The Ricochet Podcast - The Norman Conquests

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Only a very few guests warrant two segments on the Ricochet Podcast aka, America’s Most Trusted Podcast® and one of those people is the great Norman Podhoretz (around these parts, we call him “The Podfather). We talk to Norman (who’s a sprightly 89) about his recent conversion to a supporter of the President, the history of the Conservative movement, how he may have singlehandedly invented the... 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 you missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs.

Today we talk to Norman Podhortz, and we don't need anybody else. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast, but it's not any Ricochet Podcast. It's number 450. What a meaningless milestone, but a milestone nevertheless. We're happy to have made it with your help, and also, of course, the invaluable contributions of the contributions. They're founders, for heaven's sakes, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Hi, hello hello james how are you i couldn't be better i'm on the cusp of car buying which means i got to deal with odd millennial salesmen who know nothing about the passion of

cars it's talking about the internet has solved that yeah yeah you know internet millennials have ruined uh car dealerships i'm convinced of it i mean after dealing with some of these people who have no fellow feeling for them, have no ability to slap you on the back and flat. I went into the dealership and I, honest to God, told the kid, I said, I woke up this morning feeling like I wanted to be lied to and flattered, but since there's not a brothel

in my neighborhood, I thought I'd come to the car dealership. And he sort of stared at me like, I have no idea what you're talking about. What language do you use? We have bilingual staff here, sir. One of the old guys would have said, well, first let me sell you a car, sir, and then let me tell you where the brothel is. Well, exactly. I was talking to the kid.

I said, so how does it perform in snow? And he said, well, it has variable automatic variable continually adapting transmission that seeks the best possible option. He goes on and on with his technical stuff. And there's another big old salesman standing nearby. I looked at him and said, how does it handle in the snow? He says, fantastic. That's what I want to hear.

Here's my own stupid, obscure joke about a millennial car salesman. He tells you he's got to go text his manager. Yeah, exactly. When it comes to being lied to some people uh well uh lies lies tell me sweet little lies muller yesterday got up and said some stuff and people are wondering exactly why he surfed surfaced himself like this what was the point of this uh was he trying to restore his reputation uh what was the deal are we we going to ever hear from him again? Was this it?

And then he goes off and it's silence for the rest of his life from this guy? Okay, so I have a take on this, which is very loose. I haven't spoken, talked it out with anybody. And I make bold to lay it before you because I think Rob will jump all over it. So I make bold to say what I'm about to say. In my mind, all these, what, two and a half years now, I myself have been cutting Robert Mueller a lot of slack because so many people who've known him and worked with him over the years have said, this guy is a straight arrow. It's going to be thorough.

It'll be well written. It will solve the problem and he will display no bias whatsoever. And so he hires nothing but Democrats for his legal staff. Well, that's all right. He knows them well. They're going to do their job well. And if he finds that there was no collusion, so much the better that his staff was made i cut him slack on point after point after point and then he spoke for eight minutes yesterday and he's a hack he is a hack he's a very classy hack but he the idea that he would stand there and speak for eight minutes with one purpose in mind he already published the report it It's already been digested. Everybody's already read it and seen news reports about it. So why does he repeat? He, of course, stands there and talks for eight minutes for only one purpose, and that is to emphasize or spin the report the way he wants to. And the way he wants to is not the way of a professional and serious and clean prosecutor who will who will

say we made a decision not to prosecute that's the end of it instead he gives all this well we could we couldn't prosecute prosecute it was an anti-trump move and the guy is a hack and all and the other thing that came to me was oh my goodness john brennan was running cia he's crazy uh vicious clapper was running some other chunk of intelligence he really is a crazy person comey we know is this self-aggrandizing smug self-righteous and now it turns out that Robert Mueller, who looks like a straight arrow, is in fact a classy hack. And these are the people who have been in charge of American intelligence for roughly a decade now. I really, it was eight minutes, anodyne, boring, and I put down, stopped watching it, and I was just shocked. Rob, i think it changed your mind on trump you don't

like him anymore do you well i mean i kind of see peter's point um my problem with with all this is just the anguish it brings me when i find myself uh grasping to describe how i feel and discovering that how i feel is how you know a guy with a MAGA hat – Sean Hannity feels. I don't really want to feel like Sean Hannity feels, but it is – I don't think he's a hack. I mean I think he's a hack in the sense of he's a bureaucrat, and bureaucrats have a certain way of doing things and a certain way of thinking things. And I think he's a prosecutor, and prosecutors always – their default setting is prosecute. And I think he's a product of a very, very small – proportionally small Washington elite who know and like each other and are – remind each other all the time of how good and honest they are. That's probably what they say. Probably the first 20 minutes of any conversation between these the law and a bully and reckless, and he just wishes that guy wasn't president. And he found a whole bunch of things in there in Volume 2,

which if stretched and pulled and maybe, I don't know, it doesn't seem like anybody would ever prosecute that or put anybody in jail for that, but okay, fine. And he was frustrated by his inability to do so and is mad about it. And now he's mad because when the report came out, everyone's mad at him. And he's been spending the past 20 years, certainly the past two years, just loving the fact that everyone tells – everyone's talking about how great he is, and now they're not. And he has reverted to what every every washington bureaucrat eventually averts to and that's he's a political animal um and so i you know it's too it's too bad i would have liked to become and say everything you need to know is in the report if it is not it does not make you happy i apologize to your hurt hurt feelings but it's all there. The speech – Can I just – I'm sorry.

