The Ricochet Podcast - A Perfect Storm of Tipping Points

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

There is a tide… and depending on who you ask, Democracy is either drowning in it or she’s catching some righteous swells. With Peter and Rob elsewhere, James links up with guests- slash-hosts Charlie Cooke and Steve Hayward to soak up the vibes. There’s blue check mania and sleeper issues puzzling pollsters; not to mention Covid amnesty and Michael Beschloss coming down with whatever Chris Hayes... Source

I'm still very slightly mortified that I just barged in and sort of said, hello! I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed, we're on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away. I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylex.

I'm Peter Robinson and Rob Long. We've got Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook. Our guests, why ourselves? So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 617. I'm James Lilacs, and I'm sitting in a dark room, rocking back and forth, my blue check clutched to my breast, telling it, it'll be all right. It'll be okay. I'll see you on the other side. I was thinking, actually, of printing off my blue check before it gets taken away by that fascist. And, you know, just so I can prove to the world that once there was a once there was a Camelot and I was at the round table with the rest of the clever kids. Not even a blue check.

It's a blue thing with a white check in it. My guest, not my guest, my co-host is usually going to be, you know, Rob Long, Peter Robinson. But they're off gallivanting about the world doing things. So we are lucky to have Steve Hayward. Stephen, hello. Hi, James. It's great to be with you this weekend always is and and charles cw cook uh who i will always call charles even though charlie is when he goes by uh will be along shortly are you a blue check steven you know i am not i've never decided to go for that pretentious nonsense oh well i feel seen and heard and felt as they say um true but you could probably get one you could have presented your credentials and said i am a

member of the chattering class my my presence here should be verified because i have importance people should look at what i see note that small icon and adjust their interpretation of the world accordingly because a blue check a blue check has spoken right so i don't get it but uh you may be content with being influential every and you know elsewhere and that's fine but musk has caused the great nailing wailing gnashing of teeth rending of garments because he's going to make people pay eight dollars to be verified and what more, it's going to seem as if anyone could get it. Anyone. That's just the point, I think, is that now anybody can do it.

I think if Musk really wants to be mischievous, he would offer red checkmarks. So you can have the red-blue thing going, and that would make it even worse for the precious blue checkmarks amongst us. Well, no, they would instantly figure that their blue check mark being original and and allied with the proper things would be a badge of courage whereas the red stain of dishonor would it would apply to those people who who wanted one that that showed their ideological flags but that would be kind of nice to be able to see at a glance whether somebody is a collectivist or uh you know classical liberal but that's a lot to ask out of the world these days big big story in the uh what is i think uh, the Daily Fail in England. Charlie isn't here to

roll his eyes visibly, audibly when I mentioned that paper, but, you know, they do have fun stuff. Talking about how people were waking up in London and their laptops were wiped. Their Slack was gone. Their Gmail was gone because they had been automatically remotely sacked, as they say, overnight. And that, of course, they're all having wailings and unhappiness and that the government is talking about how perhaps they should get involved in this. I don't know how, but it's astonishing the number of people who work for that company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I don't know why anyone should be surprised that this kind of thing is happening

and happening more often, you know, people being deplatformed from PayPal. I thought that the warning flare of this was actually some years ago now, I think maybe as long ago as 15 years ago, when ironically enough, Amazon took down from the early Kindles an edition of Orwell's 1984, there was some copyright problem they had. And people woke up and found that their copy of 1984 was gone from their Kindle. And you thought, how can they? What an oddly symbolic book for that to happen to, right? It was sort of perfect. And now this is happening left and right, and it's often not a blanket thing like it was in that case where there was a actual legal problem at the base of it but now it's um you know people who are guilty of

wrong think i well the people who are being who finding their laptops wiped are the people who are being let go by twitter but what i love did i did i call on you i did not call on you charles i will in a second i can't just wander in and and put your hat on the rack and we're talking. Anyway, welcome, Charles, if you are indeed here and potted up and wired in. Are you with us? I am with you. I thought we were in a green room. Are we not?

No, no, no, no. This is the actual show. This is the equivalent of you wandering onto the Tonight Show set while Johnny was talking with somebody and just sort of taking your place on the sofa, which would be fine. We were talking about the strange poetry of Amazon a few years ago, reaching out and remotely wiping 1984 from people's Kindles. And I think that Amazon should have just not done that because it's too on the nose. It's just too perfect a memory hole, the book. But yeah, so that leads. Okay. So we have three things on the table right now. We have the despair of the chattering classes over the future of Twitter, which is the most

important thing in the world. We have the example of a tech company that might be a tad too top heavy. And we have the argument for physical media and i think we could probably spend the rest of the show on just those three but charles i'll throw those in your lap welcome back and uh tell me which one of those little biscuits you'd like to gnaw on for a while oh wow either the future of twitter or the importance of physical media i think do i need your permission as to which one I choose, or can I just go? No, at this point, I'm going to stop being so passive-aggressive and just let you. You're on the sofa now, John.

He's looking at you. All right. Well, I find myself in an odd position with Twitter in that i'm wildly amused by the mass hysteria that musk's takeover has provoked but i also am not particularly impressed by what he has done or proposed since he took over so i suppose i'm just at this point what don't you like twitter what don't you like i don't like the eight dollars a month for verification idea no it's not because all my self-worth is tangled up in my blue check it's because i don't think it solves anything except insofar as it provides a means by which he can torment journalists and politicians which i

have been enjoying if it is a trolling exercise i'm in favor of it if it's a fundraising exercise i'm in favor of it if it's a serious attempt to remedy what's wrong with twitter it won't work it won't work to bring about either of the changes that he said he wants to see one is that everyone in the world is verified that's what he said six months ago but you can't do that at eight dollars a month and the other is that it gets rid of the lords and peasant aspect which is real in that you can't get a blue check unless you're famous but is not solved by charging people 110 a year to be verified in the middle of a recession and massive inflation so i'm completely baffled as to what he thinks he's achieving here and i can only assume there's something else that

