The Ricochet Podcast - A Big Bomb

Episode Date: August 6, 2014

This week on the Ricochet Podcast (which starts at about 5 minutes in progress due to a technical issue), we talk politics and washing machines with Ricochet editor Jon Gabriel, and then historian Reverend Wilson Miscamble, author of The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan joins to discuss today’s anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and... Source

All right, here we go. Okay. In three, two, one. Oh, oh man, Rob, that is the funniest thing I think you've ever said. What? Oh, shoot. We've got audio problems. We weren't rolling.

Well, just to bring you all up to speed, Rob just said the most amazing thing. And Peter told this incredible anecdote about Ronald Reagan that has never been told before. Unfortunately, we lost it. So we now join the podcast already in progress. Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. But I am not a bully. I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long.

I'm James Lylex, and today, Ricochet editor John Gabriel stops by to tell us about the state of the world, horrible, and his washing machine, even worse. And then we'll hear from Reverend Wilson McCampbell about Truman and the bomb. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Tragic songs in tragic circumstances. You kind of have to know something as bad as coming, right? It's not as though you find yourself going over the top of the trench and the bullets are whipping past and you say, all right, boys, link arms and find ourselves a good song anthem to go out with.

Well, in any case, I don't know what they were saying at fox when uh they decided to pull their bid for time warner but they did so i don't know if there's a appropriate sad melody or is this a sad melody at all should we i think in the movie the dawn patrol they sing a great song called the rosy goblet every time someone dies it's a great it's a great scene from dawn patrol if you i think i think it's an early gary cooper movie i'm now make i'm making this up but i uh it's a dawn patrol is a world war fighter uh flying ace movie and they they had the song and the rosy goblet's an old song that they they sang i guess in the 19th century so there you go rosy rosy she used to strip down at the copper squirrel and end up in avenue yeah yeah i knew And the Rosie Goblet's an old song that they sang, I guess, in the 19th century. So there you go. Rosie Goblet.

She used to strip down at the Copper Squirrel on Hennepin Avenue. Yeah, I knew her. Rosie Goblet. But I go back to my point here before I return to Peter's point about the weather and the rain, which I know people are dying to get back to. We were looking down the barrel at a great concatenation, an assemblage, a wad of media with Fox and Time Warner being part of the same company. But now it doesn't seem to be that's going to happen. Is this a good thing? Does it speak of ill of Fox's future? What happened here? We'll go to the media guy first, Rob. Well, I mean, look, there's a couple things going on. One is that these companies can really only

make sense at scale, right? Because distribution, all the stuff that doesn't really matter to the making of a picture, distribution, that kind of thing, only really makes sense if you're making a whole bunch of pictures a year and none of these studios can really afford to make a whole bunch of pictures a year. So there's this natural squeeze that's occurring. So the people who have money and who have sort of vision and real courage like Murdoch know they got to make a big play. And the second thing that's going on is just consolidation in general, which is terrifying everyone sort of on my side of the business because we feel like, oh my god, there are 12 buyers for our stuff and now they're going to be four buyers for our stuff and that's not going to be good. film but splitting it up splitting it up into different labels so that they have lots of different ways to put you know entertainment in front of you and they look at a company like time warner which has got a lot of little weird divisions none of which really work well together

it's not a it's not it doesn't really make a lot of sense that company as a company it's got a news channel that doesn't really work it's got two cable channels that don't really, that both are successful, but that are based out of Atlanta. And it's got weird little properties here and there. And if you're Rupert Murdoch, you're smart. You say, okay, I'll just buy the whole thing and then I'm going to bust it up.

And I'm going to keep the stuff that I need. I'm going to sell the stuff that I don't. And the company will look different in five years, four years. People here did not like that. My side of the aisle – not my side of the aisle but my side of the business, the writers and stuff. The writers hated that because they hate all consolidation.

They hate all companies. Time Warner made the argument that, well, hey, we're going to do all that stuff ourselves. So I think by withdrawing that bid – I'm surprised he withdrew it because he tends to be a really tenacious guy. He may have another thing up his sleeve because he tends to always have another thing up his sleeve. You have not seen the Time Warner leadership. Does it ever. They're going to have to sell some stuff. They're going to have to streamline that business.

They're going to have to make some big, big, big changes. Peter, when he was talking about the number of channels, the number of imprints, et cetera, it reminded me of publishing, which itself you'll have two or three big houses, each of which will have five to ten different little imprints. Does that make sense? I mean – Well, the way – Rob touched on this. Another way of thinking about it – by the way, I don't want to pronounce on all this as though I actually understand it, but I can relate to you what friends here in Silicon Valley have explained to me. When has that ever stopped any of us? Come on, come on, man. Well, in politics, I delude myself that I understand it. On this, I don't even delude myself. One way to think of it is pipes versus content or software versus hardware. And 21st

Century Fox and Rupert Murdoch are in the business of providing content, by and large, making movies, making television shows, airing Fox News. So, by and large, is Time Warner in the business of producing content. What they all find themselves up against is consolidation in the pipes business, Comcast, Brian Roberts at Comcast, all of these, all the content more and more has to go through cable and fiber optic systems. And those are themselves consolidating. So the fear in the industry is that the people who own the pipes will be able to shake down the content makers and the content makers need to be able to get bigger just to stand up to the distribution, so to speak, to the pipes. So from that point of view, you don't want the writers, the creatives in Hollywood, I'm guessing, Rob will know this in more detail, they may look at Rupert Murdoch and say, oh no,

the ogre expands his empire. That's silly. But they should also be aware that consolidation is taking place in the distribution and the people who buy their product, the people who are in the business of making huge, huge trouble because, of course, people are going cableless. They don't need cable. If you're under 30, you don't even have a TV. You watch everything on demand as you wish on your laptop. And you're not going to pay a cable company $50. Why would you bother to do that? You can get Hulu or a subscription to this or that.

