The Ricochet Podcast - Questions

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

You have questions, our podcasters have answers. We also have a little Rank Punditry® on the current news cycle, some spots, a few laughs. Oh, just listen. You’ll like it. Really. Music from this week’s show: Questions by Jack Johnson... 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 Lalix, and today the guests, well, James Lalix, Rob Long, and Peter Robinson, because it's question time. So let's have ourselves a podcast.

Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast number 459. How did we get this far? Well, by giving you what you want, which is evasive answers to the questions that you pose. It's question time week, which means that people in good faith put a lot of questions up on Ricochet for us to answer. And as is usually the case, we'll probably get to about two or three of them, then wander off completely entranced by the sound of our own voices and avoid the things that people ask.

No, we won't. Not this time. No, we'll get to the questions in just a bit, however, but first I have to welcome and say hello again. It's been a couple of weeks to Peter and Rob.

Hey guys, James, how are you welcome and say hello again. It's been a couple of weeks to Peter and Rob. Hey, guys. James, how are you? Welcome back. Good. Explain yourself. Where were you? Well, I was in London for a couple of days, and then I took a train up to Suffolk to a little town called Walberswick, which is this perfect little English village on the sea. I was there with friends for about four or five days, walking amongst the hedgerows and into the marshes and along the sea. I was there with friends for about four or five days, walking amongst the hedgerows and

into the marshes and along the sea. It's just an extraordinary little place and just a tonic for the soul. There's nothing like England. There just isn't. It was great. I got away from everything, even though the news of the Yanks would find its way into the paper. I was more concerned with the imminence of industrial action because there was supposedly going to be a strike at Heathrow the day I was going out. Oh, that would have been difficult. So Matt, here's the thing that we don't probably get over here. We don't worry about our summer vacation plans being destroyed by industrial action,

as they call it, by strikes. Industrial action. Is that what they call it now, actually? I love that term. It turns out it didn't happen. And everybody was telling me, don't worry about it. It's not going to happen. But meanwhile, Heathrow cancels 177 flights. People panic as to whether or not they can get out. And I'm sitting there trying to figure out on my phone if I can find an alternate way out of this country back home. And it all evaporates into nothing. And the only problem was a

tie up in the m1 getting to the getting to the airport so it was good except for those nerve-wracking moments so you need to tell us i just want to establish this yeah this had nothing to do with politics speaking reporting no nothing this is what is known as a vacation an absolute vacation wow just time kicking around london with my daughter, good Indian food, fine museums, just the joy of walking around a great city where you can actually read the signage in the menus. I like that part. Good. And the weather cooperated. I'd have heard you mention the rain if it had rained, I think. Well, it rained, it was sunny, it was cloudy,

it spit, then it was dry. I mean, every five minutes, something new would roll over from the west and change the timber of the day. It didn't matter. It was beautiful. Do you mind my noticing, just for a moment, that you spent time with your daughter in London, which means that she somehow, by sheer miracle, returned home safe from her trip to South America. I just want to note in passing that actually that all went very well, even though you were probably having mini strokes every day. It did. And I'd like to thank you for keeping oh so current on my all-important life, Rob,

since that was two months ago. I know, but it's the first time really you've mentioned it, I think, because I think you're still kind of surprised that it all happened and it was all great. The whole year has been a surprise. The whole year has been a series of fastballs, flaming or otherwise thrown in my head, the least of my concerns being the imminence of college and paying for it.

It's been a year. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. When does she leave? In about two and a half weeks or so. Now, that was the first question we had from somebody on Ricochet. When does your daughter go to college? So obviously we've answered that one. Tick that box, as they say. But there was an in-between watching cricket, which my host was keen to explain to me about. There was looking at the paper and clucks of alarm and sympathy for what was going on back at the States, which they

completely don't understand. It's an absolute mystery to them, the shootings. And I'm thinking to myself, I was just thinking this morning, it's not a question of if there's going to be a next one. The question is where and how many? Because it doesn't seem as if there's anything that we can do about it. It's, it's bizarre. Back in the days of the sixties and the seventies, when you had the left running around bombing things, there was the idea that you could possibly get inside one of these cells. You could anticipate, you could work. There was intelligence that can be done, but this is just like some, some, some demon just gets shot up from a hole in hell and comes to us and this happens. Or is there something we can do? Now, before the podcast, we were talking about,

oh, policy and perhaps the Republicans are going to do something. And Peter, you mentioned something interesting. You said perhaps the Republicans are going to do something about assault weapons. And I think I should note and ask what's an assault weapon. An assault weapon. All right. As you, as you both know perfectly well, I don't know very much about guns and I don't know all that much about constitutional law. Here's what's clear. The second amendment guarantees us the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court reaffirmed that within the last, what was it? When was the Heller decision? 10 years ago, something like that. Justice Scalia spent 60 pages talking about that one clause in the Constitution, which is a complicated clause, a militia being necessary for the common defense, comma. What does all of that mean? Is it only militias that can bear arms? And he

went through the syntax and the history and the Supreme Court decided, yes, indeed, we do have the right to bear arms. That's established. It is also established that private citizens do not have the right to own tanks or nuclear weapons or bazookas. And so there is what remains up for question is, where is the reasonable place, the useful and reasonable place to draw the line? We may not infringe on a constitutional right to bear arms, but what is an arm that may be born? Clearly, it's not military-grade weaponry, for question number one. And Republicans, as best I can tell, in the wake of these two horrible events, there's more talk about Republicans in the Senate particularly reconsidering where that line may be drawn than there has been in years. And then, of course, the second question, to me,