he hasn't announced yet or i've missed because i don't see how that improves anything i think it's a troll i i actually do i think that he's saying this is so important to you well if it's so important it's surely worth the cost of one of your fancy little lattes so pony up um and making them squeal because of it but i may be wrong steven do you think it's a troll do you think it's fundraising do you think it's all of the above? And again, we have to get back to the impact on the real world. This is right. Well, who knows about Musk? I mean, you know, I was long a skeptic of Tesla, and I've been proven wrong on that. He really did make that thing go. I think it's mostly a troll. I think my favorite aspect of all this is all the people

saying, I'm leaving Twitter, which has become the new, I'm moving to Canada, Trump wins the election. And so people are posting, I'm leaving Twitter, and then they stay on Twitter to see how the reactions go to all that. And so we will see how many people actually leave Twitter. I think it's another one of these great moments of virtue signaling and breastfeeding by the left who, let's face it, they prize Twitter. I don't know charlie if anyone's ever done a study of this but my perception is uh the the people on the left i think we do have some studies of this the people on the left dominate twitter they have many way more followers than people like you and i do or people on the right uh they're more blue check

marks amongst them and that's a big deal for them all um so they're being offended they've lost their sandbox and that trump talks back to them. And maybe last point I'll make on this. You really saw it in action this week when the White House foolishly sent out a tweet saying Social Security recipients are getting the biggest raise in cost of living increase in years because of Joe Biden's leadership. And Twitter attached a fact check to this saying, well, actually, it's from that richard nixon signed 50 years ago that happens automatically and the white house took it down but i believe that the reason that twitter appended that was because people were responding to the tweet with that very fact in other words twitter itself up in the boardroom didn't look at this and say hmm biden is not being technically correct here in our new role in moderating the public debate.

We should say something. I think it was a grumbling thing, which I like. Yes and no, in that the system that was used to fact check the president is called, I think, Birdwatch. And it was launched a year and a half ago by the previous twitter major domo and it is user generated but it has at least as far as i can see never been utilized before by the people who decide what gets fact-checked and what doesn't so even though there was all sorts of input for biden tweets before this none of them ever got featured and all of sudden, this does seem to be a change from Musk. All of a sudden, Biden and Dick Durbin, I saw yesterday with his incorrect First Amendment

claim of being fact-checked. So that is a change from on high. And I should say, having said, I haven't been too impressed, that I like that one a lot. Indeed. I mean, the first time that Biden gets fact-checked by Birdwatch is like the first time that somebody boos during a ceausescu speech exactly it's the moment that starts it that starts everything else and i think we won't take that to its logical conclusion no no no and biden is not ceausescu to state the bleedingly obvious but when i was looking through the piece in the daily mail sorry charles we were referring to this before you got here about the british tech workers who are being laid off by this i can't tell them what we would tell them in the states which is learn to weld Charles, we were referring to this before you got here, about the British tech workers who are being laid off by this. I can't tell them what we would tell them in the States, which is learn to weld.

It seems to me that there was very little, not a lot of angst amongst the chattering classes when the Keystone was canceled and a number of workers no longer found employment. I was looking at how many people were supposedly lost their job when Keystone was canceled again and again. And 11,000 was the fact-checking. And the fact-checking said, well, 11,000 is what they're saying, but many of those jobs are actually temporary. And I thought, really? You mean when you get a job building a pipeline, it's not an infinite thing where you just go around and around the world?

Of course it's temporary, but it's still good money for a lot of people for a lot of time. And nobody cared about that because those were dirty jobs doing evil things, which is transporting hydrocarbons. The people who are being laid off on Twitter have no belly feel, shall we say, unbelly feel for the people who work with their hands and rivet things and weld things and get dirty and live in camps. They're the important ones because they are saving our democracy, which leads us to the next thing, gentlemen. It seems to me that everything's on the line next Tuesday. And by everything, I mean that if things go the wrong way, my children, my child, you know, my daughter's 22, Charles, your children, I think is a better

example because they're younger, are probably going to be put in camps and shot. Unless, of course, you do something to save our democracy and prevent them from their imminent internment in a mass grave. You both know what I'm talking about, right, Stephen, Charles? Yes, right. Somebody want to describe what he said? Yeah, so Michael Beschloss, who I've always thought was a mediocre historian and very puffed up because he gets on TV a lot. And he went on a rant on, I guess it was MSNBC, Charlie, I think, where he said, you know, if this election goes wrong, which really this is the pre-election, pre-criminations, primal scream of the left starting early. He said something like you know our children are at risk they might even be lined up and shot or words to that effect i think you put this in a larger context i think the worst thing that well it's hard to say what the worst thing is but one

of the very bad things that happened to joe bide when he took office is he allowed a circle of historians beschloss uh what's his name john meam, who's apparently writing some of these dreadful speeches, Doris Kearns Goodwood, the usual crowd of celebrated, lightweight liberal historians came to the White House over and over again, telling him that with a Congress with really no majority at all, you can be the next FDR. Well, tell that to an egomaniac like Biden. And I think he's followed their bad advice and puffed him up with their patina of intellectual seriousness. And now that it's all going wrong, poor Beschloss has just blown every gasket he's got left. You know what I like the most about this? It's that as a habit, Beschloss always says, I don't really get involved in politics. I'm just a historian. And then he explains that if it's really serious, he might make a comment. And I just love the space between, I don't really talk about politics, and your

children will be shot and put in camps, right? That is an acceleration from zero to 100 of a quite remarkable quality. Right. Can I just add, James, that, you know, the angst of what's coming Tuesday for the left, this is my favorite 72-hour period ever because, you know, this weekend is when conservatives

literally get to turn the clock back. And then if you listen to the left, we get to do it all over again on Tuesday. It's seldom we get the double play like we have in front of us here in the next week. Well, what are we turning the clock back to exactly?

