The Ricochet Podcast - Bad Blood

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

This week, some thoughts on the Khashoggi murder, a deep dive into the Catholic Church scandals with the great Rod Dreher, and our mid-term preview with Ricochet’s newest podcaster, Lahnee Chen (subscribe to his show!). Also, you thought we weren’t going to give our take on Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test? No way, Chief. Music from this week’s podcast Bad Blood by Taylor Swift... Source

It's the Ricochet Podcast, and it's number 421. It's brought to you by the fine people at Home Chef. Home Chef offers 16 delicious meal options, not including dog, each week steak, cheese. I'm sorry about this. We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid.

But my family history is my family history. Who, Pocahontas? Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix, and today we talk to Rod Dreher about the Catholic Church and Lonnie Chen about the elections to come. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 421.

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didn't pitch for the money here. But you know, later, we got other stuff to do. Hey, Peter. Hey, Rob, how you doing i'm doing great this is why you're interrupting your segue for me but i i uh which i like um doing very well james how are you fantastic and peter how are you there in california i'm looking at a beautiful fall day here with a full panoply of colors and the rest of it that you don't get out there in your monoclimate world right right? Well, it's a beautiful day, and you know what happens after a little while in Northern California, anyway? You develop, you kind of reset your sensitivity to color. So we do get, it's not the lurid colors that you get in the upper Midwest.

It's nothing as vulgar as that. We get refined, little, sensitive, subtle touches of color. All the more beautiful, James. Yeah, great. You dial down the saturation by 6%. I get it. sensitive, subtle touches of color, all the more beautiful, Jim. Yeah, great. All the more beautiful. Dial down the saturation by 6%. I get it. And Rob, are you swanning about New York?

I am in New York City. I'll prove it to you because there seems to be some traffic hostility on 11th Street here. But I will say this. In the winter, not in the spring when the hills in California are nice and green. In the summer and the winter and the autumn, there are two colors. There's brown and sad brown. That's it. Are you talking about New York?

No, no, no. New York, the colors are beautiful. But in California, that's the color that the foliage gets. Hate to hear that. Well, of course, we know that in Saudi Arabia, it's the color that the foliage gets. Hate to hear that. Well, of course, we know that in Saudi Arabia, it's evergreen and flowing, except for those times when it's blood and motor oil, in which case there's been an accident which conveniently got rid of somebody. And, you know, we've all sort of had to become experts on Saudi politics and Saudi media and the rest of it this week as the Khashoggi story continues to unfold. Why do you think this particular murder of a journalist has fascinated Washington media as much as it did? Is it because he wrote for The Washington Post and they think there but for the grace of God go I?

Or is it because that plus, boy, this is a handy thing to show that we're virtuous and that we oppose the saudis without understanding what's the side of how that society has been changing in the last few years um plus hey we get to beat trump over this plus i don't know yes yes yes yes you're doing fine keep going it's a it's a wonderful series of opportunities for everybody to bang on the proper targets and and and look extremely uh you know uh proud of themselves because they're great journalists and and exemplars of freedom well i mean yeah that's one way to look at it i mean the other way is that american political and financial and economic ties to saudi arabia uh are in the news when um the president is of the you know out part of the, it was a Republican, put it that way.

We're absolutely obsessed with connections to the Saudis under George W. Bush, not as interested in them under Clinton or certainly under Obama, where there were some. It's also like this movie version that people in the news or sort of the observant class tend to do, which is to create the movie of things are changing. There are moderates here. There are moderates there, something like that. And then when this kind of thing happens, they kind of freak out. It's also a really – I mean this is a horrible thing to say. It's man's life.

It's incredible. It's just reprehensible what they did to him. But it's also a really, really great story because it has deception and murder in it. It feels like a movie. The one thing that I really hate about the press – I mean not the one thing, but among the many things I hate about the American media is once they get the story, once they decide what the story is, they are no longer interested in any details. The most interesting detail about this isn't really that he died. I mean the Saudi regime is pretty murderous. It's that he was being tortured probably, which means they wanted something from him.

What do they want? That's my question. That's what made me – That's interesting. But I thought the whole tape lasted only seven minutes from the moment he goes inside the embassy to the moment he's dead. And you don't just try for seven minutes if somebody's got something you really need, I think. But I mean I agree. But to me, the bit about the story that's – what is there?

With the press, something basic is going – I mean the press is on to something. It was horrible. It was unacceptable to do something like that in another country. It's bad to do it in your own country. But even as the British – if Putin kills somebody in Russia, there's a limit to what you can do. But if he kills somebody in Britain, that's crossing some kind of horrible line. OK. But what it forces the administration to do is what administrations

don't want to do of any party. And what this administration is especially loathe to do, because it can't handle nuance at all. And that is to say the Saudi regime is a horrible, corrupt, sick regime, and we need it. Both of those things are true and they are hard to say. They are hard to say. I would just like if you substituted. King of Saudi Arabia or. Chairman Fidel Castro, I was just going to say the exact same thing. You would have a different conversation.

You would. What it does suggest, though, is that we made, first of all, that we are insufficiently, I mean, this is horrible, insufficiently recognizing moves that Saudi Arabia has made over the past, well, you know, what is it, 16, 17 years, since 9-11. In the last two years. I mean, their head – But I mean just in terms of its commitment to the security of the region, its commitment even –

To containing Iran. To containing Iran. And to collaborating with its great enemy, Israel, in many respects, and intelligence for sure certainly intelligence gathering but we've also forgotten that the very point of after 9-11 there was the one of the theories going around in american foreign policy ideas was that that the the region the problem with the region wasn't instability as we usually term these things the problem with the region was stability but if you went in a clockwise fashion around israel all you saw were decades-long dictatorships in place or kingdoms in place. What you saw was not a region that was being driven apart or with any internal strife.

What you saw was stability. That stability was purchased by fomenting terrorist activity outside the region, either in Israel or in New York City or Washington D.C. or in London. And the outcome of the past 15, 16, 17 years has been instability in the region. There is a vicious war going on in Yemen. There is a civil war going on in Syria. There is a relative peace at this point in Iraq, but the whole region itself is unstable.

And what we did was we destabilized it and now we need the Saudis because they're the only ones with the American jets who aren't going to fly them into Israel. Right? I mean isn't that kind of our problem? Yeah. And the problem is we're also allied with Turkey. They formally allied through NATO. Correct. And Turkey is playing a game where they want to cuddle up to Iran and Qatar. And so if the Gulf Cooperation Council is split down the middle between the Qatar side and the Saudi side, then we've got to pick one.

And unfortunately, there isn't anything about the Turkish side that's looking particularly palatable these days. I mean every vestige of their Western democracy seems to be stripped off and replaced with an authoritarian patch every time we look. And a split has to be coming there. And I'd love to think that there are deep plans underway that will prepare us for that. But the idea somehow that Turkey was this virtuous country that wanted nothing but the truth to come out. I mean, when you consider the Byzantine, literally, conspiratorial mindset there, the idea that anybody hearing what this story was would be able to say anything about it with any degree of certainty is absurd. But Rob's right.