And all that stuff is coming. And so what you see is you feed people like Comcast and Time Warner, Comcast, Time Warner combining. You find a lot of combinations in those pipes. And what they're putting money into is trying to figure out how we create a wireless network around the country. So how we deliver data to you in a different way, that's a big, big, big deal. That allows them to compete, compete also with themselves,

can offer more services. I mean, everybody knows cable companies are sort of right there along with the post office and the DMV is like bad customer service. And they know that. They know that their customers are going to leave them the minute they have it.

The other problem with the distributors is they're at the mercy of people who have signature programming. So if you're the Disney company, every time you want more money from your cable operator or your distributor, and cable operators, they have a couple ways of putting TV on. They put it on, they charge the provider, or they pay the provider. And in the case of becoming like Disney, they pay you. They pay you a little bit per subscriber, per sub.

If you're Disney and you want a little bit more money, you say, I want more money for ABC Family or I want a little bit more money for some other little cable property I've got. OK, that's fine. But the cable company says, no, we're not going to give it to you. And then if you're Disney, you say, well, OK, that's fine. Then we're not going to give you ESPN. And we'll see how your subscribers like waking up tomorrow not getting espn because espn is one of those channels sports that you if you watch it you have to have it and if you don't get it you're going to call up direct tv the next day um and so that's a terrifying thing

for cable operators they tend to always capitulate to whoever's got sports programming or event programming, which is one of the reasons why, if you look at what 21st Century Fox is doing under Rupert Murdoch, they're spending a whole lot of money to build a sports network, just like ESPN, because it gives you leverage. Once you have sports or you have stuff like sports, people have to watch you. They have to watch you then, not just when they get around to it. They don't DVR it. They watch it on Tuesday night when the game is on Tuesday night. So all this stuff is happening.

The great thing about it is the winner here is the consumer. I mean you win because you have better choices. You lose because you have to make a lot more choices and there's just so much on. You miss a lot of stuff. But in general, this is a perfect example of competition being good absolutely just right now we're in a state of horrible flux a perfect example might be this show that i started watching mainly because i didn't like it was called the killing uh but it had a little mystery that you were supposed to care about and the end of the first season came and they didn't resolve it i know i hated that so much like like kill that

show by the way like like that series like twin peaks well then they brought it back for a second season and it was way. It killed that series. Like Twin Peaks. Well, then they brought it back for a second season, and it was unimpressive, and I watched it just to find out who did it. Then they brought it back for a third season, and for some reason I started watching it just to hate on it a little bit more, but I found myself starting to like it at the end of it. They killed it dead in the third season, AMC. What happens? Shazam! Netflix.

Netflix picks it up for another four... That was my Peter Robinson imitation right there, by the way. Netflix picks it up for another four or five my Peter Robinson imitation right there by the way, Netflix picks it up for another four or five episodes and then closes the season off, this was an option that was never available when I was a kid, when I was a kid something got cancelled after 13 weeks, it went to the graveyard forever and it never came

back, so this idea of having the, you know, we have no loyalty to the tube anymore, we have loyalty to the show wherever we may find it is what's going to change things and what's, I think you're right Rob, it's going to be better for the consumer, which is why, for example, why should you have to depend on going down to the store, to the aisle that has the razors and buy them there when you can just have them delivered to your door? Do you care if it's by the post office? No. Do you care if it's by UPS? No. Do you care if it's, if it's,

they fall out of the sky? No. What matters is the quality of the shave that you get, and that's why you should be getting your next shaving kit from Harry's. And very cheaply, very quickly, I'll just tell you this. They are focused, focused like the edge of that blade, on giving guys a greater shaving experience for a fraction of the cost, half the price of other razor blades.

Are you tired of paying full price for a razor blade? Of course you are. Unbundle. Cut the virtual equivalent of the cable there and go to Harry's. Harry's.com, incidentally, if you use the coupon code RICOCHET, you get five bucks off your first purchase. You'll find that they're shipped to your door. You'll love the look and feel and the heft of the product, the quality of the shave,

and the way the emollients on that wonderful little cream just make it the smoothest, easiest, blood-free, nick-free shave you've ever had. Of course, if you got up this morning and had six cups of espresso and you can't control that tremor, even if you hold your wrist with the other hand, I can't help you there. I can't. But, you know, when it comes to the ease and the convenience and the perfect, fine quality of the product, you're not going to beat Harry's. And if you do so, you'll thank Harry's for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And one of the things that Ricochet does, of course, is bring to you fine contributors and editors from around the world with a variety of life experiences that they bring.

I mean, look, Peter, Rob, could you find two more dissimilar really trades that they're in? And yet they founded Ricochet, one of the things they brought forth in this was John Gabriel and introduced his signature looking over the cup of coffee to a generation, to a nation which to this very day is emulating his trademark profile avatar picture in little contests they hold on Twitter.