this is in many ways the more important one, is to what extent may states decide that question within constitutional permissibility? It seems to me perfectly reasonable and understandable that Manhattan would feel one way about people bearing arms and Oklahoma might feel or Montana where hunting is a common part of ordinary culture might feel a different way. And that strikes me as a perfectly reasonable set of questions to ask. And Republicans seem to be willing to ask them. Undoubtedly, this has something to do, a great deal to do with the horrific shootings of the past few days. It may also have something to do with the total political disarray of the NRA right now, the National Rifle Association, which seems to be undergoing

some kind of civil war inside the organization itself. And it may be that Republicans feel they've got that lobbying group off their back to some extent. So the raw politics plus high aspirations as usual in politics, it's a mix. Well, I'm from real America where we don't fear guns. So this is an interesting discussion to me because I have a deep understanding of them and the culture. Rob, on the other hand, as a soft-handed feet intellectual on the East Coast, probably has something to say on the matter. And Rob, what would that be? Well, gun control, I mean, we're talking about gun control, really. I mean, in general, when gun control was,

or handgun control was implemented in New York City, the argument that Giuliani, Mayor Giuliani made at the time, who's, as you know, has always described himself as a Second Amendment purist, was kind of a shrug and like, yeah, we're not actually going to keep guns off the street. We're just going to give us one more reason to arrest somebody and keep them in the clink for 48 hours if they're carrying a gun. The idea was really to help policing and law and order the streets. It had very little to do with gun violence.

I mean, that was sort of a secondary thing. And I kind of feel the same way here. I mean, the problem in America is that we all have lost our faith and our trust in each other and in the institutions that we have. So it is a thought experiment. If you remove, you know, or if you say you buy back, you know, 35% of all assault weapons, which you could do. I mean, you could do that. It's expensive and you could do it. That would have some effect on the problem, but it wouldn't solve the problem. The problem really ultimately aren't the guns that people can hold. It's the people holding the guns who are in grave distress. I mean, these are young men, almost uniformly young men in grave distress.

And we don't seem to be addressing that for a whole variety of reasons, mostly because nobody's really interested in it because it's sort of a hard topic. And so many institutions have failed young men in the country, so many of them on the left and on the right, or conservative traditional institutions like the church, and also sort of liberal progressive institutions like universities, that you end up with this pathetic kind of childish argument about what a gun is and how can you ban it? We're only about maybe five years away from being able to print the damn things anyway and you're that's right that that it's just besides really isn't isn't the solution it isn't it isn't it's surprising to me politically is that the republican party is um is willing to make to take the steps that it was unwilling to take only a few years ago that is

true even if you watch the sort of conservative press, the Fox News. That's right. Even on Fox News, those certain things, those arguments that used to be Republican bedrock, keystones of the Republican policy monolith, gun control, taxing the rich, anti-rich, class work, all that stuff that we were Republicans generally used to be totally against. It's now sort of the bread and butter of the most popular organ of conservative news, Fox News. Right. There was a time when we would expect conservatives to be able to slam down the sill, slam the Overton window down on the fingers of the left and close it and say that no more. And now we're saying, you know, the Overton window should be over here in the left. Hold on.

It should be a bay window. heard that term for the maybe maybe the overton window is something that the two of you have been talking about for a decade i just heard that term about two weeks ago i can hardly believe i'm hearing it again all of a sudden you'd better stop and if i am unfamiliar with it there may be others who are as well it's interesting well it is the overton window is a range of ideas tolerated in public discourse it's also known as the window of discourse term is named after joseph p overton as a matter of fact who stated that an idea's political liability depends mainly on whether it falls within the range rather than on politicians' individual preferences. I'm reading directly from Wikipedia. Oh, thank God. Thank God.

It's the range of ideas that we're talking about. I mean, when the Overton window shifts, it means that all of a sudden we're encompassing a different set of predicates and possibilities and the rest of it. So for the Republicans to say now, yes, it's time to ban assault weapons without defining what it is and blaming a particular class of weapons, what they do then is just simply assure that the window will be moved even further to the left. Because at no point is the conservative going to be given credit by the left for having agreed to a portion of their principle uh the minute you do that then you open the door for everything that the left wants which is the left in its insatiable desire to consume all of society within the arms

of government and state control that's right he's fine with him but rob hit on it i mean it's you can do whatever you want with guns what What you can't fix right away is this this this this this matrix of intellectual and spiritual thistles that have descended upon so many people. It's decades in the making, but it generally has to go back to the proposition that Western civilization is inherently flawed and immoral and has to be replaced with some sort of egalitarian utopia and everything flows from that. These kids have been taught all of their life that they're growing up in a horrible place that exists to exploit them and that God is dead and that there's no difference between the sexes and a whole variety of things

that just destroyed the bedrock commonality that we used to casually pass on to the next generation. If I were an editor, a book editor in New York, I would be thinking about a sign, thinking who's an author, who's a good reporter. I would want to just take the last six shooters without even knowing who they were. The last six shooting incidents that made national news and say get me a book get it fast and i want proof i want portraits of these six young men and i know a lot about them we do yeah but i i would want to know i wanted for example one of the things that was shocking to me okay see we've we've discussed this on the show many times to come from fractured

families right but you think what one of the things that was shocking to me, and this may show what a romantic notion I have as a Californian about the Lone Star State. Texas is where family structures were supposed to still work, where communities remained strong. And this shooter in El Paso, isolated figure, where were the dozen people? Where was a neighbor? Where were the men in his life? What happened in the schools? Why didn't a teacher or a coach? Where was the pastor at the church or the rabbi at this? Well, he wasn't Jewish, but so let's say, where was the pastor at the church? You could name any of a dozen figures who used to be ordinary, common, commonplace figures in the lives of kids as they were growing up, and you'd say, where was the neighbor? Where was the pastor in Texas of all places?