The point – I failed to make the central point, which is this. The most sacred tenet of American jurisprudence and indeed of Anglo-Saxon common law going back at least 800 years is simple. Innocent until proven guilty. Serious prosecutors either bring charges and make clear that there is a case for prosecution or they say nothing. And not only did the report, in effect, smear Trump, well, maybe he wasn't guilty,

but for sure he wasn't innocent. That's unserious. That's politics. Not only did the report do that, but Mueller took to national cameras yesterday before he disappears into the sunset. And, Lord, I hope he does disappear. He wanted to repeat that and make sure we all knew that he was not going to play the game of innocent until proven guilty. And that was – really, that was just disgusting.

He was suborning the most sacred tenet in our jurisprudence. He was also doing this incredibly childish thing of saying, well, you know, I couldn't, I would have, had I only had the authority, I would have, which is just ridiculous. And sort of beneath

an independent prosecutor, I thought, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when we were actually contemplating doing away with this position right it depends on who's president that's one you know whoever decides to do away with it but it does seem to me like either you uh either you i mean what i would do is this i would say that muller should have had it should have been an up or down vote there should be no muller report there should be no volume one there should be no volume two there should be simply an investigation that then is presented to him and he decides to prosecute or not and the only way you know what he's got in his report is if he files an indictment and it goes to court that seems to be the only fair way

to deal with all this stuff this won't be the last we hear from him there will be a book the speech that he gave yesterday was the trailer for the upcoming book and he'll be paid a lot of money for it and he probably won't think oh man now i'm going to cash out he will think that he's doing a great service to the republic by telling the true story and the money it's nice but it's incidental he's a patriot i'm sure that's what's going on in his mind but what he left the democrats with was this uh okay now what do we do? Because we got a lot of people on our side who really want to impeach. I was listening to NPR

this morning, and they were interviewing one of the 738 people running for president, I don't know, congressman, senator, Ohio, whatever, Ryan. And he was talking about the fact that the host asked him, how do you feel about impeachment? And he said, well, I'm a lot closer to it today than I was yesterday, which is a weaselly way of saying that I understand that the base is getting all head up and twitching. Now, the previous question that had come to him from the audience was somebody had gone through his voting record and found that this guy who calls himself a Democrat had voted 19 percent of the time with Donald Trump. And, you know, and Ryan says, you know, come on, stop clock twice a day. 19% of the time with Donald Trump. And Ryan says, come on, stop clock twice a day. We're talking farm bills, fentanyl prevention.

These are things that, get out of here. But if you have people who are so, the very fact that you aligned yourself even once to facilitate the orange man means that you are beyond the pale. And you'd best impeach. And it's not going to go anywhere. Trump pulled this little linguistic thing this morning where he said, it's a dirty word. Impeach. It's a dirty, filthy, horrible, slimy, viscous, you know, on and on word. Trying to soil the word so that those who are use it are sort of soiled by comparison, by contact with it. It's an interesting little strategy, if that's what it was.

Hey, you know, sometimes, however, the soil, the ickiness, the viscousness that you get when you pour out some Alpo into a bowl or something for your dog. Oh, God. You know, dogs love that stuff. They really do. And I mean, I feed my dog this stuff that Lord knows what's in it. It's just abattoir scrapings, frankly. And he'll wolf it down. It is. It sure is. And I give him the kibble, which he just loves. It's just abattoir scrapings, frankly. And he'll wolf it down. It is. And I give him

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for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Norman Podhoretz, the legendary longtime editor-in-chief of Commentary and one of the founders of neoconservativism, which he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. And around these parts, we call him the Podfather. He is not on Twitter, which makes two Podhortses who are not on Twitter. Mr. Podhortse, welcome back to the podcast. How are you today? Well, pretty good, let's say, compared to what might be.