I mean, we need the Saudis. And the fact is, is that there have been changes there. And the idea that this guy somehow was this was this moderate liberalizing force because he wrote for The Washington Post seems a bit. You're right. It seems a bit credulous, shall we say. So, I mean, everybody's going to pull out of the conference and we'll tut tut. And then two or three months down the road, nothing will be different. Yeah, well, we'll see two or three months down the road, nothing will be different. Yeah, well, we'll see two or three months down the road. That's – I mean what we don't know – I'd like to think American intelligence is all over this, but I doubt it. What we don't know is what's happening inside Saudi Arabia.

You've got this 33, 34-year-old prince who's been named the next king and whom – there's a big royal family. Speaking of Byzantine politics, it has to be a complicated set of politics. There's no free press. There's no way for these people to engage in open opposition. So everything has to take place behind closed doors. Every one of them is worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, huge amounts of money at stake, and it cannot be the case that this young – this 33, 34-year-old prince is the only one of those many princes who would like to be king. Who knows what this does to the internal politics of Saudi Arabia? By the way, James, what was your point about Fidel Castro?

You were on to something interesting there. Fidel Castro, it could be demonstrably proven that Fidel Castro had flayed, filleted, and disposed through a meat grinder of every oppositional journalist when he came along. And Steven Spielberg would still say that lunching with him, dining with him was the most important day of his life. There are certain regimes. Chavez could have taken the entire journalistic class and filmed them having bamboo shoots pounded into their nails. And Sean Penn would have shrugged because, well, sometimes you... I mean, so the

selectiveness of this, everybody always accuses the other side of being selective. It's just interesting to recognize certainly in this region, just how fast it changed, not from what we, not on the trajectory that we expected but a trajectory that we never expected. So we never – 20 years ago, the titanic struggle in the world of Islam was between the forces of Saudi Arabia and the forces frankly of Turkey, westernized, cosmopolitan, mostly secular quasi-democracy that was tilting towards Europe. And then – and compared to the Saudis, which were pouring money into all these sort of awakening Arab – Muslim nations, pouring oil money ever have expected that the Saudis could find support in Turkey for murdering a dissident journalist or in fact that the Saudis would even have a dissident journalist.

There would be a dissident journalist who could make a go of writing about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the United States. It just it just it was it's a mind boggling turn of events that just proves once again that we keep acting like, well, we know – here's what it's going to be like in 20 years. We have no idea. Nobody has any idea. Exactly. No. I mean that's true. We like to think that we're in control of the future because we think we understand the present.

But something happens and the next thing you know, you black swan your way into a whole new – I mean it's hard to even look ahead frankly to next week and figure out what you're going to have for dinner, let alone what the character of the Middle East is going to look like 20 years down the road. But you know, with all the options out there, there are so many meal delivery kits that when you want to look at next week's meals, what do you do? Which home delivery service is best for you? Home Chef. Have you heard of them? Home Chef. They offer 16 different delicious meal options each week. That's a lot. Steak, chicken, seafood, vegetarian. You can mix and match based on your

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HomeChef.com. Rob, Peter, you guys have ordered Home Chef. What did you choose? What particular option did you go with? I selected, frankly, the paleo ketogenic kind of more protein emails. But there's a huge number of choices. In fact, it's like – actually, the best thing about it is that I hate anything that's complicated to do. I need to be able to do it on my phone.

And this was really simple. So I think they've made a big, big breakthrough in just the simplicity of the ordering, which to me is a big deal. Fantastic. And Peter? My order has not yet arrived. And so I can't really comment on it. And furthermore, I farmed it out. My daughter took charge of the order. This may have been a terrible mistake. We'll see what actually arrives. But I know that it was easy, and I know that she enjoyed it because she smiled and said, oh, yeah, yeah, I ordered it.

Just wait. So I will report next week. That's great. My daughter took charge of the order. It's almost a song. $30 off your first order at HomeChef.com slash Ricochet. And remember, if you've got kids, teens, this is a great way to have some family together time as you make the meal with them.

Trust me, it's one of the memories that I have of my daughter that I treasure the most. And now we welcome back to the podcast Rod Dreher, senior editor of the American Conservative. He's written and edited for the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, National Review, the Washington Times, et cetera, et cetera. And his commentary has been published

in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary and the Weekly Standard and more. His new book is The Benedict Option. And on Twitter, he's a reliable source of links to what's going on in the Catholic Church and often to his own anguished and energized commentary on the subject. Hey, Rod, speaking from somebody here in the middle of the country, in the heart of Lutheranism, this looks disastrous for the Catholic Church, and it also looks unrecoverable. And then we also think, well, they've survived Medicis, they've survived this, and schisms and the rest of it.

Perhaps this is as it's always been. But bring people up to speed who aren't Catholic, perhaps, on what's going on in the Church, what the elements are, and what you think the end result is going to be. How long do we have, James? We've got nine hours, Rod, so go on. Thumbnail it for us. Well, the abuse scandal, of course, is the thing that's made all the headlines.

And I think a lot of Catholics thought that in the first spasm of the abuse scandal in the U.S. starting in 2002 when things broke big out of Boston, I think a lot of Catholics believed that the bishops over the years that followed pretty much got things under control. They did make some improvements, but the thing back then that was not addressed was the complicity of bishops themselves in the abuse and the networks of abuse and of, I don't know how you would call it, but sexual exploitation, even when it didn't involve abusing minors. A lot of this stuff was covered up, never dealt with, the bishops were never held to account, and we see now with the things that came out about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick over the

summer, that he had abused minors but also had molested seminarians. When that broke big, we were right back to where we started, except this time, I think the patience of ordinary Catholics, many ordinary Catholics, was completely worn out. And then, of course, we had the Pennsylvania grand jury investigation, which revealed all kinds of horrors that had gone on there in the past in Pennsylvania. That has sparked, I think, 13 different state investigations around the U.S., where you have state attorneys general and grand juries looking into the records of Catholic dioceses around the country to see if the same thing exists there. We found out just this week that the U.S. agents, federal agents from the Justice Department, serve subpoenas on all the bishops of Pennsylvania because it looks like they're going to do a RICO investigation of the Catholic

diocese there in connection with sex abuse. So it is really, really hard for the Catholic Church now. The bishops have zero credibility, and we're just getting started on this thing. At the same time, there is a theological crisis going on. Pope Francis has been terrible on abuse. He has tried to say all the right things, but he has a record in Argentina when he was the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires covering up for abuse. He has surrounded himself with theological liberals who have been complicit in abuse and its cover-up, and yet Pope Francis keeps saying that the people

who criticize him are working for the devil, and it's just a total mess. This Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. for a couple of years, he, about two months ago, released a statement naming names, talking about a homosexual cover-up in the church to cover up for networks of abuse and aberrant sexuality, and he was denounced by a lot of people around Pope Francis, but nobody has yet come out and said that Vigano is telling a lie. They keep talking about, from the Vatican and from others surrounding Francis, they talk about how Vigano has caused scandal, how dare he speak this way of the Pope. It's such a sad and outrageous thing.