And that's question one. How did it – Well, but that's a very good argument. I mean in Texas of all places, because a place is conservative does not mean that it is intact. Correct. Correct. Because it's a red state and votes Republican, those are absolutely irrelevant to the problem. You know, for me, there's the phrase that people have been using about a lot of these guys, the guy in Toronto and various other people, they're called incels.

Involuntarily. Go ahead. Involuntarily celibate. And the idea is that these are young men are involuntarily celibate and they're furious about it. And they, and they feel like they're out of the, out of the culture and they're, and they're being disdained and put down by everyone and they don't fit in. And they, so they call themselves incels. And this is how distorted and crackpot our culture is now, is that the idea of being involuntarily celibate is has been for thousands of years. The whole point of being a young man. It is the essence and the heart of almost all popular music, all popular entertainment, great works of literature. The idea that being involuntarily celibate is a bad thing or somehow is avoidable or is like an unnatural position for you to be in as a young man is just – would be so ludicrous to a teenager in 1957.

I'm so lonesome I could cry. Right. The idea that that's like – yes, of course, it's lonely, bad, and so on. But the ideas are supposed to drive you into – Yes, get a job, get an education, start dating, learn to shave, use deodorant, start dating. Right. We now have a culture in which that's considered a pathology. A condition. And it's so weird. And who can – I mean it's sort of a perfect storm of failures in institutions. But, you know, until we get to that, I don't think until we get to the I mean, you know, this is the old story, the bolding alone story.

But we get to that stuff. It doesn't matter how many or which guns we ban. It really doesn't. No. And the incel culture is different from people before who just couldn't get any. We're talking about people who have joined this philosophy about how actually everything is set up against them. And once you red pill yourself and realize how things actually work and how the misogyny at the heart of the incel culture is one of the things that's different. I mean, before when you were involuntarily celibate, you were still mooning over Susie Q. You were still sad that Peggy Sue got married. You still wanted to participate because you wanted the company of women. In this case, it's this toxic, and I hate that word, it's overused, but it fits, this toxic blend of desire and hatred that is then encouraged online.

And I'm not one to blame the internet and to blame games, but they provide a place for people to go where you have sensation without meaning, where you have degradation without elevation. And so everything, everything, everything about their lives is this empty simulacrum of actual experience. And you cannot not know that. What's the Shakespeare line? The waste of spirit and an expense of shame or vice versa, whatever it is. Everything is false from the game to the porn, to the online relationships. It's false and they know it, but it fits at the moment and after the moment they're loathing, and then they hit it again. And then after the moment they're loathing and what the pathology

that this creates inside of people is horrible, is awful and dreadful. And the internet is not helping. The internet is part of it. And I'm not going to blame the internet. And once more, Rob, I want to say what you had said, what is so screwed about our culture, you said, and I'm putting that in quotes. I hear this a lot. We have a problem with white men. Our culture is this. There's the generalizations fail to seem me to recognize that actually it's not all, it's not our, it's not we. There are elements and corners and pockets and fragments and fractions. And if we believe that it's all and our and we and all these encompassing terms, then despair sets in because there's nothing to save. I think that there is something to save, and it's all around us, and it's pretty good. Like wireless signals, for

example. A good Wi-Fi system surrounds your house. Now I had to do it because we have to get to the questions, don't we? But I also did it because I really want to tell you about Eero. And you know about Eero. And if you don't, then listen. Because Eero, well, Peter here is already muttering to himself about how he should be doing this spot because he has it and loves it. Eero, what is it? E-E-R-O. Eero blankets your whole home with fast, reliable Wi-Fi.

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No more Netflix buffering in the master bedroom. No more kids complaining the Xbox isn't getting a signal. No more worrying that your security camera will be offline when you really need it. Peter, Rob, I think you're podcasting on an Eero right now. How do you like it? I am. I love it. In fact, I will tell an Eero story that my internet was going off, as you don't recall, but it was last week. I was thinking, this is ridiculous. I have these Eero's, they're all great. And they must be working on the street, etc. And then I realized they weren't working on the street.

And then I thought, maybe the Eero's broken. And then it turned out, of course, that the problem was there was a faulty outlet. And my actual cable was plugged into a faulty outlet that kept popping off and on. Because the Eero is never broken. The Eero works, and it's simple, and I cannot tell you how my life has changed. Well, there you go. If you live in New York, don't blame the crappy, outdated infrastructure nobody spent the money to repair. Your Eero will detect these things.

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Questions to the Prime Minister. Mr. Speaker, sir. Here we go. First from Randy, we vote a, why vote a, why vote a? I swear I miss it every time, but Randy W. Question, last year there was some talk about Rob James and Peter recording a podcast at the 2019 Minnesota State Fair. Is that going to happen? No. Okay. Next question. Well, the reason being, not all three of us. I'm going to be at the State Fair now this year, and I'm pleased to announce that last year's 10-day performance on the stage at the Star Tribune Center where I did the lip balm review has been winnowed down to at my request. Because doing the fair every day was too much. Yeah.

But you're both welcome to come here next year and try it. Question for Rob. All right, Rob, you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Hand on the buzzer. Wait, wait, wait. Before we leave the State Fair, there will be content.

