TRIGGERnometry - Andrew Sullivan: “America Is on the Edge of Violence”

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Andrew Sullivan is a British-American political commentator and author. A former editor of The New Republic, he is the author or editor of six books. He started a political blog, The Daily Dish, in 2000, and eventually moved his blog to platforms such as Time, The Atlantic and The Daily Beast. After a spell at New York magazine, he ultimately launched his Substack newsletter, The Weekly Dish, in July 2020: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/ SPONSORED BY: BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/trigger/ - get 10% off your first month, and get on your way to being your best self. SPONSORED BY: ExpressVPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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People showing up in mass at public demonstrations is a very scary fact. People showing up at people's homes, invading people's private spaces for political reasons. That's a very alarming fact. These are signs that liberal democracy is becoming extinct. Andrew, you still sound optimistic about this country. And there's people who are not. Why are you optimistic? I'm not optimistic. I have hope. You have hope.

There is a distinction between those two. The First Amendment means that at some point, unlike you guys, we will always have the right to air criticism of whatever. is happening, which to my mind is the only real guarantee of preventing disaster. For the last, however many elections, I look at the candidates which have been presented to us by both left and right and go, is this really the best America has to offer? You're on the right. You're going to vote for a left winger over Trump? Yes.

And you're going to someone... If that's the option. Andrew Sullivan, welcome to Trigonometry. Welcome back. Thank you. Welcome to Washington, D.C. Thank you. We're all in a very good mood. We are. It's beautiful out there. I mean, it's a lot of pollen. Yeah.

It's a sort of arboreal buccarchy out there today. It certainly is. Told you is in a good mood. So having clean my eyes, I'm very happy to be here. It's great to have you on, man. Listen, one of the things we wanted to talk to you about is we've been here for, this is probably our second trip. We've been here for about a week.

And it's always interesting coming because you see the media coverage and then you see reality and they don't always necessarily match up. And you are still British. We've been told you still eat the crappy British food even while you're here. I prefer it actually. You prefer it, right. So you're true to your roots. What do you see?

What's going on in America? Tell us. Educate us. Educate our audience. I think we're in acute case of acute cultural and political tribalization and polarization. And this is a banal fact and it's something everyone says. But then when you see the society a team, to actually resolve any issues, you find it in complete crisis.

And the democracy and the institutions that we set up seem to be struggling to achieve any kind of compromise on things that could actually work. So we're even, I think, going to face the possibility of, you know, a debt default, not because anybody thinks it's a good idea, but because we simply can't compromise. And that worries me. It worries me for many different reasons. and it's accompanied by a shift in the public discourse and in the culture in which the very epistemology

in many ways of liberal democracy have disappeared. The epistemology of being just an individual person having a view in the world, regardless of your position in the culture, the notion that there is something other than power, that there are things like truth and justice alongside power. And I think the notion that a little bit bit better if it violates some of your core tribal instincts is no longer deemed possible.

And so you'd rather things got worse than actually in any way compromise. Those two things together are dangerous to liberal democracy. And I think the failure in many ways to resolve that under the Biden administration, we had a chance in some ways maybe, is not working. currently, and, you know, things change a lot, I think the likelihood of Trump becoming president again is not insignificant. And especially since both the mainstream media

and the Trump media hate any alternative to Trump because Trump is fantastic news for the left. And... You mean because they get to make money? They get to make a huge amount of money, but they also get to use him to legitimize and validate. their extreme views of America.

In other words, this is this horrible ratchet in which when someone like me comes along and says, look, yes, we know, and you'd be immoral and stupid to deny that the legacy of slavery and racism, segregation and so on, is not a huge thing. But there are many other things in America alongside that, including the long struggle of Americans to overcome that that help define who we are as a society.

that becomes very hard in this context, very, very hard. Similarly, it's very hard to say something like, which is what I've been trying to say, which is we fully accept trans people as fully realized citizens in our society. And in fact, the Bostock Supreme Court decision only a few years ago granted them full civil rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

the gold standard for civil rights. protection, but we should be able to have pragmatic conversations about minor parts of it. In other words, and I'm echoing, actually, I think I'm echoing William Hague, my old friend William Hague, when I don't have a problem at all with treating transgender women as transgender women in the law, in the culture, in person, in almost every single respect, if they've done the right thing and formally recognized as transgender, and we can talk about, But the tiny marginal issues involved here, they're very marginal, in which it actually does matter biologically, which aren't that many.

It's kind of a handful. Sports, obviously, and it's crazy we even have to debate it. There's a legitimate debate about prisons and shelters, I think. And there is a very important question about how you deal with children with gender dysphoria, including the majority of them who are gay and what's the right way to help them grapple with that dysphoria those are not questions of civil rights as such

they're questions of medicine, they're question of prudence of judgment they should be able to be resolved we should be able to compromise them but we can't because they're not questions of anything like that anymore they're a question of politics they're a question of tribal loyalty more than anything else so you know so one side is now coming to the point

where all transgender people have to be denied. This is the Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles' position, which I think is ridiculous and stupid. And yes, to some extent, and bigoted is a strong word, but it's denying the dignity of people to describe their own experiences and lives as they really are and telling them they don't know who they are.

And that's just a not good way to do it. Or you have the left, which is like any conceivable, restriction on this is genocide. Yeah. Genocide and you hate us. And what I'm trying to say is that voice in the middle that says yes but. This is the yes but position, which I think is the only same position for most people have on any topic.

I agree. I agree with you. But I would like to ask you to articulate because we've had our issues with Matt Walsh and backs and force and whatever. But the reason I wanted to ask you about that is you mentioned truth earlier, right? And Matt Walsh would say, not unreasonably in some senses, the truth is you cannot change your sex, right? So why are we pretending? And you say people have a right to define their own experience. But no, only, I mean, again, this is problematic because we don't have sort of some objective measurement in which we can say this person trans, this person isn't, right? The science isn't there.

