The Ricochet Podcast - Putting Out Fires

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

Got a Super-Sized show for you this week chocked full of topics and Big Name Guests®. First up, we take a look at the state of California, which appears to be regressing back to the 19th century in real time. Then, Douglas Murray stops by to discuss his new book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity which ponders and answers all of the provocative questions posed by the words in that... Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs.

Today we talk to Douglas Murray about the wisdom, no, the madness of crowds. And John Yoo about the madness, no, the wisdom of John Yoo. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Wink and Shay podcast, and it is number 471, cannonballing our way to number 500, which will come in, oh, I don't know, 29 episodes or so. Peter, Rob, how are you today? James, I just had my flu shot, and they told me to stick around in the waiting room for 15 minutes to make sure there was no adverse reaction, but I couldn't. I had to hurry back to record this podcast.

So, James, if I start agreeing with Rob, call an ambulance. Yeah. Yes, I had my flu shot a while ago, and they gave me no such thing. Apparently, I am hale and hearty and look as the certain person that didn't take it, just scroll out. I was reminded again when I was a kid, I swore that the needles that they used were like number two pencils, insufficiently sharpened. Now, a shot is just painless. There's just nothing to it. It's really miraculous, and there's no excuse for not getting one. Where did you get it?

Did you have something through work? Did you have to go to, uh, the little medical clinic, uh, which is organized these days, it's been bought by something bigger, which in turn has been bought by something bigger. But fortunately the shape, the face, the actual experience of going to the little medical clinic still feels like a little medical clinic that our family has used for years and years and years is 10 minutes away from the house. Rob, have you been inoculated or are you just a herd immunity? I have not yet. It's on my list of things to do. I eventually will do it. But I don't know. It's just, it's such a pain in the neck. Well, I actually know the arm because they don't do it. What I love about it though, is that even though they tell you it takes a couple of weeks to build up the immunity, we all know that we walk out of there feeling bulletproof.

It's like I've got it. I'm good. Let me find a doorknob. Let me hold that. Let me touch a doorknob and then rub my eyes. Nothing can touch me. I've got my flu shot, which is great. I don't feel quite superior to vaccines and

microbes, but I certainly do feel superior to my fellow man. I walk out of there thinking, I have done it. The rest of you procrastinating still, I see you slackers. Right. And Target gives me a $5 gift certificate that I can use on the spot. So I just, I feel all hail and good. And like I've done something, even though I don't take care of myself at all. That's the one thing a year that I do. Well, here we are now in November, a year away from the election, and we're having the annual California fires, which the rest of the country looks upon as not so much. I mean, it depends. I suppose if you're of the climate alarmist type, you think, well, this is what happens.

This is what is happening because we drive cars. Or if you're otherwise inclined, you might say, this is what happens when you don't clear away the underbrush, don't invest in your infrastructure, and let things slack. Victor Davis Hanson had an interesting piece this week about California becoming pre-modern. And let me quote from it. He said, more than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state's largest utility, PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, preemptively shut down transmission lines out of fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds. Consumers blame the state for not clearing up the dead trees and the brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn blame the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids. Consequently, California, this marvelous state, this great place of beauty,

actually starts to appear to the rest of the country to be this incredibly inefficient, burdened, one-party state that has squandered everything that was given to it and is on the brink of turning into the mask of the Red Death, where 2%, 3% of the tech elite stare down from their balconies at the people below. And I know, I know. It's not like that in the beautiful places that you live. But in the big cities and in the – Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't – Soon by fire.

Where are we wrong in seeing California as a fast case? Do not be too hasty. Do not be too hasty to exclude – to include me among the one or two percent chuckling from my rooftop as I survey. No. The last summer in particular, but just last week, again, it happened. This is for the first time since we've lived out here. We've lived out here for more than 20 years. The wildfires took place in such a position north of us and at such a time of year that

the winds blew smoke and even ash into San Francisco itself. Last summer, not this past summer, but the year before, it was dark and ashy and sooty over much of the coast from San Francisco down to LA for almost three weeks. And then again, it happened here in Palo Alto, Stanford University. We got notices saying, stay indoors. The air quality is close to dangerous. And it actually felt and smelled as if you were standing. Apparently, odors, aromas are locked into memory. They're one of the triggers for memory. What came back to me was something I hadn't thought of in years and years and years, which was a camping trip with the Boy Scouts, which incidentally cured me of the Boy Scouts. I hated every minute of it. But the smell in the air was campfire smell, only this time it was a wildfire burning 180 miles away.

It's pretty bad out here. I will imagine that as a Boy Scout, when you leaned over the fire, the sleeves of your knotted sweater around your neck caught fire, and that's probably a very bad memory. That's what put me off, yes. Rob, you're there on the other side of the country, I believe, or are you currently discussing Pacific Northwestern cuisine with some banquet group that you've been attached to? No, I'm in New York. I'm outside. I'm away from the fires. But I have friends who are facing the fires.

But does anybody – I mean I think only Californians really think about California. And I think Californians only really think about California decay. Something like that. Something like that. There were pictures yesterday, the day before yesterday, the wildfire got within a couple of hundred yards of the Reagan Library. I was ready to go down there and start manning the hoses myself. And burned up to within, again, a couple of hundred yards of the Getty Museum, causing the Getty Museum to put out on its website a note on how it had been designed with fire in mind. And the safest place for any artwork in the world to be was in the middle of the Getty Museum, even in the middle of a wildfire.

But enough about California. Rob has just chastened us for talking too much about California. Rob, tell us about the services you attended. Well, I haven't. The Easter of Halloween. Oh, you haven't? Well, All Saints Day, I don't know if you know this, Peter, All the services you attended. Well, I have. Oh, you have? Well, All Saints Day, I don't know if you know this, Peter, All Saints Day is today. Oh, I just came from Mass before getting my flu shot, so there. I feel doubly superior. You Catholics, I guess, for some reason, you're sticklers about going in the morning for All Saints Day, but when it comes to an actual sunday you'll go saturday night

we uh we will be uh we will be um honoring all saints day or i don't want to attending all saints day services uh tonight 6 p.m that's when episcopalians go to church right before cocktail hour very good and all saints day is how do you what the Episcopalian understanding of All Saints Day? Well, it's sort of a day where you ecumenically worship all faith traditions and the spirits of all faith traditions that may or may not be present in the atmosphere or in what some might call heaven, but I'm not a stickler on that. That's kind of what we do. All of them? We've got the guy from the Indiana Jones movie standing up there in the pulpit saying, Kalimar! Kalimar!

No. That would not be a controversy. I'll put it that way. That would be considered interfaith worship and the unity of the human experience there when they redid the prayer book once i don't know when they did it a couple years ago a bunch of years ago they actually added a kind of like 70s groovy language which you know when you when you when you speak to god when you call god and you use the name you know all merciful god all this uh god of interstellar space was one they put in there, which I loved.