What patina or patina? You say patina. I say patina. What are we turning it back to? Which particular era? When you mentioned that they tell him that he could be another FDR, they were saying the same thing about Obama with the famous Time magazine cover of him sitting in the back seat with a jaunty smile reprising the famous FDR photograph.

Except, of course, they had to take out the cigarette holder because we have to airbrush that out of history completely. But if they want to be, I mean, who wants to be exactly the next FDR? I'm going to come in here. I'm going to arbitrarily set gold prices based on the horoscope that i read today i'm going to institute a whole bunch of laws which can be tossed out by the supreme court as is unconstitutional restraints on trade i'm going to put a whole bunch of people into camps that i'm going to do i mean fdr we can argue about his legacy but aren't there better examples perhaps that the democrats might go you can be the next jfk i would think would work better because it's sort of absurd to say that somebody of Joe Biden's age could be somebody who projected that youthful bigger.

But JFK is a lot more present in the American imagination, space, victory, all those things. And by victory, of course, I know we can debate, but it wouldn't that be better to do that? I mean, do you do either you guys want an FDR back again? Would you go in and tell the president you can be the next FDR? Well, it's a fervent anti new dealer. I can't think of much worse than having another Franklin Roosevelt. And the two they always pick are the two people I don't want to add, you know, SLBJ and FDR. Add Wilson in and you've got a trio of

undesirability from my perspective. But Charles, you don't understand. FDR saved the country. The New Deal saved the country, did it not? Did it not prevent us from tipping into fashion? Did it not get us out of the depression? Come on. What sort of red state mega ultra revisionist is this? It's mega, mega trickle down. Mega, mega trickle down mega mega mega trickle down yeah

okay i think the question james is uh can and i think people will be raising this uh wednesday morning can biden be bill clinton we all remember now that bill clinton pivoted on a dime after the democrats got hammered in 1994 he triangulated as the saying goes, and then was reelected two years later when everyone thought he was doomed. And then Obama did much the same thing after the 2010 drubbing the Democrats took, the shellacking, as he put it. Now, of course, both Clinton and Obama were much more talented politicians than Biden is or ever was. So I'm doubtful that he'll be able to change direction. For one thing, as is known, Bill Clinton had the sinister Dick Morris around him to advise him to move to the center and ways to play off against Republicans.

I don't see a Dick Morris figure lurking in the background of the Democrats these days. The White House seems to be run by these young millennials who are so deep into the progressive Kool-Aid that their message is going to be the one you'll hear from Bernie Sanders and AOC, which is we lost this election because we weren't left enough. We didn't run on big tax increases on the rich. We didn't pass a $4 trillion spending bill. So I think that instead of the shell-shocked Democrats giving Clinton some running room, as you saw in the 1990s, I think the progressive left is going to double down, and we'll just sit back and eat our popcorn if we can still find it at a reasonable

price. Charlie, you're smiling. No, I just like the reasonable price line. Oh, okay. I have noted that it's going up, along with everything else, and it's made our Christmas shopping a little bit difficult this year. Luckily luckily we're at the point with our family where we don't really exchange a lot anymore because we have everything and we're you know it's you know when you're a kid the tree is just he gifts all kinds of ridiculous plastic tritus shipped out of china but there's more you age some socks and scarves and the rest of it it's just being together is enough the holidays you know they're really the most exciting time of the year. And if you want to enjoy them the fullest, you'll need to get your best sleep every night. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this. And it's easier to

sleep well. It's easier than it sounds. All you need are the softest, most luxurious organic cotton sheets from Boll and Branch. Boll and Branch sheets are made from the finest 100% organic cotton threads on the planet. They make a difference you can truly feel night after night. And as I say every week when I do this, I'm here to tell you that it is true. With every washing, the sheets get better. I don't know how. I said one day they feel like silk and they wear like iron. That's basically it. Bowl and branch products are made differently so you can sleep better at night. They're made from the finest 100% organic cotton on earth. They're free from toxins, pesticides, and harsh chemicals at every step of the making. And they're made by artisans who earn the pay and respect that

they deserve. If you want to simplify your shopping, their signature sheets come wrapped and ready in a beautiful holiday gift box. Trust me on this. It's like unboxing an Apple product. And so your gifts will look as special as they feel. Bring home a better night's sleep this holiday season with Bowl & Branch bedding. For a limited time, get 20% off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use the promo code RICOCHET at bowlandbranch.com. That's Bowl & Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com, promo code RICOCHET. And we thank Bowl & Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, yes, so we'll enjoy what happens we'll enjoy the pivot i don't know i think steven's correct that they

have people who will double down and because to do otherwise is to frankly is to trade with evil to do otherwise is to destroy our democracy to destroy the planet to to give racism and fear and bigotry and all of these things prominence. You can't equivocate with evil. And since the other side, e.g. us, believes in all of these revanchist ideas, how can you compromise with people who believe what we believe? That's the fun that we're having. I was watching a blowout on Reddit the other day that was interesting. They were absolutely flummoxed that Muslim parents in Dearborn and Hamtramck, which I can never pronounce, were upset with the school board and were partnering with Christian parents and Republicans to do something about sex manuals in the middle school.

And people were saying, how can they make a coalition with these people? They hate them. They hate them. They want them all to leave. A, no. B, no. C, sometimes you need these temporary little groups in order to get a point across. And so what's the harm?

It flummoxed them that this group, which they identified as a identity group, was not performing the way identity groups are supposed to do, right? Oh, James, you have just pushed one of my hot buttons this week. I'm starting to call this the Desperate Housewives election. And the reason I say that is the Wall Street Journal poll that came out early in the week that had one really stunning finding, which was that suburban women have, since August, moved 26 points into the Republican camp. That seems beyond the margin of error of an oddball outlier poll. That's an absolute lie. They lost 30 percent because of abortion. We all know. We all know that. Well, the Journal scratches its head and says, well, gosh, it seems like inflation and crime are being prioritized now.

