The Ricochet Podcast - Socialists, SJWs, and Patriots

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

This week on the Big Show, we start in frigid Minnesota, home of one James Lileks, who describes life in a Polar Vortex for those of us who live in more temperate climes. Then, we’re off to the swamps of Jersey for a visit from Commentary’s Noah Rothman to talk about his fascinating new book Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. Then, it’s off to Venezuela where Annika Rothstein is... Source

Three, two, one. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs and today we talk to Noah Rothman about social justice warriors and Annika Rothstein about Venezuela. She's there. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 433. I'm James Lilacs and I'm coming to you live from the swag room

at the newspaper where I work. Rob, Peter, have you ever been to the swag room of a newspaper? I've been to a gifting room. Yeah, it's sort of kind of maybe like that. It's where all of the stuff that the networks send to the TV critic end up. And it's astonishing

what they do to get you to write about the show. My microphone right now is on a very nice suitcase, a metal suitcase that AT&T sent out to promote its series Condor, and inside is a surveillance kit, a camera, and an SD, and power supply. I can't imagine how much it costs to send this thing. It's really neat. And, of course, what you all do is you just open it up and throw all the stuff out and not write about the show

and carry the suitcase around. Or you can use these wonderful glasses that I have here that are promoting a show that never aired or something. It's amazing. And they're tottering stacks of DVDs and the like. And it's still a tenth of what it used to be. Anyway, how are you guys? I'm in a cold place, but a good place.

Why does it stay in the swag room? Do you have to check it out if you want to use the suitcase and then put it back at the end of the weekend? No, it's just where our TV critic piles stuff. That's all it is. Oh, I see. An ancillary dumping ground to his desk. I mean, you can't sell the DVDs. You can't sell what they give us. That would be

unethical. So they pile up here and then eventually they are sold or given away or some charity thing is involved. I see. I see. All right. Yes, fine. Excellent. Rob, where are you today? I'm in Los Angeles, California. I'm having a little bit of trouble. The thing about all of this technology is that it comes down to whether the wires work, the actual connecting things that they make incredibly flimsily like it's like when they they when they pack light bulbs you know it's just like a tiny little gossamer thin sheet of paper basically with these incredibly delicate things and when and you have this

incredible equipment i've got a great computer and a great microphone but the actual thing that communicates between the microphone and the computer is this you know low rent bad piece of connecting something so well it's whether or not the people who are running for president can connect with the american people the way that your devices and peripherals connect with your your hard drive and your computer that's the test that's going to be shown and now we have this week what do we have 14 more candidates announced howard schultz of Starbucks, of course. Cory Booker, who never said he was Spartacus but will ever be tagged with that. And Ms. Harris, who called for the abolition of the insurance industry. And also I think we're missing Jillibrand, Kristen Jillibrand, or was she last week?

I don't know. And then Julian, I don't know how he pronounces it, Julian Castro, the former, or sitting for all I know, mayor of San Antonio. In other words, the list is long and getting longer. The interesting thing is watching everybody fire on Schultz for not getting with the program, that he's actually attacking Democrats for running too much to the left, which would seem to be advice they ought to heed, no? If they're all going to try to outflank each other

on the left, then we come up with these preposterous situations where we want to eliminate this industry. We want the new Green Deal, which is essentially going to get rid of fossil fuels. We want the maximum tax rate to be 90 percent and we want post-birth abortion, which is not what a lot of people are looking for when they're looking for a Trump alternative. Right, right. Well, so the Democrats are saying to themselves that Ralph Nader's margin in Florida cost Al Gore Florida in 2000 and with it the presidency. And they're saying to themselves that but for 70,000 votes distributed across three different states, Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016 and not Donald Trump. And this time we are going to get it right. And Howard Schultz can co-take a leap into a giant

coffee urn. He's not going to mess it up for us because, of course, their calculation is Howard Schultz comes across as an American, as a hero of American business, as a reasonable, moderate, likable, well-spoken man. All of this is already clear. I've only watched a hero of American business, as a reasonable, moderate, likable, well-spoken man, all of this is already clear. I've only watched a couple of his YouTube comments. He's very impressive. And his policy complexion is more or less moderate. What out here in California, Rob and I run into all the time so that it's almost conventional out here, fiscally conservative. He's concerned about the budget, but he's socially liberal, gay marriage, pro-choice,

all of that. And that's within the realm of – it's not a position I hold, but within – across the spectrum of American politics, it's close to the center of the Democratic Party at least right so if they run a cory booker a kamala harris and schultz who has all the money in the world runs as an independent he creams them and donald trump gets re-elected and this very thought is causing their eyes to rotate like pinwheels rob how many votes do you think that howard schultz takes away from john kasich well i mean my problem is that this is a dumb thing to say because of course i said this in 2016 we all do but i i don't see the

person yet or the candidacy or the message that beats donald trump i see a lot of candidacies and messages and um campaigns that potentially can win the media primary um but that kind of fades pretty fast what's what's weird to me there was a scatter graph somebody posted last week and if i find it i'll post it um uh of the two 2016 voters and they and they divided it you know they did i x and y axis and four quadrants and uh it went from you know economically liberal to economically conservative sort of on the x what is it what's the one that goes up and down is Is that Y or X? I don't remember. And then the sideways one was a social, a socially liberal, a socially conservative.

And they sort of plotted all these different things. And you ended up having this big clump of blue in the lower left. So big clump of blue and socially liberal, economically liberal. But you had the big clump of red was not in the upper right quadrant. It was right in the middle of socially conservative but economically liberal, basically. And then you also had this huge clustered

or random scattered, but a preponderance of people that were Trump voters in the socially conservative, economically liberal quadrant. Say that one one more time. Socially liberal. Go ahead.

Socially – no, sorry. Economically liberal, socially conservative. So you have a whole bunch of voters there who believe that – I mean there are two ways to look at that. One is that America is socially conservative and doesn't like all this sort of – the new culture, and I think that's true. But you also have to contend with the fact that most America – a lot of Americans are economically liberal. They are not economic conservatives. They don't mind taxing the rich. They are not free market. They do not want free trade.

They want federal entitlements. They like the idea of a national health system that works. That is part of what the voters are trying to say. Now, whether they can be persuaded to change their mind about economics or not is a separate thing, but for a long time, we've said things like, well, you know, most Americans are economically conservative and socially liberal. The truth is that most Americans are socially conservative and economically liberal. They don't like trans education in elementary school. There's things that are happening in the culture they don't like. But one of them isn't the Social Security is being expanded or Medicare for all.