It was like, yeah, we're hip to outer space. Yeah, we believe in other planets. It was such a great 70s thing that the groovy Episcopal bishops decided to put in. Probably at some big service. That's really interesting. I mean I was married by a Unitarian preacher who was also the, the religion writer for the paper that I worked for, which was pretty cool. But it was, I mean, the number of spirits, I mean, it was practically in the name of God, the periodic table, you know, you thought, I mean,

it was just everybody, but interstellar space. I mean, there's space beyond stars, isn't there? At which point it ceases to be interstellar. So do you, do you get into that? Ah, that's really, I, doesn't it all expand? I don't really know. I mean, I don't understand space, put it that way. I don't understand space. I don't know how that works. Right.

I find the whole thing incredibly baffling. I do know this, because last night was Halloween, that as I was sitting there in my front stoop handing out candy to strange children, $200 worth of candy, by the way, I went through in about 70 minutes. Yeah, it was huge. 11th Street, 11th, 12th, 13th, 9th, 10th, the streets between 5th and 6th, huge. Was it fun? Did a sort of sense of neighborhood emerge?

It was lovely. It was incredibly fun. But what I was thinking about is like, okay, I am a childless 54-year-old man handing out candy to strange children. 364 days of the year is something that people think, you better stop him, you better lock him up. People are suspicious. If on one day of the year, that same man doesn't hand out candy to children, people say, what a jerk. It's very strange. There really is no middle ground. There's just, there's no, I give candy out to some kids sometimes is not acceptable. It's just you either, you must give it out on Halloween and then you must not give it out on any other day. It's sort of like the, when people are walking around with a soul patch, you know, that soul

patch, the thing on their face, man had a little patch right underneath the they call it a soul patch right underneath the lip um and uh it was like it's a little square kind of a little brushing rectangle beneath the lip it's about the soul patch there that piece of facial hair there um perfectly okay hip even considered it's fashionable about half an inch north yeah exactly on the mirror position on the upper lip absolutely unacceptable then we're talking then we're talking hitler i but that's not unusual rob i mean if you put on a white beard went to the shopping mall and encouraged small children to climb into your lap you would be vilified i mean to everything there to everything there is a season,

and I believe that's in the Bible, which I think the Episcopalians include in their retinue of philosophies, right? Yeah, we still enjoy a lot that's in there. There's a lot in there we think is really, really interesting. Because the old joke is, how do you get an Episcopalian to look at his shoes? You mention Jesus or money. Two subjects we don't want to talk about. Well, then we get into the whole judgmental things. And, you know, we're having an interesting time here with our political season coming up. Joe Biden up here and Elizabeth Warren continuing to tussle. And nobody in the media will ever ask them a question about the

sort of end result of all the democratic identity politics that are going on right now. I mean, wouldn't you love to see, for example, in a debate, because this would be judgy and, you know, judgy, we can't be judgy. If you said, do you support, for example, oh, medically necessary third term government paid for abortions for trans men who are undocumented aliens who are also going to college at the public dole. And if that statement upsets you, explain which one of these parts you don't agree with. And I think it'd be very difficult for them to do so because in each one of those is some constituency of their party that would be most inflamed and take to Twitter and castigate them. But at least we're probably going to be arguing

about something else, which is Elizabeth Warren's new proposal for taking everybody off of the health care that they like and shepherding them with tasers and cattle prods into a government program. Gentlemen, have you seen her new $52 trillion proposal know it it it came out and i it's it's not it's not a surprise i mean that the one thing about elizabeth warren is she keeps saying she's a plan for this you should plan for that what she doesn't have is a plan what she has are enemies she has bad guys so she she's identified bad guys for every problem that is not the same thing as having a plan to solve it. And, um, I mean, it's,

it's amazing to me. I mean, I went to a, a book party, uh, earlier this week, uh, for a book,

a very good book, by the way, about, uh, Michael Bloomberg called Michael Bloomberg. Um, the many lives of Michael Bloomberg or something like that, his authorized biography,

but it's even though it's authorized, uh, um, he doesn't like a couple of chapters. He doesn't like, it's a very, it's a very Manhattan kind of party. Everybody there, they're good

Democrats. They're sensible Democrats, guys. They're sensible. They're not crazy. They're sensible. But they like Elizabeth Warren, but they kept saying, is there some way that Bloomberg could jump in? Is there some way Bloomberg could jump in? How would it take? We talked about that a lot at the table. How would it take? What would it take for Bloomberg to drop in? Well, I know Michael, and he's been very clear to me that he Bloomberg to drop in and everybody, well, you know, I know Michael and, you know, he's been very clear to me that he would only drop in if Biden drops out. And so I finally raised my little hand and said, oh, excuse me, who at this table thinks that Michael Bloomberg would win the Democratic primary? He would be down there fighting it out with Marianne Williamson.

And they said, no, he's this, he's that. Excuse me, he was the architect of stop and frisk, which liberals hate. And he's the enemy, the sworn enemy, the vampire versus werewolf style enemy of the teachers unions. Which one of those issues do you think the Democrat primary voters are flexible on? The law and order? Well, check out Kamala Harris's poll numbers today. do you think the Democrat primary voters are flexible on?

The law and order? Well, check out Kamala Harris's poll numbers today. Teachers unions? Check it out. I mean, not happening. And they look at me like, and then one finally said, well, you know, you might have a point.

I was like, I might have a point? Right, right. Well, what's it? That's not responsive to this topic, but I just thought I'd share it. Well, everybody has a dream candidate they think would catch fire in the public imagination. What I think is interesting, and I can't wait to get to work to ask my union people about, is one of the things that Warren wants to do to raise the money is to divert the money that employers spend on their insurance for their employees, and the employers will be required to turn it over to the government. As far as I can understand, this invalidates every union contract ever made, doesn't it? Of course. If you're using the power of the state to invalidate union contracts, which were agreements

reached between citizens and their employers. First of all, heck, that sounds kind of authoritarian to me. And B, if she is the nominee, are my union dues going to be going to somebody then to promote the campaign of somebody who promises to invalidate the very thing that our union got for us? I mean, I, and if, if so, it sort of gives the game away, doesn't it? That they're not really there for us at all. They're there for statism, for large, huge, immense, enormous statement. Yes, Rob. But there's a certain amount of honesty to that. You're correct. But that is, I prefer that position to the position that if you like your doctor, you can keep your dog. Oh, which was just a lie. Because that's a lie.