And that's explained. And Dobbs, the reaction of Dobbs has faded. That seems to me correct, but not persuasive when you think about it for a while. Inflation and crime were just as bad in August as they are now. I think what's going on is something the pollsters are not asking about. You know, I'm kind of a maven for polling techniques and data and all the rest and complain about them like everybody. But I noticed in the issue panels where they spoon feed you the choices of what are the most important issues. Questions about COVID and the COVID lockdown hangover are conspicuously missing, as are questions about these controversies about what is being taught in the schools.

Tudor Dixon, the person running against Whitmer, brought this up in the debate this week, as is Paula Page in Maine, who's trying to get his job back as governor of Maine, talking about some of these really obscene books that are in schools. It's polling malpractice. We know this was a big issue in the election a year ago with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. We saw the big furor. In fact, I talked about it one time previously with you, James. It is they had the don't say gay bill, as the left called it in Florida, which became this national sensation. And when polled in Florida, found that a majority of Democrats supported DeSantis's position, right? So I think this is an issue that's bubbling up. You know, Charlie, your late great colleague, Cato Byrne, used to like to point out to survey data showing that women pay closer attention to local issues

and school issues than men voters do. We're not supposed to say that, of course, but I think she's right. And I think an awful lot of suburban moms, now that the kids are back in school and they're paying attention to what they've been taught and and some Republicans are making an issue of this when the pollsters and the media ignore it. I think this is the sleeper issue in the campaign. There are so many issues. I see the mixed cliches and then I'll stop is this year has a perfect storm of tipping points against the Democrats. It's hard to pick any one issue and say, this is the issue that tips it. But I think this huge move in this one key segment that we've seen, I think this issue is the sleeper issue that's driving a lot of it. And if you combine it with latent anger over COVID and the school lockdowns, what you get is people saying,

wait a minute, you didn't educate my children. Now they're back at school. They're learning this. Yes. And I have a real problem with some of the critiques of this anger that you see from the left and also from some libertarians. And I lean libertarian on a whole bunch of issues. I'm more of a classical liberal, but this is not an anti-libertarian point i am one in most ways but you just can't apply the sort of free speech absolutist uh value neutral approach that i would in almost every other circumstance especially where the government is involved, to schools that teach minors. I mean, I am a little confused, I suppose, in my thinking as to how this should be on college campuses, and so I'm always open to debates on that.

But much of the language that we see from people who are criticizing people such as DeSantis or Tudor Dixon is just wrong. I mean, for example, if a school declines to teach a book or put a book in its library, that is not banning a book. If a school consults with a school board or is directed by the legislature that created the school and funds it, that is not government intrusion. It is not state overreach. And I think that the intellectual framework that many of the people who seem perplexed by this development in public life have brought to it is serving them badly. Of course parents are going to be involved and want to be involved in the education of their children. Of course they're going to care what they're being taught. Of

course they're going to care which values are being transmitted. Now, I understand that on the merits, there are some bad ways to teach. For example, the straw man criticism that you see, which is conservatives just don't want to talk about slavery, although that's actually not true, if it were true, and in such cases as it is true at the margins, that is a problem. If there are people out there in America who say, I don't want my kids to learn about slavery, I don't want my kids to learn about the internment camps in the Second World War, that is bad. I'm opposed to that. I want all of that stuff taught. But that is a question of substance. We've already conceded the premise, right, when we've got there, which is we're going to have a conversation as parents

and as voters as to how the schools are run. And I see this very weird approach, and it really costs Terry McAuliffe, particularly in Virginia, which is, why are you interfering with the teachers' unions in their judgment? And this is, I think this is going to change because it's, as you've said, it's absolutely catastrophic for the Democratic Party, and I think it's going to continue to be. Yeah, I mean, my footnote to that, Charlie, is first of all, it's utter fertilizers, Ronald Reagan used to say, that we don't teach about slavery and the legacy of racism in the country. I learned it in my very conservative Republican schools 50 years ago. What we don't want is, we don't want that Howard Zinn version of American history taught exclusively.

The Howard Zinn version is that the defects of America are the whole of America. And that is now orthodoxy among the educational left, which means most of the education establishment. That's what we're against. And I think a lot of non-ideological parents are against it. Proof and point being, I think, and you talk about not a canary in a coal mine. This should have been the klaxons nationwide. San Francisco, as we know, six, eight months ago recalled, San Francisco recalled by a landslide, three uber-woke members of their own school board who were more concerned about renaming Abraham Lincoln High School, because

he's defective, of course, instead of getting the schools reopened again. And when that happens in San Francisco, I'm amazed that people aren't, you know, the political establishment aren't paying closer attention to that. It's to their uh it doesn't work well for them if they do right i'm gonna barge in here and i know you're gonna kill me for doing this but uh i don't care i don't care if you do because my family's covered because i've got insurance well i'd rather you wouldn't there's probably double indemnity clauses and stuff like that and then uh insurance life insurance i'm joking about it because we hate to talk about wouldn't. There's probably double indemnity clauses and stuff like that. Insurance, life insurance. I'm joking about it because we hate to talk about it, right? We all hope we never need

life insurance, but mortgage payments and childcare and other expenses do not disappear when you're gone. No, life insurance through your workplace, well, that's great, but it might not offer enough protection for your family's needs, and it won't follow you if you leave your job. Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as we age, now is the time to buy. Probably yesterday, but if not yesterday, now. PolicyGenius gives you a smarter way to find and buy the right coverage for you and your family. PolicyGenius was built to modernize the life insurance industry. Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies like AIG and Prudential. In just a few clicks, you'll find your lowest price. With PolicyGenius,

you can find life insurance policies that start at just $17 per month for $500,000 of coverage. And PolicyGenius has licensed agents who will help you find options that offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams. They're not incentivized to recommend one insurer over the other, so you can trust their guidance. There are no added fees and your personal info is always private. No wonder they have thousands of five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. Your loved ones, they deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smarter way to find it and buy it. So head to PolicyGenius.com or click

the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. And we thank Policy Genius for sponsoring this, the Regassé podcast. Going on, I'm just trying to think of something, because what Stephen was talking about, the social issues, right? The fact that the the covid we are told now through an atlantic magazine that it's time to forgive and when that article hit about how it's time for just sort of a covid amnesty all i could think of was michael payland in the monty python movie let's not bicker about who killed who. It's important that, no, we do need to bicker.