Hey, Norman, Peter Robinson here. Of course we want to talk about Donald Trump. We want to get there. But you know what I'd like to do is go way back to establish your starting position. I can't think of anyone who's had a more fascinating political journey, and I would like to identify the point of departure. You grow up in Brooklyn. You're discovered as a brilliant kid. You study in cambridge you come

back you're a brilliant writer and editor in all of new york new york in the 50s is like this they know who the talent and what are your politics when you're up when you're a beautiful bright young man in new york in the 50s well i was what they used to call a Cold War liberal at that point. And all of that lost to us. You have to explain that to us. Well, it's hard to imagine from today's perspective where there is no such animal, but there was a substantial segment of the liberal community in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, that was anti-communist and supported the resistance of Soviet expansionism,

as we called it. And in many cases, we people in that category were more fervently anti-communist and anti-Soviet than almost anybody on the right, oddly enough. So in those days, it would have been, you would have preferred Adlai Stevenson to Dwight Eisenhower? Yes. Oh, yes. Okay. And John Kennedy would have been a kind of heroic dream come true figure, or not quite? Well, I was never taken by the Kennedy mystique and down deep. I mean, I attacked the Kennedy administration from the right, actually, quite consistently. So although I was thought to be, I was rightly thought to be on the left.

And I can't describe this without bragging, although I'm not famous for my humility anyway. Commentary had become earlier. I took over in 1960 and I quickly turned it into the leading intellectual, sophisticated intellectual spokesman for what was not yet known as the New Left, but those tendencies that matured into the New Left um uh just to give you an idea i mean the port you're on statement the founding you know the declaration of independence of the students for democratic society which basically started the whole left new left movement right uh was written by tom hayden and he sent it to me for publication uh the reason he sent it to me was that a commentary was the place to publish such a thing then,

and I turned it down because I thought it was intellectually callow. And in that case, intellectual standards trumped, no pun intended, political views. Again, a position that is almost incomprehensible to most people today. Wait, Norman, it's Rob. I'm going to jump in here for one minute. That means that by turning Tom Hayden down, you forced him to become a hippie

and you are responsible, almost single-handedly, for the late 60s chaos. Well, I would love to claim credit for that, but I fear that I was not, I didn't have enough power to do that. I mean, he, after all, married Jane Fonda, so he didn't need me to become a hippie. Okay, all right. You're exonerated on that one count. I got another question, though. I mean, you described, describing the left, the Cold War left, and that is economically, you should stop me if I'm wrong, economically liberal, national security hawk,

probably more traditional values, if that even meant anything back then. Yeah, exactly. Isn't that, have you just described, well, have you just described a Trump voter? I mean, isn't that who? Well, yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, isn't that who? Well, it's fascinating. I mean, the Trump voter, I think, is a mutation of that the Trump voter began, let's say, as the Reagan Democrat was the first manifestation, and the Reagan Democrat was was an outgrowth of Cold War liberalism, actually. Neoconservatism grew out of the revulsion against what was going on on the left by the late 60s.

Although I had voted for Carter, I'm ashamed to say, in 1986, because he was a graduate of Annapolis. So I figured he must be a hawk. But I did vote for Reagan in 1980. And that was after meeting Carter. A bunch of us were converted like within five minutes to Reagan. So to go back to where the evolution of Trumpism, I think that

mixture that you described very well is what created the Trump voter. But things have changed and some of the economic dogmas that were essential even to Cold War liberals no longer obtain. tariffs, which were work of the devil to us in the early 60s, have become thinkable. I mean, Trump has upset everything. Donald Trump has broken up that old gang of mine. Norman, Peter here one more time. You described your, I can't remember which book.

Maybe – I don't remember which book. But you described your journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan as one of the longest journeys in the world. Trump moves from – Making it. Making it. Okay, making it. Trump – a great book, by the way. Anybody who hasn't read that book and particularly kids read making it um so trump moves from queens to

manhattan and here's one thing that i can't figure out about him i grew up in upstate new york and i look at manhattan as this glittering capital all my all my adolescence and trump had trump is comes from a family of wealth he goes to an an Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania. He has every opportunity to turn himself into a Manhattan sophisticate, to buy a townhouse and have it beautifully decorated and start holding dinners and and he doesn't do it he has plenty of money he never stops talking about how much money he has but he remains i i don't this sounds so condescending but he remains a vulgarian uh and proudly so what's going on with this guy nicole well i i was asked that very question in an interview I did recently with the Claremont Review, and I said he has, I don't know how or why, but he has a blue-collar sensibility despite the fact that he was rich and grew up in Queens.

And I also said and believe that the journey from Queens to Manhattan for somebody in the real estate business or what a lot of the old Jews in that business called real estate Knicks, to go from being a Queens real estate Knick, which is, you know, AAA baseball, let's say, into the major leagues of Manhattan is a very long journey. And the fact that Trump was able to operate as successfully as he did in that world, which involved, among other things, learning how to deal with the mafia and with unions and with corrupt city governments and so on, and do so successfully,

took a certain kind of temperament that was totally alien to the glitterati of Manhattan. And I have something of that myself, because I never lost touch with my own roots in Brooklyn as a street kid. I lived a double life in Brooklyn. I was very good in school, and I associated with all the bums after school. My parents did not know this and would have been horrified. But that the boys, as we call them, and I found that reinforced when I went into the Army

just towards the end of the Korean War. As I've sometimes said, I fell in love with Americans. I hadn't known, you know, I knew Brooklynites. And I literally fell in love with Americans because everyone from everywhere was in the Army then. There was still conscription.