They know it's a lie. The only way this works is if we take your money and we give you something that you cannot shop for, change, alter, or modify in any way. The only way this works is if we tell you that private insurance is illegal, your personal choices are illegal, we're going to take your money and we're going to turn it into something and give it back to you and call it whatever we want to call it. And your ability to complain about it or to shop around or to walk or to vote with your dollars is precisely zero. That's the only way this all works. So, I mean,

at least, say this for Elizabeth Warren, she's at least being honest about the crackpot, authoritarian, inefficient, and ultimately doomed architecture of her plan. Well, it'll be interesting to see if it covers dentistry as well, because if it does, I suspect that dentistry is going to become this little sort of sub-Rosa industry where everybody goes to, quote, the dentist, when actually that's where they're getting their flu shots and their small little operations and the rest of it. Very good point. You just have to wink and nod when you sign in and then sell them a check and go back and get your appendix out. I'm going to the dentist

to get my bones set. My dentist is going to help me with my cardiology. Right, right. I mean, you'll have to be able to ask your dentist a lot of different things. But right now, if you ask your dentist, what toothbrush is good for me? He said, ham-fistedly working his way into a segue. Your dentist may not talk about the individual kind of toothbrush they use. They'll talk about how actually it is that you use your toothbrush. I mean, what makes a better toothbrush, right? Is it industrial strength, power, grinding into your gums? Now, is it claims of miracle, trendy ingredients? Now, is it multiple

modes? Ever had a multiple mode toothbrush? A little, it'll vibrate up here and then stronger down. No, no, no, no. If you ask your dentist what's important about your toothbrush, they'll tell you it's less about the brush and more about how you use it. And that's why you need Quip. Quip, Quip toothbrush. Now you may think this is interesting. Isn't Quip a very unusual, powerful, good toothbrush? And you're telling me the toothbrush doesn't matter? Well, it does if it's a Quip. sensitive vibrations with a built-in timer guide gentle brushing for the dentist-recommended two minutes with 30-second pulses ensuring an even clean. Let me tell you, before I got a Quip, you know, I brush up here, I brush down there, I brush down there, I spit, and you're done. But the Quip, 30 seconds up in this quadrant, and then it pulses to tell you, I may not finish that last 30 seconds that it gives me because I'm in a hurry and I feel guilty because I know that my Quip knows what I should do. And you stick it

out and afterwards you feel perfectly clean and you've done what your dentist wants. Also, and this is cool, Quip automatically delivers brush heads to you every three months for clean new bristles right on schedule. So you don't have that brush with all the bristles splayed out and it's ridiculous. No, you always have a good, clean, fresh brush. Sleek, intuitive design, simple to use, comes with a travel cap that doubles as a mirror mount, by the way. Simply put, Quip makes brushing something you actually want to do twice a day, or in my case, thrice a day. Your oral care matters. Ditch the gimmicks. Grab the Quip.

Quip starts at just $25, and you get your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet. This is a simple way to support our show and start brushing better, but you have to go to getquip.com slash ricochet to get your first refill free. Go right now to getquip.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Douglas Murray, bestselling author of five books, including The Madness of Crowds and The Strange Death of Europe, associate editor at The Spectator. Welcome to the show. Douglas, in The Madness of Crowds, there's some fascinating stuff here.

Gender, race, and identity. Oh, our favorite issues. Quote, you're right. We are going through a great derangement. People are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like, and simply unpleasant. My question to you on that quote is, are we as a society going through a great derangement? Or is this derangement being imposed upon us by people who will brook no dissent and declare anybody outside of their narrow new little conceptions to be the enemy of the people? Oh, that's a very good question. It's very good to be with you. The answer is that it's a bit of both. I diagnose in one of the interim chapters of crowds, some of the very ideological Marxist, post-Cold War Marxists,

and their manner of trying to impose a new smuggling in of Marxism through identity politics. And that certainly accounts for a certain proportion of the noisiest and most aggravated figures in these strange derangements of our time. But it's worth noting that a lot of the followers, a lot of the people who join in the noise, have simply been persuaded, erroneously, I would suggest, that this is how they should be spending their lives. They should be spending their lives warring on people who have said the wrong thing once, telling everyone to get with the beat for whatever word we use today, which we didn't use 48 hours ago. And that part of it, the social justice warrior campaigning part of it, is perhaps one of the larger parts.

But that it's got a driving force behind it, I think, is unarguable. The novelty of these people, the glee that they have in taking these things apart and establishing new norms. I saw a tweet the other day from somebody who said that it is ableist to say blind spot, that we shouldn't say it. We should say dead angle. We should not stigmatize blindness. And the person was taken apart by a lot of other people having great sport with this, but it was taken up seriously by others. And it was a thing on Twitter for a day, as we say. But here's the question.

Without social media, without this roiling mass of voices screaming and clawing at each other, would these attempts to rewrite the basic strictures of Western civilization have the same impact because it's the people in the media who feast on Twitter, but it's actually like 1.5% of the people who are actually in it. I mean, without Twitter, would we have the same debate and the same manufactured importance of these debates? You're quite right. No, we wouldn't. You know, there's a famous saying about new technology. It's attributed to various people that we overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term and underestimate its impact in the long term. Social media's impact was probably overstated, overestimated at the very beginning, some 10, 15 years ago. But now we've seriously underestimated and have been ignoring the massive changes it's been making to our society, to our modes of discourse, and indeed to our politics. And one of the things you just touched on is, of course, we see this thing of the shaming culture,

which is perfect for headline writers and indeed perfect for very lazy journalists, as I've observed myself in my time, where people can say things like outrage at X saying Y. And you look into what the outrage is, and you'll find it's a couple of people on Twitter, for instance. But this has a very interesting effect. It makes everybody behave like sheep in a herd. You just need a nip at the heels of one of the sheep for the whole herd to learn the lesson and go in the correct direction. is this shining utopia, Marxist in nature, if you wish, which all of the old structures have been washed away and dissolved by the perfection of the people who are now setting the new rules. But it seems as though they believe that this utopia

is almost instantaneously available if only a few things were dissolved. And when they call our society, and I'm quoting again from the Madness of Crowns here, when they say that our society today is, quote, monstrous, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, patriarchal, you say the question needs to be asked, compared to what? In other words, the ahistorical perspective that these people have seems to say that this is not the best of all possible roles given human nature, but that Western civilization is uniquely evil in having created this thing, which is

inherently structured to keep us from the utopia that we all know is right around the corner. That's right. I think that this is, by the way, one of the Marxist substrates of this you can see. The allegation that Western capitalist societies are sort of uniquely unsuccessful and bad, patriarchal and oppressive. The people who are driving this for specific ideological reasons always give themselves away at this point. Because if you do ask them compared to what, this is the moment to which they like to say things like, well, the Cuban healthcare system has its perks, or the Venezuelan economy is doing awfully well, something they've gone a bit quiet on in the last couple of years, it has to be said. But such people give themselves away there. But for a larger number of people, those sorts of the people I described as just going along with this because they think it's the right thing to do. For those people fearful, as we know from history, extremely fearful of people who think they're creating utopias.

Because they always, they never get to utopia, but they get an awful lot of skulls lying around on the route. Right. Douglas Peter here. Fran Lebowitz once wrote, this won't make any sense, but it will in a moment. Fran Lebowitz once wrote something like, as a lifelong New Yorker, that she had always believed that people who live any place other than New York have to be, at some basic level, kidding. sort of has summed up my attitude toward all of this for years now. And for years, apparently, I have been wrong. I can remember exactly where I was standing, the bookstore I was standing in back in the 80s when I first saw in a magazine the term political correctness. And I thought, ridiculous, the common sense of ordinary people will reassert itself. And things have gotten worse and worse and worse, as you write in the madness of crowds. And by the way, I should note that the interview you and I

did this past June is up on YouTube now, Google on Douglas Murray and Peter Robinson. It has over half a million views, and I'm getting lots of compliments. You made me look good. All right. So the question is, where does this end? Am I wrong to suppose that sooner or later, some kind of ordinary common sense has to reassert itself? It won't burn itself out. The good people have to fight back? How does this end? Well, any fight back against it has to start with one thing, which is the reassertion of the right to say what we see with our own eyes. The week that this book came out in the UK and in America, the pop singer Sam Smith enormously assisted me by coming out as what he called non-binary. And it was very remarkable being on various television and