We'll be able to post some of your work on Ricochet, right? About the fair? Yeah. Well, I suppose so, if I get around to penning something. I'll have some pictures from it, because it is the greatest state fair

in the history of the universe. And I'm perfectly persuaded of that myself. So at least one out of three of us will be reporting on and possibly doing a little podcasting from the fair. I may Facebook live some of my bits at the stage there in front of the crowd, giving them the complimentary lip balm that the Star Tribune is known for. Lots of fun. All right, this one's for Rob. What's the best joke or bit you personally wrote for Cheers that made it on the air? And possibly more – possibly he's in addendum.

This is miffed white male, by the way, who's saying this. Possibly more interesting, the best joke or bit you personally wrote that didn't make it on the air. I know the second one. The second one was just a silly, stupid joke. We used to make fun – there's a – near the end, last two years, there was a guy named Paul Wilson who was a friend of a couple people and was in the Groundlings. Very funny guy. You've seen him with – owlish guy, bald guy with glasses. You see him – he was like a barfly.

We needed an extra line. We would give it – we'd bring Paul and do the extra line. And we sort of started making jokes about how Paul was always on the – like Paul was not – he he was he was like norman cliff were mean girls and uh would never allow paul like they would go do stuff and paul would miss out and uh so we once i just want to joke a stupid meanest joke ever i'm glad i didn't make it the air uh sam malone ted danson's looking opening his mail at the bar he goes oh my god i have one i have one more i this the the cheers health insurance company health insurance policy i can put one more person on for free and he's looking at paul and paul looks at

him just oh my god oh my god sam thank you i i you know i've been out of work for two years i don't have any health insurance i've been terrified scared my whole life i mean i don't know what to do uh i'm worried i was sick last week and I just didn't bother to go to the doctor. I've had this strain. You literally have saved my life. And then Sam says, oh, actually, Paul was talking to Norm. And then Paul turns to Norm and says, hey, congratulations, Norm. And it was funny when we saw it.

We wrote it on the page. It seemed really funny you know it's funny it's funny at like nine o'clock at night when you're just you know making jokes and then we went and we saw it on stage and it was just it was so cruel and we said so wait a minute what if you do it a little lighter and i remember they did it like they were so gay and they were such great actors they were like oh yeah we'll do it i'll do it 20 you know i think ted said i'll do it as as many ways as you think so we sat there and finally the director who's our boss and the executive one of the executive producers the creators of the show jim burrows turned to me and said

yeah and i don't think this is gonna make anybody laugh like you're right it's just a mean comedy writers thing that we think is hilarious it's just sheer cruelty um i don't know what the best thing i wrote personally because i really honestly i don't it all came out of the room so it's hard to remember if that's how how just how collaborative was it very collaborative you you know i think you you uh you you pitch a setup without a punchline or somebody would have a punt you know you just – it was hard to – sometimes you would say I think that this would be a funny area. I think this is a funny area. And then everyone would look at you like, hey, you don't pitch areas here.

You got to pitch jokes. But somehow it would work. I think I pitched a joke once where Frazier was like uh had hired a personal train hired somebody to train him and he was doing sit-ups and he was on lying on the pool table doing a sit-up and he couldn't even do one or two sit-ups and he's trying desperately you know so he's in the crunch position so he's on his back with his knees bent so his feet on the floor and kind of trying to crunch up to do a sit-up and he't do it. And he's only halfway up. And he says, can you see the baby's head yet?

That made a tear. Got away with a lot on that show. That's great. Peter, your sitcom experience. What was your greatest greatest bit that never made out of the writers? My sitcom experience. what was your greatest bit that never made out of the writer's review? My sitcom experience, yeah. Exactly.

So the collaborative part is interesting. And I'm curious, Rob, how many jokes never actually made it onto the show because you interrupted the writer who was describing the bit? Oh, no, we were never allowed to interrupt. You can never interrupt. Ah, so this is all just making up for lost time. Exactly. Just. Now we move on to john 1979 that's jon in 1979 if that's the year of his birth or graduation or marriage or the rest of it i was just looking at a daily news from 1979 this morning, as a matter of fact, cutting it up for a web feature that I do. And it was bad. Times were awful. I mean, just the news in New York was awful. And you got the sense of a really decaying, hopeless place and a raw, unhappy culture., cops shot, poisoned Tylenol.

I mean, it was just, it was miserable. Then you would page through and you would see in the back, maybe it was 78, you would see an ad in the back for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which we now regard as this, you know, movie that almost comes from this hopeful, wonderful era. Right. It wasn't anything of the sort. God's the 70s. Oh, anyway, question.

This is to all three of us. Do you feel any increasing weariness that in a high profile? Good. He premises it by saying all three of us live in deep blue areas and, you know, occasional reluctant, occasional Trump supporters also irked by his actions, et cetera, et cetera. We know the creations of that go between the three of us in different ways. But do any of us feel increasing wariness that as fairly high profile people in the moderate right, the Digital Committee for Public Safety types, as it will be known, could start zeroing in on you because you're willing to take conservative positions in public? Peter?

I don't quite understand. Are you worried they're coming after you, the digital mob, because of the positions that you've taken in public here and elsewhere? Oh, I sort of resigned myself. Not that there's ever been any groundswell that I should run for office, but I sort of resigned myself. Hugh Hewitt told me this years ago. He said, the minute you start podcasting, the only way you can do it is to say to yourself, that's it. I'm never going to run for office. So that bit – and once I said that to myself. But I haven't experienced – I have to say I listen to Jonah – when I listen to Glopp, every so often Jonah and John will mention all this anti-Semitic dredudge, dreck that shows up in their feeds.