And these guys were, they were wonderful in every possible way, irreverent, funny, loyal as hell to each other. And they seemed to me just the best people I'd ever known. And I still feel that way, although I'm no longer in touch with such people, being an aged recluse. But that in the end had more to do with my own political evolution than anything. I think Trump in his own way has something of that in him, in his bones.

He doesn't care about theory. He appeared on the world as a Buchananite. He was an isolationist, a protectionist, and a nativist. He never used those words, but that's what he was. Then he gets into office, and

everything he does is the opposite of those positions. Why does he do it? Not because he's got any ideological reason to. I think he does it because he wants to win, and he does what he thinks is necessary in order to win. And winning also means restoring the greatness of America, which, you know, the left these days, frankly, anti-America.

They hate America. I think the glitterati of Manhattan hate him because he puts ketchup on steak, and that appalls their instincts at a very basic level. Hey, if you want ketchup on your steak, have ketchup on your steak. It's what you want. It's what you want to eat. Maybe you've had a long day at work or a tough day at school, or you're still stuck at the office.

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And our thanks to DoorDash for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Norman, this is James Lalix in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the center of the continent where pragmatic liberalism still can be found. But you were talking... My wife comes from Minnesota. So, John, always reminds me, and give her our kindest regards to your family

connections here. Come on, visit us sometimes. It's a beautiful place. Here's the thing. When you mentioned before the anti-Americanism, this is what is and Tom Hayden, this is what's mystifying. The boomers who grew up in peace and prosperity turned on America and love of America that you'd think if anybody had a reason to turn their back on America, it would be these people who suffered probation. But it was those of your generation who loved it more. What did it? What turned the boomers into the spoiled little ungrateful brats that some of us think they are?

Our great universities is what did it. I mean, they were educated. To use an analogy I've often used, it was as though a warrior society would send all its children to a pacifist monk to be educated. And the education that was given, I don't know when it would start, mid-60s maybe, America seen through the eyes of Howard Zinn,

a fellow Brownzillian from Brooklyn who was, for all practical purposes, a communist and whose history of America still sells about 130,000 copies a year and is used in practically every school in America. That's just one example. And the capitulation of the universities, the professoriates, the administrators, who were not necessarily themselves anti-America, but the capitulation to that tendency, which began to grow in the 60s, partly because of Vietnam, partly because of the racial riots that seemed to prove that we had no answer to racial inequality or racism, and poverty. There were still poor people in the richest country in the history of the world. So to their eyes, these were all signs of the fundamental evils of

the society as compared to what? As compared to nothing, as compared to some utopian delusion. You know, the left of the 30s, which is mainly communist, had a positive alternative, or what they thought was a positive alternative, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was good, America was bad. You turn America into the Soviet Union had been largely discredited by then. So one day it was Mao, and the next day it was Castro, and the next day it was Zimbabwe, anything but America. And the real passion, and that's still true of the left, in my opinion, is to destroy the fundamental pillars on which the American sociopolitical system rests.

And out of that, whatever came out of that would be better than what was. And the notion that, which I have tried very hard in the latter part of my life to emphasize that not only is the United States not bad, the United States is one of the great civilizations in the history of the world. I mean, it is to politics and society what Athens was to tragedy, what 19th century Russia was to the novel. We had a society, and still do, in which there is more freedom, more prosperity, more widely shared than in any society known to human history. And this is something to be celebrated and to be grateful for.

And, of course, the besetting sin of the left, and I include the whole Democratic Party in this, is ingratitude. Bill Buckley said that once, I think, and he was right. Norman, Peter here. I've got a couple questions. Is this a fair summary of the present moment that the Democratic candidates

for president and the leaders of the party in Congress, if they love America, what they love is an abstraction. They love some notion of what the country could be if only they were allowed to work on it for another decade or two. Whereas Donald Trump, whatever we make of the tweets

and the vote, whatever we make of it, Donald Trump loves the country as it is. Absolutely. And no question about it. After all, you know, Obama was telling the truth when he said just before the election that made him president, we're five days away from a fundamental transformation of America. Right. And his wife said the only time she was ever proud of America is the day her husband was inaugurated. Oh, wow. And they meant it.

So Norman, what... Eric Holder more recently said, when was it ever great? Right, right. Okay, my second question, and then I know Rob wants to come in. We'd actually like to keep you for 10 hours, but we might start to lose the audience after hour three or so. So here's the second question. There are now rumblings about mounting a Republican primary challenge to Trump. There is a strain, even at this moment, of never Trumpers. But let's put it this way. And there these are many of, highly sophisticated, intellectually accomplished.

So let's name one whom I know, you have known since he was a boy, and whose father was one of your best friends and intellectual comrades as a neoconservative. And, of course, the father was the late Irving Kristol, and the son is Bill Kristol. If you had a conversation with bill what would you say to him and bill is of course one of the leading never trumpers bill's bill's argument is look this man is damaging our discourse he's damaging the country with this vulgarity narcissism he's unserious it's making our politics unserious how does norman podhoritz handle that argument i would say to him i don't know how it happened, Bill, but you've lost your mind. Wow.