But they don't say he's lying, because I don't think he is lying. He came out just this morning. We're talking on a Friday morning. He came out just this morning with a brand new statement pointing out exactly this, that nobody can contradict him in the Vatican. All they can do is tell him that it was very inappropriate for him to have said these things. But these accusations stand unrefuted, unaddressed directly by the Pope, and meanwhile there's a youth synod going on in Rome now where it looks like Francis might be about to have some doctrines changed about the meaning of family, the meaning of sexuality in a very liberal way. If that happens, maybe the Catholic Church will face the real possibility of a schism. I hope

that's not the case, but we're in real uncharted territories right now. Rod, Peter here. I owe you an apology that goes back 16 years. In 2002 when the abuse scandal began to break, you covered it. And I thought, well, of course Rod is on to something. But, oh, he's being too dark.

He's being a little too suspicious. It's not that, and it was that bad. And in fact, it was worse than that bad. And I wrong, it was worse than that bad. And I wronged you, Rod, in my own mind, not in public, in my own mind, so it doesn't matter. But I'm glad to get a chance to clear this up. Okay. So you were in Rome just, what, a couple of weeks ago for –

Last month, yeah. Last month, a seminar or a conference on your book, The Benedict Option. Two sentences on The Benedict Option, because we've discussed that on the podcast before, but we want to remind listeners about the book and your argument. And then tell us what the mood is in Rome itself. Well, The Benedict Option is a book I've come up with in which I say that we in the West are living in post-Christian times, times that are like the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and we need to look to the example of Saint Benedict of Nursia, who came out of Rome, founded the Benedictine Order, and found a new way to live safely as Christians in a very dark and chaotic time. I think he has a lot to teach us

today, all of us Christians. I went to Rome and to Italy itself for a book tour. The Benedict Option has been published there. It's in 10 languages now. And the publisher set up a meeting in the Italian parliament at which Archbishop Georg Gainsbine, who was the private secretary to Pope Benedict XVI and the prefect of the papal household of Pope Francis. Archbishop Georg gave a talk about the Benedict option. I was really nervous about this because the implications of my book are that the leaders of the Church are—you can't count on them now that faithful Catholics will need to go to dig in deeply into their own faith and to shore up their own convictions of their own spiritual lives in the face of these crises. Archbishop Georg, Peter, said the most amazing things. He said that the Church is facing its own spiritual 9-11. Those are the words he used. And he talked about corruption in

the Church, theological and sexual, and said that my book was the thing that has been giving him the most hope this summer, that the Church will thrive, that it can survive, and not only survive, but thrive through this crisis. But I'll tell you, it was one of the most astonishing things about what Patricia Gayark said was not only that a Catholic of his standing in the Vatican said it, but also that he was willing to be honest about what's happening,

which so many in Rome won't admit what's going on. I was astonished when I was in Italy to find that so many Catholics, even conservative Catholics, still believe what they read in the Italian press, that this thing going on in America, the scandal in America, is only some sort of put-up job by rich, right-wing American Catholics to attack Pope Francis. I think they're just not seeing what's really happening here. Rod, for the Lutheran and the Episcopalian on this podcast, for James and for Rob, we need, and obviously for many listeners who aren't Catholic, we need just to explain, excuse me, let me propose, I'll do it as succinctly as I can. Are you telling me whether I'm right or wrong?

The difficulty for Catholics is the unique position of the pope. Catholics believe that the pope reigns supreme. And so if the pope – they also believe that God will prevent the church from error, not from doing stupid things, but from error in matters of faith and morals. However, if the pope drives the whole bus over the cliff, there's no way to stop him. There's no way for an Archbishop Chaput, you can humbly offer your dissidents, your counter arguments. But if the pope says no, there's no way to vote him out of office. There's no way to hem him in. The Pope gets to do what the Pope wants to do. Correct? I don't think that's correct, Peter.

Oh, you don't? Well, here's the thing. The Pope is also bound by church law. No Pope can just make law on his own, and that has never happened before. However, we have a case with Pope Francis now, and mind you, I'm no longer a Catholic. I left the Catholic and not care what happens in the Catholic Church. Anyway, we have a situation now with Pope Francis where one of his great supporters, Monsignor Thomas Rosica, published something recently saying that Pope Francis is not bound by the past. Pope Francis rules personally. Now, if that is how they see things, that is a five-alarm crisis right there, because no pope can rule personally with no feeling unbound by tradition, by canon law, by anything else. I think that that's probably a risquism.

But my, yeah, right, so my point is simply about the mechanisms. It is true in theory, it's true as a matter of canon law, that the Pope doesn't get to rewrite doctrine. But should he attempt to do so, there is no mechanism for enforcing canon law against him. I don't think there is. Peter, do you think?

No, no, I don't. I think that's why good people are just, they don't know where, they have no place to put their feet, I think. So, now, Rob Long is in where, they have no place to put their feet, I think. So now, Rob Long is in New York, he's sort of rolling his eyes, he's yawning, he's scratching his side, and he's thinking, this has nothing to do with me. I'm pretty secular, and when I do go to church, I go to an Episcopalian church. Tell him why what happens in the Church of Rome will reverberate even in his life. Well, I think of something Camille Paglia once told me when I interviewed her a decade or so ago. She told me that she was greatly worried about the decline of religion in the West.

I said, why? You're an atheist. She said, I know, but I also teach art history, and I'm seeing my students who come to me know absolutely nothing about the Bible, nothing about the history and tradition of the Christian Church in the West, and because of that, they don't understand their own patrimony. Besides that, Camille Paglia also wrote once, back in the early 90s, that gays and lesbians, and she's a lesbian herself, should not want the church to decline and fall because she said, what so many people like me don't understand, this is Camille, is that the church is a pillar of civilization. Homosexuality and liberality, generally speaking in sexual matters,

can only thrive in conditions of great civilization, advanced civilization. If we don't have that, things are going to be very hard for all of us. So I think you can make a really practical case for why it's better for everyone, even secular people, when the Church is strong. not too strong, because as a Christian, I would like to see the church even stronger, but you're a secular person, you don't want the church dominating things, but you do want the church to be there to be a moral guarantor of the moral order. Right, but Rod, I have to say that, I mean, the problem the Catholic Church is having right now isn't that it wasn't strong enough, it's that it was too strong. I mean, in actual, pure, literal term of strength, it was an incredibly strong, incredibly secure,

incredibly vast conspiracy. I mean, what's going to happen in right now, the FBI is investigating the bishops and the church in Pennsylvania to prepare for a RICO case. That RICO, maybe it misinterpreted what strength was. Moral strength versus political strength or sort of physical strength. But it certainly isn't in trouble because of its weakness.

