The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Episode 1

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The Munk Members Pod provides a focused, half-hour masterclass on current events with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author. Rudyard Griffiths, Chair of the Munk Debates, is the podcast moderator. Janice and Rudyard unpack the big issues in the news and drill down into the people, events and trends that are shaping our lives in this extraordinary moment. The inaugural episode of the Munk Members pod digs into three big stories in the news this week: the storming of U.S. capitol buildings by Trump supporters and what this says about the future of U.S. democracy; the fate of Hong Kong after the latest round of arrests under China's new national security law and what if anything Canada should do about it; and the slow place of the vaccine rollout in Canada and much of the rest of developed world. Is government up to the challenge? Should we have given the job to the private sector? To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the Munk Members Pod. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). For those of you who are already Munk Members thank for being part of our community and supporting our mission to restore the art of public debate. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More info at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, I'm Roger Griffiths, the moderator of the Monk Debates. As a subscriber to our regular weekly one-on-one debate podcast, I thought you might enjoy a sample of our new Members-only pod. The Monk members' podcast is about civil and substantive discussion and debate about the people, issues, and ideas driving current events. It features me in conversation with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and internationally best-selling author. access the entire monk members podcast, consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free.

Simply register at monkdebates.com forward slash membership. Again, that address, monkdebates.com forward slash membership. For those of you who are already members, thank you for being part of our community and supporting civil and substantive public debate. Jenna Stein, welcome to the monk members-only podcast. good is it to be here, Roger. Just a pleasure. I'm really looking forward to these monk member podcast with you. It's a terrific opportunity for us to kind of delve into the big issues and ideas in the news, to get your perspective on them, to have some fun with them, to have a bit of a

debate about what we think are the issues that our monk members need to keep their focus and attention on. And Janice, I really have to start with this monumental event. that we've seen in the United States over the last few days and in the waning days of Donald Trump's presidency, a lot of speculation out here that this is revealing some deep fissures in American politics. You know, one senator saying, quote, this is the start of America's second civil war. Is that kind of rhetoric overblown? What's your take on? Way over the top. That rhetoric is way over the top. First of all, no surprise here. These fissures, these divides in American politics, you and I have talked about them many times. They've just grown a lot worse, frankly, not only

since Donald Trump became president, but before, and we can talk about why polarization has gotten so much sharper. But no big surprise that these divides exist. and even the people who participated in that protest in Washington, we've seen these folks before. We saw them in Charlottesville. We've seen them at Trump rallies. And, you know, some of the faces were actually familiar to me when I was watching this live mesmerized on Wednesday when it was happening.

I said, oh, I know him. I've seen him before. So really no surprise, frankly. But the bigger point, I think, is. that's gotten lost in the overblown rhetoric, beginning of a new civil war, the beginning of the end of American democracy. This was a remarkably incompetent group. And I really have called it theater. As offensive as that, and I don't want to minimize what happened here. Four people died. The Capitol was desecrated. But it was really a riveting performance, which Donald Trump

excels at. I thought about it as I watched these people going, it's a Capitol building, you know, and that visual of them just walking through the rotunda when they got in between the ropes and one policeman standing by. I thought, well, what are they going to do next? Are they going into the Senate chamber

and somebody's going to pick up the gavel and they're going to convene an extraordinary session and they're going to pass a resolution declaring this election null and void? Nope. They had no plan, nothing, nothing. Their whole goal was to take the capital, but once they got it, no clue what they were going to do with it.

And so they wandered around, put their feet up on people's desks, stole some art, took away Nancy Pelosi's podium, and frankly, left. But Janice, here can be the counterpoint to that, because look, I think there's a lot of reasons to acknowledge, yes, that the rhetoric around the storming on the part of Donald Trump's critics did get a bit febrile. Yes, it did. To say the least. But here's what I think I'm worried about when I look at U.S. politics.