Good to have him back. John, how are you doing? I am doing fantastic. I have a different mug of coffee today but I'm ready. Yeah, but it's still a signature mug. Of course. It's of the John Gabriel line that I sell. That's good.

That's good. Hey, John, we were going back and forth on Ricochet. There's a lot more meaty stuff to talk about, but I wanted to ask a little bit about your washing machine. I'm kind of disappointed with it, Rob. Okay. Have you solved the problem since a couple days ago? No, not really. Yeah, the towels still aren't coming out right, but the piece that I wrote about was just how I had this old beat-up washer and dryer that worked like a champ, and it was indestructestructible and it was the same design my mom probably bought in the 50s. And now I have a new high-efficiency one which costs 10 times as much and my towels smell

funny and I've decided to blame Obama for that. So too many government regulations. Well, now, I read that. I think I was like – I think I saw when you put it up and i commented on it but then you know if you keep reading that post a lot of people are saying uh hey listen i'm a staunch conservative but i got a high efficiency one too and mine works fine um and then of course they're the classic you know ricochet brainiac workarounds which i always love that ricochet but there's always somebody there like i already solved that problem you know smart person. You go to the hardware store.

I forgot who it was. I should have known. I should know who it is. You get a little phosphate thing and stick it in there. You're fine. Yeah, I'm going to try that one. That sounds good. I bookmarked that one.

That sounded very scientific. I did like the fact that there were – we got some pushback from the membership. You got some pushback from the membership. You got some pushback from the membership about like, hey, not everything is bad about this stuff. Well, there's my notes to be found everywhere. Let me push back on that then. Everybody may remember a day when their washing machine, no, their dishwasher in their house actually got their glasses sparkling clean instead of the cloudy mess that you get today. And that's because they banned TSPs. They said that you can't have these.

I think it was Washington or California that did it. TSP is what again? T-spoons. Tri-sodium. You're not allowed to put T-spoons in the dishwasher anymore. Okay, that's right because it makes the eggshells thinner, right? Tri-sodium cyanide phosphate or something else. Okay, that's what we did.

That's right. It was killing turtles. Now, in Europe, in wonderful, enlightened Europe, they're still allowed to have these things. And consequently, they have cleaner dishes than we have. Over here, no. You got to put them through twice. You got to wash them when they get done. Or you can do what Rob just said.

You can go down to the store. You can buy the damned stuff. And you can put it in by yourself, thereby completely bypassing. You can? You can and you should and you can put it in by yourself thereby completely bypassing You can? You can and you should and you ought to be careful because it's kind of sort of poisonous but yeah, I got a box of this stuff under my

under my sink so it is possible. Do you go to the hardware store, you ask for TSP and they give it to you? Yeah, absolutely. Buy a box of it, it'll last you a year. But the point of it is What's it supposed to do? It just has the surfacants, I believe, uh, that do a better job at removing the, uh, the crap, the dinginess, the dirt it's, it was there for a

reason it worked, but because it led to a higher, I don't know, phosphate content in the lakes or the rivers in California or Washington somewhere was banned nationwide. And so now this is the situation in which we find ourselves cloudy Cloudy dishes, but heck, we don't have a phosphate problem. Europe, though, different situation. James, this is actually serious. I need this stuff. Have you written about it, where you can get it, what you ask for, how much you put in? Go to – This is serious. Is there a link you can send?

You should go to John's post. Go to John's post. I like the fact that – Oh, OK. I like the fact that the Middle East is in flames. The border is now porous. Unemployment is high. We're facing a midterm election. We're here talking about dishwashers. You're absolutely right. It's completely specious.

John, the New York Times has come out in favor of marijuana legalization. Is that the answer? When you look around, the whole world is simply to just get as baked as possible and let it all take care of itself? Yeah, I think if you smoke enough weed, you can feel like there's been some real hope and change going on. Or at least stare at your hand for hours and wonder if there's little tiny universes in the atoms and wow i'm seeing trails now but uh yeah it's it's they they finally getting more libertarian over at the new york time so good for them hey john can i ask you so when you're surveying i mean you're you're surveying not just our membership but sort of the twitter sphere in general

do you feel like it i mean i don't mean to ricochet because of course we have our own code of conduct. We're civil, smart people. But if you – do you find Twitter is getting better or worse in the exchange between and among people politically on political sides? It's getting a lot worse I think, a lot more touchy. People, especially people from the left, but also just primaries are going around the country and just people are just uptight and nervous. And I think a lot of it, you know, whichever side you're on in the Republican caucus, I think a lot of people are just worried about the country and it's coming out emotionally and they're getting upset at each other.

But really from the left, it's this just insane amount of anger because they've had their way for six years and look around. It's not going too well. And when they view state as their god that can do no wrong and we just need to give it more money and more power and that God bleeds, they're lashing out and they're very angry. A lot of them aren't even talking politics anymore, which is interesting. I saw recent ratings of MSNBC has just plummeted over the summer and I think it's just because they're disappointed. They're just – they don't want to hear about it because it hasn't worked and they don't have an answer other than look at those dumb republicans. They said something stupid today. That's all they got and they have no ideas.