And that's something that conservative economically conservative republicans have missed so so the democrats nancy pelosi democrats elizabeth warren democrats it is perfectly i agree with every word that you just said it is perfectly bizarre by moving so far to the left, they are permitting Donald Trump to claim the mantles of FDR and Ronald Reagan, more or less, more or less. If George Meany were alive today, he'd say Trump is my guy. He wants workers to get higher wages. He wants trade, wants to take on China. It's just an astonishing thing that they have ceded so much ground to him to this. Of course, what I can't help is that the subtext of what Rob is saying is that Rob is still in this horrible, excruciating dilemma that he can't stand Donald Trump, but every time he's ready to feel good and get into a high-dudgeon righteous indignation and denounce the man, the Democrats

are even worse. I don't believe, I can't believe that I'm that weird or different, but I get, maybe I am, but I don't think I'm that weird or different. I am basically not pro-life. I'm basically squishy, roe v. Wade, first trimester in the middle, pro and that suggests to me that the culture itself is in big trouble. And so maybe – and maybe the self-described conservatives who are economically liberal and socially conservative are kidding themselves or maybe they're saying, look, we're going to postpone all talk about taxes and capital gains and all that stuff for later. That could be. But it could also be that the Democrats for years had the right idea, which is that the country is basically economically liberal and socially conservative. So the best thing to run is a southern conservative Democrat. Those tend to win and have a lot of power. And then they have completely lost – they've lost the thread of the conversation.

Well, the assumption they seem to make is that because people want to have their health care paid for them by some hand-waving means and they want the rich to be taxed in ways that they will never feel themselves, the Democrats seem to believe that that means that everyone's on board for the entirety of the social agenda. And that when somebody says, you know, my abortion position is kind of hard. I'm kind of, you know, after the first third, I don't know what we can talk about. I really don't like to talk about it. That people who are sort of undecided like that will be pushed, impelled toward the Democratic Party when they see the world, when they see the Empire State, I'm sorry, the World Trade Center lit up in pink to celebrate the most liberal abortion law ever

passed. That strikes me as the sort of classic overreach that assumes that everybody is as exercised as they are over Orange Man, and therefore people are just going to flock to them so they don't have to moderate. And I love it. I mean, I absolutely love it that they don't feel as if they have to moderate and they take great joy in it. Like Hera said, waving her hands and saying, let's get past it. Let's get past this. Yeah, we're done. Why are you people so slow? Why are you dragging us back?

We're already into the fourth trimester now. We have plenty of ideas that have never been tried but sound better than anybody else's ideas. Well, they have been tried, but they haven't been tried the way that we would do them. Utopianism always works great. In a perfect world, though, you walk outside your house in February and you find a bunch of roses and you pick them up and you put them in a vase and that's that. But we don't live in that world. We live in a very complex world in which it takes a lot to get flowers to people in cold climes in the wintertime, don't we? And it also requires a tremendous amount of fossil fuel. So if we ever get past that,

I'm sure that people are going to be angry at people for sending flowers. But come on, it's the most beautiful thing that you can do on Valentine's Day. And in case you're wondering how exactly you're going to do it, well, first of all, ask yourself, who are you sending flowers to this year for Valentine's Day? And if you've got a name, well, let me tell you another, Pro Flowers. Pro Flowers, they offer so many beautiful Valentine's Day bouquets for you to choose from. They're all freshly cut.

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And now we welcome to the podcast Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary and one of the hosts of the Commentary podcast available here in the Ricochet Audio Network. And his new book is Unjust, Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. You had a bit of a contretemps on Morning Joe, which people have been recommending despite the fact that a lot of people don't like to recommend Morning Joe. But apparently, from what I gather, the whole basic thrust thesis of your book was laid out in the conversation that followed. And you're a wrong person for not wanting to look at everything through these prisms that the social justice warriors have erected for us. Defend yourself, Noah. of one of the brushback pitches that I receive from people who are hostile to the thesis in this

book is that your experience simply precludes you from having an authoritative opinion on these issues. You are a privileged white guy, presumably, and to that I certainly say that people with a blaringly Jewish last name have come quite a long way as far as being considered privileged white guys. But it is irrelevant to the subject matter because i am not making these arguments as an individual which is alien to people who think of things in terms of identity these are not arguments that are unique to my status in life they are ideas that are transcendent they are they're universal and harken back to the founding of the country. And you can engage with those ideas, as you do on a pretty regular basis, with individuals who share your identity. And there's absolutely no reason why people who have an opinion on these matters can't share them as well. So once you keep pressing on the matter, eventually they engage with the subject matter noah peter robinson here with just basics i missed the interview with joe scarborough you just used the term the matter the

subject the arguments two or three times to explain yourself briefly what is the mat what is the thesis what are you talking about well social justice as we understand it is sort of a malleable term and people who don't have a lot of experience with it might think it's just a really anodyne, unobjectionable concept, a way to think about fairness and how to create a just society and right historical wrongs. But in the hands of its current activist class, it has become the antithesis of blind objective justice. It necessitates discrimination and prejudice and radicalism. It advocates against individual agency and merit, and it distorts what people think politics can achieve, what institutions in this country can achieve. And so when those expectations go unmet,

its activist class radicalizes. And we've seen those radicals now engage in street demonstrations and often violence. Are you using the term social justice, just one more time on this, I want to distinguish something here. Are you using the term social justice? Just one more time on this. I want to distinguish something here. Are you using the term social justice interchangeably with what we would think of as identity politics? Or are you saying that something separate? It is something separate. All right. Distinguish the two.

Sure. Well, social justice is a pretty old concept that originates out of the Catholic Church in the 19th century. And John Rawls put a lot of meat on those bones in the late 1960s, early 1970s. But it didn't have the identity, identitarian character, the identity politics first character that it has today until the late 20th century. And identity politics is sort of a philosophy. It's an ethos. Social justice is identity politics in practice.

It is an alternative theory of societal organization. And this book is an attack on that alternative theory of societal organization, which advocates prescriptions, policy prescriptions that I believe are in many ways incompatible with the American experiment. Okay, so affirmative action and what else in terms of the policy prescriptions? Well, affirmative action is an interesting um an interesting subject matter because uh conceptually um and i don't take an issue with that because these things have been found constitutional and i don't really particularly have a problem with positive discrimination which is what that was uh taking individuals who've been historically discriminated against and

rising them up historically this positive discrimination has sort of had a negative discrimination effect. Negative discriminatory effect. Some people were discriminated against in the act of positive discrimination. But that was sort of, okay, it was collateral damage. We didn't really talk about it because it certainly wasn't the point. That's not the case anymore. Now negative discrimination is the point. For social justice activists, in a grand sense sense they believe that a certain class of people not

individuals groups tribes whole classes of individuals need to have a comeuppance they are due a reconciling with the historical conditions that they benefited from whether they know it or not so it has very little to do with rising people up it's about forcing people down and that's a that's a very deleterious framework for the social compact, and it has a lot of psychic negative effects. So we're all Kulaks now to them. Not all, not all, unfortunately. But people are divided in this ideology. People have become divided by their accidents of birth. And this particular activist class has ideas about certain really basic concepts that underlie the American ideal that they become hostile towards. common law like the presumption of innocence these things are a problem for the modern social justice movement and that's why they are fundamentally incompatible with american

institutions as they've been uh erected for the last 200 years hey no it's rob long in los angeles thanks for joining us so my question is if you're a bright uh straight a student great grades great scores and you're asian um this is all kind of bad news for you right this this because you right now there's a lawsuit winding its way through the courts uh against harvard university but other universities watching it closely about the discrimination against asian students sometimes i mean they have the the emails and they have the sort of internal report sometimes in the most blatantly racist way, they would describe Asian kids as like not having a personality. And they're going to win that, they're going to