We just don't know. But I will tell you this. that the trans people I know and have gotten to know in my lifetime and whom I've interacted with, I really do not believe a lying about who they are. And the precise disjunction they feel between their core psychological identity and their body. Now, quite what that is, is it?

And I would say that because as someone who had to explain to people, I am genuinely not attracted to women. I'm only attracted to men. I don't know why. You can't point to some scientific thing that will prove it or otherwise, but I know it, and I'm not lying to you. I extend the same respect to them that they would respect, that they would extend to me in that respect.

And obviously, if people are mocking this, abusing it, making an absolute mockery of it, then we should have some means to say no. And there should be a process by which someone has to kind of prove that this is happening, isn't just a sort of, I feel like it today, without making it over the owner. These are compromised things.

I think we want to live in a society in which everyone possible has human dignity and is accorded it publicly. And I don't think they're lying. I do think they're transgender people in a way that I think Matt Walsh does not. And I've just, because I've seen it with my own eyes, and I don't think they're lying to me. And I think if we can accommodate them in some way, great, fantastic.

Why would we not? That's why, I mean, actually with the Women's Institute question, for example, I'm sort of with William. I was like, you know, well, you figure it out, first of all. We shouldn't ban them all, but if there's appropriate, have it. You know, I think you should also. Biden has actually done something quite interested in recently. He put out a new Title IX policy about this in sports.

And for the first time Biden broke with the tranny, Trannies, Tranny left. This was all going so smoothly. You were coming across serious authoritative. But I mean Trannies in a good way. I've always talked, that's the word. I mean, it's the thing. Like, Dan Savage going into trouble about this

is because he said this, too, like several years ago, he was completely... But it's a term of affection in the gay world, okay? I'm going to claim my LGBTQIA-2S... We're going to get a rainbow flag out, for you. Yes, but not with the invasion. arrow in it like the LGBTQI

plus swastika as I call it but it's horrible it's not about gay people anyway where am I going what was I saying so why not like but again Biden Biden Biden you were talking about Biden said no blanket ban we're not going to allow all

transgender we're talking about only about transgender male athletes also so for example no transgender men should be discriminated against in sports, they don't have an advantage at all. They're discriminated against by reality. Well, no, no, the actual FTMs

who are running in men's sports are actually somewhat likely to be injured or hurt. They're the ones who are more physically. That's what I'm saying. Right, right, okay. As for the FtMs, I think... MTFs.

Female to male. Yeah, MTFs, sorry. MCFs. I'm sorry, it does get a little... You can get, your head can get little. Do you know what's amazing? Before we get into this, right? I haven't asked you about trans,

and yet every conversation eventually boils down to trans. And this is why, this is why. I'm sorry, it's my fault. No, no, no, no. No, no. It's not your fault because we end up talking about a lot. And my point is, this is why it's an issue, because it is the eternal conflict between truth and self,

the desire to self-identify, to describe yourself the way you want. And I think it is different from being gay, Andrew. Not that I know anything about being gay. although I may find out. Being gay does not require other people to pretend things are true that are not. Right.

That's the difference here. If I demanded that you recognize that I could have a baby by fucking my husband, then I would think you were nuts. Obviously we can't. But babies don't live, as someone wants it. You're getting a lesson in anatomy right here right now. I feel...

This is great. No, it's not. It's great for you. It's terrible for me. This is fantastic for us. I'm just talking to you as I might talk to a friend of mine. I'm not... What was the question?

My point is, the reason this issue comes up organically is it's a fundamental... Is the demand that other people lie? That's why people don't like it. Yes, if I am told... But in most of the cases, you're not. It's kind of a white lie in most cases. it seems to me, give you an example of George W. Bush, who at the White House had a Yale reunion.

And one of his classmates showed up who had transitioned from male to female. And he, and as he was, as she introduced herself to W. So, well, you may not remember me quite as like this. And he said, well, I'm glad you've come just as you are. that's a classy statement of decency and civility and insofar as we can do that and affirm the dignity of the gender that people represent we should it's a good thing it's horrible to mock people

horrible to marginalize people like this and what it does to the psyche which is already struggling with this horrible difficult conflict between who you feel you are and who you you appear to be, it can be a compounding horrible thing. And I don't see why we shouldn't be treating those people with dignity and respect. And you can in almost every circumstance, is my point. Practically speaking, a trans person comes into your presence.

Why would you bring it up? We employ two people with gender this for. You don't have to explain this to us. We get it. We're good people. But then if you ask me as a human being that this person who's been female since birth and this person who's transitioned to be female, if there is no difference between them at all, I can't because there is. That's the key. So don't make me have to say that because it's not true

because you're forcing me to position which we don't have to get to by and large. It seems to me the far right and the far right, what is to get to this impossible point? Because they both want us to resolve this in this essentially illiberal way, one way or the other. And our task is to create the space in the middle whereby we can say yes, let's treat all transgender people as the gender they say they

are, as long as it is in good faith and done correctly. But that's where, sorry, I want Francis to jump in, but just to finish this comment, but this is where the problem comes, because we see in Scotland a two-time rapist, you know,

what we jokingly call a prisoner onset, gender dysphoria, right? Turns up in the courtroom, suddenly transgender. So when we talk about good faith, the problem is that it's at the extremes, as it always is, that these issues have to be decided hard. You're either male or you're female. And if you are capable of inserting your penis into a woman who doesn't want that, that's a problem. And that's where these... In some circumstances. And that's where... I know. And I'm with you on that. And I'm frustrated. demanding acceptance of unreality as a condition for their being part of the even political discourse. It's crazy.

And it's contrary, I think, to creating an atmosphere of acceptance for transgender people. I think that transgender people have gone backwards. I think gay people, because we've been completely now mashed up with every transgender manifestation, some of which is deranged and unhinged, along with every single variety of drag queen, which also has a huge spectrum and some of them are bathing inappropriately but most are not and most are completely harmful, harmless.