It's like they're kind of aware of what's happening and the country sort of moving away I think. And so there seems to be this – I mean there seems to be these strange Freudian errors. I mean who was it? Was it Talking Points Memo that had a little press release or a tweet yesterday that said Senator Walsh, Republican of Montana, may pull out from the race today? It was like this instinct. They had to attack a Republican even if he wasn't a Republican. They created him as a Republican and you're seeing that too. There was a Democratic activist in Kentucky who started complaining about Mitch McConnell's wife because she's not from Kentucky. She's Asian, and this woman ended up deleting her entire account, and I can't remember who she worked with. Democratic Party, but it was some progressive caucus leader always invading against the

intolerance of Republicans who went on this screed of about 12 tweets attacking Mitch McConnell's wife because she wasn't white, which was really bizarre to see. They're cracking up. And I was at this Netroots conference a couple of weeks ago, and it is a glum group of people, that's for sure. Yeah. So what are they preparing for? Are they preparing for midterms? Are they preparing for 16? Because it seems to me – I have noticed that. I've noticed a little bit even in the political conversations I've been having with people I know here, all of whom by the way are Obama supporters.

It's not cordial or it's less cordial than it was. It's less – I mean I could always tell my good friends who were Obama supporters because they would say things to me like, you know, I think there's a lot of good ideas on your side. I mean a lot of crazies and like I think you guys love guns too much and i think there's a lot of bigots and racism but you get some good idea and now it's it's just fury and rage all along and when you when you put out when i point out you're talking about a tiny tiny fragment of the of the american government at this point it's simply the uh the house not the senate not the white house um bar. Barack Obama could get anything he wants and had two years to get every – he's – Barack Obama is in trouble not because of what he didn't get but because of what he got, stimulus and Obamacare. That's what's hurt him and foreign policy, which is his exclusive province. So that's when it sort of starts to turn angry.

And I kind of feel like we're – it's like we're in for a psychotic break on the left. And if you read Twitter like I guess like a therapist would read the vital signs of some psychology, it does look like it's coming. I don't know what's going to happen. But it looks like there's a big tantrum on the way. There's a big tantrum and I think too you're going to see – it will be interesting to see the divergence between the Liz Warren caucus who says the only reason Obama has failed is he didn't go far enough. Kind of Marxist never worked because the Soviets, they just weren't Marxist enough. They weren't pure enough.

And I know at this liberal conference I was at, they – it was Warren all the time. And obviously, they're the left wing of the Democratic Party, but no one else was mentioned. No O'Malley, no Hillary. There was some Hillary presence, but it seemed so pro forma. And she was passing out free coffee, her campaign to people. So I guess they kind of had to be polite to the volunteers. But it was all Warren all the time. And then you're going to have a lot of pragmatists who are just like, let's go with Hillary or even an O'Malley or something, but someone who looks a little more reasonable and might work with the other side a little bit because they're not getting anything done anymore because all Obama does is blame the other side and if the other side, the Republicans are about to pass something on, be it immigration or the VA,

right before the vote, he gets on the podium and starts bashing republicans again to almost dare them to vote against any initiatives that might improve things. OK. So you're – just because you brought up the border again. You're in Arizona. Yes. So you're walking around. You're getting a cup of coffee. You're at the Walgreens, wherever. How much of a topic of a conversation is the border just around town? It is being talked about, but in my experience – and it kind of depends where you're at. But in my experience, Arizona is burned out on the immigration issue. Really? Arizona is burned out on the immigration issue. They're just kind of burned out. It is coming up a lot in the midterms campaign, but we kind of went through everything that Texas is going through now since they are really being impacted by all these unaccompanied minors, however old they might be. They're dealing now with what we dealt with a few years ago. We kind of were fed up a few years ago. Now it is actually lessened, and interestingly, by the histrionics coming out of Washington and various Democrats.

A lot of immigrants trying to cross the border, they're choosing California or they're choosing Texas or even New Mexico. They're trying to avoid, and if they come in through Arizona, they get the heck out of Arizona quick because Arizona has been so demonized by the left. It's been this kind of weird thing where the Democrats are actually helping the more – the border security folks in Arizona, the Democrats have helped them out. And really when that whole border thing happened, SB 1070 was the rule passed, which wasn't that extreme, especially after they altered it and the courts got in. But the schools in inner city areas where a lot of illegal immigrants were thought to reside, schools were just emptying out because people just left. They headed back to Mexico or Central America, or they headed to Colorado,

California, other states because of the hostile environment? Now in Arizona, it's a lot more focuses on how do we get jobs here? Look what Texas is doing. Why are these trucks leaving California and driving through our state to Texas instead of just stopping and setting up shop right next door? So I think a lot of people are changing their focus from the let's shut down the border to let's welcome jobs. Well, John, so Peter here, what's the – they're changing their focus but are they changing their views? Is there even a kind of subterranean consensus forming that Governor Brewer was mistaken to come down hard on the border? Does the state feel that it went too far or is it just we handled that problem, now on to the next matter? There are some, I would call it kind of the chamber of commerce types,

who think it went too far. But the people who think it went too far, it's almost always on the PR side, not the legal side. Because the rule changes weren't that strict. As they were originally drafted, I didn't support them. But then Governor Brewer forced a couple minor changes to make sure there wasn't people just getting stopped in their cars because they looked a certain way. But once that was removed, I think a lot of people in the state, especially the GOP voters, support it wholeheartedly. A lot of people are concerned about – it's all rhetoric.