probably win that lawsuit. And so my question is, it does seem like if you look at the trajectory of affirmative action law in this country, it does seem like affirmative action as a policy, as a law, is weakening. But on the other side, the cultural power, the sort of non-legislative, non-policy power of the culture at large, its ability to silence people, its ability to, the phrase they use, cancel people, is getting stronger, right? The organism has found a better, easier, cheaper, more efficient way to accomplish its ends. First, two questions. One, is that true or am I just wrong? And two, if that is true, it's easy to sue Harvard. It's easy for the Bakke decision to go through the Supreme Court as it did in the late 70s against affirmative action. It's easy for all those things attributable to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the United States. They talk about how they have cultural heritage that allows them to excel in an academic context

because they come from a culture where they have stable families and parents are much more closely observant of their children. Dog whistle! So those are sort of advantageous. And yeah, well, they talk about them as though they are stereotypes. And this ideal, this approach to social organization necessitates thinking of people as stereotypes and not individuals. It establishes a whole set of very arbitrary metrics to treat classes and groups of people by – and again, you have to appeal to stereotypes in order to navigate this world. It's much easier and simpler, and I sort of appeal to a Marxian dialectic here when I feel like the whole thing collapses of its own contradictions, because you cannot establish a real unitary

approach to that as a governing ethos. It is an arbitrary case-by-case basis. And so the easiest way to do this is to allow people to rise of their own volition and their own talent and aptitude and arguing, as social justice advocates are, that now minority classes need to be discriminated against because they're simply doing too well exposes what this ideology is about, which is retribution, which is negative social leveling, downward pressure, the successful. That's what just about all social just activism forms take today, cutting the successful down to size. Well, I mean last week – I'm now sort of talking-published and is kind of a publishing success story. She had a book that was about to be published by the Delacorte Press, and it was pulled because she apparently – a few people who read the book thought it was racist, and there was a giant twitter storm against it and then she apologized and pulled it this is a book that was written that will not now not be published because some people who wrote it were were pre-offended by it and what i'm wondering is is there any way i mean how do we how how do people in the culture who disagree with that how do they fight back if they can't i mean it isn't you can't call your congressman you can't vote a new president it has nothing to do with that has to do with sort of these strange, murky levers of cultural power.

And maybe the response is the solution is that we get our own levers of power. But for right now, if you were looking for that book in the Y or the Y shelves, you wouldn't be able to find it. Yes. So I deal with this issue really specifically in this book, actually. I went to undergraduate with Kat Rosenfeld, who is the preeminent expert on this field, a young adult novelist herself, who really uncovered this bizarre trend in the young adult novelist community to police what were perceived to be tracks in the young adult novelist community that were talking about experiences, racial experiences, gender experiences, that the author did not share. And it goes into this chapter on the book on some of the real small, minutiae, petty things that the social justice activist movement is so focused on these days, which they think are real grand political issues that have real grand cultural effects, but they're really pop culture and very small issues that, by the way, are only relevant because the individuals who they are targeting agree with them.

They're social justice activists themselves because otherwise everybody else isn't listening so you have not young adult novels like e.e charlton trajillo's when we was fierce which talks about uh the experience of a young african-american protagonist but carlton trajillo is not african-american herself and so she was attacked for writing from an experience she did not have and listened to these attacks and agreed to uh withdraw her manuscript. There was something else similar, very similar, about an individual who wrote a manuscript which talked about internment camps for Muslims. And it was a very negative portrayal of this sort of dystopian future.

But because they even dared to engage in that kind of hypothetical, it came under attack, and the attack was ultimately successful. Kirkus Book Reviews, which is a place where young adult novelists reviews all books, and it's probably a very bad strategy for me to attack a book reviewer in this book, but I did, which has a policy called their own voices policy, which insists that the reviewer has to share the experience, the physical experience, the accidents of birth of the protagonist in order to accurately review the subject matter. This is stereotypes.

Well, it goes to what we've been talking about. These people have done a pretty good job of defanging fiction by insisting that everybody quote, stay in their lane, end quote, that any attempt to talk about another culture other than yours is appropriation and just pushed everybody into writing narrowly about their own experience and destroying what fiction is about, which is inhabiting other people. You have in the book called – in the publishing houses now, you have sensitivity people who come in and give these things a read. So you have one individual whose sensitivities may be abraded by something the author did not intend. It's problematic.

The book gets waved off. You mentioned the one that was just been canceled. There are more to come. It's odd that people who retreat to writing about speculative science fiction in order to avoid the real world find themselves being dragged for the things that they invent because they're insufficiently accurate and reflective of the world as the

social justice warriors see it. But, Noah, if you also look at places like, well, BuzzFeed, a hot bit of this stuff, there's a controversy today in which a woman who has a cosmetic line, I think, has come out with a new inclusive ad campaign and showed all of the people that she's inclusive of. And she ticks off the little boxes that make them special. They're not individuals. They are either Samoan or disabled or gay.

They're not individuals. They're these things. And she was happy about that. And she's getting ripped to pieces because her plus-size model is not plus-size enough. She may be 1X. Where's the 4X model? So she's getting ripped to pieces because her plus-size model is not plus-size enough. She may be 1X. Where's the 4X model? So she's getting dragged. My question to you is, is this a foretaste of inevitably what happens when they all take over and the revolutions and the Jacobins start consuming their own and marching them off to the tumble?

Or should we just sort of sit back and relax and watch as they claw each other to bloody sharks? I wish we could. I wish I was content enough to sit back with some satisfaction, and there is some, I admit, but it's a bad thing to indulge, I suppose. And unfortunately, the movement is generating more and more traction, even as its targets become smaller. As we said before, the movement has generated less deference from people who are predisposed not to agree with it. So the movement's targets have become individuals who already agree with them. They become liberals in the fields of entertainment and culinary arts and people who are generally outspoken, and in this case, an advertisement that appeals explicitly to them. Because this movement has to generate constant streams of victims in order to generate the impression that it is effective, that efficacy has to be generated constantly, demonstrated. And so it attacks people who are going to bend as fast and as easy as possible.

More increasingly, when I was writing this book, it was conspicuous the extent to which the individuals who resist this movement can sort of get away with it after 24 48 hours if you wait out the furor the media firestorm the social media firestorm increasingly then it goes away and as long as the institution doesn't bend the institution that's backing those individuals who are caught in the firestorm doesn't bend. And if they're conservative institutions, it's more likely than not that they won't, then it goes away. But if they're democratic, liberal, social justice activists themselves, they're much more sensitive to these outcries because they're members of their own coalition. And then the feud grows because they get some traction.

Noah, Peter here. Last question. And I would like Brother Rob Long to listen very, very carefully. Noah, here it is. participate in one degree or another, but a pretty large degree in just the view of social justice that you have been describing. And what that means is that for all his many, many failings, Donald Trump is the man standing against it. And we are going to have to support him in 2020. Yes or no?

