've been much more than decimated, right? They've been halved and maybe even more than that. Look at Mike using decimated correctly, meaning 90% remain. We need a fundamental, massive recalibration on everything that we were told was prudent and possible in this, the most vital region of the world.

And I don't know that anyone is going to acknowledge their mistakes or that we're going to get anything close to it. How do we even craft a foreign policy based on this, given our, it seems to me, incorrect assumption. Joan, I guess I agree with his baseline point that I think of foreign policy experts, a lot of the way I think of public health experts. That's a pretty soft science. They're expert-ish. Right, they know a lot of facts, but that doesn't mean they can predict the future. Right. Well, in fairness, the future is hard to predict. Yes.

But then don't tell me you can predict the future. I'm talking more about assess the price. No, I get it. Look, I largely agree with you. And I do think you're probably right that Iran is at this moment trying to figure out if they needed to tap the strategic face reserve because they've lost so much of their operational face in all of this. But my part, so if we've entered the festivist portion of this for airing of grievances on this stuff, My problem with this is the way in which repeatedly, it's like those days since accident on the work site signs, it's like the second Israel gets, the moment Israel gets attacked,

the days since Israel's attack sign gets erased, and like, and then Israel is being provocative or escalating. And they never call it retaliate, right? It's always either escalate or unprovoked or whatever. And it's like, Bisbalah has been dropping bombs and missiles on Israel for a freaking year. And the reason for doing so, which I still think is relevant. I mean, like if we were having

a debate over Thanksgiving dinner about who started what, it's not like the reason for it is because Israel pushed beyond the Latani River or did something to you know, Beirut or anything like that. The reason for doing it is that on October 7th, Hamas raped and murdered it and kidnapped a whole bunch of people.

And then in solidarity, With that, on October 8th, it starts dropping bombs on Israel. And people are like, well, that's just their nature. That's what they do. You can't get mad at that. But we wear a ribbon. They drop a bomb. That's what we do.

And like people are talking about, anyway, so I could, this could turn into a John Belushi sketch where, like, does this SNL commentary and don't make you start it on the Irish and their mothers and then keel over from the stroke. But my only, my larger point is, look, I don't know. I agree what Israel has done has been just amazingly impressive, and I salute it. There is a lot of loose talk about finish the job with Israel, I mean, with Iran, that feels to me like a straight line projection from the success as Israel has had right now. and as impressive as it was to take out Hezbollah and all that, the idea that you can with one swoop do the same about Iran's nuclear program,

I'm less convinced about. Doesn't mean, like, if you could persuade me that they could do it, great. And if they do do it, and successfully, awesome. But, like, that's a big undertaking. And I think you need America to do some of that. Like, you need America's buy-in to do that. And I don't know that Biden is there and all that.

So for me, it's just, I'm in favor of Israel. I think Israel is morally justified to do whatever the hell it wants vis-a-vis Iran. I do think that this, that when you lob a whole bunch of ballistic missiles on another country that is escalatory, I do find the logic of escalation so weird, you know, the logic of deterrence, so weird. But it is a fact of the reality out there. So I agree that I don't necessarily trust the experts. I do think some caution and prudence is advisable. And what that actually looks like, I just don't have visibility on it, you know.

So, Mike, I want to give our audience a little bit more flavor on your overall foreign policy takes from the last, let's call it, 25 years or so. Because based on what you said about like, well, wow, if you go in and punch them in the knows, maybe that works pretty well in the Middle East after we've been told like diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. Take us back to how that works post 9-11 and what your thoughts on Iraq and Afghanistan were, were we taking the war over there so that it wasn't over here? Was it a mistake? Just Mike's foreign policy. Do it in less than 20 seconds. I'm just kidding. Take as long as you want. Afghanistan was a necessary limited goal and then it expanded

into an unwinnable war, Iraq was in retrospect, and I have sympathy for people other than the ones cooking the books within the administration, but I have general sympathy for why people and Colin Powell would have thought that this was a necessary war to get into. It turns out not to have been, and so therefore, in terms of goods, treasure, and men, we definitely shouldn't have done it. I generally agree with Barack Obama. I don't believe in all wars. I'm not opposed to all Wars, just opposed stupid wars. I think sometimes Barack Obama was very overcautious on what constituted a stupid war. It's just deferring to this idea of the unwinnability of things. I was thinking about Dan Cynor wrote a book, The Genius of Israel. Look, I have it right here. And part of it is he talks