Well, this is true. One of the weaknesses is that Bishks were not able to reform their own organization. I remember back in 2002 when I was a very strong conservative. They weren't able to or they weren't willing to?

Well, I think they weren't able to because they weren't willing to. I don't want this to be a question of semantics, but I can remember back in 2002 when I was a very strong conservative Catholic writing at the New York Post and in a national review about the scandal, and a well-known conservative bishop in this country,

somebody whose name you would all know, said to me, I don't understand you. I said, if you don't trust the bishops to fix this, why are you still a Catholic? And I told him, I said, I'm a Catholic because I believe what the faith teaches. I don't – my Catholic faith doesn't depend on believing in the integrity or the capability of the bishops. Well, this guy didn't understand that, and I bet he understands it now because he has faith. now an Episcopal minister, but a former Catholic, very, she's very religious Catholic, worked for Cardinal Law in Boston. And she said that one of the most astonishing

and earth shattering events in her life was to discover that there was a retreat house in Boston. And now it's, of course, it was part of the movie Spotlight. That, that was a place where you were just sent if you had been trouble, if you had been sort of a

sexual abuser and a molester and wore the collar, you were sort of sent there for a few months on your way to somewhere else and that Cardinal Long knew about it. And she described it this way. She said she was on his team, his sort of media, public relations sort of political team, and she said that originally she thought her job was to protect cardinal law from the world. And then she realized her job was the opposite, to protect the world from cardinal law. Powerful. Yeah, and she left the church. But it wasn't because it wasn't powerful, because it was powerful. But I can say the second thing I would just say, and I know that Peter will just – I don't know whether this will make you happy, Peter, or not. I'm already in prayer for you, Rob.

The other thing she said – For what you're about to do. The other thing she said, since we're talking about religion, is that right one in the Book of Common Prayer. So right one, the Eucharist, the first right in the Anglican church is right one in the book of common prayer so right one the eucharist the first right in in in the anglican church is right one and it's the sort of the fancy ornate these and those kind of you know that's it's the it's the old-fashioned one the 1928 book of common yeah exactly the one that peter would like if he could yes yes if he could bend um uh and she said that's the most popular right at the – right now at this point, especially among young people, that there's something about the mystery of it and the – almost the strangeness of it that is attractive to people because it's the thing they can't get anywhere else. You can't get it on TV.

You can't get it at Starbucks. You can't get anywhere else. You can't get it on TV. You can't get it at Starbucks. You can't get it anywhere. It's a special thing that you can only get in the church. And so in that respect, do you think that maybe there will be a return in sort of the fundamentals, I would say? I mean, is that what you prescribe for the Catholic Church? That's happening in France already.

Rod, right? In France, for example. No, it is happening in France. In fact, the Society of Pius X, which are the traditionalists who are in perfect communion with Rome, let's say, they're thriving. They're producing vocations, whereas the mainstream Catholic Church is

dying on the vine. But good luck trying to tell this to Francis the the hippie Pope, who is trying to revive the 1970s as if that wasn't a complete disaster for the Catholic church. Peter. No, no, no. James, James, Rod, we love you. Yeah. But I'm getting notes here from our producer that we have to move on.

Of course, we could talk about this for nine hours. I'm going to ask him one more. And I would I would be I'd so dearly want to ask him about the failure of and the decline of the schism and the rebirth of one institution being the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which which a lot of people aren't seeing this in their radar. All of a sudden there's a different one, and they've got to staff it. And that's a fascinating story if you know any ukes. But I want to end actually with a secular institution that just founded. You were tweeting this week about Sears, and like a lot of Americans of a particular age who have great nostalgia for them, for wearing those itchy church pants made of polyester with the horrible designs that your mom got out of the catalog. Or when a book came to your house and you would pour over every possible page of what you could get for Christmas. And, oh, my gosh, there's bras in here, too.

Sears killed itself from the sound of it. They drove us all away. But still, in a way, these institutions sort of are secular versions of the doctrines and the faiths that we follow on Sunday. They're part of the structure that we live in, aren't they? And when they go, it seems like anything can go. Well, that's right. And we are living in a time of what a famous sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, called liquid modernity.

And what he meant by that was in the times we live in, things change so quickly that institutions barely have time to form and get established before they change again. And this is our modern condition. We can't afford to be nostalgic, not truly nostalgic, about the demise of a retailer. But in the case of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, that is an extremely complicated situation. A lot of it had to do with nationalism and politics. I can't remotely begin to explain it, but I would say that we can't ever take for granted the stability of our institutions, certainly not in this day and age. And when I became Eastern Orthodox in 2006, after I was broken as a Catholic, I didn't enter the Orthodox Church thinking I was

going into a church that has no sin. It clearly does. But I went into it for theological reasons, but also I went into it with humility, because as a Catholic, I had been such an arrogant, intellectual Catholic. I was very triumphalist. I assumed that the Catholic Church would be strong and dependable forever and ever, even though history should have told me otherwise. God broke me in my own pride, and I told myself I can't be that kind of Orthodox Christian. So what I say today to whether you're Catholic, you're Orthodox, you're Protestant, do not put your faith in princes and the leaders of the church or in the structures you have around you, because they will be tried today in liquid modernity like

they never have been. And if you're a religious person, only put your faith in Jesus Christ, and dig deep into your own tradition. Learn what that is, practice it, embody it in your life, in your church, in your small communities, because that's the only thing that's going to get us through. Well put. And liquid modernity feels not just liquid, but set on purée and frothy and all the rest of the settings of my warring blender, because everything seems to be going into it. And what comes out? Nutritious snoob moody or poisonous ichor?

We'll find out. Thanks, Rod, for joining us on the podcast today. We'll have you again as soon as possible. And we'll, of course, follow you on Twitter and read you at the American Conservative. Thanks a lot, James. And let's just pray that the Catholics don't adopt Sears tough-skinned vestments.

That's right. Well, they do wear well, especially theels the knees part and we're going to stop there thanks rod um we need also to remind you that um in these fractious times it helps to center yourself from time to time and as you can tell between peter and rob you've got two individuals who are grounded and centered and know when to breathe. But if you're one of those people who says, how can I have the sort of Zen detachment of a Peter or a Rob? Well, there are tools to get you there. And if you've meditated before, for example, you might know how it focuses your mind.

And if you haven't meditated, you're thinking, why would I want to do this? It's silly. What do I get? The crystals and the new age and the rest of it? And I play some chimes and I go home. No, that's not it. That's a cliche. That's incorrect.