I certainly don't. No? I thought I had you on that one. Rob is now laughing up his sleeve. No. Donald Trump takes it on the chin in this book. When I tell social justice advocates that the things that they increasingly believe, that colorblindness is naive at best and dangerous at worst, that meritocracy is a myth, that separatism is good because it prevents social discomfort, that all – they look at me funny like they hadn't really thought about it that way. These obstacles to attacking real discrimination and real bigotry in institutions are shared by the various that donald trump has allowed to flourish uh he very explicitly created the conditions where the

quote-unquote alt-right which takes it on the chin in this book as uh has has become an actual force in american politics whereas just a few years ago they were pretty well they knew that they were anathema and that they should remain in the shadows. And I put a lot of the blame on the president and how he's conducted himself. So I don't think that has changed, frankly, in his rhetoric, if not his approach to governance. And that is not something that's tolerated by anybody who's an opponent of the social justice movement. Ah, interesting. I only note that that's interesting. Just one question went wrong on me.

And Rob comes climbing in to laugh. Well, last question, then who what presidential candidates do you see could win and get us past this? I mean, we thought we thought Obama would be the guy who did it, but no. Yeah, no. I mean, it has very little to do with presidential politics or politics in general. This is really a cultural issue, and it's not going to be addressed by American governmental institutions because it cannot. Social justice activists appeal to governing institutions to affect this downward pressure on people they perceive to be members of groups who have historically aggrieved them. And that's going to fail. pressure on people they perceive to be members of groups who have historically aggrieved them. And that's going to fail. American institutions are not equipped to affect the kind of change that these people want. And so they become very frustrated. Similarly, if we, opponents of the

social justice movement, were to appeal to governmental institutions for redress, we would be similarly frustrated. It's just not going to happen. This is a paradigmatic revolution that needs to happen. We all need to agree that individuals need to be treated like individuals, which didn't used to be and isn't theoretically a controversial concept. Again, in theory, in practice, it's becoming much more of a conundrum for people who believe in historical retribution. Well, I asked a question hoping for a facile answer that could get us out of here on a note of hope, but...

There are no easy answers i wish there were yeah all right that's all right uh but work to be done work to be done you can start by reading noah's new book unjust social justice and the unmaking of america and uh you know it's a great break from twitter because twitter is all about that and you can read noah's book then you go back to twitter and back and forth and just see everything falling apart like a spider web in a rainstorm before your very eyes. No thanks. We'll talk to you later when things are worse or better or probably just the same.

Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it. Take care. Bye-bye. Well, I think a president isn't going to save us from this, but it's entirely possible that a certain kind of personality of a president can redirect the conversation at least. Am I nuts there, guys, or is it – or am I just –

Well, I mean I think in order – I mean it is possible for a president to have sort of moral and cultural leadership. I think Reagan did. I think Fagan did i think fdr did i mean it's possible um to have the to be to to to put a brand on an era um i don't think this is the man to do it i don't i don't think it's his temperament but he wants to do it i don't i could have i don't want to i just fundamentally disagree with noah's approach on that to say that well of course he was he's what he's doing is trying to analyze a social pathology. He's not trying to make political – but politics is you get to make choices.

And I think my question was actually a valid question. For all his many, many failings, Donald Trump is appointing judges who do not buy into social justice. And any one of his opponents, if victorious, would appoint judges who do. It'll end when it stops working for the people who are pushing it and harms them. As long as they're rewarded for it and they get something for it, it's going to work. I mean, you don't pay a cable bill every month if you get a black screen, do you? No. I mean, it's working for them.

By the way but i thought i think your point james was actually more interesting was that it seems to be working for them in in in their world sort of distilling and and focusing and amplifying their own groups it isn't really working for them on the large scale because obviously they there's they have a president they despise and who represents a lot of people whom they want to put in prison and they can't. So in a lot of ways, that ultimately is the question of American politics, which is the dialectic is really designed, the country is designed for leaders to sort of figure

out where that scatter graph is I talked about and to be that person. And what they discover is that when you're out where that scattergraph is i talked about right and to be that person and what they discover is that when you're extreme you all you do is excite and amplify the opposition which is a dangerous thing to do is that scattergraph is that sort of like an intellectual emotional actuarial table well well if you look at it it would be I mean look. I don't know any of the Democrats who are running personally, right? But I do know that they are politicians, and so I kind of think they're open to persuasion on policy things that are more popular, right? I think if you show them that, the roadmap for some of those people is so clear. I mean Cory Booker started his career as a new Democrat.

It's basically a moderate, new-thinking, free-market Democrat. If you look at that graph, you're like, oh, wait a minute. Look at all these votes I can have if I just stop talking about trans bathrooms in elementary schools, just just to use an example. Right. And it's what's astonishing to me is that nobody on the left or the right, either Republican or Democrat, really thinks about it that way. I mean, even Donald Trump and even Trump supporters are like living in a fantasy land. I'm concerned about the win in 2016, which was extremely squeaky tight. Yes, it was. it's nothing to like it is nothing to raise it was a fluke let's be honest you should not cheer it and you should

not there should be no parades it should be head down and try to figure out how do i how do i appeal to more people so how do i say to them gonna go jump in the lake this is in my opinion this is the importance this is what howard schz demonstrates. The people you just mentioned, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, they're all intelligent people. They're all looking at the same scatter graph. What they have concluded is that the current structure of the Democratic Party requires anyone who wishes to win the nomination of the Democratic Party to run far to the left. That means the money, the activism, all the energy, the control of the nomination lies on the left. And Howard Schultz says, oh, well, if that's the case, I just don't want the Democratic nomination. I'll just run as an independent. And they all know

that they're going to have to move to the left to get the nomination and then do something which is very difficult, which is to run as fast as they can to the center to win the country. And Schultz says, nah, I'm not going to move to the left. I'll just start with this. I'll start as I intend to go on. I'll just run a campaign right down the middle from the very get-go. That is maddening to them because of the current structure of the Democrats. They have a party which is forcing them to do things that are politically –

But that was normal. That was normal. Not quite as far you didn't have to you run but not quite as far that's exactly right it was never it was never so insane yes it's never so crazily to the left that you had to be talking about um a redistribution of wealth uh racing taxes socializing medicine uh trans issues and now the idea that you're going to keep the newborn comfortable while you and the doctor decide just what to do next. I mean, for a lot of people, it's crazy. It's like the Democrats have willingly decided to run on a platform of acid, abortion, and amnesty. Yes. You can't accuse us of acid, abortion, and amnesty. Yes. You can't accuse us of that.

That's a ridiculous accusation. Now it's precisely what they want to be known for. And the mistake that they seem to be making, and a lot of us, I think, make, is that if we spend too much time on social media, if we marinate a little bit too much on Twitter, we assume that the battles that go on there are indicative of the battles that go on in the rest of the world that people are aware of. They aren't. They just aren't. It's small, little, nasty, bitter. It's like the equivalent of all of a sudden every faculty lounge at a small college in America had a live show that was broadcast to tens of millions of people.