Gentile that I don't get any of that. I haven't been subjected to any harassment. Now, maybe there's stuff that I'm missing, but I am just not very interesting to people, apparently. So it honestly hasn't crossed my mind. Do I fear it? No, I don't. Maybe I should, but I just don't. Rob, you take that and,

and go for a long time because I have to go get the dog inside. Oh yeah, I guess. I don't, I don't really feel that way. I mean, I guess for me, it's sort of the opposite, which is that I have this, uh, well, first of all, I get recognized a lot, um, for when I, you know, just appear on Gutfeld, which I'm going to be doing tomorrow night, by the way, or this, I should say, Saturday. And it's almost always by, I was at a wedding recently and some guy was like the, I think literally the drunk uncle at the wedding said, I know you. I'm not going to get into this. I'm not going to get in.

So I just felt like, I decided, I figured he was going to, you know, then the minute he'd say, yeah, he'd want to pull me around all the relatives. This guy, I'm telling you, he says what I'm not going to get in. So I decided – I figured he was going to – then the minute he would say, yeah, he would want to pull me around all the relatives. This guy. I'm telling you. He says what I'm telling you. He's the one – the guy at the wedding, the family who watches Fox News or has a political axe to grind who's sort of – there are boars on our side too, right? Because I hang around him in the media. I get a lot of like, well, how come that Republicans aren't as sensible as you? You're one of the good ones.

Oh, right, right. I mean, in the old days, before Trump, I used to get – what's so amazing is that I get that you're like – I mean, I understand your position. And I don't hate you, people would say, who I ordinarily just would get along with otherwise. There is that sense of like – I mean I never felt I had to apologize to it, but just the idea that you're surprising people because you espouse views that, as you know, mine are ridiculously watered down conservative views. I mean, I am the classic liberal Republican. But even those views are seen as like, wow, I didn't really know anybody had those. Or I'm surprised that you are not some kind of, you know, a bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody and tooth and claw devil. Like that you're an acceptable person that you can have it. You can put you can cook dinner even. That's to me the idea that your politics or your your your basic sort of incredibly boilerplate anodyne views on policy and how taxes should be collected and spent and how much should be collected and spent and what's the most efficient way to achieve societal aims, that those things are

as important as your basic decent goodness and as unimportant as your brand of shirt, that your politics for a lot of people on the left are all part of the 100% of your core, that I shop in certain places, I wear certain clothes, I listen to certain music, I go to certain restaurants, I eat certain foods, I vote for certain candidates, and there really isn't that much variation allowed. And I think that's what surprises me about it. That's not an answer. I get exactly what you mean. The other day, I was thinking to myself, the color of my shoes does not match how I feel exactly about immigration policy. I think people would look at my shoes and say, my, those are periwinkle converse shoes. Ergo, I assume that you are in favor of unrestricted immigration with college and healthcare paid for them.

Because if you have any standard deviation from what they perceive to be the button down norm, you got to be a good person. What Rob was saying there, the assumption from the left is, well, not the assumption from the left is, well, not the assumption from the left, but perhaps the self-delusion of the left is that their politics make them good people. And that if you believe in these large, big egalitarian notions that drape over the entire society, like a wet blanket, like a warm, hot towel at the barbershop, that you can do whatever you like in your private life. That actually holding those beliefs is what makes you good and moral. It's funny.

One of the – the Dayton shooter who may or may not have been mentally ill, he talked about hearing voices and demons, but he could have been trying to get some cred with the rest of his friends because mental illness for some of these people is a badge of deepness and you're interesting and everybody's mentally ill in some way. He was in a band that was a horrible band. I'm not even going to say the name of it, from a genre of music that they call porno grind, which essentially is like death metal sped up, but with more sarcastic over the top references to female anatomy and female abuse. Horrible,

horrible lyrics. Just, I can't even say the song titles are so bad, but it's kind of tongue in cheek, you know, it's dark, but it's over the top. So everyone kind of gets it. And the people were after he shot all these people in Dayton were saying, um, wow, huh? All of us in the porno grind community are not surprised that a guy who caped progressive politics turned out to be really lousy toward women. None of us are like this. We're all actually pretty cool people. indulges this hideousness, this awful, ugly hideousness and winks at it because it's sarcastic and ironic and people actually becoming unmoored from the ideas that, that, that kept society perpetuated. So I, I mean, I'm not afraid in saying that the root of a lot of our problems

has to do with the unraveling of the bourgeois culture that, that was so trumpeted and, and, and performed with glean enthusiasm by the cultural heroes in the 50s and 60s. Not at all. And I don't think anybody's going to come after me torchlight mob for that. But right, since I don't, bottom line, I'm not worried because I have a union job, so there. Right wing teamster lawyer. There is a name with enough internal contradictions to cause spontaneous combustions combustions as one oh this is kind of sweet where and how did rob and peter

meet and what was the catalyst then for ricochet i think we've told this tale before but it's a good one guys uh give them the story the catalyst for ricochet i can remember that i'll let rob handle that how did how did we meet it had something to do with John O'Sullivan, maybe? Maybe. John was our mutual friend. He must have introduced us. I think he introduced us because you were writing your book about the Republican Party. Oh, was that it? The first time we met was when I was – we had breakfast together when I was writing a book about the Republican Party. That's it. So I interviewed Rob. I can tell you when you first came to my attention, I read a line in National Review and I thought this is brilliant and hilarious.