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which includes hundreds of hours of premium programs, including guided meditations on issues like anxiety, stress, focus, relationships. We all have a little bit of that in some degree. And there's even a brand new meditation each day called the Daily Calm. And they also have sleep stories. They're like bedtime stories for grownups and much more. So for a limited time, Ricochet podcast listeners can get 25% off a Calm premium subscription at Calm.com slash Ricochet. It includes unlimited access to all of Calm's amazing content, and you can get started right now today at Calm.com slash Ricochet. That's Calm.com slash Ricochet. And we thank Calm for sponsoring this Ricochet podcast. And now we bring back to the podcast Lonnie Chen, fellow at

the Hoover Institution, policy advisor and counselor to top republican politicians and office holders he was the policy director for the 2012 Mitt Romney presidential campaign and Romney's chief policy advisor period his new podcast Crossing Lines debuted this week on Ricochet Audio Network welcome hey thanks for having me I understand we have an election coming. I'm getting that feeling that there might be something happening electoral-wise. And I hate predictions because if they're good, I feel nervous. If they're bad, I feel depressed. As a matter of fact, I just kind of like to wake up the next day and say, oh, now this is the world in which we live. But people love to horse race and handicap and the rest of it.

So what races should we be looking at in the House? Well, you know, it's going to be a very competitive set of races. I think there are a few races in Southern California, for example, which are very heavily contested districts in part because Hillary Clinton won them in 2016. And so now you have Republicans who are trying to defend seats or in some cases taking over for people who are retiring. And it's very competitive because the dynamics of the district are not particularly good for Republicans. So I would keep an eye on some of those races in Southern California. There's a few races in Florida as well near Miami, which will be quite competitive. New York sort of states that you would expect Democrats to have done well in.

These are places where I do think you're going to see a very, very competitive race. And then on the Senate side, it's those targeted races, those places that Democrats won six years ago that have really become much more solidly Republican in the years since. And those are the places that are worth watching out for, places like North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia, and even Florida and Tennessee. Hey, Lonnie, Peter here. By the way, congrats on the podcast. Welcome to Ricochet.

Thank you. So it's a story. I can't cite it right now, but I've seen it several different places. You'll know what I mean. It's in the air that the Kavanaugh hearings harmed the Republicans' prospects for retaining control of the House, but helped them for retaining control of the Senate. Does that make sense to you? And if so, how can it be? Well, it cuts both ways. So it does make sense to me in the sense that if you think about enthusiasm, what the Kavanaugh hearings did was to really animate the Republican base, but at the same time also to animate the Democratic base or the progressive base.

And so what you see in some of these districts on the House side in particular, as I noted, a number of them have either Democratic majorities or they lean left. In those situations, you might understand how a motivated progressive base would potentially hurt the Republicans and help the Democrats. On the other hand, if you look at the Senate races, these are predominantly in states where Republicans and President Trump in particular have done very well. And so if you animate the Republican or conservative base in these states, what you will see is a positive impact for Republicans. A state like North Dakota is a perfect example of that, where the Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp is going to have problems because her state has become more Republican and support for the Republicans increased because of the Kavanaugh hearings. So it's tough to say what will actually happen, but that thesis certainly is a reasonable one. Right. Hey, Lonnie, I have

one more. I know Rob and James wants to get back in and I don't know Rob is champing at the pit. I have one question about one specific race, Utah. Your friend and old boss, Mitt Romney, is running – I checked the polls a little while ago. He's running something like 40 points ahead. Utah is so Republican and Mitt Romney is so personally popular that not only will he win in a blowout, he will get to be the senator from Utah for as long as he wishes. Not many people get seats like that. What will he do with it? I think he I think, first of all, he's going to be a great senator for Utah. And I think he is going to be focused on the issues that Utahns care about. If you look at his campaign, it's been all about making sure that people in Utah understands he understands the issues. He's ready to serve them and ready to be a good senator. Beyond that, I do think he is

going to take a leading role as a voice on on big issues, whether foreign policy issues like the U.S. relationship or situation with Russia, which is something he was quite prescient about in 2012, as many listeners will recall, or on big issues like entitlement reform. I think he's going to be one of the few voices in Congress championing fiscal responsibility, which I think is long overdue. So he is going to be a great voice in the Senate. I look forward to it. Rob? Hey, Lonnie, It's Rob Long in New York. Thanks for joining us. So I feel like as the resident Ricochet promo machine, I have to do a promo for your podcast. To tell listeners a little bit about – I mean it's called Crossing Lines. It's on the Ricochet mega feed. You can get it there.

But a little bit about what you want to do with your podcast and what kinds of – what kind of deep dives you're doing because like the first one is out. It's with Speaker Paul Ryan, and it's – I mean it's pretty deep. I mean you guys get into the – I wouldn't say the weeds, but certainly the details of policy. Is that what we can – are we going to nerd and wonk out on this podcast? Sometimes, sometimes. But, you know, I recognize that not everyone likes to wonk out and nerd out quite like I do or we do. You know, but here's the thing. I think policy is a really important part of our conversation because it's oftentimes what's missing from the dialogue. You know, we get so caught up in the story of the day and things as such. But I think that the podcast, think of the podcast as right in that intersection between policy and politics, because I've spent my career with kind of one foot in both. So I want listeners to have a behind the scenes view, you know, kind of getting beyond the spin.

What is it like to be in these various scenarios? So what's it like to be a policymaker? What's it like to be on a campaign in the last couple of days before a general election? What's it like to work in the West Wing of the White House? I want to give people that perspective. And sometimes it's going to be wonky. Sometimes it's going to be more overtly political or horse racy. So, you know, I think it's going to be a good mix for people. I think that it'll attract hopefully listeners who are interested in how things actually get done or don't get done in politics. Do you think that the voters know anything like that?

I mean every politician I speak to off the record or everybody I know who worked in campaigns, they all at some point say the same thing, left and right, Republican, Democrat, which is – man, the voters, they just don't know anything, and they don't care. Obviously that's the darkest, most cynical spin, but do you ever feel that way? Like, I mean, they don't even they don't even know how Social Security really works. Yeah. I mean, here's what I think, Rob. People are busy. You know, people are really busy with their lives. And I and I don't expect people to to know all the details, nor frankly, is it their job to it's their job to decide directionally where where's our country going to go? And that's what elections are about. Elections are about big, big changes in direction. They're about big questions. So, you know, would it be great if we all knew the minutiae of when Social Security is going to go bankrupt so we can

figure out what we need to fix next week? Yeah, right. But but but but I don't I don't fault people for for living their lives. And I certainly understand that. OK, so the last. Thank you, Lon. He did you hear that rob he doesn't fault people for living their lives no i don't unlike unlike some certainly when it comes to the national debt i do but uh last last question about podcast so i mean yeah this is a i'm gonna reveal something about myself i like listening to podcasts like yours because you're gonna give me a little nugget that i didn't know before and i I'm going to be able to pretend that I knew it all along later that day when I talk to other people. So can you just promise me you're going to at least give me that every episode?

I mean, of course, I listen to all of, for the next 72 hours, you're going to be able to lord it over other people because you're going to have this incredibly brilliant piece of conversation. I promise you that if you listen to the podcast, you are going to be the king or queen of the PTA meeting, of the cocktail party. That's what I wanted to hear. Whatever it is, you're going to have some interesting facts. Actually, one of those guys. That's what you want to be. Okay, so thank you. I just want to make sure that everybody heard that because I'm very excited about this podcast.