And we took their petty little arguments about whether John Rawls was right in his first version or his second version to indicate a broad national debate about whether or not distributive justice was the thing. It isn't. I mean when you have these people dragging their friends on Twitter, their enemies on Twitter for their books and their young adult books, this is not something that everybody else is concerned with and consumed with. But the Democrats are letting it identify and define their ideology, which is insane for them to do they ought to be running to the middle now because there's a whole bunch of people who are hungry for something and if they run to the middle now and say you know what we could be crazy but we're not crazy we're actually the moderate sane adults in the room all the time if if the first person i think in the

democratic field outside of schultz started to move to run to the center as, you know, wives tales, shibboleth, whatever, that, hey, you vote for the guy you want to have a beer with. I don't think that's true. I think you vote and you win. You vote for the guy who you think wants to have a beer with you. And it's a different way to look at it but the the person who looks like they they may actually want to talk to you they may actually be able to sit down with you have a beer i mean donald trump's not gonna have a beer with you but

there's no doubt that donald trump would love to sit down and have a big mac with you and hillary clinton would not and the reason she wouldn't is because she doesn't like you and she disapproves of you and you're wrong and you're bad. And the first Democrat who runs and seems like a person who actually might want to sit down and have a beer with you,

by that I mean Joe Biden, that person is going to be very, very, very politically powerful. I agree. I may have been the problem with Mitt Romney. You couldn't imagine him wanting to have a beer with you. Maybe if, you know, non-caffeinated soda or something like that. Anyway, a long time ago I mentioned something about an emotional actuarial table, which

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Not available in all states. And our thanks to Selectquote for sponsoring this Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Annika Rothstein. She's a political advisor, pundit, and a writer who is passionate about foreign affairs, counterterrorism, and human rights issues around the globe. She's also a columnist for Israel's largest daily newspaper, Israel Chaim, where she writes on European politics, anti-Semitism, and Middle East affairs. I'm sure I mispronounced the name of that newspaper. Did I? No, you did really well, actually.

I'm very impressed. Oh, good. So what's the biggest newspaper in Venezuela? Well, right now, none or all of them are equally non-existent, I would say, as there have been quite the clampdown on media of late. So I guess that's why we're here. We're trying to bring the news to the world that otherwise wouldn't reach it. That's what I'm curious about. I mean, you know, there's state control of the media.

How pervasive is it? I saw, didn't security forces go to the new president, the counter president the other day and sort of give him a little bit of harassment as sort of a poking? He did. I mean, it was very interesting because I was just, as that piece of news reached me, I was actually sitting in a house in one of the slum areas of Caracas interviewing a woman whose son was shot by the FICE forces, which is, you know, it's supposedly Maduro's SWAT team, but it's actually, you know, a death squad. And two minutes later, after I left her house, I see that the FICE team was at Juan Guaido's house while he was in a debate at the Caracas University, and they were intimidating his wife and young child. So, yeah, things are,

things are definitely heating up here in Caracas. So when I saw all those microphones looking at him and I wondered what stations there were for and whether or not it's completely uniform, that there's absolute state voice and nothing else, or if there are still, because we still hear from time to time, I mean, the fact that you have an opposition president, the fact that you have, I mean, how much of an opposition is allowed to flourish and how emboldened has it become in the last couple of weeks? I would, well, first of all, to the second part of your question, it's become quite emboldened. I mean, I was at that press conference with Juan Guaido and there were about 40 or 50 journalists there. Two of them came from state media.

One of them was jailed earlier this week, has now been released. Four of the foreign journalists who were at that press conference are in jail or have been in jail and are now deported. So there is, you know, the news is really tightening, especially since January 11th and January 23rd, of course. I mean, most people see this as a good sign. I mean, I'm out in Caracas all day, and I haven't since Sunday. And most people are saying this is a sign of Maduro being in a panic. Before this, you know, we've had one of these each year, one of these big protests each year since the time of Chavez. But now we see panic in the regime, and that's a good sign. And the opposition is handling itself quite well. Tomorrow,

we're expecting the biggest protest yet. And hopefully, God willing, we'll be in the middle of that tomorrow, experiencing it for myself and reporting about it. And many are feeling that this is the straw, you know, God willing that this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. There is a tension in the air. It feels as if something is just about to happen. So here's what you wrote, quote, As the temperature rises here in Caracas, a final showdown seems inevitable.

And given that Maduro has rejected the offer of amnesty, the socialist state will not likely go quietly into that good night. Meanwhile, the people still suffer in silence and go about their day trying to survive while the fate of their nation is fought out in the streets and the halls of parliament. This is a city holding its breath with its totalitarian oppressors at the brink. That's what you wrote. And we got this weekend coming up and everybody seems to be saying that the military has got to be the one to finally break the grip of Maduro. And that's the question. They're all looking at each other and saying who's going to go first.

How much more likely is that, let's say now, as it was a couple of weeks ago? I mean, it's definitely more likely. Things are changing here by the day. We have a couple of options on the table now, or at least, you know, we in the journalist pool are debating this every night over drinks and cigars, as one would imagine. You know, there's not a lot to do here at night in Caracas, obviously, as one can't go out after 4 p.m., really. So we're debating this, and there are several options. You know, there are Maduro loyalists in the very top echelons of the military, but the majority is kind of up for grabs. So that's, of course, one option that they're going to determine is that they're going to sway. But on the other hand, you have all of these levels of states within the states.

You know, you have the colectivos who are out policing society, and they were created by Chavez. They're not controlled by Maduro. And they have a will of their own. Will they sway at some point? No one knows. Will the military sway, or will they stay with Maduro? And will there be a massive clampdown on the protesters tomorrow, or as rumor has, it's Sunday or Monday? We just don't know.

I mean, the thing that I am quite sure of is that, like I said, he won't go quietly into that good night. He has refused the offer. He wants to save face, and he's refusing to step down. And as we know from dictators of old, there are only a few options left when you refuse to negotiate. Right. Well, here's my last question to tie

into how I started it. How does information get around then about what's happening? Do people use WhatsApp? Do they text? If the media is controlled and the newspapers are useless, how do people know exactly what's happening and whether or not the military has come around? Or is it just having to rely on rumors passed from block to block? Yeah, it is block to block. I mean, this is literally a word of mouth city. You go from barrio to barrio. And that's how it's done. Because it's also, you know, it's also an issue of which area you live in. I was, you know, I was in one of the poorer areas yesterday at a local wholesale market. And I asked the woman I was buying spices from, I said, do you think Guaido is the big hope?

And she looked at me with sort of a blank stare and said, who's Guaido? Wow. And, and the thing is that they live in, I've never seen, I've been around the world. I have never seen poverty like this. I have never seen hardship like this. And they are busy working five jobs, you know, taking care of children who are dying from starvation and curable diseases. And they are not concerned.