It's all polish. You'll have a state representative from a rural area who will say something that people construe as racist, and they're just like, okay, let's just tone down a little bit. Let's tone down our rhetoric. But it's not about changing the rules, which is good to see. But it seems like a lot of business leaders too, they just want to move past the issue and focus on, like I said, jobs and also education, other issues like that to make sure that we have a good business climate since especially our next-door neighbor, which is huge, is shedding manufacturers and companies and droves. Hey, John, one last question. I was just scanning Twitter and I'm watching and reading Jonah Goldberg. He's making an interesting point about the difference between the Cuomo scandals in New York and the Christie scandals in New Jersey.

And that the Christie scandals, of course, were a magnificent, epic miniseries on every major news channel and newspaper. And the Cuomo scandals are a blip. Is this something that we should – What Cuomo scandals? I have no idea what you're talking about. Right, right. Is this something that we should be prepared for in the – put it this way.

Is this something that going forward Twitter is going to – because you're a great user of Twitter, and that's why I'm sort of asking about Twitter. Is this something that Twitter is going to – because you're a great user of Twitter and that's why I'm sort of asking about Twitter. Is this something that Twitter is designed to combat that people on our side can use Twitter the way – as a cudgel against the sort of the left-wing media monolith or is it more just – are we just sort of ankle biters? I think it can be used fantastic as a cudgel because a lot of reporters really want to give the appearance that they're unbiased. And there's all sorts of fantastic reporters out there too who are trying to be unbiased.

But if you live in Manhattan, you're going to have a certain tilt just because you're so saturated in that environment. To their credit, New York Times has been going after Cuomo. I'm kind of shocked the rest of the papers around the region aren't following their lead since that's usually what they do. They kind of take their cues from the A section of the Times. Twitter is fantastic though for holding reporters accountable, and a lot of them won't reply. But if they're getting a lot of questions about Cuomo, they're going to at least start making excuses for him. Someone who uses it in a great way is our good friend Molly Hemingway. questions about Cuomo, they're going to at least start making excuses for him. Someone who uses it in a great way is our good friend Molly Hemingway who during the Gosnell trial, how health reporters were not mentioning it at all and she basically shamed

the press corps into covering it single-handedly really. As she started prying away, other people jumped in and helped out and she wasn't rude or a jerk or anything like that but just says, hey, there's another side out here. And when you get reporters to say, oh, well, we don't cover the Gosnell thing because being in Philadelphia, that's a local crime story. But then they will cover an errant traffic cone on a New Jersey bridge. It's like, OK, what is local? What is national?

And what are your priorities here? That's a great point. Well, you – I mean you use Twitter beautifully. So if people are listening, we'll put your Twitter feed. I know it's on the – well, we have a little Twitter thing on the side of the page. We'll put it in the podcast notes too because there aren't that – I mean you're a Twitter star. I am. Now I got to monetize it.

John, I want to get back to something that Rob had mentioned earlier and that is you can go to Walgreens for coffee. Don't answer that. Answer that question on Twitter. Rewind the tape here. All will be clear to everybody else. Thanks for joining us today. We'll see you back at ricochet.com. And of course on Twitter,

you know, um, what I would like to do right now is to come up with some really, uh, ornate, complex, labyrinthical, uh,

segue to guide us to the encounter books. But frankly, we don't have the time and B, you know what we're talking about because we talked about it before, but just to remind you, Andy McCarthy, you know, when people say McCarthyism these days, you should really think of Andy because

he almost redefines the term. When I think McCarthy now, I think of this guy, former prosecutor, hard edge when it comes to understanding terrorism and a rather encyclopedic knowledge of exactly what sort of, quote, crimes and misdemeanors, end quote, I put them like that in case you disagree with the concept, that the administration has wreaked upon the country. Or not. If you're an anti-impeachment person, if you are an MSNBC listener who has somehow stumbled into this

and you want to know exactly what those wingnuts are. God, you must be experiencing such pain right now, but yes. You might want to read the book just to find out what those crazy wingnuts are up about. So yeah, as we've been talking about for a month, Andy's Faithless Execution, that actually isn't the title of the book, Andy's Faithless Execution, that's an upcoming Toy Story episode, building the case for Obama's impeachment, will tell you exactly what high crimes and misdemeanors means, what it actually should specify. But to focus on all these individual episodes of misdemeanors, as Andy points out, is to miss the overarching offense, and yes, I'm quoting from the Parises, and that is the

president's willful violation of his solemn constitutional oath to faithfully execute the laws. And that matters. So to get Andy's book for 15% off the list price or any other of the fine Encounter books, go to EncounterBooks.com and use that favorite coupon code of yours. I know you punch it into every site you go, hoping, hoping that it'll work. Well, it works at Harry's, and it works at Encounter.

Ricochet. We thank Encounter Books for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we turn to a perspective that goes back a bit more distance, perhaps, than what we've been nattering about here. And it's good to remind ourselves that history did not begin last week, or with the Obama administration, but we trail behind us centuries, centuries, millennia of accumulated human history, which to this day echoes down into our actions. And for that, we bring to you

the Reverend Wilson McCampbell. He is the author of The Controversial Decision, Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan. And, well, he was born in 1953, educated at the University of Queensland, from which he graduated in 73 and obtained a master's degree three years later. In 76, he came to Notre Dame to pursue graduate studies in history.