So yeah, this is the problem. Liberalism depends on our ability to have some moderation and some flexibility in the middle allows us to say again, yes but. Our left and right are refusing to let us do that. Isn't the problem, Andrew, that hard left, hard right are ideologues. They conform to an ideology.

And the problem is with an ideology is it creates a rigidity of thought. So you can't say yes, but because the moment you do that, then you are questioning your ideology, which means you're going to be expelled from the tribe. And the reason you shouldn't do that is because you are first and foremost a member of the society, not a member of your tribe and you have an obligation as a democratic citizen to compromise and our entire system of government

is set up designed for compromise, especially in America where the power is dispersed massively. Now some of that you can see at work now. You can see federalism happening. You can see some states, blue states in which kids are going to be told, you know, going to be handed dildos

at the age of two or something. I mean, I'm joking. But in which sure, here's my memory. issue with the education of children. And then you're going to have states where poor trans kids have no capacity to find anyone who can help them. And that worries me a great deal too. And I'm also not, I'll be honest with you, I don't want to ban all of it because I think in some cases there are some outlying cases in which if conducted within a clinical trial, these experimental treatments in hormones and in puberty law can be legitimately defended in a few cases.

So again, I don't want to make that an absolute thing, too. So Biden's thing of no blanket ban, but you figure it out in the localities in a pragmatic way, should work in a liberal democracy. Whether it can or not will reveal the extent to which we have the semblance of that left. I mean, I find myself in a weird position because obviously I have sympathies in both camps. I'm very strongly conflicted about this on many issues, like on the issues of religious freedom. as both I believe in Catholic and a gay person, I have to weigh those things up. But I, as a citizen, who is neither Catholic nor gay,

but as an American citizen, I favor a compromise. I favor, like, not forcing someone against their conscience to do something they don't want to do. I mean, in favor of encouraging gay people to find someone else to bake a cake or run a wedding. Because if you can't find a gay florist, I don't know where you are.

It's not hard. You don't have to go to another state. Every small town has one. No, I was going to say there is a philosophical argument to me made that all florists are gay. I think that's an outrageous assumption. Yes, but, I would say. Yes, but. But I listen to what you're saying, Andrew, and I agree with it.

And I think partly is because you're, right. And I think, but there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a more crucial part to it, which is we grew up when there was no social media, when we weren't incentivized to be in these tribes, when we weren't incentivized to all think the same. Isn't that what's really going on here, is that social media is driving us all insane? It's definitely making things a lot worse. I don't think it's a sufficient explanation. But I do think it's absolutely necessary part of the explanation. I do. I mean, I do think in America you also have this very strait and in most of the West you have this very interesting educational

divide that's going on which is related to the economy and to culture to some extent. But and you also have this ideological shift in which in which wokeness is capturing the left and a kind of a white identity politics is in danger of capturing the right and in which the left is regarding any anything that they don't believe in as somehow illegitimate and the right does too increasingly. You also have in America this strange geographical thing in which the Democrats are so concentrated into big urban areas and the Republicans are so evenly spread out that there is a really uncanny balance between these two, which you first saw in 2000 when the country split right

down the middle. The first election in which we said red and blue, actually, those are the first time when we switched the colors around, just to confuse you guys. And I think that was 50-50, and it's kind of remarkable how 50-50 it is. And that's just a demographic accident. But yeah, I think social media, by incentivizing conflict and also the other troubling thing, anonymity, both the anonymity online, but then you also very frighteningly see it on the streets, people wearing masks. This is one of these signs.

You should be on the red button list of things that are going wrong. People showing up in maths at public demonstrations is a very scary fact. People showing up at people's homes, invading people's private spaces for political reasons. That's a very alarming fact. These are signs that liberal democracy is becoming extinct. And the alternative of liberal democracy is a permanent political war, a sort of permanent, cold civil war. And we have been doing that on and off now for quite a while in a country. And it's not like this divide has not manifested itself throughout American history.

It has. But it's just a very tough time in which we don't seem to have many people capable of negotiating a sane centre. And why is that? Because I completely agree with you. And for the last, however many elections, I look at the candidates which have been presented to us by both left and right and go, is this really the best America has to offer? 300 and what, 20 million people, and we get Biden or Trump? Next time as well.

That's the amazing thing. Next time as well. I mean, it's going to be weekend of Bernie's up against, you know, this crazy, malevolent mobster person and both in their 80s. That's something that bothers me about it. It's like Joe Biden, who's present right now, whatever you think about Trump, it's a bit different because he's still with it, right? But Biden isn't even in his own prime.

You couldn't even get a guy who is at his own best to run the country. No, in fact, someone who really should be retired. I mean, but don't think Trump is, I mean, Trump gives you a, you should look at a tape of Trump from 20 years ago and look at it now. But he's also clinically unwell, quite clearly, a delusional maniac. I mean, the sheer vehemence with which he consistently, even now, asserts that the 2020 election was a landslide victory for him. This is someone who was saying something equivalent in our private life.

We would get that person into a mental hospital. That's how crazy this man is. That's delusional. And he believes it because his psyche won't allow him to believe anything else. He's still saying this, Constantine. At what point do you say this person? And he could... Do you're not a fan?

I think he's a dangerous evil maniac, yes. And my task number one is preventing him returning. If that makes me have to vote for a left-wing Democrat, I will. You're on the right. You're going to vote for a left-winger over Trump? Yes. And you're going to... If that's the option, look, I supported by...

And Hillary. Look, I'm open to... I'm open to your argument. You can't have a lunatic running the Western world. But he did get elected, and I understand that he's very provocative, and he says things that aren't true. And that annoys me. What is he done that makes you think he's an evil lunatic? I think those are the words you used.

I think attempting to prevent the actual, I mean, this is something we, some of us said before he got elected in the first place, that he will never concede defeat. and therefore will create a constitutional crisis because his psyche does not allow him to lose what other reality says. The fact that he refused that he is currently engaged in an assault on American democracy currently engaged in it,

still spreading the lie, still mandating others spread the lie, and was clearly complicit in an attempt to prevent the peaceful fact that person should be in jail. Can I, do you mind if I? Yeah, go for it, go for a couple. Or exiled.