I want everybody to hear it because I think it's going to be really, really, really fun and also useful. But the other thing we talked about is politics. We talked a little bit about how the math is tough for the Republicans for the House, although it always was. But it looks better for the Senate. What's happening to Claire McCaskill in Missouri? Well, her problem is that she is kind of – her political positioning, her policy positioning is a little bit out of step with where Missouri is. And I think it's gotten progressively worse over the last several years. Couple that with the fact that she's running against a very talented guy named Josh Hawley, who's the attorney general of Missouri, young, dynamic, thoughtful,

constitutional, conservative. You know, he has spent time actually understanding these issues that we've been talking about that have been at play with the Kavanaugh hearings and with everything else over the last several weeks. So she's really got the perfect storm working against her. So I think she's going to lose. I think Josh Hawley is going to be the next senator for Missouri, and I think that the people of Missouri are better for it. So just to follow up on that, I mean is she emblematic of the problem the Democrats have? But that they have – they've won red states that they can't keep because the party itself is just too deep blue. And the same way that they – they seem to have a lot of political power, but when it comes down to running a national general campaign where it's – you've got to win a bunch of states, you have a real, real trouble, because you've just basically moved too far left. Oh, absolutely. And I think they've moved too far left, because they're thinking about 2020.

They're thinking about how to deal with with President Trump. And I think a lot of these candidates have decided that the best way to do it is to be as far left as possible, in part to, to cater to their far left progressive base, it's going to show up in the presidential primaries in 2020. We all know that primary electorates are not representative of general election electorates. So, yeah, I think part of the problem is that they've gone left. The other problem is they won these states because of of Obama and the Obama afterglow. And Obama is not on the ballot anymore. And I think I think in some of these states, that's going to hurt them. And beyond that, I think it makes it unsustainable for their party going forward without a message. Right. Okay, last question about Tennessee. Fascinating state. I was there very close to there last weekend. I would call the sitting governor who's running for Senate, a fairly moderate Democrat.

Would you agree? Yeah, I mean Phil Bredesen is a moderate Democrat. He actually said he would support Kavanaugh's nomination and confirmation. So I mean yes, he is fairly moderate, but he's not a Republican. And I think fundamentally that is what's going to get him in trouble there. He will have a very difficult time winning that race. So you think he's on the ropes? Oh, absolutely. I think Marsha Blackburn, the Republican in that race, has the advantage. I think the public polling now has her up near 10 points. That state has gotten away from the

Democrats. All these states have gotten away from the Democrats. And the Kavanaugh hearings really, really did make a big difference in animating Republican turnout and Republican interest in the election. Then that, to me, that would be an upset. I've been reading the polls too, but, you know, Tennessee is a locked down state politically. The governor of Tennessee, the sitting governor, whoever that is, has a huge amount of political support. You know, Lamar Alexander, when he was governor, had the place locked down tight, and Bredesen seems to have done the same thing.

But to me, it feels like if I was to describe that politician to you, a southern moderate Democrat governor, I mean that is pretty much the definition of an unstoppable political figure in American history, right? I mean that is kind of where we go when we are looking for a leader. The country is basically a moderate Democrat and they trust southerners to kind of hold to their values. Is that – is it surprising to you that Bredesen is like – may go down that big? Or is that an antiquated concept? Because we believe that Southern equals God and guns. I mean, not that I'm saying they're a bunch of bitter clingers,

but there's the assumption that culturally they're more inclined to be sympathetic to people who are believers and people who are strong Second Amendment. But is the party now shifting as such where there's no longer a farm team that turns out these people who have genuine, basic, old-style American values but are more aligned with identity politics? And hence the whole southern thing is sort of a – well, they can coast on that for a while, but they're going to come up short eventually.

Yeah, I mean I think that's exactly right. The Democratic Party has largely become an urban identity politics party, and it's not a great fit for the South. And I think the identity of the Democratic Party has indeed become toxic in some parts of the South. You know, you look at a guy like Bredesen, Bredesen may in a different era have been a Republican, given where his, you know, given what his issue stands are. The problem the Democrats have is that identification in some parts of the South is so thoroughly associated with the politics of, you know, of these urban areas, as well as of where we are now in terms of wanting people to believe that they should have a certain set of beliefs or a certain

set of political preferences just because of who they are. And that's not going to be popular in a lot of places. But that's a fair point. That's a fair point for the people of Tennessee to make in deciding against Bredesen because that's the way the Senate works. If he's a Democrat, he's supporting Schumer. Full stop, right? Right. Yeah.

Okay. Can I ask you sort of a general question because you've been looking at politics for a long time. John Penoritz always says that the secret weapon that Republicans have or conservatives have in American politics is that we have to be bilingual. We have to speak the other language. And they don't. But the ones who do, the Democrats, the liberals who do speak the other language tend to be from the South because they have to run conservative states like Tennessee, basically conservative states. Who in the Democratic Party do you think is bilingual? I actually don't know that it's anyone in the South. I'd point to a guy like John Hickenlooper, who's in Colorado. And he's someone who I think, as a governor, has tried to govern in a reasonable way and understand some of these sensibilities we're talking about. He comes from a state that's

got rural populations. He comes from a state about. You know, he comes from a state that's got rural populations. He comes from a state that where guns are important. He comes from a state where fiscal conservatism has been important at points in the past. So he's someone that I would consider the archetype of the progressive who might understand the other language and be able to speak it in a way that's convincing. Well, I totally agree. I've been I've been singing. I've been trying to sing the Hinkoper song for so long. And all my Democrat

friends roll their eyes like, who is this guy? But that tells you where the party is. That's right. The party is when I say he's a pro energy governor. They say, oh, we can't have that. Right. God forbid. Lon, he Lon, he sent it lightning round. Let me just name a few close races and you just tell us who's going to win. Florida. I think Rick Scott, the Republican, has a very good chance there. I think he'll win. Really? Yeah, I do.

Arizona. I like Martha McSally down there. I really do. I think she's a much better candidate. And Kyrsten Sinema is – you talk about out of touch. You have a former Green Party, left-wing – I mean not even progressive, beyond progressive, essentially socialist Marxist candidate. I just have a tough time seeing the voters of Arizona picking her. And they are just beating her to death.

They are just banging on her every day. That's a rough campaign. Yeah, banging on her every day consists of quoting her accurately. Showing video of her speaking okay so so far we've got one republican pickup in florida one republican seat retained in arizona indiana democrat uh defending a seat an incumbent democrat defending indiana yeah i i think that one's going to be very tough for the republicans like you know all the polling that i've seen suggests that the democrat there donnelly has has the inside track so i think that's one the democrats have a shot at hanging on to two more nevada well you know there if you'd asked me a month ago i would have said that dean heller has the inside track. So I think that's one the Democrats have a shot at hanging on to. Two more. Nevada.