about that Israel doesn't have this malaise, this defeatism, Israeli society, Israeli teens, the TikTok teens over there are in all quasi-suicidal and it's because they have, there are real stakes and there's a shared mission and I was thinking to myself, maybe the fact that they've actually won a war might be interesting to live in a society

which none of us have that actually won a meaningful war. And I'm not called... What about the Cold War? That actually won a... You're laughing! The Berlin Wall coming down in my lifetime, on my birthday, I will add, was a very meaningful moment of my childhood. Yeah, mine too. I remember signing up for a college course called Political Communication in the Soviet Union in the fall. And in the spring, it was changed to political communication in the former Soviet Union. So we learned a lot of things that were. My wife got her master's degree from Johns Hopkins in 1991 on Soviet politics.

Was the word Soviet written in pencil? And then she went into public health. I don't think that when we, this was a situation where when we send troops to war and they come back, it's usually been from Vietnam and my childhood on through all the wars in the Middle East. It hasn't been accompanied, luckily other than Vietnam, there wasn't the insulting of the troops, but it hasn't been accompanied with good feelings. By the way, this was amazing. So I was at Ronald Reagan National Airport. And for those who travel through that airport from time to time, you may have seen one of these honor flights. And it's just incredible and like you want to just break out on the national anthem,

but they have sometimes like fire trucks that have water spraying over the planes, which is pretty cool. And then when the veterans get out, there's, um, you know, bunting and flags and a whole bunch of people just congregate of random strangers and clap. And of course, many of our World War II veterans aren't left anymore. So this honor flight that I stumbled upon last week was, It said World War II, but also mostly Korea and Vietnam. And I thought to myself, my God, can you imagine coming off that plane from Vietnam and that experience compared to 2024 coming off that plane? And strangers are clapping and cheering for you and shaking your hand and thanking you. And what a shameful part of our history that is that that's not what happened.

Yeah. The military is, according to polls by Gallup, the most trusted and respected institution in America. And I think that trust should have limits, but it's proper and it's improper that in the Vietnam era, it was the exact opposite. So in general, what I think is that the United States actually can't solve most of its problems through military might. And this is because its problems aren't existential. It's the United States could get hit every once and a while, but it's not going to be put out of business by a foreign military. But Israel could. So it's a different calculation.

And that calculation changed after 1,200 of their citizens were killed and another 250 were kidnapped. And they said, rather than go through this again or another three times, we're going to do something a bit more drastic and radical. And it worked. And that's the part where we were all surprised. And that's what I'm recalibrating about. Could it work? Yes, they weren't in a guaranteed death spiral with their enemies, their proximate enemies of Hezbollah and Hamas

were not able to be defeated. I think Iran's in another category, but that's fine. And let's also articulate that I believe in the principle that every country has the right to be its own country, defend itself. And however, the Mullahs took control of Iran, if you make an analogy with Israel. However, a country was founded.

They eventually, after a few dozen years, gained the legitimacy through oppression or whatever, of being a country. So it's a far different thing from Israel engaging in a war with Iran than it is with Hamas or with Hezbollah. Now, it might be necessary for Israel's survival, but it is a different thing. They are a sovereign state.

They do have an actual seat at the UN, rather than just people who are doing interference for them via Kuwait or their other proxies like the like like Hezbollah and and Hamas. And so I do think it's a whole other set of communications. And if we were to my view able to push Iran back in that pre-nuclear box, that would be good without much bloodshed. I just think it would be really good if more countries were afraid of us escalating than us being afraid of them escalating. Yeah. So that I think is my question to you. Does this week or the last three weeks put us closer or farther from, quote unquote, escalation with Iran?