Actually, we do need to have a reckoning. We, you know, some people want trials, which we're not going to have. But we do need a full accounting and an airing of this. You can't just plaster this over. You can't just bind the, you can't pour super glue in the wound and squeeze it and say that's it we're done we're healed but we're not going to get that are we gentlemen i'm sorry some people were saying that if the republicans took power again in uh in the midterms you're going to see trials of public health officials and what they're seeing of course is like a hitler style thing where they're let out immediately afterwards and strung up with piano wire, or a Soviet show trial where people are forced to confess that, yes, I did and thought and deed consort with the proles in the prostitute sector and spread the word of Goldstein.

That's what they think trials would be. I think impaneling people to really look at what we knew and what was said and who was saying it and why is a healthy thing, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. I would like to see, as I call him, J. Edgar Fauci hauled before Congress for extensive cross-examination. I think there ought to be oversight hearings where you have some of our, I say our best people, the people who I think have been fully vindicated, like Jay Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas and Kevin Roach. There was your neighbor in Minnesota, James. And they've been right from the beginning and right all the way along.

And they ought to have a bright spotlight shown on them, among other things that a Republican Congress ought to do as part of an oversight agenda. I was reading a tweet the other day, and perhaps, Charles, you saw this as well, where somebody was saying, well, as part of the amnesty package, we've said, okay, we'll forgive a lot of the stuff that happened at the beginning because we really didn't know. We were scared, and we really didn't know.

And what this tweet thread did was show that we knew. We absolutely knew. We knew very early that there was evidence contrary to all the things that we were being told. And like I say, I've never believed that this is a great reset conspiracy. I believe this is agencies doubling down and trying to cover their ass for a variety of reasons. In the case of Fauci, I think it's because there's questions about the funding of the Wuhan lab. There's questions about gain of function research that we're supposedly not doing, but did, et cetera. But I don't think it's been evil. I think

it's been just basic human perfidy in its mistake-making and as-governing form all this time. But there was a list of all the things that we did indeed know what the effect of lockdowns would be economically, socially, on children, what the effects of sending them to Zoom school would be for those who didn't have the resources, what the unification of masks would do, etc. The transmission was not what we thought it was. The fomites weren't actually what we thought it was. All of this stuff we knew. And yet we launched into this fortnight to slow the spread, which became an interminable update until nine months later after this in the summertime.

I'm standing outside of the neighborhood hardware store, unable to go inside and look for a screw. Hardware store, mind you. Because you had to stand apart from one another with your mask, in which somebody with a mask would go into the deep recesses of the store to try to find the exact little piece of metal that you wanted, then bring it out to you to compare. It was just nonsense theater that affected every area of our life and made, I mean, I sit right now in a skyscraper that is largely empty because of this BS. I walk streets down there that are largely empty and unsafe to a certain degree because of this. So we're still dealing with all of that.

There's the idea that we should just shrug our shoulders and say, well, you know, six, one, half dozen of the other had to happen is nonsense. But I don't know what the I don't know what it's going to take to make me feel less angry about what we did voluntarily and involuntarily. Charles, Charles probably feels different because you're in Florida, the free state of. Right. voluntarily well charles charles probably feels different because you're in florida the freaks stayed up right i certainly had a different experience than you and most other americans i think it was a shame that that piece was written by emily austin because people thought that she was one of the great villains of this when she wasn't and wasn't yeah her editors did her a great disservice they they it should have read the headline you know i was repeatedly

vilified and received death threats i want to forgive everyone um instead it made it look as if she was sort of saying i anthony fauci would would like an amnesty um that said i just think she's wrong on the merits um but you don't demand forgiveness for a start um more to the point there have to be changes made here now one of the changes that is going to be made i think is that the democrats are going to get absolutely crushed in the midterm elections and once that has happened maybe people will be in more of a mood uh to forgive, because there will have been consequences for the thing that they're forgiving. Until then, though, they're not going to be in that mood, and they shouldn't be asked to be in that mood. I would go one step further and say the elections in and of themselves

will not be enough. We need to see people resign, lose their jobs. We need to see people change the way that some of our institutions work so that next time this doesn't happen. It's not good enough just to say, oh, well, I guess we got that wrong. Please, will you forgive me? It needs to be accompanied with, and here are the decisions that we will take next time. Here are the alterations and reforms that we are going to make within the federal government, within this or that state government. Until that point, I think people are absolutely within their rights to say, no, if you're still there, if you're still getting paid, if you're still in a position of responsibility,

we're going to keep throwing rotten vegetables at you. Because the consequences here were absolutely catastrophic. They were catastrophic economically, they were catastrophic educationally. You know, there are subtler parts of this, as you said, James. I mean, look at where you are, look at your building, look at the streets outside, look at how many of the restaurants, small thing, that i used to go to when i lived in new york city are just not there now it's not a small thing it's not a small thing it's the warp and woof of a city right yeah right um i more meant it's a small thing that i can't go to the restaurants that i used to go to but it's not a small thing for the people who own them um or who relied upon them and it's just not good enough again emily oster is not the villain here but it is just not good enough to say let's have an amnesty

uh it's self-serving um and it's premature until we see electoral consequences and more concrete consequences then no you can shove your amnesty so what you're saying then is you want to see people die no what you're saying is that you're saying that you would have been happy with the death toll that was 10 times as much you can't see a downside to any of this but hey folks i'm going to tell you about something that is an upside an upside to the times in which we live can you possibly think of one well yes because we're here at ricochet we are we are we are optimistic by nature because we love america and that's the essential beating heart of the country. But still, you go to the pump, you fill up, you cringe, and then you get an eye-popping check at your favorite restaurant if it's still around.