Well, you know, there, if you'd asked me a month ago, I would have said that Dean Heller, the Republicans in big trouble. But what we've seen in the last couple of weeks is Jackie Rosen, the Democrat, has faltered. And Heller is now up in most public polling. In fact, I don't think she's been up in a public poll since the end of September. So I got to say, I like Dean Heller's chances coming into the stretch here. OK. And then this is this is I'm indulging myself with this one. Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, popular Democratic senators up for reelection. She's way ahead. But the Republican, John James, is just such an attractive figure. I think. What do you make of that race?

I think John James is tremendously talented. I think he's run a great race of actually speaking to people in a lot of these blighted areas in Michigan. Give us about two sentences on John James so listeners who aren't familiar with him understand. He's the son of a small business owner. He himself has been a businessman. He's got a military background. He's African-American, very, very well-spoken, thoughtful guy on the issues. I think he's a great fit for Michigan. The problem is Stabenow has been there for so long, and her name ID is so good, and so many people are just used to voting for Debbie Stabenow.

That's what I worry about. But I will tell you, if there is a counterwave, if the Republicans are able to do well in some of these Senate races, I would not look past John James in Michigan. And one more, I wouldn't look past a guy named Bob Hugin in New Jersey running against almost a convicted felon, Menendez. You think Hugin has a chance in the next 18 days? I think it'll be closer than people think. Hugin is putting a lot of his own resources into this race. He's up on the air big time. And Menendez is such an unsympathetic figure. I just keep coming back to the fact that Bob Menendez is still polling in the mid 40s,

as last I checked. And that's a very dangerous place for an incumbent to be three weeks out from election day. If you're not over 50 percent, you're in trouble. Okay, so last question for me then. In this lightning round, you've done nothing but say Republicans may lose seats they don't yet have, but they're going to keep the seats they have and they may pick up one or two. What's the number in the Senate the day after the election? I think Republicans end up at 53 or 54. Got it. Thank you.

Wow. It'll be interesting. All right. Well, you know, Lonnie, speaking as a longtime podcaster here, in your own shows, you're going to have to bring some specifics. You just can't trade in all of these generalities. I mean, it's great to have that 30,000 feet perspective, but we're going to expect you to drill down a little bit more. Wow.

Okay, well, that's why we have you on, because we learn things like this, and they're great. And now we're all on record, sort of, kind of, and we'll talk after the election about how we are busy erasing the tapes of the things we said before the election. Please do. Please do. All right. Listen to his podcast. Read him everywhere. And thank you. We'll see you later here at Ricochet.com.

Thanks, Dex. You know, Rob, the thing of it is people bang on conservatives for being so parsimonious and tight-pursed and all the rest of it. But Insight Light, you just heard and you hear on this podcast, we give it away for free asking nothing of anybody. Well, I got to stop you there. We give it away for free, but it's not free. It actually costs a lot of money, and we want to do more of it. And one of the things we try to do is try to tell different stories, and we're trying to sort of expand our offerings. But the only way we can do that is if you are

listening to this right now and you become a member. If you are a member already, we thank you for joining us here at Ricochet. If you are not a member, chances are if you're not a member, you've already made the decision. You've already decided, hey, I'm not going to join. So I'm just going to fast forward through this. Or you've done what I think a lot of people do, which is to say, oh, I keep meaning to do that. I keep putting it off. Please do not put it off. We need to grow.

We need to make our payroll. secure that we don't kind of get a little nervous sweat every time paychecks have to be written and cashed by loyal and decent and good employees that we need to cover that so if you enjoy these podcasts and you have been thinking about becoming a member please do it today uh we really really need your help and um you will be contributing to the longevity and the expansion and the creation of a great thing, a great thing that stories and news and commentary from our priorities, not theirs. Well, the people are fast-forwarding through this, the unscrupulous folk that they are. Maybe you should just say it really slowly. I'm wrong. Exactly right.

That's exactly right. It will be like one of those dreams where you're trying to move, but everything is in slow motion, and no matter how far you run, you can't. Dreams. I hate those things. I actually don't have those. I used to have that kind of anxiety dream. Now I have dreams where I got to show up at something, and I don't know my script, and I don't know what we're doing. And in these dreams, remarkably, I don't care anymore.

It's not an anxiety sort of thing. I just kind of wing it. Well, Rob here, of course, is doing his best to stick an awl into the eyeball of what I'm looking at here, which is copy about something you need to know. So I'm just going to deep six my attempt to gently move you into a commercial, Rob having just given you one. But I will tell you this. We're going to talk about Elizabeth Warren and what it means to the end of identity politics in just a second. But first, I have to tell you about Bull and Branch. Two words reminding you

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Could be some sort of – who literally knows. And Trump having baited her into this by not even calling her by the correct mocking name. Focohontas was the word, and he just called her Pocahontas, cutting directly to the chase. The interesting thing about this is that now the Democrats have come right back to the position of slave owners. One drop of blood means you have ethnicity that is apparently transmitted through the strands of your DNA and makes you oppressed, not you're a Harvard professor and the likes of it.

It's preposterous. Right, right. But you know what? It's not going to do – it's not going to dent the shield a jot when it comes to these people who insist that ethnicity and skin – Yeah, I don't know either. It may. I mean I was surprised by how quickly, within a day, the cycle turned against her. And I think what's interesting about it is that the tone deafness of Elizabeth Warren and her advisors, they hate Trump so much. They're so convinced that they're right, that they start by being right, that nobody thought to themselves, wait a minute, this is not the story we want told, that you have one one-thousandth of Native American DNA in you,

and you claimed to be Native American and took away from those sort of groups their set-asides, essentially, that Harvard law school described you as a woman of color the exploitation of affirmative action and quotas by rich privileged white people is a really good story and i'm just shocked that no one in the elizabeth warren organization could see that i couldn't agree more the this this 23 and me the other dna test she apparently had some highfalutin dna test done by an expert here at stanford but people i heard a story just last week uh rob you and i were in new york um and a lady was telling me that her husband had taken dna she is jewish he was irish cath Catholic and then discovered that he's one third Jewish himself and she

went to her mother and said ma he was a nice Jewish boy after all this whole notion that all that are racial or ethnic background is all mixed up and most of us are a little bit of something that would surprise us

now in a certain sense what's the big deal? Of course, particularly in this country, which has been a melting pot racially, ethnically, genetically since the beginning, just as it's been a melting pot for cultures and so forth. But here's the big deal. The big deal runs as follows. If you accept that having one 1,000th Indian blood, Native American blood, makes you a Native American, if you accept that having one one thousandth indian blood native american blood makes you a native american if you pursue that argument then the entire apparatus of affirmative

action in which the liberals have invested themselves so deeply right over six decades now the entire apparatus of affirmative action becomes instantly untenable. And here is which is which is why this story will go away. Well, they have a choice. They do have a choice. Yes, it's hard to go away. It's a very bad. It's a perfect storm for them because it's a it's a it's a funny story that Trump likes to make fun of it.