radio shows in the UK and being asked about this and simply saying that I don't think there is any such thing as non-binary, or at least if there is, I'd like to see the evidence and no one's yet provided it. What's interesting about this, as I say, is that every time I said that, you would see the presenter sort of gasp, look slightly horrified, see their imminent career end. And of course, everybody knows this is the case. I would submit everyone other than a tiny number of people who have deluded themselves otherwise, or have been bullied into it in the pretense that they're being polite if they get bullied and then bully other people. But, but the reason I mentioned this is because all of this stuff of, you know, a hundred

different genders and, you know, and the spirit to spirit and all that stuff, it's, it's very obviously nonsense. Now, it doesn't want to be unkind, but a lot of very unkind people rely on our unwillingness to be unkind. And I would just submit that the problem in case after case, as I describe in The Madness of Crowds, is that the adults keep on leaving the room. And we see this perhaps most clearly with what is described as woke capitalism. And there's a very interesting thing about that, if I can say so, which is that when I was researching the Madness of Crowns, I thought like a lot of people had, oh, well, it's sort of, it's confined to American universities and the spillover from them. And then you discover that corporation after corporation is doing this sort of thing. And I think there's a specific reason for that, which I don't think I've said

before, which is that the specific reason is that for a lot of large companies, large corporations, particularly things like energy companies and banks and so on, this is their way to pay their votive offerings to the gods of the day and not really do other things. So after the economy nearly completely crashes in 2008, there's a massive upsurge of all this stuff, a running of it into the mainstream. And my suspicion is that for a lot of the companies and others who did exceptionally badly in that period, if you then introduce diversity quotas

and all of that stuff, bias training, it's sort of pretending that you're with the era, even if you're not really, or you're up to something else. It's deeply cynical among some of these people. Hey, Douglas, it's Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. So deeply cynical. That was, this is like a dog whistle to me. I suddenly sat up straight when I heard that. So I would say to you this. One is that Madness of Crowds is the title of the book. But isn't part of the now more people are included in the national conversation or the international conversation. You're hearing voices that you didn't hear before. And that's going to require a new set of standards of politeness of discourse. Right. That's that's kind of what they say. But now, isn't that doesn't that also mean that there are larger, smaller crowds? And here are just two little examples.

One, I was with a bunch of friends of mine, and we were sort of – well, you know, we were – I mean, we weren't making fun of LGBTQIA stuff. But it did come up in the context of Dave Chappelle's comedy special, which he makes fun of it. And a friend of mine, a gay man, said to me, he said, well, look, doesn't everybody know that T is mental illness? And it sort of stopped everybody cold. Like, well, I didn't know you're allowed to say that. I didn't think that something that you can say, but you know, there, and then about 20 people, 25 people, maybe 30 people all,

all together sort of agreed to it. Another data point, I was sitting at a table a few years ago, actually, with a bunch of chefs, female chefs. One very prominent female chef and her former protege, now a prominent female chef in her own right. And I was asking about the Me Too business. And the very prominent female chef, who's been very successful, said, well, you know, when I first started, I was working at Jean-Louis Paladin's restaurant. It was a very, you know, classic French chef in Washington, D.C. And there was not a day that went by that he did not attempt to assault me and, you know, and expose himself and use lewd comments and all that. And I said, well, my God, how did that make you feel? What did that do to you? And she said, maybe stronger my God, how did that make you feel? What did that do to

you? And she said, maybe stronger, maybe a better chef and maybe a better boss. I was like, I got over it. You get over it. Aren't there these conversations, these sort of heretical conversations going on everywhere? That's absolutely right. One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was to say aloud what everyone's whispering to their friends. And my favorite feedback is when readers, including people I know, tell me, this is the discussion my wife and I have over dinner, but she tells me we shouldn't have outside the house. Well, I mean, is that entirely bad? Oh, I think it's got all sorts of things to be said for it until you start doing insane things as a society in the name of kindness. And I think it's worth remembering that historically, you know, even the Nazis thought in large part they were being good. You know, very few people actually do bad things in the pursuit of doing

bad things. One of my tests always is to say every society in history does things which we look back on and say they did what? So assume we're doing some of them too and trying to work them out a bit early. And I would submit that in the name of kindness, there are several things into which I would particularly put trans and specifically so-called trans children into that category. When the Democrats had their LGBT town hall at the beginning of October and this nine-year-old child introduces themselves as a trans nine-year-old boy, a girl to boy. And the mother's standing beside whooping. Elizabeth Warren whoops. And everyone whoops

because you can only affirm. I've interviewed for this book people who have been only affirmed, including by the health authorities, and who then do things that are totally life-changing and they regret and they can't get back. Now, that would seem to me to be an example of one thing, and it's an extreme thing for sure, but one thing that happens if society mutes all of its modes of contestation in the name of politeness. Right, right. Well, no, I agree with that. And I was speaking to other friends of mine who are sort of democratic activists in the South.

And I said, look, were I running against you, I would say you either think that a seven-year-old child can be trans and should have hormone therapy at seven, or you don't. And if you don't, you're in a vast majority. And if you do, you're in a tiny, tiny eccentric crackpot minority. And if I'm a politician running for office, that's an easy distinction for me to make. Well, the problem is there's all this stuff I do in the trans chapter. I try really hard to be as careful and specific as possible to salami slice the reasonable bits of this claim from the unreasonable, from the unreasonable claims. And one of the things I come back to is we really don't know very much about this. So perhaps we should be a little less certain in our public discourse about it.

Whereas compare that with the second example you gave of your friend, the chef. We know an awful lot about relations between the sexes. I mean, that's gone on for quite a long time. Yeah. And we are pretending to have forgotten things in the name of the same politeness that means we pretend to be certain about things we're not certain about. We all know a lot more

about male-female relations than our society currently pretends because our society pretends it's incredibly simple. If it was simple, the way that it pretends, we wouldn't have many of the consequences we have today. Well, if it pretends, we wouldn't have many of the consequences we have today. Well, if it was simple, we wouldn't have all of world literature. I mean, the complexities are what has driven human beings to create art since the beginning.