Closer, but that may be necessary, right? I mean, there's no way Israel cannot respond to a sovereign nation lobbying, I don't know what the final number was, 100, something like that, ballistic missiles into its territory. Like, you can't just say, oh, okay, now we're even, right? And again, I find the whole logic of deterrence and retaliation really, really, really weird. the idea that somehow you shouldn't have attacked Iran because only its proxies in Hezbollah and Gaza were attacking you. I mean, it's like, oh, you shouldn't attack them because they're just paying other people to attack you. They're not attacking you themselves is such a weird argument

to me, but that's, they wore a mustache while punching you. He invaded, he paid your neighbors to invade your home. He didn't invade your home is like a weird argument, but like that's, apparently those are the rules and like when you talk to experts about this they're like yeah it's stupid but those are the rules okay so there's the rules i think i want to give some credit here what the biden administration has actually said has been pretty good that this aggression cannot stand that this is unacceptable blah blah blah blah blah blah the only problem i have with it is they're not saying it with much feeling it's really pro forma it's done in readouts from the defense department or the state department. You're not getting Biden up there, giving a forceful statement.

Like, if you want to send the signal that Iran really screwed up and we got Israel's back to do X, then you say it like you mean it. Instead, the problem with Biden is always that he, when I shouldn't say always, but in these circumstances, he'll give a good opening statement and then for days afterwards he'll claw it back piecemeal. And so now we're hearing him, you know, talking about how he doesn't want the nuclear facilities to be drug. It has to be proportional. I don't know what proportional means necessarily in these contexts, but this gets back to the expert problem.

There are people out there who say, Bibi knows something when he talks about the days of the Iranian regime being numbered, this is an opportunity for regime change and all that kind of stuff. If that's true, there could be a case to go for it. I just don't know. Like my view about regime change has always been, I'm entirely in favor of regime change at no cost. And then I'm less in favor of it as you move up the scale of cost, right? So if you told me that for a dollar and one U.S. servicemen stubbed toe, we could replace the regime in North Korea, I think you'd be a moron not to say get rid of those people, right?

I mean, it's in America's national interest, it's in the world's interest, it's in the North Korean people's interest. Ditto the argument with China. It is not worth a global thermonuclear war with China to get rid of the Chinese regime. Iran's somewhere in the middle in all of that stuff. And I think Obama, it was a moral travesty that he didn't support the green revolution stuff more in Iran. It really looked like there was an opportunity there to really shatter the regime. Maybe I'm wrong, but you don't know until you try. and the Iranian regime is evil.

It is, again, it is an fundamental enemy. I mean, like, when you say that in front of enlightened audiences, people are like, oh, that's so jingoistic. It was like, I'm literally reading the liner notes on the Iranian regime's album. I mean, it's like they say it every Friday. America is Satan. Israel must go. You know, it's like in the Hamas charter.

It's in the Hezbollah charter that they want to destroy. Roy, Israel, and if you say, well, they're the ones who are genocidal, like, oh, come on. The problem with these arguments is that so much of it is, like, putting crazy pills in the mixture for the gaslighting. So it does not bother me at all if we're moving closer to a war with Iran so long as there's an actual prospect of success reasonably defined. I just don't know, I don't know that I trust anybody to have that foresight or the ability to pull it off. So that's why I'm in favor of proof. Mike, last word to you. I think it's really

important. Two points. One, proportionality is about a ratio. So what is the denominator of the ratio? Is the last 180 missiles? Is it the thousands of missiles? No, it seems to be whatever you want it to be. But the other really important thing is in terms of game theory and the military might of the United States and Israel, you are never going to achieve deterrence if you consistently signal that you are, A, not willing to fight a war, but this is really important, B, if you're allergic to deterrence, if you equate deterrence with, I don't know, evildom or aggression or some quality or virtue that makes your skin crawl, you have just told yourself that all of the spending and all of the, all of the resources, and all of the actual capacity you have, throw it out

the window, you can't run away from, you can't run away from the idea of escalation if deterrence is your goal. Grocery shopping, cha-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-filling. Filling up on gas, cha-ch-ch-ch-ch-chmuting, using streaming services. With your RBC I-O-plus visa, earn three times the Avion points on groceries, gas, dining, and more. Then, redeem your points on gift cards from over two. 200 brands. Your idea of rewarding happens here. Conditions apply. Visit rbc.com slash Iron

cards. A couple more topics to hit here. One, just a little Supreme Court preview for those who are not advisory opinions listeners who are listening to this pod. Such people exist. I can't imagine that they do, but our producer tells me that they might, hypothetically. They must enjoy ignorance of the law. The basis for our self-governance. Republic. That's no defense, Jonah. So the Supreme Court term will kick off on Monday, and we are awaiting every hour of the day the orders list from the long conference this week where we'll get a whole new set of cases that the Supreme Court will be hearing. But as of right now, so that you guys know,