But the other amazing thing is that 45% of the country, well, 30% of the country would follow him into the gates of hell. And 45% would put him back in the White House. I was very troubled by what happened on January 6th. And I said so at the time. Even though what happened wasn't an insurrection in my opinion, but I was troubled by what happened and the way that it happened. What I'm curious about, though, is I think it's fair to say, look, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the people I'm talking about. And Donald Trump was called every name under the sun. And I remember this was a complete shock to me.

Are you honestly saying we should worry that Trump's been called names? No, I'm going to get to, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. Just give me a second to lay the argument out. In 2018, my wife and I watched one of the diehard movies. and this is at the peak of you know Trump is evil fascist Nazi whatever and there's a scene in that movie I think I may have talked about on the show before

where because of something that happens they have to run the switchboard for the entire city through one woman in an office somewhere and her supervisor comes in he's a white guy she's a black woman this is a black woman and he says to her, you're going to have to run the switchboard for the entire city.

And she says, if you think I'm going to do that, you think I'm going to marry Donald Trump. Prior to him running for president, this guy was an aspirational figure in this country. Is that fair to say? Am I being unreasonable? For some deluded people, yes. No, there were a lot of men who wanted to be him

and a lot of women who wanted to marry him or sleep with him or whatever it would have been, right? He comes, he runs for president, he's treated as a joke. He gets elected. He gets called an Nazi. Now, I'm from a Jewish background. Donald Trump is not a Nazi. His daughter married a Jewish guy who he gave a big role in government and converted to Judaism. He gets whatever, you may like him, dislike him, whatever, but he has been misrepresented from day one. Now, I agree with you. He's a complete narcissist and a malignant one in terms of the way that he behaves. but I'm thinking about me. I get shit in the media, social media, every day now, every interview we do.

If I was being misrepresented at that level, how would that affect how I behaved? Well, if you also said you wanted to shoot protesters dead, that you believed in... That sounds like something I would say to be. When you have the authority of the presidency of the United States... States no less. I agree, of course. When you violate, when you de-legitimize the entire system of what you were elected and vowed that such a thing will be, when you actually attempt to seize voting machines to rig them,

when you ask a governor to just invent votes to get you into office, when you support war crimes openly, when you say you want to bomb other countries like Mexico without the Declaration of War when you say you want to steal oil from, I mean, he can go on and on and on. This man's public positions are so extreme. They're dutati level. He wants to execute drug dealers without trials.

He's right out there right now saying these things. You can read what he roots up on his truth social, and it is not distinguishable from someone in a mental hospital. And he is also belligerent, malevolent, and capable of doing things to other people that are fundamentally cruel and enjoy it. Such a person has no place in a democratic society. And he was always this way, by the way,

and you say he's misrepresented, if you so much as misplace a comma, he will be offended. He is the most incredibly, thin-skinned person imagine. We can agree on that. But what's happened, and I get what you're feeling, because people feel this way as well, is that the way he was completely dismissed, maligned, and not only that, but his voters, more importantly, the voters who supported him were treated this way. They feel like you, or like I do, I'm called a Nazi all the time, I'm a white supremacist, I'm a homophobia, get up every morning, thinking of what harm I can do to some poor trans child. That's what, that's how I'm,

Now, it's very easy emotionally to then retreat into your tribe to say, well, whatever you're saying about that, well, I get it emotionally. And I think people in the country feel that emotionally. And if they're pushed to make some emotional choice, are you with them or with us? They will say with us again. But at the same time, I don't think most of them have given an opportunity to vote for someone who was sane, who represented some of Trump's positions. I think many of them would be quite happy to do so. They just don't want to put on the spot. And they don't want to be harangued by the left media.

And they are right when they're told they're being propagandized in many ways and condescended to in many ways. So all of that I understand. I do because I feel it myself. And I've been vilified and lies, just complete lies about you, in order purely to diminish your credibility or legitimacy. Because, as I said, they only believe in power. believe in truth. They don't believe in rebutting you because that's not what they believe and they

believe in destroying you. And the zeal with which the far left actually joy is taking on individual human beings, you know, a succession of Emmanuel Goldstein's to vilify and hate is really chilling, really chilling. And this is why I bring up this point because my worry is that in that sort of media environment where, look, the moment you've got the artie next to your name, you become an if you're running for president. That is what they do. Some people would argue, I'm not saying I agree with them necessarily, but some people would argue the reason Donald Trump was successful

is he doubled down instead of cowing and cowering. He wasn't successful though, Constantine. He did get elected. He got elected with a, I mean, with a minority of the popular vote. He just squeaked in. I mean, legitimately elected. lost every single election ever since, his own party consistently losing, the people he nominated and championed last time around losing.

This is not actually we could have a third loss coming up in 2024. Now, if, however, social media, the culture, the Democrats, whoever, want to turn this into whose side are you on, then it could get quite close. and it's perfectly possible he could be re-elected. My nightmare scenario is Biden keeps Camilla, which is one of his biggest mistakes. And there's a moment in like the fall campaign where Biden completely loses strain of thought in public

or has a heart attack or something because, you know, this happens. It's not completely unknown. And it becomes Trump Kamala and we have a Trump landslide. And then where are we? And then watch the cities go up. I mean, we are on the edge of violence here, if we're not careful. This is a question actually that I wanted to ask you,

because there's a lot of people who talk about the potential for civil war in this country, and there's a lot of people online, and we know those type of people who make a lot of money out of it, and they sensationalize it, and they always talk about it, and it's scratching that very unpleasant itch. How close do you think we are to things going really awry in this country? You're not going to have the Confederacy and the Union forces marching together and finding a battlefield in the middle of Virginia to fight it out. That's not going to happen.