So my last question, and I know James has a few more, is it going to get a lot worse before it gets better? Is it going to get a little worse before it gets better? Or is it starting to get better now? Or is it just not going to get better? I think we're on a bit of a cusp, actually. There are heretics coming out in different fields in increasing numbers, and it gives me hope. You just mentioned Dave Chappelle. He and I, needless to say, toil

in different vineyards. He's much more lucrative. But what Dave Chappelle did in that comedy special you mentioned is really important. And a number of other people have been breaking ranks as well. And the striking thing to me is that every time they do, or if I may say that every time we break ranks on it, the answer sometimes is fury, sometimes irritation, but it's never a good argument back. And I think that lots of people, particularly young, clever Americans and others can see that, can see that the argument one way is an argument and the argument back is I'm hurt. And they're not persuaded by the second as much as they're persuaded by the first. I think all cleverer people, among others, will be able to get to there. Well, hey, Douglas, James wants to get

back in. I just had a thought prompted by a comment of yours to Rob. And while I've got you on the line, I want to check and see whether this makes any sense. And if not, I'll dispense with it immediately. But one test of the nonsense, and I had always thought of it as the test, is that they're opposed to freedom of speech. You feel constrained in what you can say. But there's another test isn't there, which is this. They not only want to limit what they can say, they want to make us stupider. They want us to unlearn. They want us to say Mark Twain is not worth reading because of some of the language that he uses. They want us to say, stop reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky because of the way they treat

women. And it's not just they want to suppress common sense. They want to write out whole chapters of what the civilization, they want to eliminate large, large aspects of the legacy of civilization. They want to make us stupider. That's also a test, isn't it? Yes, I think you're right. Since this book came out, I've been having, obviously, more rows than normal. And one interesting thing, particularly as young people, I've noticed a particular trend among some young readers who say things like, somebody said to me recently, a very clever young man said, that Immanuel Kant uses the N word somewhere. And I said, I just, I don't think he does.

I can't see what context he could have used it or how he would have. And this person sort of pushed back a bit and then I could see he was on rocky ground. And as I pushed a bit further, I think he was referring to at some point emmanuel kant using the term negro actually uh which isn't totally impossible i've got to look into it but the sudden realization i had it dawned on me like anything was i said him ah of course that would mean you wouldn't have to read kant and of course that's really convenient because he's difficult yeah exactly exactly and it was always the thing leo strauss famously pointed out always the the conceit of the moderns was that they knew more than the ancients because they lived after them and there is this

is interesting trend that that if you lived before the era of woke, you don't know as much as us. So you know more than Kant because you're living in 2019 and he didn't, the idiot. Right, right, right. It's just a way to get out of the reading. Yes, and to construct the entire world around yourself and your own boredom.

Actually, it's really quite brilliant. I wish I had had that. My equivalent of that, and I know, James, I'm sorry. When I graduated from college and I applied to some investment banks, and they note almost every single interview I had noted I had no economics classes on my transcript. And I said, well, economics classes at my college are taught exclusively by Marxists. So I assume that you operate your bank on different principles,

which is a pretty good answer for being too lazy to take a hard economics class. You know, again, isn't it the interesting thing? We all know from our own experience that when you're young, you try things out and you try to find the places where the adults might give in. You see what you can get away with. And the question then is, do the adults let you get away with it or not?

And on so much of this stuff, as I go back to this issue, people are trying stuff out, but the adults have all left the room. Exactly. Exactly. Now it's the adults have all left the room. Exactly. Now it's time for you to do the same, or at least leave the room that is Ricochet. With our regrets and our thanks, Douglas Murray, author of the book Madness of Crowds. Can't wait to talk to you again. We could have you on for about 17 hours consecutively talking about all these things. Been a pleasure. Regards to England.

Good luck with that Brexit. And we'll talk again soon. It's been a great day. Doug, thank you. You know, when he mentioned that these are the conversations that you have inside the house and not outside the house, I was just thinking of people sitting there. It was like Winston Smith, you know, getting out his little book from the behind the brick where he put it, getting out of range of the telescreen. And, you know, instead of writing two plus two equals four and the freedom to say so, saying, you know, if you have a penis, you can't be a woman and then putting the

book back before anybody sees it. Or nowadays for that matter, having that conversation at the dinner table and then, you know, casting a glance over at the Alexa and wondering if you should put a hood over it so it doesn't hear what you're saying and send it back to the home office. And then just say, no, Alexa, I was just kidding. Order me some beef, Alexa. That's what you do. But if you order beef from Alexa, if you just ask her to send you beef,

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A free turkey, plus $20 off your first box A free turkey plus $20 off your first box. Free turkey and $20 off your first box. What are you waiting for? ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet or enter the promo code Ricochet at your checkout. That's ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet or enter the promo code Ricochet at checkout for a free turkey, free turkey, and $20 off your first box. And our thanks to ButcherBox for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Pod. Now we welcome back to the podcast, John Yoo, international man of mystery, intrigue, espionage, and the rest of it. He's been all over CNN.

You know who he is. You don't? What's the matter with you? He's the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at Bolt Hall and the co-host of the wildly popular Law Talk with Epstein and Yoo. That's a podcast you can hear right here on the Ricochet Audio Network. Visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and he is not on Twitter, which is probably wise and a symptom of his towering intellect. Hey, John, how you doing?

Good, good. How are you? Oh, well, you're going to play this game, you're gonna like i'm fine everything's cool uh all right all right let's that's how we're gonna play it john that's how we're gonna play it john you your entire persona is on fire we have invited you on to help douse it now you have to cooperate oh so let's get the let's let's deal with the the elephant in the room here um you you you didn't say uh army lieutenant colonel alexander vinman was a spy right no okay but they people say that you said that because, because why, how, how, how dumb are they? Or how, I mean, or how dumb are you? I mean, did you say, did you say it, did you use the wrong word? I mean, you know what I'm saying? How, just, I don't really care about, as you know, I don't really care about the facts or the truth here. I'm just interested in how this little thing becomes a thing. What happened? Well, I didn't know it was a thing. I was sleeping happily.

And then it was the Blue Yeti actually texted me and said, you know, maybe you should explain yourself. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like you said, you called this guy testifying in an impeachment hearing a spy. And I was like, I did? So I went back and looked at the tape apparently the tape which by then by the time exactly two and a half million people by then more now go ahead yeah well i don't know i should have i should have uh i should have included a clip to richard epstein talking that would have uh all right so is this the kind of thing that happens when you're –

Basically what happened is I went on the Laura Ingraham show, and I was talking about what strategy to try to defeat impeachment. And then Laura read a story about this guy, Lieutenantians, the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian government officials had contacted him and tried to find out what they should do about Rudy Giuliani. Now, of course, this is a question that all of America struggles with. What should we do with Rudy Giuliani? So I kind of laughed and I said, you know, some might call that espionage. And then I said, but it doesn't matter. It's not important because what this guy, Vidman, is apparently going to testify to doesn't actually change the story. The facts are pretty clear. President Trump and his aides asked for a quid pro quo for releasing military aid. And then everyone, apparently, while I was asleep, you know, happily asleep, I was just here wondering whether, you know, we're going to have electricity in California and whether her house was going to go down. Apparently all these people tweeted, emailing, saying that I called him a double agent, a traitor, a spy. And actually all I had in mind was the Ukrainians are up to espionage. I actually kind of thought it was kind of almost amusing that they would try that, that they would call the National Security Council,

which is in charge of intelligence operations. Of course, they're engaged in espionage. But actually, I got to say, the Blue Yeti, he was good to me. He said, no, everyone else thinks it's this. And he was showing me Twitter feeds and so on. And so I said, okay, I'll issue a statement. So I issued this little statement. And then CNN said, will you come on the show? So I went on the show. Everyone said, don't go on the show. He's going to ambush you. He's going to play gotcha. And he was like, oh, well, yeah, I guess. I was like, what do I care? I mean, come on. Chris Cuomo, right? I beat up John Stupor.