The election of Ronald Reagan proves that one out of every three conservatives in Hollywood becomes president. Yeah. That was Rob Long sometime during the 1980s. So I thought, ooh, who is this guy? And then that's how we – that would be 20 years ago rob oh my goodness yeah a long time uh but well it might have actually it might be closer to 30 actually to just to be just a dot all the eyes oh um you know because it's it's 2019 um yeah uh and i think the catalyst for ricochet was just how gross and awful the internet was. Oh, it was more than that.

We were both annoyed with Ariana. Oh, yeah, that's true. Remember that? That's right. That's true. Yeah, because Ariana was – Harvinden, who had been our friend and still – she's still a very friendly person. But she moved to the left rather sharply, rather quickly. And we thought, well, that's ridiculous.

She started the Huffington Post. And so we thought, well, what could you start online that would be for center right conversation conversation and started as a conversation site? And the idea was that which we still have, which is we have a dress code for comments that it isn't just a swamp that people pay a little bit and they have a little skin in the game. So if you're listening to this podcast right now and you are not a member of Ricochet, please join. Go to ricochet.com slash join. We need your support. A lot of people listen to these podcasts. Our podcasts obviously are more widely distributed, more widely listened to,

have a huge audience across the network, millions and millions of people listen to the Ricochet Network podcast. And if 10%, 1% or 5% of those people went to ricochet.com slash join and joined at the podcast level, which is only a couple bucks a month, the company would be in much better shape. So we started thinking that we were going to have a thriving business and prove to the media in general that these things can work. And we are begging with begging. We continue to beg for people to join. But make no mistake, we are in fact begging. If you've been thinking about it and putting it off, please do it. And that was a remarkable act there by Rob Long, who was taking a question and seamlessly moved into a Dunning, an actual, an actual at a segue. Um, I'll, I'll give you

applause for that because if you, if there was no applause, there would just be no noise. And this, this, this sort of nullity would be hanging over all of us. And no one likes a nullity. No one likes zero of anything. It's like when you break your phone and you lose contact with the outside world, you got zero calls, zero texts, zero social media. Honestly, life without a phone means pretty much zero everything. Having zero of anything is not a good thing unless we are talking Zebit. That's Z-E-B-I-T. They will change your whole perspective on zero forever. Why? Well, Zebit, first of all, it's a better credit option. If you're wondering

what it is, Zebit provides a better credit option to those who need it. They allow you to buy what you need, pay over time, interest-free. There's zero cost to join with Zebit. No cost to join, no membership fees, no late fees, which is great. There's zero credit score needed. Zebit does not check your credit score, so your Zebit account does not affect your credit score. Zebit's huge marketplace has everything you need, everyday items at everyday prices.

They've got, well, more than 50,000 products to name a few. Oh, Xbox, Sony, Apple, GoPro, Fitbit. Sound familiar? Right. From electronics to barbecues, furniture to more, Zebit has everything you need when you need it. And Zebit has a five-star rating on trust pilot and they've earned the trust of more than a million customers who shop on zebit you can too sign up for zebit today at zebit.com slash ricochet and get twenty five hundred dollars credit to the shop the zebit marketplace with zero interest and zero cost to join that's zebit.com slash ricochet zebit dot com slash Ricochet. Z-E-B-I-T dot com slash Ricochet. $2,500 of interest-free credit. Zebit dot com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to Zebit for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast.

And now, another question. Matt Bartle asks, the podcast drop-down list contains 63 different podcasts. All right, Peter, Rob, we're going to set the clock here. How many can you name without looking and how many to listen to? Go. Oh, man. I listened to, actually, I had, there was an unused office at the Hoover Institution that for the last couple of years, I was permitted to use for storage. And then the facilities people told me that somebody's going to be using that office. They needed it back. And I spent about four whole days in that office sorting through books and papers and throwing stuff out and listening to podcasts. So I listened to, it seems to me, I listened to three law talks in a row. I listened to John Yu and Misha Oslin's new podcast, The Pacific Century. I listened to Victor Hansen and Troy Sinek on The Classicist. I caught up with GLOP.

I listened to the most recent GLOP. So what's that? One, two, three, four, five podcasts in which I'm current. That's pretty much the top of my form, though, I have to admit. I just, with 63 podcasts, I don't have them all memorized, and I can keep up with three, four, five, something like that, I guess. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, but it's true. No, I think that's, that's, that's fine. It's that part of the,

part of what we're trying to do is sort of like create choice, give you lots of choices and, and, um, some things are doing really well and some things that are have a niche appeal. That's okay too. So I, you know, I, I love James Dellingpole and Toby Young, so I listen to them. I don't know if I listen to every single one. I don't listen to every single of Drew Clavin's because there's just too many. I love Lady Brains. Bridget Phetasy, I think she's doing great stuff right now. Let's see.

Obviously Law Talk. stuff right now um see what obviously law talk right i mean you know it because i have it on my podcast app i can kind of you know scroll through and if something hits me or feels like something is uh right you know the headline of something is like something we have a lot of think tanks produce a lot of audio content for us, and they're all great. But sometimes they're more appropriate. I guess the City Journal's got one about the trade war, which I think is really interesting. It says stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily expect. I would love to get into the think tank programming departments and just make them slightly more – I do know what you mean.

A little more showbiz would be a terrible thing. Wouldn't be a terrible thing. But London Calling, for example, I was in the car. I had a long drive the other day. And of course, Brexit, Boris Johnson. I listened to three London Callings right in a row and felt that I was informed in a way that I could not be informed. And I had been trying to keep up by reading The Telegraph and The London Times and The London callings right in a row and felt that I was informed in a way that I could not be informed.