Inflation, inflation, inflation. It's hitting us all where it hurts, and it really hurts. And that's why you need to start using Upside. Upside is an incredible app for anybody who buys gas or grocery or just dines out. With every purchase purchase you earn cash back thanks to upside so the app's really easy to use um which goes without saying because if it was tough nobody would use it so they designed something that's really easy and seamless and you look at what you're getting back and think what am i going to do with this i could

splurge it on myself i could get some ice cream like nancy pelosi has in her massive freezer well what counts is you got to get started to start getting the money. Download the free Upside app. Use the promo code Ricochet and get $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more. Look at that. Download the app. Five bucks. Wow.

Next, claim an offer for whatever you're buying on Upside. You check in at the business. You pay as usual with your credit or your debit card, and then you get paid. You get paid. In comparison with credit card rewards or loyalty programs, you can earn up to three times more cash back with Upside. Upside users are earning more than a million dollars every week. And I have my little finger up against my mouth like Dr. Evil. A million dollars every week. That's probably why they have a 4.8 star rating on the App Store. Download the free Upside app and use the promo code RICOSHET to get $5 or more off cash back on your first

purchase of $10 or more. That's $5 or more cash back on your first purchase of $10 or more using the promo code RICOSHET. And we thank Upside for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. So, Stephen, before we go on to something else because we should talk about inflation the effect that has in the the election uh any thoughts about what charles was saying there i i mean yes we in a functioning healthy society we would have these things but the other side is so invested in the idea of the wisdom of technocratic rule and the infallibility of science science to do what charles is suggesting would delegitimize the very institutions in which their power resides wouldn't it yeah well see you made the point that uh well i'll restate it this way there's an old saying attributed to various people that you don't need to recur to mendacity

or conspiracy theories when simple when stupidity can explain a situation adequately there's nothing more stupid than our bureaucracies, and it's not because the people there aren't smart. It's not because Fauci, for example, I'll be slightly nice to him, doesn't actually know some things, but it's because bureaucracies tend to become single-minded and fanatical in their purpose, and all bureaucracies, whether it's CDC or EPA or name anyone you want, they are congenitally unable to weigh trade-offs. So in this case, you were yelling into the hurricane to say, wait a minute, if you keep kids out of school for years, there's going to be a high cost and lost learning. If you tell people

they have to be locked down and can't go to the doctor, you're going to see increases in other diseases. Cancer rates are up because people aren't getting screenings and so forth. Those kinds of trade-offs exist across the board. How do you try and fix this in a bureaucracy? It's very difficult. You can put in some better bureaucrats, I suppose. I keep thinking, and I've thought about this a lot, the area of climate change and a few others. We need to emulate more widely across government the famous Team B experiment of the CIA from the mid-70s. I don't know how many listeners know of this episode, but there was a lot of commotion among the Reaganite circles, really. Team B is a cover story for Team C, so I know a little bit about this.

Well, right. The thought was that the CIA is continually misestimating Soviet arms buildup and Soviet activities. And the CIA, under then-director George H. W. Bush, said, fine, we're going to give the same raw intelligence to a whole separate outside group of experts to do their own assessment. And Team B came back and, in one sentence, humiliated Team A, the CIA insiders, and made a big difference in intelligence. So the point is competition. I don't know if it means we need a parallel CDC. I think that just becomes another bureaucracy. But we need to think some way of institutionalizing.

And, by the way, this was done under the Reagan years in the Office of Management and Budget. This is getting a little wonky, but it's very limited. We need more of that kind of bringing competitive criticism to bear on our government agencies. End of rant. And good it is, and I'd love to see it. We would all love to see it, but it seems to require a change in the culture. And the question is, everybody fears that we're going to get a red wave and they're going to go in and um they're going to do what everyone has thought they have done before which is little nothing structural no swamp draining of course there's only so much so much they can do um or get along to get along you know

go along to get along whatever spinelessness well there are supine behavior before the inexorable march of the left through the institutions may be standing a thwart of this or that for five minutes before allowing it to creep forward a millimeter or two as it always does that's not an unreasonable fear i mean when the sort of thing that we're talking about here is that is what you a healthy self-regulating society that believed in itself would do. And I wonder if we have that in us still. Yeah, I think there are. You said the guy who just said we were optimists.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're quite right to be skeptical and cynical about the capacities of the Republican Party, the stupid party, as the old joke goes, to do anything effective. But there are a couple of exceptions that we ought to recall from the distant past and try and emulate them. And one's actually quite current again. Back in the 90s, you might remember James, I think it was Senator Roth of Delaware, who held some spectacular hearings with lots of show business involved. This is an important point about abuses from the Internal Revenue Service. And one of the climactic hearings that got on the evening news was when they had a witness come out behind a screen with a voice box scrambling the voice explaining how the IRS agents really violated the law and invaded people's privacy. You know, we had that leak last

year of somewhere in the IRS, the tax returns of Elon Musk and Peter T and a lot of very wealthy people that's supposed to be against the law. Still, nobody has been held responsible for that. I think that kind of hearing against the IRS could be run again, especially since we're going to add 80,000 agents, supposedly, and other agencies, the CDC and all the rest. I think, again, I do think that there is an element of show business about this, and that's why the House Republicans ought to hire Rob Long as their consultant. Could be done. Charles, do you think it's wise for the Republicans to make hay about the recent revelations that Facebook, Meta, Google, Twitter were working hand in glove, it appears, with government agencies to tamp down dis, mal, and mis information? Yes, because I think this is the sweet spot. I am, as your listeners will know, and many of them seem irritated by this,