Come on. And so then I went on Chris Cuomo. And he actually I thought was quite fair to me. He said, OK, you said it was espionage. And did you call him a double agent? Why don't you explain yourself? So my point was, I'm not accusing this guy of being a traitor or a spy. I mean, it's crazy. But I think the interesting thing is,

to me, the lesson learned is any even single two words that can be taken out of context by the left in this environment will be used to set up Twitter blaze for their own purposes. It doesn't matter what you said or what your intention was. Right. John, Peter here. So one question I have, first of all, as I went and looked at the clip a couple of times, and it was, to me, the way I read it, the way it seemed to me was, you were actually, Laura was trying to prompt you to go off in a certain direction in your commentary, and you actually sort of brushed her back and said it was a throwaway line. Well, some might call that espionage. But the fact is, it doesn't change anything about impeachment.

And you took the conversation right back to the main topic and sort of shut down the avenue that she was suggesting. That's the way it seemed to me. Right? Now, wait a second john here we have a u.s national security official who is advising ukraine while working inside the white house apparently against the president's interest and usually they spoke in english isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story? I find that astounding. And some people might call that espionage. Yeah. I mean, I actually have not heard the case for this guy or the facts. I was like, yeah, let's talk about what and so let's talk about

what's important, which is, is this a high crime and misdemeanor? I kind of think all the facts are pretty settled now. Okay, so last question on Vindman, and then we'll let Rob and James take you over impeachment. Last question on Vindman runs as follows. I still haven't seen, now that you're the world expert on this, I still haven't seen any follow-up journalism. Wait a minute. This guy is a lieutenant colonel on secondment to the National Security Council, and he's advising the government of Ukraine. Isn't it simple, ordinary journalistic practice to follow up that story and say, was he coordinating his advice to Ukraine with his superiors? Was he doing that as part of his portfolio on the National Security Council staff? Or was he freelancing? That's a story. And thank goodness. I mean, if one tenth of the energy the journalists put into mischaracterizing you, they had put into following up the story, we might actually know something.

Yes? Well, I think what it shows is, and this is a point I was trying to make in, I had a piece in USA Today is that, you know, the Russians, Ukrainians, all their intelligence services are all over us and they're having a lot of success. And that's one thing we aren't talking about is if people are complaining about the elections and the Trump administration, these foreign intelligence services are trying to intertwine themselves with Trump and his circle and our government. It's incredible. When I was in the government, I don't remember from any foreign government official ever.

And if I had, I would have had to report it to the FBI right away. That was sort of what I was thinking about when Laura was talking on the show. I was like, I can't believe these foreign officials are calling directly people on the National Security Council and so on. That's why I said they're trying to engage in espionage. I would think you would want to follow that up. Hey, John, it's Rob Long. Just a quick question about the law now that you described it. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, is Paul Manafort in jail for kind of the same thing? Oh, no, I wouldn't say so. Manafort actually is in jail for taking money from Ukrainians and then lying about it. He took millions of dollars from the Ukrainians, which is fine for a private citizen to do, I suppose.

But he didn't report it to the IRS, and then he hid it in offshore accounts. But that just goes to my point. The Ukrainians are up to no good here. They're not really – I mean, they're kind of friends of the United States. We have an interest, I guess, in stopping the Russians from getting more and more Ukrainian land. But there are elements of the Ukrainian government and their business elite who seem kind of hostile to us. Okay, so let me run this other theory by you, which I've been running by a lot of people, and they all think I'm wrong. But I think you'll think I'm right.

I don't know whether that's good for you or good for me or we're bad for both of us. We're bad for both of us but here we go for both of us yeah um it it is politically speaking and maybe even legally speaking it is a race it is a race between the criminal investigation of russia gate and how that happened and the russia probe and the mueller um independent council investigation to the origins of that to the origins of the steel dossier where of the Steele dossier, where it came from, how it got there, who filed the FISA report, what those 30, I think the 302, 301s, how they were amended in the FBI. So race to get to the truth to that and to find something, anything in the Ukrainian phone call that the president made. And the Democrats are having their investigation and the Republicans essentially, Republican led DOj is having its investigation and whoever gets to the

bombshell conclusions first is going to be able to sort of like smother the other do you think that's fair well i think that's a reason that democrats were trying to accelerate this probe, but it's a race they can't win because the IG report about all of this, the Steele dossier, FISA, everything is already done. And it's just being declassified by the attorney general. So it could come out any day now. On the other hand, the House, if it's going to do this investigation responsibly, it's not going to be finished by Thanksgiving. They've got, I would think, several months to go. If they want to do a job that's good enough, as you're suggesting, Rob, to persuade the American people and sort of completely preempt all other news stories. But if they do it in this kind of rushed sort of slapdash way, then no one's going

to take it seriously. The Senate's not going to give it serious respect. And then it's just going to fall apart, and it'll just give more fodder, I think, to President Trump. Right, right. I mean, here's how I differentiate it and see if your legal genius agrees. In a criminal investigation, all I have to do is prove that what you did was against the law as written. So you committed perjury if you were Bill Clinton. You obstructed justice if you were Richard Nixon.

But I – and you go to prison if you're found guilty of those things. If you lie to a federal investigator in a conversation, in a formal – not even under oath, you go to jail as did Martha Stewart. In an impeachment, I have to convince people that not only – Martha Stewart should be in jail for a lot of things, not just one. Go ahead. I believe she should never go. In an impeachment, you have to convince essentially the lawmakers who report to the American people that not only was what you did wrong or – not only was what you did illegal, but it was also wrong in the larger sense and punishable and worth removing you from office. It's not a much, much higher, bigger, fatter job. It seems to me it's easier for a prosecutor to make the case than for an impeachment inquiry.

Actually, I think you're, as usual, following the storyline put out by Adam Schiff. So Adam Schiff. Thank you for that. But for good and bad consequences for Republicans or conservatives, this is just like a criminal prosecution. So the House is like the prosecutor. So that's why the president doesn't get to send a representative. That's why Republicans don't get to ask questions or suggest witnesses because he says, you know, the House is the prosecutor. Prosecutors would never have the defense counsel show up when they're interviewing witnesses and trying to figure out what kind of cases to bring. And then the Senate's like the trial, it's like the courtroom.

But that's actually not what it is at all. Impeachment is not like the criminal process. One reason why, just an obvious reason why, is part of your remarks, Rob, is that you don't actually have to commit a crime to be impeached. The framers were quite clear that impeachment is only the system to remove someone from office. It's going to be, by nature, a mixture of law and politics. But you can impeach someone and remove them from office for something that's not a violation of criminal law. Suppose Trump actually did all the worst things with this Ukrainian mess that Democrats think he did. It's not criminal as far as I know.

It might be an abuse of power. And the framers were quite clear you could remove a president from an abuse of power. So I think this is actually one consequence of the Clinton impeachment. There's two. One is that peoples tend to vote on partisan lines, which is going to make it impossible for impeachment to function, I think, the way the founders thought. But the second thing about the Clinton impeachment, I think, is a mistake that we all learned from it, we focus on the idea you can only remove a president if they committed a crime. But that's not true.