What you see when you look at Trump is not what is actually there. You don't see what he has accomplished as president, the economy, the lowest rate of employment among minorities, the restoration of dignity to what you yourself and especially your mother, Gertrude Hill Farm, lauded as middle class values, bourgeois values, if you like. And all you can see is basically aesthetic deformations. Now, what I see when I look at Trump is an unworthy vehicle sent to us by God to save us from the hordes of America haters who are trying to take over. And the fact that he's an unworthy vehicle is not unprecedented. Even King David, the greatest hero of the Jewish people, had a guy killed so he could sleep with his wife, among other things he did. But that's what, I mean, Trump is, I think, this doesn't sound blasphemous, doing the Lord's work.

Well, it does, actually. Okay. So that's the Trump I see. The Trump of the tweets is the political Trump. It's the way he talks to his fellow, let's say, blue-collar Americans. And it's hard to reconcile the two sometimes because he's a totally new phenomenon. And I think that he, as a leader, and the people who follow him are the only obstacle, the only obstacle to the triumph of the America haters.

You asked me what they believe in and all. I think they think that the Constitution is unconstitutional. I mean, that's what they think. So, go ahead. Well, I was going to ask you, I guess I'm the closest thing we have on this podcast to Bill Kristol, although I'm not quite so

vehement. I'm just more sort of anguished, and I fully, fully accept that a good part of my, I guess, hesitation or resistance to Trump is snobbery. Really, I mean, I just thought maybe that's – Thou hast said it.

Yeah, and I think a good – and there's a part of it that I think is just pure – the differences that I would have with any – with President X doing what he's doing. I don't think his policy in China is right. I think his policy in North Korea is reckless. I think these tariffs are silly and I think that we're – in a way, we're slipping backwards into an idea that command economy is a good one. All right, all that said, it does seem to me that snobbery is a part here. And as I said, I'm a prime example of that and the old you know political shibboleth is that you vote for the guy or woman i guess that you want to have a beer with and my and i just want to you i'm working on a different theory i have sort of a

slightly amended version i'd like your reaction to that. Actually, the most successful politicians and certainly the successful presidential candidate is somebody that you think would like to have a beer with you. In a sense, it's somebody who's not a snob, somebody who isn't worried that you're going to – that the beer is not going to be good or that we're going to have nothing to talk about. I mean, there was never more. And what's strange is there was never more bold relief of that than in 2016, where we had a woman who, you know, she did not want to have a beer with you. And you had a guy who doesn't even drink who you think would sit down, have a Diet Coke with you or Big Mac or like he's got no problem with that. And yet that was a very, very, very, very, very close election. In fact, the president lost significant votes in the popular vote. So what do you attribute that to?

If you say he's so new, why is his political effect not so sweeping? Well, again, I agree with you, by the way. Snobbery is a very large part of the anti-Trump sentiment, especially among my old former neocon friends, who are not so friendly to me anymore. But I think that it comes back to what I call the blue-collar sensibility. Yes, Trump would like to have a Diet Coke with you and would like to shoot the breeze with you. He identifies with you and not with the people who look down upon you

and despise you as riffraff. I don't know how it happened that Trump developed into such a person, but he did, and he remains such a person. And I think that's a very large part of his political appeal. So, you know, I wrote, I gave this interview in which I praised him a lot, and I received a handwritten note from him saying, Norman, thank you, a great honor, and he underscored the word honor. And I thought to myself, well, he probably means it because hardly anybody like me or, you know, who comes from that world has had a good word to say about him.

And it moved him enough to write a handwritten note of thanks. So it's just another sign of the complexity of this character, I think. Norman, 2020. Is he going to win, win big? Will there be a kind of crystallization? Rob just talked about how narrow it was. Will there be a crystallization among ordinary Americans? You know what?

For all his faults, he's our guy. Well, I think so, and I hope so, and I don't see anyone among those 23 Democrats wanting to run against him. I don't see who could beat him, but who knows? I mean, who knows what could happen between now and 2020? I do know this, that if the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, comes back into power, the what I call the pillars on which this great

socio-political system rests and they may very well have the power to do it so I just think we all ought to pray that he will win because the alternative is

just for me too horrible to contemplate. And I say this as someone who grew up as a Democrat and, you know, was a Democrat well into my 30s. But what's happened to that party is one of the great political tragedies, in my opinion, that we've witnessed. When McGovern took over, some of us started an organization called Coalition for a Democratic Majority, hoping to win the party back from McGovern. And there was still some hope. There was Scoop Jackson, there was Pat Moynihan,

there were the unions, there was the Catholic Church, and there was some reason to think you could succeed in this venture. Well, not only did we fail despite all our efforts, but things metastasized to a point that even the worst Cassandra, I don't say Jeremiah because Jeremiah has been given a bum bum rap, but it's Cassandra. I could not have imagined it would get this bad, and I think it may get worse.