And I had been trying to keep up by reading the Telegraph and the London Times and the Spectator. And it turns out that James Dellingpole and Toby Young just do a better job of reporting and filling you in on what's actually going on. The other final comment about the podcast. Before I forget, the other one I think that people probably are not listening to as much as they should and it's excellent is the Conservatarians. That's John Gabriels and Steve Millers. That's really great. If that's not on your rotation, put it on your rotation because it's really good. Right. Listening to Law Talk gave me a new appreciation for James because when you listen to Law Talk, you realize how Troy Sinek, the moderator, holds that darn thing together. Richard and John are brilliant, but they're both capable of delivering three-hour lectures.

And Troy makes it conversational, and I thought, wow, James keeps our show moving in just the same way that Troy does. So this is a weird sideways backhanded tangential. Glenn Amurgus has another question I'd like to get to right now in the interest of moving this forward. Sorry, Peter, but you just gave me that. And it's from Peter. If you had to be a speech, right, if you had to write a speech for Trump, if were a speechwriter how would you approach it oh i would approach it with a very have very heavy heart because he just doesn't give speeches and when he does here's what i mean he doesn't stick to a text and so you could construct the most beautiful pacing timing rhythm and he'd destroy it. He would for sure destroy it.

And item one. Item two of two is that he has given a few wonderful speeches when he has been disciplined enough, I think partly because the text was complicated enough, he felt he had no choice. He's read it off the prompter and stayed for the most part with the text. They were good speeches. And the press just shrugs and says, nah, we're not buying it because they know the distance between Donald Trump and his text is vast. Everybody knows that there were speechwriters involved and the speechwriters were creating this thing, which is separate from, different from Trump, as opposed to Reagan or even the Bushes, who made sure to work with the writers that you were drawing from the president in Reagan's case to give back to him, so to speak, so that by the time Ronald Reagan

delivered a text, there was no distance between himself and that text. The text was authentic to him with Trump. So you could construct the most beautiful speech. He'd probably step on it. And even if he didn't, the press would just say, nah, that's not him. That's not him. Not even newsworthy. From presidential discourse to national culture. This one's for Rob. See, I did it again, Peter. I'm just cutting you off. No. Relentlessly cutting them down. Moan down the questions. Petty Bourgeois asks, uh, no, it wasn't.

Sorry. It's front seat. Cat was asking, I think Rob, will we ever see a decent sitcom again? He says Seinfeld was the last. I don't agree with that myself, but Rob. Um, yeah, look, it's a, all of this kind of entertainment is a cycle, right? I mean, people were saying not that long ago, would we ever see would superheroes ever not be a joke? And now, I mean, it's sort of like we're living in a universe where all movies are about superheroes. So I suspect that we will see sitcoms again. The problem ultimately is that sitcoms worked because comedy works as a crowd

pleaser. And there are a lot of services now that are not interested in crowd pleasing entertainment. They don't judge that, you know, it doesn't really matter how many people watch HBO or Netflix or Amazon or Hulu. What matters is how many subscribers they have. So if you're subscribing and it doesn't matter if you watch 10 shows, 10 series or not or none, what matters is that you continue to subscribe. So a lot of that's going to change. I'm writing about this for commentary this week, too. I mean, the most interesting that's going to happen in the future is that for the past 20 years,

it's been all about demographics, right? Because I've been selling, you would sell advertising and to sell advertising, you need advertisers to pay top dollar and they'll only pay top dollar for specific segments of the market, usually younger with disposable income, because younger people tend to not have brand preferences already set. Right. So they, when you get to a certain age, you know, what kind of toothpaste you have, um, you know, kind of beer you're going to drink that is all changing. Cause look, $11 is $11. So, uh, you know, uh, uh, a rural Southerner in Mississippi who subscribes to Hulu or Netflix is equally valuable as an urban sophisticate who pays $11 to Netflix or Hulu. They're the same. So demographics and that kind of skewing is

going to become less important. And I hope crowd pleasing is going to become more important. So I guess my question to you is, I think we will see another decent sitcom again. There you go. People on the East Coast, sophisticated. People in the rural parts, bunch of yeehaw snake handling and heal abilities. They have a blunderbuss propped up in the corner. I wonder where they get that jet clamped back on the air. But $11 is $11, right? I don't think that we're done with the age of sitcoms. There's a sitcom animated called Bojack Horseman, which I think is one of the finest things on television lately uh and not just because it's funny which it is and because of the world in which it constructs which is quite imaginative but because

it's also it's it's it's not a shallow piece of work it actually grapples with the human condition in horse form and it's quite wise and it's quite bleak and funny and life-affirming and all those things nobody hugs at the end but it's really good it's really sharp and i apologize by the way if you heard my dog there barking in the background the dog is not uh you know caravan moving on all that stuff but it may i've got this ring doorbell which we used to have before and periodically it will make a sound that tells the dog that somebody's here. And my dog loves that because frequently when the door opens, it's somebody with food. Food, because I've got the DoorDash app.