So presidents can commit crimes which are not worth impeachment. They can also do things which are not criminal, which are worth impeachment, like abuse of power. So I think this is just a pitch that the Democrats in the House are setting out because it's an excuse for why they can do everything in secret and rush the process forward. So I got one more question for you, John. Bill Barr, you know, end of the year, after the inquiry is over, he's tired, he resigns. Your phone rings. It's whoever's the chief of staff at that point. Or maybe it's Trump himself. Hey, I need an attorney. By now, it's an intern.

An intern, yeah. Hey, John, I need an attorney general. Rob, did you ever finish that law degree by mail? Because you might be qualified. No, no. I mean, any interest at all? Seems like a pretty interesting job. So people have given me a hard time because people know I don't like Trump personally. But they say, you defend a lot of what he's doing on TV and your writings. Why are you doing that? And I said because you are you we have to protect the office of the president even if we don't know it like who

happens to be in it right yeah there's this- you know the military says when they salute the- a superior officer you you're saluting the. The rank not the. And right or the one. And I think that's important not to forget because- one you

know if you really just want to get Trump, and you're willing to destroy and pull down all the institutions and all the constitutional powers of the president, it'll be like the Ford Carter years for the next 10 years. And we'll have an office that's just going to make us so weak. So I think that actually lawyers, Republican lawyers who don't like Trump personally, those are the best people to come forward and work on his impeachment or work in the Justice Department because they have to – and I think that's why Barr is there. I don't think Barr has any particular love for Trump, but I think he's there because he's trying to protect the institution of the presidency too. That's a fantastic non-answer. Yeah, it is.

And you should have had that answer on Larry Ingram. It would have saved you a couple nights sleep. Oh, I was sleeping anyway. I was just – I was spending most of my time dousing my house in water. That's right. I have several cases of corned beef hash and chili from Costco getting ready for the end times here. Yeah, that sounds like you're – that's your haute cuisine as far as you're concerned. You know when the fires come over the hill and the earthquake happens, liberals are the

ones who are going to lose it first when the state of nature comes. So I've got to be ready. You are ready. That's the movie I want to make. John, thank you for dropping by. We'll talk to you next when you are indeed the beleaguered Attorney

General. Controversial. Controversial and beleaguered and polarizing and all the rest of those. If I'm there, you guys are all invited for lunch in the cafeteria at the justice department. Great.

Great. There's a thrill. Yeah. Corned beef hash. You style. Yeah. All right, John.

I'm going to have some McRibs brought in special. You'll have that power. You will have that power. That's right. Thanks, John. Talk to you later. Thanks,

John. Compose in front of a picture of Donald Trump style of, Trump style of mounds and mounds of McRibs, then I think he would be carrying on a fine tradition. I was going to ask him, and I'm not sure he's the guy to ask. It's sort of the question we can throw to everybody is when the IG's report comes out, whether or not the media is going to look at it and say, yawn, haven't we been all through this? This is irrelevant. This is just a diversion because they've shown no inclination whatsoever as understanding what it's all about. They just seem, as I said last week, remarkably incurious when it comes to what seems to have been done. You want to talk about precedent. You want to talk about tearing down the norms. Bill

Crystal had a tweet today. He said that Donald Trump was the most, he didn't call him the most authoritarian president. He called him the most, get this guys, aspirationally authoritarian, which means that he'd, he'd really want to do all the things that Wilson did and really would like to do all the things that FDR did. Uh. But he's constrained by the antibodies in our political system that keep him from being so. So I think that's the best new Never Trumper description. Well, he's aspirationally authoritarian as opposed to the actual authoritarians who preceded him. I love Bill, but I have to say I am also aspirationally authoritarian. I mean, in all aspects of my life, If only people did exactly what I told them to do, everything would be easier.

Right. And Peter, you don't strike me as an authoritarian sort of person at all. You sort of strike me as the person who likes to do the right thing so he knows that he can sleep at night with himself, right? There, yes. Thank you. Don't sleep on Peter, though. Although, go ahead. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Don't sleep on Peter, though. Although, yeah. Go ahead. Yes, yes, yes.

And when I go to bed at night, the only thing I really would like is soft, comfortable, durable sheets. Ha! You see? I saw where you were going, James. Thank you. Thank you. That was almost Rob Long-like. But you rolled it out without Rob's usual sharp elbows

throwing his way into a Segway and destroying it and enjoying it. And ruining its relaxation. And enjoying the tinkle of the china as it patters to the floor. You did that so gently and so Robinson-esque that I'm grateful. But yes, sheets. I am talking about sheets because, you know, have you ever had scratchy sheets? Have you ever had low thread count sheets? Have you ever gotten into bed and just thought, okay, well, it's bad. It'll do. You know that the

most important words, well, let's say the three most important words when it comes to getting a good night's sleep are comfortable, comfortable, and comfortable. You want the best sleep of your life. You got to be comfortable. That's what those sleeping pills are trying to do for you, but you do not need those. No. You just need bowl and branch sheets. Now, what makes bowl and branch sheets unique is that each sheet is crafted from 100% organic cotton. And that means that bowl and branch sheets not only feel incredible, but they look amazing. You might not even want to make your bed in the morning. Just leave that duvet out so that people can admire the sheets if they happen to wander into your bedroom. And since Bowling Branch are exclusively sold online, like right here,

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Well, I have a couple of things to do before we leave you here today. One of them is the Ricochet member post of the week. The Lilacs Ricochet member post of the week, I guess. Curated, if you will, from the many things that appear. And I like to go to the member feed and find something. And usually I like to find something that's arts-related, books, music, the rest of it, just to show you the depth and or breadth of Ricochet. But this week I chose the story that disappeared. RushBabe49 had a little note talking about a Seattle council person discussing moving government facilities out of Seattle because

the crime around the courthouse was so bad. And RushBabe49 noted that that story seems to have disappeared. And people went around and dug around and found it and discussed the issue a little bit. So here's what I liked about it. One, it was somebody noticing a story that seems to go away, which is eagle-eyed. And Ricochet members are that. It also spurred a discussion of Seattle's condition, which even though we've been talking about California an awful lot, Seattle is germane as well, because like California, it's a state run by progressives and finds itself in a pickle. So somebody starts by saying, hey, look at this news story. It's gone. And then everybody starts talking about Seattle and the effects of the policies. And they find the story and they discuss

their own experiences of what it was like to go and work on jury duty and how they didn't feel. I mean, it's just it's a it's a ricochet post. That's one of a hundred. And in its simple little way is a microcosm of the depth and breadth of ricochet. So that's why I chose it. And, uh, let's see, uh, we've got a Rob long poll question, but we're going to leave that for the end because I have to say all those things at the end, uh, and people turn away and figure the show's over. But it's not. One last thing, though, before we get to that, and that is Obama has, talking about what we were discussing with Douglas Murley earlier, came out against cancel culture. Wow. Wow. Quote, this idea of purity, that you never compromise, that you're always politically woke and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly, Obama said. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who

really do good stuff have flaws. He's not going to be canceled for this, but no one's going to take him up on it, will they? No, nobody but our side. I saw that because it showed up in my Twitter feed. Do you think that changed any? I don't think so. Well, but it's also preemptive, right? Because, I mean, the irony is that Obama, who has president, had he merely compromised on Obamacare, he would have been a much more successful president. And Obamacare would be un unchanged law of the land today. I mean, that's just without a doubt true. He would have been much better off. But I think he's aware

that there are positions he took. Probably gay marriage is one of them that now it seemed like, well, if in 2008 and 2009 you were against gay marriage, you were you're going to be written out. You're going to be canceled. And I don't think he wants to be canceled. I mean, you know, the first thing they do is eat their own. And I think Obama's, Obama's a very, very smart person. And I think he knows that eventually, you know, this is, this is self-preservation on his part. I think he's been grandfathered in on that issue. Yeah. Well, as the, as the cancelers and the cancel cultures get younger and younger, as they start to complain about any form of capitalism, it gets harder and harder to be liberal enough and progressive enough. So test of that, is Bill Clinton grandfathered in? No.