a defender of Section 230. I think Section 230 is one of the best laws we've ever passed. I think most of the criticism of Section 230 is wrong. I actually think Ricochet relies very heavily on section 230 and um would be much diminished if section 230 were removed so i am the guy who says free market free market free market uh section 230 first amendment freedom etc etc etc but i will not and cannot tolerate and don't regard it as being tolerable for the government to start getting involved in the censorship process. If the moderators at Ricochet or the owners of Facebook or Elon Musk at Twitter wants to get rid of me because I'm annoying, fine. His company, his website. I don't think that this

is a public utility. I don't think this is a national forum or a town hall. It's a website. It's a website with private owners protected under the first amendment and with the civil and criminal liability rooted properly by section 230 but that is very very very different from saying that governments can start putting pressure on these institutions governments by the way that regulate them not record but facebook and twitter and i support uh any law that either renders that illegal or requires transparency. Marco Rubio has a really good bill on this that has gone nowhere, but that should go somewhere, which would make it illegal for any government official, and that includes legislators, to communicate with moderation teams at Twitter, Facebook, social media in general without disclosing it. You can say if you're Jen Psaki or Karine Jean-Pierre, you can say,

hey, Twitter, we think you should get rid of this post from Ron DeSantis, or we think you should put a misinformation label on this claim by Kevin McCarthy. But if you do that, under Rubio's bill, it has to be disclosed. In other words, the public has to know what pressure the people with bayonets are bringing to bear on the free market. So I read this report, and I mean, I'm assuming there's something to it, maybe we'll find out there's not. But if there is or not, I read this report. And I thought this is precisely the sort of thing that I do want government involved with, not the private editorial decisions of free players within a free market, but government pressure and influence. And if that report is true, it's extremely alarming and it has to be addressed. Stephen, your take on it before I switch us to another topic? I mostly agree with that with the partial and limited exception that I don't know what to make of, which is you have these dominant network effects, right?

I mean, it's one thing to say, well, let's just start a competitor to Twitter, which Trump has tried to do with True Social. It's very hard to do. Some point, and this is the conceptual argument a lot of people are having, is hasn't Twitter, hasn't Google, haven't they become effectively like the phone company, which in that case is more of a public access type of medium? I'm not entirely persuaded about that, but I don't think it's a frivolous argument either. Well, I don't think they're the phone company. I think they're the people you call. It's more equivalent to having some sort of service that you can call. I am entirely happy to put common carrier rules on the phone company, to put it on the ISP from the street to your house, to put it on the trunk lines that run between data centers and so on and so forth. But, you know, the idea that the person on the other end of the phone, the one you call, should not be able to hang up, which is essentially what I think people who want to regulate Twitter are suggesting. I just think

it's wrong. And I think there are almost no barriers to entry when it comes to this, which includes social media. I mean, if you go back 20 years, it was Friendster. Friendster got supplanted by MySpace, which was a big bad monopoly owned by Rupert Murdoch. And MySpace, if you read the press coverage at the time, was unbeatable. There's just no way that it could be supplanted. And all of a sudden, Facebook came along and did it. So I'm totally fine with the House Republican, I don't know which committee it would be, but advancing legislation that says, you know what,

Comcast cannot tell you you can't visit National Review. The trunk lines between the data centers in houston and data centers in los angeles cannot tell you that you can't visit ricochet um i don't want them telling you know john gabriel what he has to do in his job i think there's a big difference between those things my space oh for heaven you know i've still got on my stock from geo cities which i'm waiting to pay off at some point here well i'm such a traditional conservative i still use betamax to watch movies at night well do you know there's something you mentioned uh right there i'm having to move

because i have a co-worker who's coming in and i can't hear me can't poisonous violent stuff that i'm spewing here when you were telling listeners you can't see this james is literally on the move right now oh hold on we're moving oh sorry about that i just have to reconnect all my stuff here can you hear me now you're doing fine james okay let me make beautiful james there we are all right i'm i'm what was that was that you sound beautiful thank you thank you uh when you when you said it's like a telephone company it's it's the people who were irritated on twitter by musk taking over said well that's it i'm going back to tumblr which is like quitting the telephone for the telegraph company although tumblr is now saying that they might allow a little bit of nudity back before the thing that killed their killed their platform a few years ago who knows i don't think they're going back to Tumblr.

I do know, however, that when I said I was going to introduce another topic quickly, the topic has to do with your loins and the comfort thereof. We'll get to the loins in a second here, but I have to ask you. And yes, this is a commercial, and you should be happy about that. The more commercials that we have on Rickshay, which means the more we prosper and thrive, and not coincidentally, the more we prosper and thrive, and not coincidentally, the more you get exposed to some good stuff that makes your life better, like Tommy John's. So if you ever got stuck in a Black Friday crowd, it is super uncomfortable. Shopping Tommy John's before Black Friday sale is super duper comfortable. When you give your loved ones Tommy

John, they're that much more comfortable too, so they can do everything better. That's right. Shop Tommy John's before Black Friday sale now and give the gift of comfort to everyone on your list, including yourself with Tommy John's men and women's loungewear. With over 18 million pairs sold, giving Tommy John underwear and loungewear has become a holiday tradition for many. 97% of women and men love getting a gift from Tommy John's. I don't know what's the deal with those other 3%. That's why Tommy John's doesn't just have customers. No, they have fanatics. I'm one of them. Partly for just the durability of these things. You buy a lot of stuff. It just wears out a couple of times in the wash. It's dead. Man, I don't know what they use, but the Tommy John's that I have been going for years. And they're still soft. And you can celebrate this softness season with a gift of Tommy John underwear, loungewear, and pajamas.