it's a relatively sleepy term so far. Now, of course, there's an election and, um, various people may be wise to predict litigation making its way to the Supreme Court in regards to that election, which will make it not a sleepy term. But as of right now, you know, some of the biggest cases come from the Fifth Circuit, which again is the most conservative lower court at this point, which I always point out as pushback on this, you know, the Supreme Court's crazy conservative. When the Supreme Court takes the case, it is more likely than not that they are reversing the lower a court. So at the beginning of the term, you always want to look at which circuit is getting the most cases taken up. You know, when it was the Ninth Circuit, that was a pretty good sign that

the Ninth Circuit was too liberal or the Supreme Court was too conservative. And now when it's the Fifth Circuit with sort of these bigger cases getting taken up, that either means that the Fifth Circuit is too conservative or the Supreme Court super liberal. You pick. But for instance, a case on porn. That's everyone's favorite topic. This is on age gating and whether... That sounds dirty. Whether we look at sort of the purpose of the law, which is to prevent children from accessing porn and their First Amendment rights, which are quite limited as children, though they have First Amendment rights as children, or whether we look at the adults' First Amendment rights

and this making it harder for adults to access pornography by having real requirement for age-gating. Pornhub, by the way, in certain months, will hit 2 billion users a month. I hear the lieutenant governor's office in North Carolina has great Wi-Fi. Oh, my God.

Another case on the state laws that ban treatment for gender dysphoria that involves hormones or surgery on minors. So that's coming out of the Sixth Circuit. And then another Fifth Circuit case on ghost guns. And this isn't a Second Amendment case. It's actually just a statutory case of whether Congress's law that it passed in 1968 can now be said to ban these kits that you get in the mail to build your own gun. It reminds me a lot of the bump stocks case. You know, can the ATF sort of

create new rules, make new things illegal based on a law that's been on the books for 50 plus years where it wasn't before. And I've said, my number one pet peeve, right, is the headlines that come out of it that says, you know, Supreme Court strikes down gun control measure or something instead of Supreme Court says Congress should pass that law. It sounds like a good idea. Literally they said that in a bumpstock's concurrence by Alito.

And what has Congress done? Jack sh-so. So that's at least the taste of the Supreme Court term coming up. Big themes, of course. All I seem to be on Justice Barrett. what's she going to be up to and just this overall institutional decline of the Supreme Court as both sides to some extent fight to delegitimize a court that they don't think is on their side, quote unquote. Mike, how do you think the Supreme Court delegitimizing efforts are going to

play out here based on the election? Like if Trump wins the election versus Harris wins the election, does that affect the Supreme Court's legitimacy in your eyes or in your predictive eyes? Yeah, as an expert, it bothers me. The questions of legitimacy bother me, but they don't all flow in one direction. I do think that some of the actions taken by, not so much Alito, but Clarence Thomas have been really shady. I know, Sarah, you, okay, I'm not going to characterize, but I listen to your show all the time, and I know you will recite the list of shady actions taken by relatives of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and everyone else. But I do think it's reasonable to say,

well, justices shouldn't be doing that. That doesn't adhere to the quality of justice that I've been led to believe that we should have. So sometimes what I'm saying is... To be clear, I think that's just fine to say justices shouldn't be doing that as long as we say all justices shouldn't be doing it. And as long as we're clear

that there's no evidence of like cases being involved in this. There's no evidence of bribery for case outcomes, things like that. But that doesn't mean it's good or that it should be. Well, right, there's no evidence of a direct quid pro quo, which, by the way, even if it were to happen, according to their ruling in the mayor of portage case, maybe would be allowed a little bit of quid pro quo.