Yes, we had this definitive win in Georgia, which gives the Democrats now control of both houses and the presidency. Just on that point, Roger, this was no big defendant of win either. Look at those margins. 50.2, 49. This isn't a close call. So we're talking in America that is, you know, divided down the middle, red, blue, Republican Democrat. And now we have a Democratic Party in control of all of government. And let's face it, a lot of Democrats, rightly possible. depending on your perspective, animated by some politics of revenge here, wanting to go after not only this president, possibly when he leaves office, but going after what they see as a Republican

agenda that is antithetical to their vision of America. So I guess what I'm concerned about, Janice, is that storming a kind of precursor, the storming of the capital, a precursor to an era of instability in American politics where people are going to be taking to the street. They're going to be taking political action away from the ballot box, away from organized politics into, you know, what's called direct action. And I'm concerned that we're at some kind of watershed here. Yeah, that's the big. When it comes to the state and climate and tenor of American political culture. I think that's the big question. Because the polarization, you're talking about, Richard, starts in the modern era.

We've had it before in American politics. It's not new. But the modern era, I think it really starts with Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party, which really says we're not about working with you folks across the aisle. That's not who we are. We have a radically different agenda, and we're going all out for it. So we've had more than a decade now of this. But what's new, and you're right to put your finger on it, is direct action.

this system is rigged. This system does not represent you. You don't have a fair chance of getting your way. Don't bother voting. Don't join a political party. Take to the streets and take action because that's the only way your voice is going to be heard in a system that's rigged against you.

So it's actually important that this was as dumb as it was on Wednesday. Right? and that the people who did it looked as dumb as they did when they did it, and that they just walked out with nothing. Many of them are going to be arrested. There is the FBI, which under Biden will not, as Biden said yesterday, work for him, which is a really important point.

So even if Biden wanted to stop this now and have no politics of revenge, He's not going to be able to do that. They are going to go all out and on social media today, if I could recognize some of the people, let me tell you, the FBI can. This was a failure. It didn't achieve its theater. When we call them dumb, though, Janice,

do we engage in that typical bi-coastal kind of elite view of what is a real trauma at the heart of America? a trauma experienced by a generation of Americans who have witnessed falling living standards, a drug epidemic that has ravaged their communities with opioids, and who feel largely left behind by virtue of the very policies that those bicultural elites enacted, namely globalization, free trade, fair trade, whatever you call it, with China and the rest of the world, that just gutted their communities. We call them dumb.

We agree it's stupid to storm the Capitol building and get arrested or shot. But at the end of the day, these are people coming from trauma. These are people who are hurting. I think there is no – that's the deaths of despair generation that you're talking about, right? Where you see some parts of America, and by the way, some communities in Canada where the deaths from opioid higher than the deaths from COVID in this last year, which is something we do not talk enough about. So that's the challenge for the Biden team, right?

What do you do to meet the grievances of legitimate grievances of those people who frankly have fallen behind? But, you know, most of those people were not in that group that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday. The group that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, some were when you read about them, but most were not. So the way you address that need to take action, you see, government takes action. Government introduces policies that speak to these communities that have fallen behind. There is a huge issue of inequality and access to education in the United States. We know this, Richard. You know, the best universities in the world, but they're a meritocracy.

Not everybody gets in. And the children of donors. owners, right? Have a 400% chance, better chance of getting in to one of these universities, which are pathways to opportunity. And that actually, that whole agenda fits with the Biden agenda, which is. Yeah, well, let's see if they can do it. There's powerful K Street lobbyists.

There's corporations, effectively, United States, that have the same rights and powers as citizens. You know, I really wish them luck. But let's shift gears here. Just before we shift gears, Roger. Let's put a marker on the table here and say, if the Biden administration fails to do this, if it gets captured the United States four years from now will face the kind of crisis that you're talking about. Thanks for listening to this sample of the Monk members podcast.

To access the rest of this episode and to become a regular subscriber of the full-length editions of the Monk member pod, consider joining our community at Monk members podcast. Debates.com forward slash membership. Again, that URL monkdebates.com forward slash membership. Membership is free. And for those of you who are already members, thank you for being part of our community and supporting civil and substantive public debate.