And he's when Trump wants to be funny, he can be very, very funny. Everyone – I mean Ancestry.com advertises on TV. People are taking these tests left and right. It's part of the culture. And people have always felt uneasy about these kinds of – not always. They didn't feel uneasy about it in Louisiana in 1911, but they feel uneasy about it now in 2018 about this sort of precise octarunification of your background. Exhibit A is me. I am 10%, according to a

DNA test I took a few years ago, 10% Native American. Now, the idea that I have any right to claim any Native American goodies in the goodie bag that we distribute in America is ludicrous. And yet I am – I mean I don't even know how to do the math, but I think I'm – am I a thousand times more – am I a thousand times more of a person of color than Elizabeth Warren? Could I give a piece of color at Harvard Law School? I would be – I personally would be ashamed if anyone claimed that I had any privileges due to my minority 10 percent. Picture the admissions officers next year at Yale or Dartmouth or the University of Minnesota, when the kids start ticking all the ethnic boxes and say, see the attached from 23andMe, I'm Hispanic and African-American, the kids are going to start ticking every single privileged box and they'll have proof stapled to their

admit. The apparatus, it just comes under pressure immediately and over the long term it becomes utterly untenable this is actually great news yeah and harvard admissions would still still if that's the case still be racist against asians because that is the other thing that's happening now it's about harvard harvard gleefully decided that elizabeth warren was a person of color. And yet as the lawsuit is now – winds its way through to conclusion and the discovery documents are released, we now know that Harvard University, Harvard College anyway, the admissions departments there, wrote rather shockingly racist assessments of Asian prospective students because they weren't interesting enough or they were typical Asian or all sorts of things that if you replace the ethnicity Asian with any other ethnicity would be a national international scandal. They did everything but use the words inscrutable oriental on their assessments.

Amazing. Amazing. This is all great. More lawsuits to follow and this corrupt structure of affirmative action is going to come under increasing pressure.

I would like to think so because that would be great, but there's so much institutional investment in this way of thinking that I think that they'll look at... The people who are making the arguments that you guys are... That we're all making will look at the people who are making the arguments that you guys are,

that we're all making, um, will be, will be viewed as people who are making it a bad faith because we're on that side, right? We're on the other side. We're on the Trumpian side that doesn't believe that actually such things

as racial identity should be considered. Right? You look at the left wants you to think that they're, that gender is a social contract, that race is a social contract, that there are no absolutes. And since they are pretty adept at twisting the definitions in order to achieve the goal of the wonderful egalitarian utopia to come, I have no doubt that they will be able to

weather all of these white kids checking off the boxes saying that 10% this and 10% that, that they will just simply adjust what they do and how they factor it and achieve exactly what they want before because there's too much political power to be had from making identity groups feel victimized and then assembling them together into one coalition that you can use to extort money from the people who you know you regard as as as the instigators of all this so i mean so what's funny's funny though, I mean if you did a DNA test and it came across – and you surprisingly found yourself possessing 10, 15, 20 percent southern, central American and indigenous genes. Oh, yeah. And also to your surprise, you had 40 percent Spanish genes.

Then you yourself would be a walking example of colonialist and oppressed victim. You would be the person who came over to ruin the Eden of America, and you'd also be the person who was unjustly oppressed, which cracks me up. Absolutely so, when somehow the fact that you have these dominant Spanish-Portuguese cultures south of the was who essentially did what America is accused of doing, right? Showing up, kicking out the people. They somehow get a pass and become a victim the minute that anything American enters in the equation, whether we meddled in their affairs or they crossed over a border. It's astonishing because, like I said, there's too much hay, power, money to be had for making the United States the worst possible example of humanity on the planet. And yet sometimes – just one last anecdote. I don't have to run, but sometimes something is so emblematic that it cannot be forgotten.

And I think this is it. I remember doing a project at Disney, ABC at Disney, and the producer I was working with, nice guy. I've known him for years. His father is Mexican. his mother's from Italy. And, you know, once you sell a project, the first thing they do is they send you a bunch of forms you've got to fill out. And then one of the forms is your ethnicity

because these big companies want to keep track of it. They have to report these numbers. And he said, I usually just put, you know, nothing. And I'm like, no, no, no, my friend. You are Latino. And he said, yeah no, no, no, my friend. You are Latino. And he said, yeah, but not really. No, no, you are Latino. For the purposes of this project and us and our partnership, you are Latino, my friend.

And he kind of laughed. And I was like, no, no, let's not mess around here. This is an important thing. There's – if you're going to be distributing goodies and Elizabeth Warren can be a Native American, you, my friend, can be as Mexican as Ricardo Montalban. Who is actually Bolivian. No, actually I think he's Lebanese. Like Selma Hayek. Selma Hayek I think is from Lebanon originally or something like that. I don't care what somebody is from or any of that stuff.

What matters is culture and behavior and the rest of it, what they think, how they act. I just – I mean it's just – race is the most boring subject in the world. And of course I can say that because here I am with my alabaster shining privilege. I'm able to rise above it and say it doesn't matter when, of course, I'm not the guy who's experiencing it day by day. Listen to the Serial podcast if you want. It's an interesting account of what people go through in Cleveland in the justice system, and it's quite remarkable. I'd love to hear our own Jack Dunphy, Ricochet's police correspondent, comment on some of the things that he hears about the behavior in East Cleveland and elsewhere. But that's something you can find on Ricochet in the member feed, which you

will have access to once you join. Thank you very much. And you will, because heck, look at all you got out of this podcast. Wouldn't you like us to be around for another 142 of those? Well, we're brought to you by Home Chef, Bowling Branch and Calm. You can go to the page for this website at

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Have I mentioned you can pay for it? Yes, I think I have. Guys, it's been fun. I'll see you next week. Bye, Peter. Bye, Rob. And we'll see everybody at Ricochet 3.0. Next week. Next week, Peter. Bye, Rob. And we'll see everybody in Ricochet 3.0. Next week. Next week, fellas. I don't think we can solve them You made a really deep cut And baby now we got bad blood

Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted Did you have to ruin what was shining? Now it's all rusted Did you have to hit me where I'm weak? Baby I couldn't breathe And rub it in so deep, salt in the wound like you're laughing right at me Oh, it's so sad to think about the good times you and I

Cause baby, now we got bad blood, You know it used to be mad love So take a look what you've done Cause baby now we got bad blood Now we got problems And I don't think we can solve them You made a really deep cut And baby now we got bad blood Did you think we'd be fine?

Still got scars on my back from your knife So don't think it's in the past These kind of wounds, they last and they last now Did you think it all through? All these things will catch up to you And time can heal, but this won't So if you're coming my way, just don't Oh, it's so sad to think about the good times

You and I Cause baby, now we got bad blood You know we used to be mad, love So take a look what you've done Cause baby, now we got bad blood Ricochet. Join the conversation.