Got his doctoral there in 80. And his book in the Cambridge Essential Library series includes the aforementioned book on Truman, the atomic bomb. It was published in May of 2011. We welcome him with pride to the Ricochet podcast. Thank you so much. Father, it's Peter Robinson here. I want to repeat the title of that book because it is incomparably the best book on Truman and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

The most controversial decision, Truman, the atomic bombs, and the defeat of Japan by Father Wilson Miscampo, a beloved figure at the University of Notre Dame. Father, 69 years ago this very day, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. One week ago today, the last of the 12 crewmen of the Enola Gay, the B-29 superfortress that carried that bomb, the last of the crewmen died at the age of 93. Let me ask you a few questions about that event. Point number one, argument number one, the Japanese were trying to surrender before we dropped the bomb. We picked up cables. We knew they were trying to surrender,

but we dropped the bomb anyway. Father? That is, in my view, Peter, a completely false view. It is one that has been pushed by revisionist historians in some ways to denigrate Truman and his decision-making. But there are some terrific research that has been done that reveals that the Japanese military was deeply committed to continuing the fight against the Americans. Their whole military strategy was based on inflicting was deeply committed to continuing the fight against the Americans. Their whole military strategy was based on inflicting enormous casualties on the United States invading troops, and that's what they were expecting to take place.

It's well to keep in mind, Peter, that even after the use of two atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war which took place in the Northern States, the Japanese military was still keen to continue the fight. It was only the unprecedented intervention by the Emperor Hirohito that forced the decision-making. So there were, of course, some diplomatic explorations by Japan through the Soviets to try and organize not a surrender but some kind of settlement between some sort of peace treaty or settlement which would not have involved any occupation of the Japanese homeland. And in fact, the Japanese had hoped that they might have been

able to preserve some of their old colonial empire. So the suggestion that the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering and that the United States went ahead to use it anyway as a warning shot to the Soviet Union. It's sort of like an object concluding. Yeah, not the concluding blow of the Second World War, but it's an opening shot in the Cold War is the argument that is made. To my view, that is a specious argument that simply cannot be sustained by the facts. So, Father, I believe we now know – I don't believe it. I know it because I read it in your book that we drop a bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th. The Soviets come into the war on August 8th.

We drop a bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th. And there is a meeting of the war cabinet in tokyo and even after and of course also there's been firebombing of tokyo taking place for many weeks months by that point even after firebombing two atomic weapons in the soviet entry into the war correct me on this but as i recall the details the war cabinet split three to three three wanted to surrender three wanted to continue fighting and the emperor himself had to break the deadlock and even then when he recorded what they refer to in japan to this day as the jewel voice broadcast the broadcast for the first time the people of Japan heard the voice of an emperor. When he recorded that, there was an attempted coup. The military tried to capture all the copies to prevent it from being broadcast. That's all correct. Is that right? Have I got that right?

That is absolutely correct. The military coup was primarily by junior officers. They were hot-blooded and couldn't bear the thought of surrender, and they sought to take over the palace and to capture the emperor and to prevent the broadcast being made, in which he would ask Japanese armed forces to lay down their arms. An indication of how the military, once the decision had been made, felt somewhat humiliated. General Anami, who was the war minister, he went back to his home and put a sword through his guts. So you can sense that the Japanese military were deeply resistant

to any move that was going to cause. And something that I hope that your listeners would be aware, the Japanese were quite clear on the American strategy. They'd pretty much identified where the invading forces were going to take place. And a terrific book by a fellow named Dennis Gian Greco called Hell to Pay, Hell to Pay, looks at the Japanese military preparations for an invasion. Peter, they were gearing up to fight like crazy and to inflict maximum casualties on an invading force,

both in Kyushu and then later on the Tokyo Plain. Right. Father, just a couple more questions. You are a priest. You teach at Notre Dame, but you also celebrate mass every day. Civilians were killed in these attacks. The President of the United States and his, the general staff, knew that civilians would be killed in these attacks. What about the morality of dropping these two atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes, this is an area, Peter, in which I've given some thought and attention, and I don't want to to avoid any bombing involving indiscriminate killing. Regrettably, the war in the Pacific had evolved into such levels of killing.

By 1945, you mentioned earlier the Tokyo fire bombings, well over 100,000 people killed in that attack, more than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And the losses that were occurring throughout Asia, of course, as your listeners would appreciate, Japan still pretty much occupied all of China, most of Southeast Asia, etc., etc. And roughly 2,000 to 250,000 Asians were dying each month as the Japanese empire continued its sort of rampage. We often don't give attention to the losses that Japan inflicted,

but the Chinese remember them well, of course. Perhaps 20 to 25 million people died at Japanese hands or through Japanese responsibility. Anyway, sorry, I'm rambling here, Peter. To get back to the point, I present the use of the bombs as the least worst of the terrible options that was available to Truman. And in that context, I see it as a moral option. Some people want to suggest that President Truman should be put on trial retrospectively for war crimes and other things of that sort. I do not think that that is in any way justifiable. He took an action that he thought would bring the war quickly to an end. He took an action that he thought would lead to the fewest casualties. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military industrial cities. Civilians had

been warned to evacuate the cities that then sustained warnings. And it's obviously an area in which many people would disagree. But if someone can point to me a more moral way that Japan could have been defeated, I'll be glad to change my own position. Thank you, Father. My co-host here, James Lilacs, has a question for you, Father. Yes, Father. Wind the clock forward several decades.