Annika Peter here, Peter Robinson here. 20 years ago, Venezuela had the highest GDP per capita in South America. And you just touched on what I'm wondering, with your own eyes, how poor does it seem? With your own eyes, have you seen genuine malnutrition? Is it that bad now? Yeah. It is. I mean, like I said, I've reported from Iran. I've reported from Gaza. I've been, you know, places that are bad. I've never broken down and cried during, you know, while reporting before. Um, it is, it is, um, it is the worst. It's different. It's very difficult to describe, but I, I see babies yesterday. I saw babies sitting, you know, they wrapped in a dirty t-shirt. There are no diapers. They have boils

all over their bodies. Um, they have birth deformities because there's no healthcare for their mothers. They have no food. You see them starving before your eyes and your instinct as a you know the humanity of it all you know you want your instinct is to give them food but like my bodyguard said you know that this is not a child this is a country like this you said i respect what you're trying to do but it's impossible. Everyone is dying. And what about fleeing from the country? I just had, as it happened, I had lunch with a Chilean the other day, and he said, we can't get enough Venezuelans.

They're all highly educated. Once they get out of Venezuela, they'll hate socialism for the rest of our lives. In Chile, we love them, but it's hard for them to reach Chile. Are people simply streaming out of the country in the tens of thousands every day has the government tried to crack down on that what is this a battle yeah sorry go ahead they're they're no longer able to get passports first of all uh they their passports are taken from them the the borders are closed this is a situation you know we as journalists are finding ourselves struggling with right now because, you know, God forbid something happens, they will probably close the airport and all the borders are closed.

You know, to – Colombia has one and a half million Venezuelans now, but they all came earlier before it got this bad, before it got this desperate. So at this point, everyone is held hostage within this country. There's nothing you can do. And also, I mean, I was naive. I thought I knew I had seen the pictures of, you know, the shoeboxes of money, you know, you have to have to even buy, you know, a cigarette or whatever. But seeing it for yourself, the sheer desperation, they are busy surviving, not even by the day, it seems, but it's by the hour because it's not only starvation. It's also, you know, crime to an extent that I've never, ever seen before. And they're stuck. They're stuck.

And in the worst areas, they're not even concerned with politics or what's going on or determining the fate of their country. Right, right. Now, in the old days, there would have been half a dozen places where Maduro could have gone and lived the rest of his life in some chalet. If the moment came, there would have been a helicopter sent in, he would have been rescued. I mean, in the old days of the third world. And that, so where is he going to, is this guy more likely to make some horrible bloody last stand? Or are they going to set him up with a nice place in Havana? There are no nice places in Havana. What's the end game? What are the end games that are plausible?

Well, the thing that we're almost afraid to speak of, but that we all think at this point, you know, the day before the big showdown, is that we think that he's going to make one last big bloody stand. There are certainly rumors of it. I heard them this morning. There are rumors of, you know, military intervention. Basically, you know, we're looking at a Tiananmen Square situation. This is what people fear because we're at, you know, these people are at a point of no return. I was at a protest the day before yesterday, and that was like a little taste of what's to come. And that was maybe 1,500, 2,000 people. And it's moving to the point that you have to pry because they're screaming, you know, liberidad, liberidad, and they're, you know, yelling the Venezuelan national anthem.

And they're now, they say we have nothing to lose. They scream, Maduro, dictator. And they say, you know, I'm not afraid. Show my face. Show my face on TV if you want. I have nothing else to lose. And I think the issue is that neither does Maduro at this point. We're pushed to a point where something's got to give. Something's got to give. And a cynical colleague of mine from Egypt, we were talking yesterday, and he said, well, there are two options. Either there's the bloodbath or there's one pool of blood, and that is Maduro's. If his people turn on him, he will die in the streets, as so many dictators have before him.

Hey, Anika, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles. I've got two impossible questions, but I'm going to ask them anyway. Would this be happening if Chavez was alive? Okay. No. I would say no, because the interesting thing that has happened, the lawlessness, for example, after Chavez, this veneer of ideology or, you know, it has disappeared completely.

Maduro has none of that. He has no legitimacy as far as ideology or democracy, obviously. With Chavez, there was still the dream. You know, if you walk around Caracas, the murals are of Chavez. You know, he was the savior. He was that one man who would bring, you know, freedom and wealth to the people. Maduro doesn't have that.

I don't think this would happen. But the poverty might be, right? Would the poverty be happening? Would the starvation be happening? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because the policies that he put in place, he was at a point – this is his legacy. People may scream Maduro's name, but this is just we don't like this dictator and we are hungry? And how much of it is a realization that socialism failed? Well, I would say it's 90 percent just desperation. It's just desperation because this is not the time for.

Right. You know, revolution is sort of the privilege of the middle class. I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't know how to put it in any better way. These are people who see their children die every day. So what they're screaming is freedom and no more. This is what, you know, they've had enough. That's what it is. And this is not the time for, you know, maybe there will be analysis at some point it's happening

elsewhere. You know, we're, we're, we're doing it now, but they're not doing it. Uh, the issue as I see it is of course, they're turning to another single person. Many of them are turning to another single person. They're looking to Guaido to be the great hope, right? And this will be an issue because the legacy of Chavez is these gangs who are ruling half the city, where the police doesn't go, where the military doesn't go, the poverty, the, you know, the illiteracy, all of these things. This, what was broken from 98 and on, I mean, this will take, I don't know how long to even begin to repair. But it's not, it's not as if people here are realizing and saying, no, this is socialism.

They're saying this is Chavez. They all have a personal story of losing home or losing property. I mean, it's reminiscent of Cuba, of course. I mean, this is, but they haven't gotten to the point because they're held hostage. So they're not on the other side of it where they can express anger or analysis over what has actually happened. They're still in the thick of it. They're still bleeding out in the street. So it's just desperation.

Anika, last question here. The left in America says that America is involved in Venezuela because, you know, first of all, it isn't real socialism. Second, we caused it with the sanctions. And third, we just want their oil. What do Venezuelans feel about Americans' interest in this? Do they think the same things? This is interesting.

It was very moving, the protest I was at the other day. Many of the people were aware that there was foreign media, so they had translated their signs. And several of their signs said, please, world, listen to America. Please follow America's lead. Save us. This is something, you know, everyone I speak to, they show gratitude toward America, toward Israel, toward Canada, toward other major countries who have, you know, acknowledged Guaido, who are trying to help, who are putting their foot down against this totalitarian ruler. There is no animosity

toward America here, apart from, you know, the Chavistas who are, you know, ruling certain parts of the town, but that's baked in the cake. But generally, there's gratitude toward America. And they think that with America's help and with America's voice, they will at least, you know, get help to receive foreign aid, that other people will follow suit, that other countries will follow suit and finally listen and see what's happening in Venezuela. Anika, good luck. Thank you for being with us today. Everybody, follow her on Twitter, at Truth and Fiction. It's a fascinating Twitter feed, and you'll get the news as it happens, faster than you'll get it anyplace else from Annika.

Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and again, good luck. Thank you so much. Annika, just brilliant reporting. You make Edward R. Murrow look like chopped liver. Thank you. Thank you. I need all the encouragement I can get right now. It's just terrific.