So that's what 2020 means. I think it's the culminating battle of the war. And if Trump and we who support Trump don't win it, To quote Jefferson on slavery, I fear for my country when I consider that God is just. Well, take heart, Norman, because if Joe Biden wins, that means there'll be immediate investigation into his son's Ukrainian connections, and that means the Democrats will insist on the abolition of the special prosecutor, and we'll all be better off.

Thank you so much for joining us today, sir. Thanks, Norman. Well, thank you, guys. It's a pleasure. We'll talk to you down the road. Bye-bye. Great. Bye. And, of course, you know, he's not on Twitter, which would be fun to see him on Twitter. We miss John on Twitter from time to time, and we really do. I think he's

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And our thanks to Ancestry.com for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. So John Cleese got in trouble this week. Anybody follow that? I know, but I'm interested. John Cleese, who I love, from Monty Python, of course, tweeted out that London felt less like an English, didn't feel like an English city anymore. He was absolutely hammered about this by people who were complaining that, well, what you don't mean is that you don't mean it was the old England of your childhood, which he's responded to quite sensibly, well, yes. And it's interesting because Cleese and all the rest of the Monty Python guys, whom I love, made their bones, made their comedic name by tearing down the old establishment,

by making fun and poking ridicule at the stuffy old guys, right? I mean, Graham Chapman, a man on the street, bewhiskered with a bowler hat saying, well, basically, as a member of the conservative party, I'm going to say, well, basically, and foam over the mouth until I fall over backwards. Anything old was to be poked at and laughed and ridiculed, and they did a great job of it, but at the end of it,

the cultural rubble, there's nothing that comes out of that except weeds. So now he's left, actually, and he tweeted back today that it might interest those people who seem to think my remarks about London are racist as opposed to culturalist. He notes that he spends time in Nevis in the Caribbean. Nevis has excellent racial relations, a very well-educated population, no sign of political correctness. He's now canceled, though.

He's canceled because he has rejected what some people call an empty, strange city. I mean, I still love London, but I haven't the cultural reference that he does. So he's another icon to be shoveled into the heap. I guess we're going to miss him. What do you mean? Cancel? You mean Twitter has blocked him or? No, no. It cancels his term just saying that this person is no longer. Oh, well, I mean, I don't think at this point it must matter to him. On the other hand, it is hilarious that he's being canceled, if that's what's happening, for saying a fairly middle-of-the-road thing about London, which is, in fact, unrecognizable from the way it was in the early 70s. I mean, it's incredibly – if you like that kind of thing, it's pretty diverse. I mean, there's Russian oligarchs, and there's Saudi ol oligarchs and there's probably a few EU oligarchs there.

There are tons of oligarchs. More oligarchs than – the English used to be the oligarchs and now it's the foreigners coming back. But on the other hand, his great masterpiece – in fact, I think one of the finest television shows ever was Fawlty Towers. Right. And he managed to take to import what is essentially a pure American form, the situation comedy, and turned it into, I think, 12 or 13, almost perfect, each episode almost perfect. Highbrow, lowbrow, farce, all wrapped into one.

It was an extraordinary, extraordinary burst of creativity i don't think that television's ever seen anything quite so intensely brilliant you know in a very short burst he had a heart attack i think after finishing the the 12 or 13 because he or the or the 401 because he couldn't do it anymore it was just too exhausting and that was had i mean if you want to – cancel him for racism. Cancel him for that show. He had a Spanish waiter named Manuel who was a fool, and he kept pushing him and knocking him against the wall and saying Manuel. And then he would turn to some sort of – don't worry about him. He's from Barcelona, and he would say it with such dripping contempt.

And the character he played, of course, was a total racist. And then they had an Irish character, the Irish contractor, who was a drunk and a cheat. It was insanely great, right? I mean, cancel John Cleese for his masterpiece. Don't cancel him for just some offhand statement. Well, when it comes to oligarchs coming to a place and transforming it, the New York Times gave us a little bombshell today. Apparently there are aliens. Government admits – well, at least the government admits that there's stuff on film that they really can't explain.

These films have been out there for a couple of years, and I was surprised to see the Times get on the story. But the story seemed to be, we don't know what this stuff is, and it's remarkably conforming to the ideas of what UFOs ought to be able to do. Go very, very fast. Stop. Change direction immediately. No emissions. Hover. What do you guys make of that story? I know Peter believes it's absolute nonsense and there's probably some perfectly good –

it's probably what we're seeing is that some tic-tac that was spat out of a cannon just as a lark on some ship somewhere and the pilots were fooled by it. But not necessarily. I sort of subscribe to the Ross Dowdett position. Ross wasn't talking about UFOs, but he put up a tweet the other day. He was at some sophisticated dinner and he asked for a show of hands of how many people believe in ghosts. And he tweeted that a lady who was seated near him said well i don't believe in them but of course i have seen one and ross's point ross makes this is one of ross's themes that pops up in his writing from time to time there is a lot more

going on out there than fits our usual view of the world so i don't know what's happening up in the skies i but i wouldn't rule it out but uh let's see what rob has to rob rob will find it well i don't know i i know i i what i love about the all the ufo stories i don't know whether they exist or they don't exist or they're here they're not here um or they're lizard people or i don't know all that stuff is these are fun things to think about because – Don't talk about the lizard people. You're in trouble if you talk about the lizard people. Well, they don't exist.