Today, we look at Japan making moves to perhaps increase its military budgets, to rearm a bit, to counteract China, and people are fine with that. Is that because we have no historical memory or because we believe that the culture of Japan has changed so irrevocably that the old nationalistic militarism that gave birth to their empire is gone for good? I think it's a function of the concern for China's growing power and Japan's own recognition

that it probably could contribute more within an alliance structure sort of led by the United States. I've just been in my own home of Australia for the past few weeks and the Japanese Prime Minister Abe was out there and gave an address to the Australian Parliament. And interesting to see that from the perspective of nations

like Australia and Japan, there's some concern about Chinese ambitions and Chinese domination of the region, particularly if the United States were to pull back considerably. So I don't expect Japan to be moving into any sort of supranationalist direction, but to be a more cooperative partner with the United States and capable of projecting force a little more broadly and perhaps participating in some international efforts more significantly

than they've been able to do in the past with the treaty restrictions that were placed upon them when that Japanese treaty was signed. By the way, the Japanese military at the moment is quite significant. It's quite substantial. So it's a sort of beefing up on something that's already in place. And when you have North Korea and also China seemingly a bit more restless in your neighborhood, I think from a Japanese perspective, it's quite understandable. So I still hope that the United States continues its major engagement.

The Obama administration has said as much that it would continue to be a very active player in the Pacific. And in that context, I don't think there should be too many worries about what Japan's future course might be. Were the United States to ever pull out of serious engagement in Northeast Asia, I then suspect the Japanese would rearm in a much more dramatic way. Father, Ms. Campbell, we thank you so much for being on the show today, especially after a 14-hour flight from Down Under. Thank you so much for having me. I apologize if I was a bit foggy in the mind.

Life in Australia is not a short one. Not in the least, sir, and we look forward to having you on as soon as possible again. Have a great day. Father, thank you so much. God bless. Thank you, Peter. Bye-bye now. Bye.

Bye. You know, the 14-hour flight from Australia, I don't think anybody was worried if anyone started coughing. When it comes to the other direction, however, the nation is gripped in fears of Ebola, as we are supposedly told by a media that doesn't want us to panic, but nevertheless has to have aerial footage of an ambulance bringing somebody to an isolation ward. I know that Rob has to go here very quickly, but I just want to check the temperature out there in California in the entertainment world. Never mind where Ebola fears. Not Ebola fears, but are you all sitting around the table saying, we've got to work this into a script?

Who's going to pitch the first Ebola panic movie? This is the second Ebola eruption or even eruption of the national consciousness. So there's already been Ebola. There's a movie called Outbreak. I think it was called Outbreak. Was it Dustin Hoffman? Robert Preston. I think it was based on actually a terrific book.

Yeah. Hot Zone. Hot Zone. Called Hot Zone, yeah. Robert Preston, I think. Richard Preston. Right. And of course in Hollywood, what it turned out to be was that it was a brave WHO researchers or something. And then it turned out that the US military wanted this biological weapon.

They didn't want to cure it. They wanted to store it so they could use it against their enemies, which was sort of ludicrous. And of course, I don't think – I think it hurt the picture actually, the way these things often do. I don't – I think people don't quite understand Ebola right now and they don't quite understand – I mean first of all, somebody is – I mean I think we're much more in danger of an airborne virus coming because those are things that are much more portable. But that's just my own personal obsession with these. Well, it's interesting how these things fall down the scale of what we're supposed to worry about. For a while there, we're all worried about bird flu,

waiting for the inevitable mutation that will lay us out because we haven't had a good global pandemic since 1917, and we're due. Swine flu didn't do it. H1N1, SARS, nah, that was just a warmup stuff. There's a big population winnowing virus coming somewhere. But then we stopped worrying about that when we have summers like this one, where all of a sudden we've got flames popping up all over the world.

There was a piece yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Brett Stevens, I believe, who was talking about the inordinate amount of attention that people are spending looking at the Gaza conflict. When you compare the slaughter that's going on elsewhere next door practically in Libya, in Syria, down in Sudan, almost as if, well, what is the reason for that exactly? I just, is it pure flat out anti-Semitism or is this just the vestiges of the left's anti-colonialism, which has nothing to do with historical anti-Semitism, finally having its natural apotheosis?

Rob, if you've got to go, you've got to go. I'm not sure. No, I'm not sure. But part of it has to do with the fact that we hold Israel and Israeli to Western standards. That's right. And so we assume that they're just like us. The Western standards of firebombing Tokyo and Dresden. Exactly right.

And we – and we – that's – and so that's naturally how we look at that part of the world and we look at them. Whereas we look at these other parts and whether we're conscious of it or media, they believe that those are cases that were closed. Libya was a successful liberation. Now let's not talk about it anymore. Same thing with Sudan. Same thing in many ways with Egypt. Let's just simply not talk about it anymore because our president succeeded at what he tried to do. That's my theory. James, you're on to something there. You just made a quip about

firebombing Dresden. But listen to what Father Bill and Ms. Campbell just said. Even after two atomic weapons had been dropped, firebombing. The military still opposed surrender and we now know that the military was talking about the glory of a kind of mass suicide by the entire nation of Japan. In other words, in Japan, there was a real death wish on the part of the military and some of the people in government. And in Hamas, you see very much, I'm convinced, you see very much the same thing. They want the violence for the sake of the violence. And when it came to it, we were unable to devise any better way of ending it