My impression is that he is in the process of being canceled. Is that right? He is, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. It's the slowest canceling in the world, but it's definitely the canceling. He's in Marty McFly's photograph in the last half hour of Back to the Future. Well, we have a question for the Rob Long poll of the week. We're going to get to that in just a second after I tell you that ButcherBox, Bowling Branch, Quip, fine products. You can eat better, you can sleep better, you can brush better. Your life will be better. And incidentally, we'll be supported too. So support them for supporting us. And also, I know, I know, you went to iTunes,

you called us up, you were about to give us a five-star review, but then the phone rang and some of the dog barked or whatever, and you didn't get around to it. Well, you've got another week. So if you go to iTunes, give us a little review. Your reviews will help new listeners discover us, make the show rise in the ranks so that more people see it when they turn into iTunes for what's new in the podcast world. It helps keep the show going. As, of course, does joining Ricochet. And if you'd like to participate in the Rob Long poll,

you've got to be a Ricochet member to participate. Make your voice heard. Join today. I'm pointing at you like Uncle Sam. Rob, ask your long poll question. Well, I mean, I just want to quickly, I know we're going along here. I'm sorry. We just want to quickly talk about last week. Last week we asked for election 2020 predictions. The number one answer was A, a narrow Trump win. 34% of you said a narrow Trump win. The second most popular, 22% said a decisive Trump win. And 13% said a narrow Democrat win. So that means that the 22% of you are delusional, as far as I'm concerned. A decisive Trump win really could happen, but I don't think,

I think 22% of you, I think 34% of you should be betting the 22% of you, you can make some money. But this week, it's a little bit more metaphorical, a little bit more spiritual. It's the question I asked Douglas. Is it going to get a lot worse before it gets better? Is it going to get a little worse before it gets better? Is it getting better now, or will it never get better? And it is up to you. Search your heart and your soul to try to decide what it is and answer accordingly. This is why we should not have Episcopalians write the poll questions. slightly, the 22% who are predicting a decisive Trump victory, I don't think they're crazy. And here's why I don't think they're crazy. Because during game seven of the World Series, the night before last, a Donald Trump ad appeared. And I sat right up in my chair,

because you know what? It was pretty brilliant. It was effective and powerful and compelling. And I thought to myself, the White House may not be handling it. The White House itself may be a shambolic mess at this point. Yeah. Somebody in the campaign organization knows exactly what he's doing. That was a very effective piece of political work. I completely agree. We're running late. We should really talk about this next week because it's really- We will do. It's very, very, it's very important. And I think it's like, it should give you, if you're a Trump supporter, it should give you, it's the one piece of good news that you can really point to. What I say about a decisive Trump win is that Trump is now at a 38% approval in

general. He's lower than he's ever been. More Republicans than ever. Fewer Republicans that ever support him. He's gone down about almost 15 points among Republicans. He won by 72,000 votes. He squeaked by. He lost the popular vote last time by three million. All right. All right. Details, details. Complicated math. I'm not saying he should win. I'm not saying he shouldn't win. I'm not even not even making a judgment. I'm just looking at numbers. And and you know, Rob, you make an excellent point. And there's just a lot of people out there who voted for him last time are going to look at this election and say, do I want to have my government, my my medical insurance taken over by the state? Or do I want to vote for this guy who tweets out a Photoshopped picture of a

dog? That wasn't a real thing at all right a lot of people are on the fence about that because you know yes i'm going to lose my insurance but on the other hand photoshopped picture of a hero dog an aspirational authoritarian right okay so here's why i mean i know we want to run but i just want to say leave you with this the most important thing um in that trump ad yes, which showed that they are – political messaging does two things, right? It tells you how to talk to yourself. Correct. It gives you vocabulary to talk to yourself and to talk to people about why you're voting for a candidate.

It gives you that vocabulary. And the second thing is it connects to people who are on the, who don't know. And what he said is, he's not, he said, Trump, he's no. No Mr. Nice guy. He's no Mr. Nice guy. But sometimes that's what you need. Right. So what that does is it acknowledges that Trump and Trump's campaign knows he's a kind of a jerk.

You know, he's a jerk. He's a, he's a kind of a jerk. You know, he's a jerk. He's a kind of a pig. You know, he's not anybody you like. And he's not, you know, he's not loyal. He's not, he's a lot of flaws, right? I mean, I personally find him repellent. But a lot of people find him repellent, especially suburban women who they desperately need to win back. So they're telling you, yeah, we know he's a jerk. but sometimes that's what you need. We know he's a jerk and here's language you can use on yourself that is officially approved that you could talk yourself into voting for this pig. And that is money in the bank. That is, that is super, super shrewd. Sometimes you need a jerk because that sedating line isn't going to annex itself, Rob.

I'm kidding. Yeah, exactly. Have that. Put your soul patch down beneath your lower lip, please. Well, unless, of course, you stand on your head and then you're Hitler anyway. But I think if you go back and look through Nexus Lexus, somewhere back in the dim recesses of my early opinion writing career, I think

I was the first one to say that in the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes. And I'm going to claim that, and if anybody can prove otherwise, then I will have to stifle your research and continue on with my delusions. We'll continue on next week with an additional podcast, probably as epic in length as this one.

Sorry about that. I have to go to the office quickly because if I don't get there in 35 minutes, they're cleaning out the fridge. My lean cuisine is going to be thrown away, so I'm gone. Rob, Peter, next week. Next week, boys. Yo, yo. Have you ever been hated

or discriminated against? I have, I've been protested and demonstrated against Picket signs for my wicked rhymes, look at the times Sickest of mind of the motherf***er, kid that's behind All this commotion, emotions run deep as oceans Exploding, tempers flaring from parents Blow em off and keep going, not taking nothing from no one Give em hell long as I'm breathing

Keep kicking ass in the morning And taking names in the evening Leave them with a taste of sour It's vinegar in they mouth See they can trigger me But they'll never figure me out Look at me now I bet you're probably sick of me now

Ain't you mama I'ma make you look so ridiculous now I'm sorry mama I never meant to hurt you I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you cry. But tonight, I'm cleaning out my closet. One more time. I said, I'm sorry, mama.

I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you cry. But tonight, I'm cleaning out my closet. I got some skeletons in my closet and I don't know if no one knows it. So before they throw me inside my closet. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Ah, my flu shot.

All right, I gotta run.