I was trying on my very first bulletproof vest today. Oh, my Lord. Oh, my God. Yeah. Do your parents know where you are? The unfortunate thing is I never tell them when I go to these places, but I was on live Swedish TV, the biggest new show in Sweden yesterday, and I received several messages saying, you're in Venezuela. So next time I might consider leaving a note, because this is going to be a really awkward family dinner when I get back, God willing. Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, yeah, I know. The other day, my mother-in-law called up and said, I heard there was an accident in Brazil. Is your daughter okay? I just laughed. It's a big country, Maryland. What happened? A dam burst. 200 people are missing. And I said, it's a big country. Don't worry about it. Look on my phone with a damn burst. It's exactly where my daughter was. But then I said, but then I had to say to my wife, it's a big city, not to worry.

But, you know, Peter, you're right. Her reporting does make Edward R. Murrow standing on the roof look like chopped liver. And it reminds me that yesterday I was actually interviewing a deli owner who was complaining about something about not getting enough publicity for the old restaurants, the old delis. And I was there to do exactly that. And I got to say to a deli owner, what am I, chopped liver? To a deli owner. And I have no idea exactly how much, you know, what chopped liver goes for in that store, whether it's the cheap stuff or the expensive. I have no idea because I've never had chopped liver.

And a lot of people are like that. You know, they know something exists, but they just don't want to pay for it, like content on the Internet. Right, Rob? Well, exactly. Exactly, James. And it's Cracker Jack running up to the mic. Here's his cue.

Yeah, but I'm having a hard time interrupting your segment because I can't find it yet. No, I'm throwing it to you for the member pitch, Rob. Content on the internet, paying for it. Oh, I see. You know, here I am. I'm a little bit – I'm already in the third spot. Yes, you're right. Content on the internet. What are we, chopped liver? Well, we are – I don't think of ourselves – it's an interesting question because we kind of started thinking we're content, but I don't think we're content. I don't think we are. I think we are conversation and community, and I think that we are a non-toxic conversation and non-toxic community, at least I hope so. And I think we have solved the problem of how you can debate and communicate and connect with other people on the web, and we've solved it in a way that conservatives have forever, which is like the free market, actual market. Like if you pay a little bit into a system and you have a little skin in the game,

not much, but some, you have ownership of that community. And our members have ownership of Ricochet and I'm really proud that they do. And if you were listening to this podcast and you are putting it off and keep thinking, I'm going to join, I'm going to join, I'm going to join,

or even if you're saying to yourself, I'll join, but I don't ever want to commute and participate in any conversation that's fine too we still need you um because nothing's free so please go to ricochet.com um and sign up but you can sign up for the podcast level which is like two two bucks 250 a month which is practically nothing or you can move your way up the ladder and uh be a big shot and um we can all have dinner soon. So the point is if you're listening and you said to yourself, you know what? I'm just going to listen for free and that's that.

I don't know – I really don't know what to tell you except I hope we're here for you in a year. But if you're listening and I think a lot of you – enough of you are listening now and have said to yourselves, hey, I'm going to do this, and you just put it off. If all of the people who put it off do it, we will be in great shape, and we will be able to grow and deliver more content and more great podcasts and more stuff to you over the next year. And that's what we want to do, and so we want your help. Great. And for those people who say, why don't you just run more ads instead of asking for money? Oh, we've got an ad coming up.

Don't worry. Well, the thing about forgetting about the ads is like it's not just the ads. Then I have to interrupt them. I know. Then you have to complain about my interruption. The whole ad package, media package is big. Oh, I remember complaining about your interruptions back in 19, 20-odd, 17. I learned since then not to complain. But just to sit back and look at the ceiling and think of England.

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ricochet. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, the Super Bowl is coming up, and Peter, are you watching? Oh, absolutely I'm watching. Absolutely I'm watching. Who are you rooting for? I have to say there's a certain – the Pats would be my sentimental favorite.

Bill Belichick, 66 years old. Football has been his life since he helped his father who was a coach at West Point, since he helped his father review tape on weekends when he was a little kid. Tom Brady, 41 years old and still willing to get down there on the field with defensive linemen who want to break his bones. On the other hand, Jared Goff, just 21 years old, this child, but he's from the neighborhood. He grew up in Marin, Northern California here. He played at Cal. I have a bet with the Yeti, and I put my money on the Rams this year. Wow. As you can tell, for reasons that have nothing to do with football,

as best I can tell, the Pats are lightly favored, favored by two to four points or so. What about you guys? Well, you're right about Brady. I mean, he's an old guy for the industry. For the industry, let's just say. And if he loses, I mean, this could be the last season. At his age, you never know. There could be some things that took him out of the game forever.

And you think how horrible it would be for him to just have to go home and wipe away the tears with $1,000 bills while Gisele Bundchen massaged his back, having applied the suntan oil to herself in the bronzer before she came and stood under the spotlight. So, yeah, but I still think the Patriots are going to win. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I guess I wish I – my problem with this stuff is when the Patriots are playing, it's like I wish there was an underdog. I just wish – there's something kind of like, I don't know, tedious. I mean, it's horrible. There's something tedious about the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

It's like, really? It's not the way you would have cast it. Well, I mean, just growing up, the idea that the Patriots would ever – I mean, the Patriots couldn't beat a high school football team when I was growing up. For that matter, the Red Sox couldn't barely beat a Triple-A baseball team. So all of New England, all of Boston was sort of a joke except for the Celtics and the Bruins, of course. So it seems – I mean I don't know. I mean I guess I would say I can't look in my heart and root for somebody. So I guess I will look in my heart and say I hope the Rams win because I'm sitting in LA right now, and it seems like what the NFL needs more than anything is new.

It's a little new, a little refreshed, a little excitement, some new faces, some new names, some new things. I mean, obviously, the L.A. Rams don't seem that new, but they are in the NFL universe. The Rams are new. And I think news. I root for new. Well, for you novelty-addled people out there on the coast who require a constant infusion of new things to shock you from your jaded, debauched lifestyles, I suppose that's fine. Some of us value tradition. Actually, I don't care. I have no dogs in this fight. All my dogs were put down a couple of weeks, a couple of months ago, a month and a half or so ago. So I'm just going to watch it and enjoy the commercials and enjoy just the camaraderie of it.

I mean that's the joy is getting together with your friends and getting the pizza and the beer and the hors d'oeuvres and hooting and hollering at the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on commercials that will impact our buying decisions. Not a whit. Not a bit. Apparently Steve Carroll's got a really good ad for Pepsi and nobody's going to change their cola preferences for that in as much as you may have one. But the next day we're going to have to all go through the ads like

advertising experts and decide what wins and what didn't. Anybody remember what the best ad of the year for the Super Bowl was last year? Not a clue. Not a clue. It was for that thing that the people did, and it had that guy who was on the thing that did the other part thing.

I love the Apple commercials. I come away from all of those saying, wow, they make a phone? Really? That looks like an interesting device. Yeah. Look at all the possibilities with that phone. Well, that's where we are.

This is just the lowest point of the year. The Christmas is over. The Super Bowl will be over. We have nothing but February to get through. James, how cold did it get? Which might explain your dark mood. How cold was it this past week? Really?