than by very unfortunately attacking the country and killing a lot of civilians. And that should be borne in mind when Americans criticize Israel, which even as we warned people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the way, I don't mean to suggest that Israel is doing anything like dropping atomic weapons on Gaza. But even as we warned the civilians to clear out, the Israelis are taking every possible precaution, as best I can tell. They're taking every precaution I can think. I feel I'm in the position of Father Ms. Campbell, who said, if anyone can point to me a more moral way of causing Japan to surrender,

if anybody can point to me a more moral way of defending Israel, I'd change my position, but I'm not aware of any. Well, the way America has come to view war is, well, it could be summed up by a title of a book I remember reading after the first Gulf War. It was called Victory Without Triumph. These indistinct endings that don't necessarily end. I mean, what was the first war we got into right after World War II? We got into the Korean War, which did not end with a decisive defeat

and reshaping of the society of North Korea. Truce. And subsequently, just about every conflict that we've gotten into, aside from the minor ones like Granada or Panama, have ended up with these indistinct, vague, sort of trailing off into nothingness like the last bars of Holst's The Planets as opposed to victory, which is a concept now that just seems immoral to people, the idea of a winnable war. You remember during the 80s, of course, that was the thing about Reagan.

Oh, my God, the crazy idiot. He thinks that a nuclear war is winnable. Well, now it kind of simplifies what is being said. But the idea to say that a war can be winnable strikes people as just as a crazy, you know, ridiculously violent, war-loving idea as opposed to saying this is a horrible thing. But if you engage in it, you have to go all the way to achieve your objective. Yeah, I mean the problem is that there are so many different kinds of war. I mean historically there have been many more wars – just in terms of history, many more wars of proxy and politics and tactics than there have been wars where there was a clear victor who then declared victory, who then occupied land. A lot of times it's just back and forth skirmishing. So it's more – in a weird way, it's probably more traditional that you have these wars that have indistinct finishes. Our problem really is that the weaponry that we have and also just geopolitically, we spent 50 years trying to maintain equilibrium and the wars were designed not to win or to lose, but to maintain equilibrium.

That's what the Korean War was about. That's what the Vietnam War was about. There's just the idea of like, well, we're trying to maintain the balance of power in the world. So it had nothing to do with Vietnam or Korea had to do with Russia, the Soviet Union. So it gets a little, it gets a little complicated. Now, our problem really is that we never quite – we have not quite figured out what to do with countries that are disproportionately powerful because they are able to kill 3,000 American civilians or they get their hands on a dirty bomb. And how do we occupy those countries and how do we turn them around? How do we punish the leaders? These are questions that there is no answer to it. Right.

They're not countries. They're stateless actors. And I think it would be amusing if the Yeti decided in his wisdom just to generally decline the volume on this until our bickering sort of comes to an irresolute end just like the wars of today. But we can't do that. We have to leave you with something. We have to give you an outro, and I'm going to do it thus. First of all, we've got to thank Harry's, of course. Harry's, don't

no, we're not done, so don't turn the podcast off. Harry's, coupon code RICOSHET, five bucks off your first purchase, you will be hooked on having great razors delivered to your door. And of course we have to thank Encounter Books as well. Same coupon code RICOSHET gets you 15% off Andy McCarthy's new book or any other title in the catalog

and a rich and incredible catalog it is. One of the books they do not have, however, in Encounters is The Hot Zone, which we mentioned before. A book by Robert Preston. And you may recall Robert Preston also for his wonderful work in musicals such as The Music Man. And his

marvelous work in The Last Starfighter. And the one thing that I remember Robert Preston from my youth and that was singing Chicken Fat, which in grade school they made us all do our exercises to every morning. Chicken Fat. You recall that one? Touch your toes every morning ten times every day. It goes on for about six or seven minutes, and it's an exhortation to be fit as from the president's fitness council i thought

it died with my youth i was singing it the other day my daughter gave me a look because they played it in her school four or five decades later and it had the same horrifying effect so um rather than leave you with just sort of a slumped shoulder feeling that the world is going to absolute hell we're going to ask you to stand up square your shoulders suck in that gut engage in some calisthenics release those emotions feel better yourself, and march off to the rest of this glorious month to the election to come. Good news en route, and of course, a podcast next week. And of course, everybody in the comments here at Ricochet 2.0. See you there, guys.

See you next week, fellas. Next week. Pat back to the chicken and don't be chicken again. No, don't be chicken again. Push up every morning. Ten times push up. Starting low. Once more on the rise. Nuts to the flabby guys.

Go, you chicken fat. Go away. Go, you chicken fat. Go. Good morning. Hands on hips, please. Now then, touch your toes with me. Ready.

Touchdown. Up. Down. Ten times. Not just. Now and then. Four. Up.

Five. Give that chicken fat sacks to the chicken and so be chicken again. No, don't be chicken again. And halt. Hit the dirt. Hit. Push-ups next. No, don't battery guys go. Chicken fat, go away. Go, you chicken fat, go. Now, struggle up to your feet. Ricochet. Join the conversation. March.

Left, left, left. Left a good pound and a quarter. Was it right, right that it should be left? Yes, I left, left, left, left, left a good pound and a quarter. It was right, left, right left that it should be left. And halt. One, two, next. Sit-ups.

Everybody's favorite. So on your back, drop. All right, girls. You're in this too. Everybody's favorite. So on your back, drop. All right, girls, you're in this too.