They're underground. They're humanoids. They've taken over everything. I would say – There's a seam in the back where you can see the zipper. Right. What I love about UFO stuff is that it's always predicated on a some kind of government conspiracy which itself is predicated on this idea that they don't want you to know because of course if we knew there was extraterrestrial

life we'd all freak out and what i love about that is that it is absolutely manifestly untrue that we would all freak out in fact we probably most people think that there is so they they wouldn't freak out i think they'd freak out if they learned that we were alone incontrovertibly that the idea that any of this stuff needs to be hidden from us is like this weird feverish paranoid fantasy that that that the ufo kind of constellation just happens to fit in i mean just happens to fit into it now so we talk about it in the same way i think um that you know you uh that almost all conspiracies government conspiracies are are based on uh an assumption about the public that doesn't doesn't really comport with reality well here's here's my favorite sentence from the time story

quote the program this is to tape ufos in. The program, which began in 2007 and was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time, was officially shut down in 2012 when the money dried up. Even in a story about aliens, the New York Times says we need more government spending. Unbelievable. I love the idea. It's like first you think harry reed uh uh you know what a nut and then you're like no no that was smart harry reed was doing good for his constituents he's got a lot of crackpot weirdos living in nevada who's they are 51 and they see ufos all the time so bring a little bacon home spread it around have the invest have the

the investigation headquartered in some benighted place in Nevada. And you're basically – it's the equivalent of the Robert Byrd turnpike in West Virginia. Just do it. Shoring up his numbers in Pahrumpf. What I love about the films though is if you look at every one of the government – the conspiracy things, they always start with the pilots seeing something. And the pilots are hushed and the pilots are in awe and the pilots are, did you see that? You know, there's this very great drama that attends to it. If you look at the films and listen to them, the pilots are hooting their heads off. They're laughing at this thing. I mean, they're really having a great time. They can't

figure out what it is, and there's no terror in their voices whatsoever. But the reason that the conspiracy exists, supposedly, is because the government is in league with them, which, again, is interesting. So they're either in league with them to get technology that they don't want us to know about or they're in league with them because they're actually going to take over. And the government wants to make sure that they can keep us all quiet until this happens. Oh, it's nonsense. It's always that, right. It's all that and i know i was gonna say the other there's the other thing you see in movies that this which is essentially the same kind of thing is this kind of lazy not paying attention to the world is um you know when they do these batman movies or any kind of dystopic

metropolitan movies set in cities the cities are always these horrible places with all sorts of like yes crying and grunt and it's all you know new y York is such a cesspool. New York is in fact one of the safest cities in the country. Chicago is safe too except in certain neighborhoods. Baltimore is safe except in certain neighborhoods. The idea that you are missing the story. The story isn't that the cities have become dystopic crime dens. The story is that certain parts of the city administ administrated in a certain way, have become that way.

The story isn't that people would freak out if they found that there were UFOs here. The story, more interesting story, is how they would actually react. I'd love to see the movie about what would really the matter-of-fact, day-to-day, quotidian events that took place after aliens came here that'd be interesting well you watch or read something called childhood's end which is a a book about the aliens come down and reveal themselves and they're pretty much going to take care of us and do things nicely for us the problem is that they're seven feet tall

they have horns cloven hoofs and tails, which is initially a bit of a PR problem. But it turns out they've been here before, and that's where that came from, etc. I mean, a lot of science fiction writers have taken a look at this. But you're right, Rob. I mean, if we found out that there was some concerted effort to study us and get in touch with us, the mind goes to the close encounters deal, where they're going to come down, and they're going to be glowing and happy and we're all going to get along and we've been introduced now to a whole brand new way that civilization can orient itself to the cosmos.

And that would be fascinating. A lot of us would fail the opportunity. A lot of us would walk right up to it. It would change society, not day to day, but it would change societies a lot. If there's something else going on, though, it's entirely possible that whatever we've been seeing for the last 50, 60 years are joyriders. You know, guys who popped out of another – used a wormhole to get over here and they're just flying around and having fun and there's nothing to it whatsoever. They're teens. That's what they're – Reckless teens. They're millennials.