Every gift is backed by Tommy John's, quote, best pair you'll ever wear, or it's free, end quote, guarantee. Shop Tommy John's Before Black Friday sale going on right now and get 25% off everything at Tommy John's.com slash ricochet 25% off for a limited time only at Tommy John.com slash ricochet Tommy John.com slash ricochet see site for details. And of course, we do thank Tommy John for sponsoring this ricochet podcast. Now before I go on here, I have well, no, actually, I'm technically going on, I have to do what Rob would do. Rob would tell you that the thing about ricochet is it's not just one of those websites, like Charlie mentioned before, Friendster, MySpace. It's just a bunch of chattering electrons. No, Ricochet is about people, and frequently we get together and meet.

The meetups are fun. They're great. Okay, where are they exactly, you ask? Well, when you join Ricochet.com, you will know. You'll find out all the places where you can go and meet people, and you can get them to come to you. Example, there's a group meeting on the National Review Cruise at November 12th to the 19th. Got a meetup scheduled in Pittsburgh, December 10th and 11th, Sarasota, Florida in January, Vacaville, California, and New Orleans later in the year. Go to the site, find the details.

But if that ought to tell you something, those are places where people in Ricochet get together in person. Vacaville, California, and New Orleans later in the year. Go to the site, find the details. But if that ought to tell you something, those are places where people and Ricochet get together in person, which makes it different from every other site like Ricochet is. You're probably thinking about, yeah, I'd like to go, but meetups are, I don't know, it's too far away. It's a big country. Money's tight. Listen, if the meetups are out of reach, why don't you join Ricochet and start one yourself and Ricochet will come to you. Now, I don't mean that there'll be a bunch of guys in uniforms with blue R's on their forehead who will show up zombie-like at your doors and clamber over your security systems. No, I mean you pick a place, and you meet the folks that you've been talking to on the site.

I love them. I went to the last one in New York. I got COVID, and I loved it. I'd still go back again. The details on the Ricochet meetups go to HTTPS. Do we have to say that anymore? Ricochet.com slash events or find the module in the sidebar and the site. And there you go. So that is what you ought to do. And you ought to join Ricochet too, because well, it's self evidently one of the more interesting places in the web.

I don't say that as a guy who just, you know, does the podcasts and then walks away whistling. I go there every night. I go to the member feed and there's lots of interesting stuff that's not on the main page where you get to talk to people. It's been 10 years and I still haven't found any place like it. So before we go, Stephen and Charles, here's a question. Some people are saying if the Republicans retake Congress, it's time to impeach Joe Biden. Good idea, bad idea, justified, unjustified. What do you say? I think it's probably a bad idea, except it might be a device to simply make the Biden administration do nothing, which wouldn't be bad. I mean, if you're having impeachment trials, that means you're not confirming judges.

You're not doing a lot of other mischief. That's the only upside for it, I think. Otherwise, I think it's likely to be a net negative for Republicans. Charles? Well, I think Biden should be impeached. He knew it was illegal, and I think we should impeach presidents who commit impeachable offenses but we're not going to because there aren't going to be you know 70 republicans in the senate which is

what you would probably need to achieve it i don't understand what you mean he got that student loan thing passed by two couple of votes that's right there's a couple of votes for he and his wife having dinner and talking about it she was against it it, actually, I read in the Washington Post. So she has better sense than he does. But no, we're not going to do it. So I don't know why we would go through the rigmarole. I think Republicans would probably be better off making their positive case for why they should be handed unified control in 2024 than they would trying to impeach someone who can't be impeached. Well, I hate the idea of everybody coming in and impeaching the guy. An endless series of that is better. On the other hand, you hate to see, as Charles said, something that was illegal get away with.

But, you know, we've all held our nose and looked away about those things for a long time. It becomes an endless cycle of recrimination and impeachment. It's probably not good. No, make the case, as you said, for unified control of the government, which, as we know, means the end of our democracy. Democracy consists of a democratic president, a democratic Senate, and a democratic House of Representatives, and progressives installed in every single administrative, bureaucratic, necrotic part of the country. That is democracy. The minute you start to fracture that with outside ideas, you're talking fracture that with outside ideas you're talking

something that would make solzhenitsyn probably just turn pink blue and you know keel over with nausea just is hey uh i want to tell you this that the podcast which you are listening to which is now over but you can't turn it off yet no because i have to tell you it's bolin branch it's policy genius it's upside it's tommy John that has helped us make it this far. And they sponsored our podcast. If you investigate what they can provide for you, your life will be measurably better. And if you could leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, as I've been saying for 617 episodes, okay, 517.

Rob and Peter were doing it for a while before I joined. We'd like that. And I would like at some point my over 500 requests to bear fruit. That'd be great. Are you going to be the guy who does it? You? You're going to be the gal who's doing it? Listen to this?

You could be. Anyway, do it. It helps listeners discover the show, which helps Ricochet, et cetera, et cetera. And then on we go into 2022 and 2024 and beyond. If you haven't been to Ricochet go there you'll see why we love it you'll sign up it's cheap and uh you'll meet charles probably hanging around somewhere commenting somewhere under you'll meet steven probably you know steven i don't know what your known to internet is but uh you know, it's possible, right?

I'm just waxing up my surfboard for Tuesday. That's what I'm up to right now. What are you talking about? You're surfing? The wave election, Charles. Charles, James. Wow, I didn't even say anything and I still got criticized. It's like being on Twitter. And so it is. All right, go

forth, Charles, and enjoy your blue check while you can uh as will i steven we'll see you all on twitter but we'll see you all on ricochet in the comments that is ricochet 4.0 gentlemen it's been a pleasure i hope to see you next week but you know we'll see you down the road bye bye james ricochet join the conversation