If it comes after. If it comes, right, right, that's right. So if Clarence Thomas retired, he'd be able to qualify for all the luxury vehicles that Harlan Stone wanted to give. Fine. I think it's really bad that the court's legitimacy has come into question. I think the court brings a lot of that on itself. I also think that the reason you have that headline that you don't like, which is Supreme Court

bans this rather than Congress should ban that, is that 90-something percent of American people are just process-oriented and 45 percent of American people are Democrat and 45 percent of a Republican. So when you get a process that is 6-3, which wasn't the case for the majority of the last court's term, but then at the end wound up being, including in that Portage Mayor case, which is on my mind because it's actually coming up in the Eric Adams. trial. But anyway, when you get a product that is just... Can I clarify your point? Do you mean the outcome obsessed, right? Not process obsessed. Yes. Sarah's point is about process. Right, right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 90% of the American people

90-something percent are product obsessed. They just want to know what the rulings are. And that's why the headlines that you cited are about the ruling, not what should happen. I forgive them or understand them for being so. To them, the definition of justice is not how the decision was made, just what the decision was. And if the Supreme Court is issuing decisions they don't like, they're going to be upset with it. But then again, it's an elected officials job to say, let's pack the courts, let's not pack the courts. Let's either, you know, screw our courage to the sticking point and say it's very important, even if we don't get court rulings that we, even if we do get court rulings, we dislike. It's important not to delegitimize the court. That

seems to be thrown away. So I think that depending on who wins, if Kamala Harris wins, You're going to get one or two more Supreme Court Justice or nominees. You know, looking at the demographic tables, you'll probably get two more who are liberal, and that will take all the pressure away from packing the courts. And then if Donald Trump wins... No, it won't. It'll just come from the other side. It'll be like the filibuster debate. Hypocrisy and charges of hypocrisy won't be relevant anymore.

Each side will say they're for getting rid of the filibuster when they're the ones in power. Yeah, but if she nominates liberal justices, the... Republicans will be hard-pressed to pack the court or achieve a packing of the court. Like, it just won't happen during her terms. No, but it'll be the same as, you know, before, where Democrats will say they want to pack the court now, even though they don't have the ability to do that. When she's in office, and if that were to happen, Republicans will say they want to pack the court, and that's what they'll run on for the next election.

Yeah, well, people run on. Which is terrifying? Yeah, but people run on saying that they want things or results out of the court that might not be good for them. The one thing that could happen, and as I've seen this floated, is I don't think it's possible, but were Republicans able to thwart any nominations from a Harris administration? And there were to be no liberal Democratic justices appointed to the court kind of expanding out the what happened with Merrick Garland for two, three, or four years, then there'd be a legitimate court court packing momentum. And at that point, I mean,

it's all hypothetical. I don't think it would happen, but there'd be a lot more legitimacy to it than there is now. Jonah, court legitimacy. Is this going to fix itself somehow? And I will just note to perhaps add some historical context to Mike's point about the 6-3 court being the problem. I mean, aside, he knows my whole like, it's not a 6-3 court. We won't do that. But is that the dicta? Is that the me-mere-mir-mir-mir-the-dicta? You know, there were decades. where Democrats had a huge majority of nominees on the court. There was a point at which they had all nine nominees on the court right before the Warren court took over.

And there was a time in the 90s for many years when Republicans had eight nominees on the court. So it was an eight one court for many, many years. And there was no talk of court packing at that point. So I do have to think that our politics and the mood everyone's in has something to do with it because frankly in the last 70 well sorry in my lifetime it's only been a five four court quote unquote um from you know for like five years you know in the like 2010s yeah so um we talked about the role of experts in the progressive era a little while ago and

i'll give you my very quick how to understand progressivism in the 20th century spiel the argument always moves were to where the shortest, to the shortest path to power. So Woodrow Wilson, when he was a young man, was writing about how Congress should be the Supreme Branch because he kind of thought he might be the Speaker of the House. Then when he decides he's going to be more like it'll be president, he thinks the president should have unalloyed power. They like the imperial presidency for as long as they controlled the presidency,

and then the argument turned towards, you know, direct democracy and primaries because they thought that's how they could have power. When the Imperial and Presidency, they went back to the Imperial Presidency with FDR, because that was the shortest route to get to results, you know, this outcome-oriented kind of thing. And then when they lost the Imperial Presidency, the argument was, no, the Supreme Court should drive everything. It's all, the argument always moves to what is the most expeditious path to get to the things that you want. The problem I have with a lot of people on the right now is all they're doing is borrowing that argument, that approach to things. and there it's it's it's all politics as the crow flies as michael oxtrap would say and let's just