They're millennials. Millennials are ruining alien invasion. Or they're all lost drones from some Amazon of another civilization that just got the wrong address and they're flying over there. To me, just as my taste, I'm more interested in stories that take a large event. A big event. Big events happen. But deal with it the way they really kind of unfold, which is like, okay. By week three, everybody's like, okay, well okay well i guess we got to find a place we got to find a

special kind of gruel for the aliens they got to eat right they own this group all that stuff like they live that they live what was the one they well they live is about no no but it was the one with uh with uh well with kyle mclaughlin and um or no no, no, the aliens. I forget. There was a great old sci-fi movie about aliens who came to Earth and this. What happens? Some of them join the police force and some of them and they're kind of a minority. Alienation.

Great picture. And there's another great one. I know we should wrap this up. I'm sorry. I know you're going with a South African director, right? That South African movie, which is really good. Yeah, what's that? I haven't seen that. Sector 54 or something like that, or Sector 13.

I mean, essentially, they're here, they're stuck in favelas, and there's a big, huge ship that's just sitting over the city for a long time, and people get used to it. That's the thing. People get used to these things. I mean, if Arrival, which I thought was a fascinating movie, just in the difficulties of communicating with other species and the rest of it, if one of those things, those ships just appeared in the edge of your town,

it would be terrifying. And then after a year, it would be, you know, one year later, what have we learned? And then after five, it would be, hey, remember when all of these things, no matter how strange they are, get integrated and normal. Yeah, I kind of like their smell, you know, it's actually not bad. The food they eat, it's actually not bad. They do restaurants like, oh, no, this is the you don't want to go to this one. They go to the authentic alien restaurant. Right. That's it. And, you know, there's another version of this, which I will recommend to people, is a bbc series or british series i forget it was called um under the skin and it took that same kind of idea that same point of view of these we're talking about

these giant cataclysmic events you know these movies are about zombies or eat ets coming and they do a zombie it's a zombie picture but it's what would really kind of happen if there were zombies in britain there would be a period of unrest and then they would figure out a way to cure the zombies and the zombies would be cured and they would be not zombies anymore they would they would go back to their families and it would be how weird would that be as if your kid who uh in this story is a teen who committed suicide is a zombie is cured and then comes back to his family and it seems outlandish but the first three four episodes of the movie or the show are fantastic the scene where he comes back to his

parents is incredibly heartbreaking even though it's you know it's it's weird right it's like but it's it's just it takes place in the sort of the day-to-day world what would really happen they'd figure it out and then we'd have to to just go on. It sounds like a metaphor for college. The kid goes away, comes back. One of the things that I – It's a weird political twist to this. I know I'm going too far, but I just want to – if you can find it, you should get it. You should watch.

It's a weird political twist in the end because then – because the zombies, they're still zombies, but they give them makeup and fake eyes to little contact lenses so they can fit in. Because there's a lot of residual anger about what the zombies did you know even though they were sick they ate brains um uh and so and so this guy this one kid he's got this friend and she's this girl and she's met he met her in the you know they call it um um partial death syndrome pds and this girl uh in the in the show she suddenly decides why why are we walking around like we're ashamed of being zombies? I'm not going to wear the makeup anymore. I'm not going to wear the contact lenses. I don't care.

And then she suddenly says, I'm not going to take my medicine. Maybe I really – maybe my true self is a zombie and you're just going to have to deal with it. And it's sort of interesting because that also would happen. So I don't know. The things that would really happen are things that interest me i have a response to that which i'll say in just a second but first i have to tell you that the podcast was brought to you by ancestry.com door dash and the farmer's dog support them for supporting us great dog food fascinating tales about your past and great food for you coming right to your door if you enjoyed the show you can check out the thing in the podcast bingo here where i tell you to go to itunes and give us a new review five stars if you wouldn't mind and that helps other listeners discover us which helps the show

going and of course what also helps us going is money if you go to ricochet and join up at any of the member levels you will be amply rewarded with access to the member feed which is fun i'll leave with this one of the things that i liked about Star Trek was that in the early years, according to the series Enterprise, there was a movement among people to not do this, to not go out there and talk to these people. And you can kind of see their point. It's like, well, this is very interesting. We get lots of food with gawk and worms and blood wine and that's great cultural

horizons are broadened but we're having spheres from other dimensions come here and saw florida off we got borgs swarming all over the place they're always coming here to kick our ass always we we got some slim jim with a soccer ball and wandered over and destroyed the weather because he was looking for the whales really what, what's in this for us? And it's oddly isolationist. And there would be that. There would be completely sensible, intellectual people who say this is not in our best interest. But as you say, we get used to anything.

The arrival ship sits on the side of your town for five years. Everyone eventually acclimates, which is why in 2020, you'll see Rob Long in a MAGA hat. I'm James Lyle. This has been the Ricochet Podcast number 415. We'll see you guys next week. Next week, boys. Thank you. Ricochet. Join the conversation. James Lilacs, Rob Long, and Peter Robinson.

Norman, how are you? Hi, Peter. I recognize your voice. Ah, good. All right. Considering that I'm 89, I'm in reasonably good shape. Let's put it that way. I consider this Act 5. Scene 2, maybe.