The truth is also this idea that there is a very clear divide between red and blue states is most red states have some very blue cities in them. It's going to be more, I think, political paralysis as the dysfunction in the states as the counties and an attempt by the Republicans also to kind of rig the system even more at their favor in some of these big central states so that they can get legislative majorities

that are out of proportion to their actual. I mean, gerrymandering, I mean. But that means that you can't have a whole bunch of states against a whole bunch of other states. It's too muddled up. There are lots of red state as implicit. More than you were thinking. You're sitting in the one place where that's not true,

which is D.C. But almost any big state will have a variety. Just go to Virginia, go down a few lines, you'll see Trump signs and so forth. So I don't know that can happen. What you can have is political paralysis and then incipient terrorist outrages, mass shootings designed to ferment even further hatred of the other.

You see, you know, like in a transit you could have some incident. I mean, we kind of almost did with the, the shooting, the school shooting, we don't know quite what that person's motivations were and they've kept the manifesto out. But when you're creating these levels of divide and hatred, mutual hatred, this country has a lot of guns, there's a lot of mayhem that can happen. It would be more like that. You have to remember also, in the first remembering in the 70s, there were bombs going off every other day in this country.

There were riots everywhere. It's not like this is completely unprecedented. The 60s and 70s, the late 60s, early 70s were unprecedented in terms of political violence. It happens in America. It's a violent place. And there seems to be a lot of anger here as well. I see the disproportionate anger. Now, take, for instance, Dylan Mulvaney, advertising Bud Light.

The reaction that both sides have had, it's insane. You go, this is a person who identifies as a woman, whatever you think of them. advertising a beer, is it really the big issue of the day? Have we not got more important things to talk about? Yet it's become this flashpoint for both left and right. Yeah, I know. I'm riveted by Dylan Mulvaney for a front of reasons. And I was actually riveted by him slash her many, many months ago,

because it's an interesting case. This is not a trans woman. This is a gay man. I mean, it's a very recognizable gay man, making fun of women, becoming a parody of women. It's a form of drag, a kind of musical theater kind of drag. Taken to the ultimate conclusion, because he figured if he couldn't become famous in the Book of Mormon or in other, and like he really went on the Price is Right, I think at some point to do the same. You can see the same act that he's doing as a man that he's doing as a woman.

There's no difference between him before and after time. except for the dress, and the marketing and his use of social media, namely TikTok, he's not even becoming a woman, he's becoming a girl. Now, this strikes me, what amazes me is why the trans movement isn't saying, hold on a minute. The idea this person represents your average trans M to F is absurd. In fact, it's a sort of parody of what it might be, not just to be a woman, but to be some sort of absurd girly girl who can't do math and can't walk can't run and can't throw and he does this

he does this whole gay boy act so i just i i i just look at it and i'm just this is kind of staggering and then of course it takes off and he gets all this and then all these dumbass uh lefty liberal PR advertising people just so then he's the superstar i wait that's my wait he's Is he really committed to living his life as a woman or committed to living his life as a girl performing for money in front of audiences? I think the right word for him is a minstrel. That he's performing as a minstrel. He's telling, especially straight women, nothing to be afraid of here. And I can represent all the cool things you like about gay men, tend to be a woman, and vibe with you and be your best gay friend, basically.

That's who he is. He's being a best. He's been the classic best gay friend to a straight woman. That's the line. That's why he's selling all these goods, because straight women love him. Do they? I mean, I know a lot of straight women that absolutely despise him.

That's probably true, but a lot don't. A lot think this is super funny and cool, and he's sweet and lovely, and he's all about love and is against hate. Look, there is, I mean, I'm just, maybe I'm wrong in identifying that. But they wouldn't be doing this for no reason, and he is popular.

I think he's just a really weird, a very idiosyncratic, eccentric event. I don't think it symbolizes anything except maybe the crisis that we're in that such a person can become so prominent and be taken seriously in a way in which I really think there are plenty of people who have transitioned from male to female

who would find his parody of their experience kind of disgusting. Have we not just hit on the very core of this difficulty, though, because we talked earlier about accepting people the way that they want to be. And yet here you are, you have unilaterally made the decision. I haven't. I'm just giving you my impressions

as a gay man of what I see in that picture. You understand I'm playing devil's advocate. Absolutely, I do. But if he were to go along and then, if she or he would go along and actually do the actual transition. But most trans people don't have the transition. No, but if he were to change his passport or change his ID

from male to female, I think that would be a, I don't think he's done that, to be honest with you. I don't know all the details of that, but I think that's TBD. I've just seen things like I watched Milo, for example, who was another kind of minstrel appealing to another kind of audience. And, you know, it didn't end particularly well. No, it didn't. And I think this is the very core of it.

It's just you look at all of these things and you go, this is weird. It is weird. I'm sorry, it is strange. And those of us who spent like 30 years in the gay rights movement, as it were, our core objective was to remind people a few things. And this is what we kind of, we did in the 80s and 90s, really. We said, we just want to be like you. We don't want to change your life in any way. Maybe you'll be a little uncomfortable because we're around, but, you know, can't help that.

We're not going to make you change your pro. They're not going to make you do anything different at your marriages. We're going to, if we join the military, we're going to, you know, we're just going to be treated the same as everyone else. And all of this will be fine. And everyone was sort of cool. After a while, you know, there was some initial hostility and panic and fear and then it's slowly.

And now we have 70th and support for those things. What we did was emphasize what we have in common with everyone else. Not what that sets us apart. In other words, what we were doing was a universal. human experiment, what they're doing is a very particularist identity-based defense of it, which appeals to no one because it's not even asking anybody to agree or disagree. It's demanding obedience, because again, this comes down to philosophically. If you believe in power or if you believe in truth.