get the short the best path is the one that provides the shortest path to get what we want and to own the lips kind of thing and so when you're talking about like this argument going back and forth about apocry about packing the court i very much look forward to we don't know if it's going to happen we can talk about it on another podcast but uh um if nick cone is directionally right that the Democrats are starting to have an advantage in the electoral college, we're all of a sudden going to see a lot of Republicans say how terrible the electoral college is. I like the electoral college, even though, like, there are some reforms that I would be in favor of, but it is this nearest weapon to hand kind of thing that poisons so much

of our politics, because it's impossible to have a good faith argument with somebody if they're going to change their position based upon what is most expedient for their team to win the next fight. And I think that that's what we've got all over the place. And the thing that makes it infuriating to discuss is Republicans are absolutely right about Democratic hypocrisy on a thousand different things. And Republicans are hypocritical for criticizing it because the Democrats can criticize them too. When each side keeps switching sides on judicial appointments, on the filaments, on the filth, filibuster on on a hundred different things, they're both hypocrites. And it doesn't make they're not being a hypocrite by pointing out the other side's hypocrisy.

So now we'll move on to a segment called Not Worth Your Time, question mark, because Mike and I were watching some very different movies over the last few weeks, but both movies have the purpose of influencing our politics, our cultural politics, if nothing else. So I watched Am I Are Racist, the movie by Matt Walsh, that's about the sort of DEI industrial complex. And the purpose was to sort of show the absurdity and clownishness and griftiness of this idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it was sort of a borat homage. Mike Walsh, Matt Walsh, sorry, you know, puts on a costume to look like a liberal. And there's a dinner scene party where he's dropping plates to, you know, sort of make a fool of.

himself at this DEI dinner where women pay to be told they're racist. Mike, what's the movie that you watched? What's it called? Will and Harper. And what was that one? Yeah, Will and Harper is Will Ferrell, who you might know is a Hollywood movie star, as literally was said in this movie. His old writing partner at S&L was a guy named Andrew Steele and now is a woman named Harper

Steele. And they go on a road trip. I'm not sure why. I mean, it's somewhat justified for Harper Steele to go back to her now hometown. in Iowa City and to experience America with her buddy Will for the first time as a woman. And it's gentle. They very much hold the viewer's hand. I'm sure most of the viewers will be on board with the journey to begin with.

But, you know, to some extent, they're probably, it's the number one show on Netflix. I'm sure this is why Will Ferrell did it because he'll reach people who maybe are trans-agnostic or perhaps trans-hospy. And here's this, you know, fun guy from elf who's going to bring you through it. So it is a decent, though not scintillating example of humanity, plus a little bit of adjutop, plus actually, you know, some interesting, though not overly funny vignettes. Yeah, I feel like I could just put that onto my movie review as well. Does he have some points? Does he point out some hypocrisies and stupidity of DEI.

individual people. Yeah, is he as good as Borat? Absolutely not. It feels like a cheap imitation. And I don't like movies that make fun of people. I don't like people who make fun of people very much. So I didn't really enjoy the movie because that's like the whole point is that you're like in on the joke with Matt Walsh making fun of these people. And even people who I don't like, who I think are stupid, who I think are grifters, I still don't like want to spend my free time enjoying them being made fun of, if that makes sense. Like, that doesn't provide me joy. So, yeah, that was my main problem with the movie.

Not that he doesn't have some, again, like, point, I guess. I think he does. But, yeah, I guess that's just not my type of movie. Jonah, do you have thoughts on either of these movies? I don't really. I struggle these days to maintain my interest in. politics generally. And the idea that in my downtime, I'm going to watch stuff that is just going to make me angry and make me feel like I have to write about it, doesn't feel like

relaxation. And I'm with you. I generally, I think, have no problem with disagreements. I think, you've heard me rant about this before. Like, democracy is about disagreement. You're supposed to have arguments. I think arguments are the essence of social progress. And, like, you're Like good faith arguments, right? And there's nothing wrong with disagreeing about anything. There's a lot wrong with having contempt for people. Movie pop culture stuff or attempts are pop culture adjacent polemics that start from the premise that the people they're exposing should just be seen with contempt and hatred rather than exposing. I'm not saying you necessarily have to have a thing that arouses.

sympathy for the DEI industry for frick's sake, right? But my point is, is like, going into it with the premise that you're simply going to pander to the people who already have contempt for these people is not a good faith argument. It's not an argument at all. It's an insult. And I had no problem crapping all over the DEI industry and whatever face, DeAngel, I can't remember her name, but I think she's been exposed as a fool. And I'm sure they make many good points illustrating that. But I think we got enough of that in our friggin' culture war stuff these days.