I didn't think so. Mostly we're just tired of it because it would get to be 35, I'm in a dark mood? Really? I didn't think so. I didn't know that. It was very, mostly we're just tired of it because it would get to be 35, 40 below with a windchill. And you can't go out much during that. I mean, I did. When it was 25 below, I'm putting on my coat. My wife says, where are you going? I said, I'm

going to the grocery store to order ice cream. So I drove to the grocery store to get ice cream at 25 below. And she's looking at my shoes and she's saying, you're wearing tennis shoes. I said, yeah, I'm not going to lace up the galoshes. It takes a minute. It takes a store to get ice cream. It was 25 below, and she's looking at my shoes, and she's saying, you're wearing tennis shoes. I said, yeah, I'm not going to lace up the galoshes. It takes a minute. It takes a minute to get them on. I'm just going eight blocks, for heaven's sakes.

But I still took enough stuff to make sure that if I did have car trouble on the way there, I wouldn't die. Now, everybody has that neighborhood. You don't want to drive through there because if your car breaks down, you die. Essentially, Minnesota is just all that neighborhood when it gets that close. We're all just that part of town where you're probably going to die if you get stranded. So, you know, you learn, you live, you compensate. I call my dad in Fargo, and it's colder in Fargo. Colder in Fargo.

Windier, too, I imagine. Am I right about that? Not a tree between Fargo and the border to keep the wind away. And my dad says he goes to the mall every day and he walks around the mall with the rest of the seniors. It's their morning exercise. At age? We'll get to that in a second. Before the stores even open.

So my dad goes in there and he said, I went over to my table where everybody meets for coffee and I said, my throat hurts. And they said, Ralph, what's the matter? Are you coming down with something? He said, no, I just had to swallow my pride because I'm not going to be walking outside today. And they all laughed. And I said, wait a minute. Hold on, dad. When you go to the mall and walk around, you walk around the outside of the mall? He said, yeah. I said, when it was 15, man was 15 below. You walked around outside and he said, yes. He said,

it's the manly thing to do. Wonderful. He's half joking. He says, it keeps, keeps you going, keeps you alive. And I'm so I'm,

so he's feeling a little, you know, abashed that it's 35 bleeping degrees below zero, and he's got to say, you know what? I'm drawing the line. I'm not walking around outside the mall today. So I asked. I said, did you go to work today? He said, yeah, well, I went to work, and I had to drive a couple of pallets of oil out of town.

So I imagine that my dad got the oil out of the drums, the 64-, the 64 gallon drums and got them out of the house and put them on the Tommy lifts and got them in the truck and drove somewhere and got them off. He's 92 and a half years old. So if anybody wants the secret to long life, the good news is that if you walk around outside of a mall when it's 15 below, it, it hardens you up. The bad news is that you got to be in Fargo to do it.

He's lived his whole life in Fargo, except for a stint, of course, in the Caribbean and the Pacific during that pesky, unfortunate series of events in the early 40s. But Elizabeth Warren says that, quote here, her tweet, our children and grandchildren should grow up in a world where they can breathe the air and drink the water, which I think is really staking out a bold position right there. And it puts in stark relief all of those of us on the right who don't wish those things.

And she said, and to go outside without risking their lives in extreme temperatures. It's time to protect our planet and pass a new green deal, which would have gotten rid of everything that kept us from dying up here. Can anybody explain to me how we can survive in these temperatures without fossil fuels? Well, I mean, we're not all your dad. I need fossil fuels.

Yeah, right. Now you're right. What they want is solar and wind to replace natural gas, right? Because natural gas is a fossil fuel. Am I right so far? Yes. Okay, so we have to replace the physical plant of everybody's house up here.

Somebody has to pay for taking out every furnace and replacing in radium. Billionaires. Billionaires will do it. That's right. The 70% or 90% tax, it'll take care of it. Don't worry. Actually, you're not rich in the first place. You probably have too much money in the first place.

You're the one who needs to be taxed by everybody's standards. Anything else, gentlemen, before we go? Because I have been obsessively tidying up this swag room while we talked. Okay. I'm just going to come back from L.A. and wonder who the hell got rid of this nice mess. I have an assignment for you, James. I have an assignment for you. Yes, sir.

I would like you either to read the book or watch the TV show, and I want to see in writing, I want to see what James Lilacs does in prose in response to Marie Kondo. Oh. Well, if you read my site, Peter, you would know. You've already done Marie Kondo. Oh. Well, if you read my site, Peter, you would know. You've already done Marie Kondo? What I did was the dispute. The problem is you write faster than I can read. I can't keep up. The debate that erupted on the web when she was advising people to get rid of books.

Right. The people who filed completely freaked out because everybody should live in a place where there are tottering stacks of books on every chair, silverfish scuttling everywhere. I agree. Yes? I agree. Yeah. Oh, you agree that that's how people should live like that with that disorder? I agree that's how people should live.

I absolutely agree. I don't think that piles of books is great. A permanent clutter cap. Yep. If people want to, then they should. No problem. But as the years go by, I look at my shelves and I look at the books and I say, I don't know you anymore. It's not me.

It's you. Whatever impact you made is gone. I'm probably not going to read Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke ever again. So it's going out. And I have cleaned out so many books, put so many more on Kindles and reduced myself down to books about architecture and pop culture and the rest of them. And they're almost all picture books, which is interesting itself. But they're reference books. No, I'm not going to keep the collected Tom Clancy that I bought in the early 80s.

No, no, absolutely not. The only thing that I refused to throw out were some Anthony Burgess paperbacks, which they don't make anymore. They're all out of print. One of the greatest authors of the later 20th century and nearly everything he's done is out of print, waiting to come back,

but it's gone. And I feel like these are holy relics. It's like the Dead Sea Scrolls of 20th century great British literature. And I've got them and I can't, nobody else can tell me

where to find them. So no. Marie, you've come to this condo. Thank you very much. These, these spark joy. Right here. All no. Marie, you're cutting this condo. Thank you very much. These. These spark joy. Right here. These little guys.

All right. Well, if we spark joy, go to Ricochet.com and, you know, join. Be a member. Right, guys? That'd be nice. And go to Quip.com. And also select quotes. And, of course, the pearl flowers.

Valentine's Day is coming up. You've got to do that. Go to iTunes, et cetera. Leave a review, et cetera. Anything else I'm forgetting except to say next week, and it's been fun, and I hope it's warmer next week. Get me out of this godforsaken place. That wraps it up. That'll do.

That'll do. That'll do. See everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. I love you more than a paper truck. I love you more than shooting ducks. I love you more than a pool hall. I love you more than a paper jug I love you more than shooting ducks I love you more than a pool and a hall

But not as much as football I love you more than a Richard Bennett I love you more than spaghetti I love you more than meatballs But not as much as football I love you more than a day of hot I love you more than a lot in my butt I love you more than Montreal Now I don't know if you're good or not

I love you more than an ESPN I love you more than a drink of gin guitar solo It's the body Take me down They'll regret y'all Hang around For the one Can't be found Ricochet. Join the conversation.