They don't believe in truth. They don't believe there's any stable truth, let alone about biology or anything else. so the only way they can do this is by the exercise of raw power, which is either just enforcing things and demanding it, like the American Medical Association is now doing, or demanding that you use certain pronouns or not, or smearing and targeting and demonizing anybody who speaks up against, not saying their arguments are wrong because this, this isn't this,

but spending God knows how much time in energy saying that someone like J.K. Rowling is somehow an evil human being. It's quite obvious to any sane person that she is not. But that's what they do, because they don't have the muscles for argument. They do not actually want to stress what they have in common with everyone else. It is a kind of adolescent temper tantrum that has always been there within gay politics, within the queer movement, and which many of us in the 80s and 90s were like, if we carry on like this, we're not going to get even basic protections or even basic respect.

And many of us who were not identifying that way, who the last thing on earth I would call myself as queer. felt as if the movement didn't really exist. And we came in and the movement actually did shift and it did succeed. But then we succeeded and we left because our goal, although I'm concerned, once he got our basic rights, our job now is to get on with our fucking lives

and actually do something with them. And so this stuff is not obsessing. It's about going forward. It's not about obsessing about who you are. And so we quit. and then they get to define it all. And the trans people come in and the queer theory people come in

who were always there but were kept somewhat at bay. And they just took over. And they've gotten rid of the entire older establishment of the gay rights organizations. They are the most militants. They are the least democratic. They are the most authoritarian. And they are borderline violence

and offensive. Their discourse, if you compare our arguments to marriage equality with their vicious insults. The way they just say things like, fuck you into people's faces in a demo. There are other ways of demonstrating, you know, than saying, fuck off,

or I want you to suck my tranny dick. We didn't say that when we were asking for the right to matter. It's not a great chat-up line, is it? It's also defeating, and it's done a lot to put back, along with this bullshit words that we have to use, like LGB-B-T-Q-I-A plot, and gender-referming care, all this bullshit.

And I think there are a lot of people who just feel like this has been imposed on them, and fuck you. And it's the word queer as well. And I'm glad you brought it up because, so a lot of my family are from Venezuela and I have, there's a saying in my family are called Los Palises. And there's a saying in L'HPalises that you're either ugly or you're gay. Right. Those are the two choices. So I grew up with a lot of gay men who were closeted in,

Latin America and seeing what they had to go through. And now this, I actually find it, it actually pisses me off when people go, I'm queer, and it's just an identity. It's just something to play with. And I'm like, it's identity slumming. That's what I call it. It's like, Sue, I'm so cool. I'm queer now. It's like, I was some dude on Twitter a couple of years back, I think, was just like this nice middle-aged guy with a nice wife and two kids and a little picture of him on Twitter, and he's like, some academic. And he just said this, I've just decided to day that I, need on Twitter to come out as queer. I'm queer now.

And I just tweeted back, no, you're not. But if you are, if that is, I mean, that's the point, the point of the left is to take queer and expand it beyond homosexual. Well, first of all, to co-opt every homosexual into it with how fucking dare they suddenly decide that because they, they're the lobby group that controls the New York Times of the Washington Post and sends them guides to the words they use, that suddenly we have the word queer used in the New York Times ubiquitously as simply a neutral descriptor of gay people. Again, imposition, power, not persuasion anyway. And then they lie that this has happened

spontaneously and organically. No, it hasn't. I mean, there's a bunch of Ivy League gays have suddenly decided to call themselves that. So I don't think it's going to succeed. I I think it's going to hurt, actually. And I think there's going to be even a lot of trans kids in red states and gay kids in blue states are going to suffer from the fact we either have all or nothing in terms of treatment of children with gender dysphoria. For me, the one point I want to make is this on that question, is that if you tell a three or four-year-old boy who might be feeling,

may I not like the other boys, I like this, I like playing Barbie, I like reading, I like, I don't. like playing rugby or whatever. If you tell them you can be a boy or a girl or both or neither or something else entirely and they're told that this is a choice for them, it is quite possible that a young gay boy will internalize that as the idea that I really should be a girl. And that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because everything we try to do, which was to tell gay boys, you do not have to deny your maleness to be gay. You don't have to renounce your sex to be gay is being undone.

And the stereotypical models and behaviors that are being fed into the minds of these children were what we fought against. And the impact on gay kids, people don't talk about it. They always talk about trans kids. But many of them are not trans. many of them are gay and confused. And most, the vast majority of kids with gender dysphoria, we all know, resolve it in puberty and go on to be gay. The question for gay people is how many of us are being siphoned off that path

by well-meant but overly invasive engineering of these kids before they're really capable of making these proper decisions for themselves. This is about gay kids. That's why they insist on alienating. LGBTI. That's why they take all these very different experiences and identities and mash them all into this queer thing so they can prevent these tensions from being aired. Well, they will be aired. But what's happened is that because of tribalism, the vast majority of gay men are going to shut up. They can't support dissentists. They can't support these right-wingers. They can't support the Republicans.

They can't support the religious right. Therefore, they're fine. Andrew, we had a whistleblower on the show from a US. Jamie. Jamie, absolutely, clinic, who is... I know, I saw it. It was last week, right? Yeah, it was last week. And for people who haven't seen it, she is a gay woman who is married to a trans man.

And she made the point that this movement is homophobic. What say you to that? I would say that there are elements of homophobia in it that are undeniable. the move in which you say that gender-trump sex means that same-sex attraction becomes problematic because you should be same-gender attraction

and that's position of Stonewall in the UK but gender that would mean that a gay man should be attracted to someone who has a vagina who is biologically still female and as I've said to people the last person who told me to get over the fact that I needed to, that I didn't want to have sex with the vagina was a priest. And now it's a trans activist. And the deep, the deep hostility to homosexuality comes from our proud ownership of our own sex. That we are men,

loving men. We're not some other, and in fact, tradition. And in fact, tradition, Societional societies and regressive societies really have a problem with that. I mean, we all know that the world center for transitioning children is Iran, because they cure homosexuality by transitioning children. The fact that those areas, I brought these, I'm one of the few people to bring this question up because it's so toxic, and it really is taboo on the left to say that there might be some conflict between gay, and trans identities, even though.