You know, contempt and demonization dehumanize people and taking on their best arguments and fighting with them over the facts and reason, pays them the compliment of taking them seriously. And everyone seems terrified of doing that these days. And so just the idea of watching that kind of...

Also, and as for the trans thing, that's great. like hagiography kind of about my best friend who becomes a woman, I would have to have gone through a lot of other things on Netflix before I'd say, hey, let's watch this.

Well, is the point of that movie also, Mike, like, are they going to places to show how backward they are in America or going to places to show how America actually is very accepting and good place at its heart? Like, what is the purpose, I guess, of all of this road trippy part?

Yeah, it was actually a little of each, but to what Jonah was saying about his unwillingness, uneagerness to engage in ripping a throat out argument. If anything, this movie studiously avoided the argument. So I think that the hard issues, the easy issues among decent people or treat other people well, right? Don't have hate in your heart and don't be cruel. The hard issue is, of course, what happens with medical interventions and minors, and the cast report had, yes, and these are the hard issues. And these are the issues that were avoided. So if the critique of, am I a racist was that it was an over-eagerness to have an unfair argument, this was an under-eagerness to have any argument. And in fact, there was one part of the movie where they go to an Indiana Pacers game and they meet

Eric Holcomb, who's anti-trans, let's call him anti-trans governor of Indiana, and there's no confrontation. They talk about Will Ferrell didn't really understand what Holcomb's politics were, and they both regret not having some sort of questions or confrontative, gentle confrontation. And then they play a montage. It's a road trip, so we see a shot of the car, of all these newscasts talking about different states in their anti-trans policies. And before they get to the word minor, there is a quick fade out on that word. So it's like another state has passed an anti-trans policy which rejects trans care. And then you could almost hear the M for minors when they say four minors. And then there are two other three, four other news reports or I've worked in

documentary films. There was a way to concoct news reports, but some could have happened where I happened to know that what the states were passing was a bill for minors and the part of that minors wasn't mentioned. So this was avoided. The hard parts, the hardest parts, I would say, were avoided. But, you know, I don't think that that pulls Jonah in. Like, if you hate a really bad argument, you'll probably also hate the avoidance of an argument. No, I think it's a great way of putting it. I will just repeat what Ramesh Pannuru told me 25 years ago, and it's, I think, one of the fundamental insights is that there is no greater political philosophy ever created than libertarianism. it only has two weaknesses,

foreign policy and the existence of children. But for those two weaknesses, there is no credible argument against libertarianism. You know, Jonah, your point about it's much easier right now, especially, and much more popular, to dehumanize or simply just attack the person rather than the underlying argument,

because the underlying argument might be hard, right? Mike, like, to your point, like better to avoid the tough cases and simply go out. after people, because all people are flawed. That's, I think, the Supreme Court fight for me. I will talk to you all day long about whether Dobbs was rightly or wrongly decided, and I am happy to cede all sorts of arguments on both sides, frankly. Like, I really do feel like both sides have good arguments on this front and any number of other Supreme Court arguments decisions that

you may not like. But that's not the fight most people want to have. Most people want to talk about whether Clarence Thomas is a good person or a bad person. Not his decisions, not his judicial philosophy. You know, it's much easier to talk about whether you should fly an American flag upside down than it is to read

the entire Dobbs opinion. And so, yeah, I guess this is a nice summary and bow to tie up on my beef with everyone. Talk about the merits of the actual hard edge cases, which is what

we're trying to do as a self-governing republic and attacking each other, I don't find it very fun or interesting, and it certainly doesn't solve those edge cases or those hard questions that we're left with. We're still left with the hard questions. If Clarence Thomas is off the court tomorrow, it will not change the questions coming to the court and whether they're hard or not and what the right answers are or not. Let's talk about that. So I guess that's why I have another podcast. Thank you, Mike Peska, for joining us for this episode of The Dispatch podcast, and Jonah Goldberg, you were here. He gets attendance credit, which is good for his final grade. It's so true. I filled out the ovals correctly for my name.

200 points. 200 in each section. Thank you. Thank you both so much for having me. We'll talk to all of y'all next week. And I ran. I ran so far away. Got to get away.