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We hit the DoorDash app and ordered it, and 40 minutes later, it was there, hot, spicy, tasty, delicious, better than anything that I could have cooked. And you could do that, too. Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order or $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter the promo code RICOSHET. That's $5 off your first order when you download the DoorDash app from the App Store and enter the promo code Ricochet. Once again, promo code Ricochet for $5 off your first order from DoorDash. And our thanks to DoorDash for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Last question here. Petty Bourgeois, name checked him, might as well give him the honor. What Trump supporter do you admire the most? What never Trump or Trump skeptic do you admire the most? And in both cases, why? Rob, Peter? Well, I can, Trump supporter I admire

the most, I think it's probably Victor Hansen. Yes. Yes. Very, very smart, very thoughtful, you know, passionate. And then the one I, the sort of never, I don't know if he's never a Trumper, but definitely a Trump skeptic I admire the most, probably Jonah Goldberg, right? These are two friends of mine. They are at odds. They are probably more at odds than they should be, I think. But I still admire and respect both of them. VDH for me, for the same. And Kevin Williamsonson just because he's a joy to read and he's a writer's writer, as they say, when he's going off and having fun. Nothing like it.

Trump supporters, Larry Kudlow, Mike Pompeo, Jim Mattis, there is a category of people who are working very, very, very hard to translate Donald Trump's genuine love of country, his animal cunning, his gut instincts into policy. Who say, Jim Mattis, before the election, Jim Mattis, who's a friend here at the Hoover Institution, Jim was actually concerned that Hillary Clinton would win, he took it for granted, as did we all, and make him Secretary of Defense. He didn't want to go back to Washington. Donald Trump won. Jim thought he was off the hook. He ends up getting the nod. I talked to Jim the day after Trump asked him to become Secretary of Defense, accept the nomination. And I said, Jim, and Jim said, Peter, you know what it comes down to? When you're trained the way I was trained, and the president-elect of the United States asks you to help out, you just say, yes, sir. And I respect that. People who are doing this, working for Trump at cost to their own reputation, certainly cost to their daily lives. Larry Kudlow went to the administration and pretty promptly had a minor heart attack. These are stressful, difficult jobs. Those guys I admire. Never Trumper, whom I admire most. I'm sort of done admiring the Never Trump bits of any of them because it's boring at this point, I'm sorry to say. He's president. He's been president. The campaign is underway.

Don't tell us he shouldn't be president. He is. It's not interesting. But that the never Trump bit aside, George Will is a thoroughly admirable thinker and writer, a loyal friend, always fascinating to listen to. Good. We have one more question, and it's a dilly. It's a doozy. It's keen. It's gear. But first, I have to tell you this. This podcast was brought to you by Eero, by Zebit, and by Dornet. Listen, if I start to say this stuff, people start to go. Sorry, I totally agree. Sorry, right? You know, this is the thing. What did the Avengers of Marvel Universe teach us? Anything. Put something at the absolute end, and people will sit there through the credits. I'm giving you the credits. Thank you to Eero, to Zebit,

to DoorDash. Support them for supporting us and you'll find all the coupon codes and URLs at Ricochet.com. And of course, if you enjoyed the show, what would you like you to do? We want you to keep it to yourself. Don't tell a soul. Sew up your lips. Keep them up. No, we want you to tell everybody about it. Go to iTunes and leave a review because if you do, and it's a nice one, why wouldn't it be?

That helps new listeners find the show, which grows the podcast, which means more money from Ricochet because every hundred thousand people, at least one or two of them are going to pop in a shekel or two once a month. So, yeah. So last question, it would be this.

It's from Scott R. Over your decades of friendship, has Peter drifted Robward or has Rob drifted Peterward? Oh, obvious. Obvious. Why would anyone need that? Rob just keeps coming my way. I think it's been a useful partnership for both of us. I think there will be convergence like we used to believe with the Soviet Union and the U.S. One will move one way, the other. And then they'll meet in the middle in a sort of in a syncretic form of new politics. It will form a beacon for all, a pharaoh's lighthouse illuminating the darkness and telling people, Rob will adopt my entire worldview and politics, and I will adopt

the way he likes his martinis. There you go. Well, we'll know when Rob is up on stage somewhere with his sweater knotted around his neck performing some English cross-dressing burlesque routine. And Peter is sitting in the sheep stands brushing the croissant crumbs off of his lap. We will know that the two of you have learned truly from one another. And we've learned a lot from our audience from the questions, and we always enjoy them. If you have more things to add, well, that's what the comment thread for this particular podcast will be. And heck, all bad cleanup. I'll go there. Ask any questions that you may have of me. There's also another thread going on elsewhere on Ricochet about what other country you feel at home in. There's a thread at Ricochet about,

right? There are threads on Ricochet about everything. And it's not just politics that would be boring. There's life. And if you join, you go to the member section where there's all this wonderful stuff by folks who are better writers than the people who are writing syndicated commentary and appearing on sharper thinkers than those who are appearing on television. And you'll find them at Ricochet

under a pseudonym contributing to the greater development and maintenance of the community that we love so much. And we'll see everybody there. Ricochet 4.0. Rob, Peter, next week,

next week, next week. And by the way, James, the secret is that Rob and I both wish we were you. Well, who doesn't now? Preeningly,

he leaves the stage. Good day. Only this one time What would you tell me? Well maybe you could give me a suggestion So I could know you What would you tell me? Maybe you could tell me what to ask you Cause then I'd know you What would you tell me? Please tell me that there's time Thank you. Will you try? Impressions, you've made impressions

They're going nowhere They're just gonna wait here if you let them Please don't let them, I want to know you And if they're gonna haunt me, please collect them Please just collect them And now I'm begging, I'm begging you to ask me just one question One simple question, cause then you know me I'll tell you that there's time to make this work Thank you. Must we all always be untrue?

Be untrue. Be untrue. Be untrue. Ricochet. Join the conversation. you