Because again, it comes back to philosophy. As far as they're concerned, the only thing that matters about gay and trans people is they're the victims of oppression. They're not interested in actual who they are as individuals, what might have affected them, how they interact with society. They're not seeing you. They're not seeing us at all.

They're seeing oppressive forces controlling. I mean, it's a mindset that once you slip into is really hard to get out of and to see the individual person and human again. I was going to light in the mood and move on to something, but actually you sparked a thought on me, which is people talk about Marxism all the time, and it's misapplied massively in a lot of cases. But the one thing that Marxism introduces fundamentally into the way we view the world

is the idea of zero sum. For me to win, you have to lose. You're either oppressed or you're the oppressor, right? And the entirety of our social existence is explained by that. and this is so antithetical to anything that makes society good. If you think about the relationship between men and women, being positioned as a zero's, what? Men and women, two groups of people who, for the entirety of human existence,

have had to work together to survive. Now these people are being positioned as enemies, and it seems to be happening everywhere. And the right will take it on when it suits the right, and the left has obviously just gone crazy. difference. The difference is the Marx, who was a historical materialist, unlike Foucault or unlike Schmidt and some other people who have influenced the new left. For him, the class forces that were zero-sum, were in these constant warfare, but eventually it had a dialectic that at some

point would lead to communist nirvana, utopia, it would suddenly end the history. It had an eschatology within it, in which it would suddenly at some point break out into sunlight. This stuff has no moment like that. It is marks without the happy ending. It is an eternal grind of power against power. There is never space for freedom. You will always be defeated. You read Tallahasse Cotes in between the world and me.

What he's telling his black son is that there is never a place for you here. America was built to destroy you. We will always destroy you. It is designed to destroy you. And we just have to suck that up. up and accept it and develop a kind of some kind of defensiveness to it and critique it and try to overthrow it maybe one day. But the idea that it could be overcome, not there. It's deeply pessimistic. That's why it's very alien to America, actually. And this is what I was going to say, because

changing this, this will feel like a gear change of gigantic proportions. You like it here, don't you? You love being in America. You love America. I do. We love America. Every time we come here, you know last time we came here we did the whole trip and you know Rogan was like you guys should move here and everyone was you guys should move you guys should and Francis and I were like yeah we should move here

then we got back and you know we him and I argue about this but I feel like we have a mission in the UK we are you know one of the few people doing what we do in the UK and trying to bring sanity to these conversations and I feel like we have a purpose and a mission there it's not to say we'll never move but for the moment

this time we've been here a week we came back day one end of the day we're just sitting there going we need to move to america right and we won't do it right now but i i think it's hard to resist to be honest with all even given what i've just described about the cultural crisis and the political the problem is and you may not know this anymore and you maybe maybe you do but whatever you guys flush down the toilet here we get served for breakfast the next day in the uk that's the way it works Plus, on top of that, we have, and I don't know if this was the case when you left or no, but we sort of feel like it's very difficult to work, to build, to create, when the entire society around you is sort of designed to pull people down if they tried to do that.

So what do you like about this country? What is it that makes it great? Well, I will say one thing. The banter here is shit. The banter is terrible. Yeah, it's not good. I know. I mean, there are elements of British culture you will forever miss.

And the banter, though, that you miss, this sardonic, constantly sarcastic, skeptical of everything. Unfortunately, that's part of the package. You know, that, that, that also, I'm, I'm disheartened because exactly what you said is how I first encountered America. I mean, I'm a natural enthusiast, builder. I do things. I was named pushy, fresh erodox, and I was like the most sort of like, I just want to do plays,

and I want to do speech, I want to do this, I want to do that. And everyone was like, who do you think you are? Like, who did you come from? What's the, when did you go to? In Ireland, they call this, they say he's got the notions.

Yes. The notions. The idea that you should aspire to something and be something is considered, you know, offensive. Or vulgar. Volga. That's the word.

That's the word. And, you know, I, I, there are elements in which that matters. So it means that England will never really have a bout of enthusiasm like some crazy person like Trump, I don't think, because he would be taken, no one would take it. No one could get. Trump is proof that there is a great deal of sanity in the English position. I take it.

And the same with Orwell's famous notion that the English would be fascist because if people would goose step down, the straight people would just snicker. They would just laugh at it. silly. So I get it and I've come to appreciate that but I also totally agree with you that when I came here and I said I want to do this,

good for you. Why not? Oh yeah. Go for it. Fuck yeah. America has a word, sure. No equivalent in English. We've got fine.

You've got fine. The European is a C, see, see, see. Is a positive, optimistic, emphatic yes. No such thing exists in the English language. How are you doing? Great, man. Not too bad.

How you doing? Fuck, yeah. You know, it's like mustn't grumble. And I immediately loved it. I felt this was a place where I only wrote my parents a letter after about six, seven weeks saying, I know this sounds crazy to you, but I feel like I've come home. There was something about the individualism here, the ability, the lack of, apparent ceilings, even though as a gay person you could see,

I mean, as a gay person coming to America, I had to on the first time sign that, declared I was not a homosexual, just to get into the country. That existed until the 90s. Wow. But I also saw, like you saw, that if I were to shift the debate here on something like gay marriage,

that mattered in a way that it wouldn't if I'd done it in Britain. And I could have spent a life I mean, the Tory party trying to persuade David Cameron to do equal marriage or whatever, which they did, which I'm very proud of that they did. But if I could turn American opinion first and help shift that debate, it would have that consequence. Because America is still where the future is invented.

That's why the stakes of this debate in America are so fascinating and great, because it really is about the West. And the values that we're going to believe in, and America is like the future West in as much as it is much more racial, multicultural than the past. So if we can get this right here, it's really good news.

If we get it wrong, it's really bad news for you guys. So my instinct as an ambitious person was to get near where the real power was and to see what I could do to affect things in that way. And I have some feelings that if I stayed in England, you know, I was president of the union, I was going to do the natural, I was following, you know, I was going to, I would have been among that, almost certainly, if I'd gone into politics, but among that generation of Boris and, I mean, he was a year below me

and Cameron, maybe, all those people, and would have known them pretty well, but didn't. And then I think of, you know this about me, my high school friend, Keir, who I spent five years debating with, rugged grammar, and now he's the leader of the, the opposition probably going to be the next prime minister. And part of you thinks, wouldn't it be great if I was battling here like we used to do on the 424 bus in the morning at the dispatch box at the House of Commons? It's not something out of, it's not a crazy idea that might possibly have happened in some way or other. And I'm not, I'm here.

But, you know, life's weird. You take a decision at one point, it leads to a million others elsewhere. The men here are also immensely hotter than in the United Kingdom. Certainly in the United Kingdom of the 1980s and 90s. It's a little bit more. It's a little bit fresher now in London. And London has now become this crazy sex pit, really. But so no, I love this place.

This white broke my heart to see someone like Trump win the presidency. And it's been really good to me. I can imagine, for example, a 25-year-old American being named editor of the Spectator, but that was the equivalent of what happened to me when I was in my 20s in this country, the New Republic. That's an amazingly open society. Almost never what right do you think you have to come here and mouth off where you aren't born here. The most you get is liberals telling me, they told me about Obama.

You don't understand. You never grow up in this country. They'll never elect a black president. They're never. you don't get it. Maybe not. Maybe the immigrant is actually the person with the best understanding of America

because it's the best spirit of America. But again, we've also seen then that spirit of immigration be threatened in many ways, again, because it wasn't pursued properly in the past. Or in the present. Now, of course, we just can't fucking solve it because we can't agree.

tomorrow we could build a million dollar war there's nothing stopping the Congress or a president from doing the things that would stop illegal immigration I mean technically speaking but the politics and the culture of it prevents it from occurring Andrew you still sound optimistic about this country and there's people who are not why are you optimistic

I'm not optimistic I have hope you have hope there's a distinction between those two of course I have hope you look at the history of this country it's an incredibly boisterous, unpredictable, young, dynamic place. 320, 30 million people across a continent. This is a country which has Miami and Seattle. It has Alabama and Minnesota.

It's just to be possible to discount this place. And its constitutional system is not finished. I mean, at some point we'll look back and see this period of populist turbulence and see how well the institutions did. I don't think they completely failed. I mean, they've been pushed and pushed and pushed. If Trump wins again, there's going to be a stress test of immense proportions. But power is still pretty much dispersed.

There is a variety of different policy options. We can judge them. The First Amendment means that at some point, unlike you guys, we will always have the right to air criticism of whatever is happening. which to my mind is the only real guarantee of preventing disaster. And we're a lucky country, the fuck's sake. It's vast, huge amounts of natural resources, huge numbers of people, happily less overly regulated in tax country,

which means that we consistently produce more growth, more innovation. We're leading the major industries of the world. It's a crazy-ass, wonderful nightmare of a place. and I think that makes it very different than most other countries and you either are upholed and crawl home or you you embrace the you embrace it it's the energy here

yeah of course it is the energy it's the shore energy yeah yeah it's addictive here because like you said it's the opportunity it's that everybody's here to make it everybody wants to make it there's not the sense of being dragged down like you get in the UK. Why are you doing that? It's less where are you from than where are you going? Where are you going?

And that's what I love here. It is. It also means you're going to get a bunch of fucking crazy people in this country. You're going to get the extremes of right and left that are going to be even more wacky than elsewhere. I mean, we're on the anniversary of the Waco situation. How could you imagine that happening in any other country on earth? A religious sect hold up up against an absolutely idiotic. bullheaded ATF, tanks, immolation of 90 people.

I mean, the whole thing is out of Waco. And the one really weird thing about America, though, I'll tell you this. It's a vast and exciting and energy, but it's incredibly paranoid. Americans have this deep strain of paranoia. And you think, I can imagine someone born in Alsace-Lorraine being paranoid about who's going to come next. the Germans or the French. I don't really see where you're... Whose turn is it now?

In the middle of fucking desert, in the middle of America, you're worried about two vast oceans and they're coming to get you. No one's coming to get you guys, except yourselves. But that's all part of it too. Unfortunately, I think some of the...

And again, sometimes the old system did really keep part of America out. The one thing I think you should say about Donald Trump is that he does represent something real in America. absolutely cheesy, awful, self-aggrandizing, money-grubbing, vulgar, capitalist, crony capitalist, worse. They deserve to be represented it in the White House as well. To some extent, he represented part of America that we're kind of ashamed of, but that is real. I think he also represented, I know it seems like I'm a massive Trump fan, I'm not, but just to play, to complete the picture, perhaps.

He's got little maga symbols in his shirt under him. Absolutely right. In his blazer, he sewed them in. He also, look, this is the disease of the West that I'm very concerned about, which is there are far too many people, and I talk about in my book about this, in the West, who have accepted this idea that Steve Bannon, when he talks about how he got Trump elected, calls managed decline. There are far too many people, and in Britain, this is even worse than it is in this country,

far too many people who feel like we've had our turn and now it's time to roll over and die and people in this country thank God don't want to hear that and so the the macabre expression of that that is Donald Trump is your concerns about it many of them in my opinion are completely legitimate but someone has to say

we're not we're not gonna we're not gonna roll over and die we are the most powerful civilization in the history of the world and would quite like to stay that way please thank you very much right someone has to say that someone has to say that and if if no one is willing to stand up for that Andrew people like you and people like me are not going to be very comfortable in the foreseeable future so I understand all of that but you know the West is only great as long as it's willing to be great

yeah the question is whether the championing of the West as Trump understood it is really a championing of the West as Reagan understood it, for example. Probably not. Very, very different. And I do think, in fact, that what's happened is that we're sort of becoming more of a late 19th century model in America, where the natural position, certainly in terms of foreign policy, is stay out to some extent, or we like our place here.

we escaped all that shit. We don't want to go back into it. The natural, but that was the Republican Party is the natural party of isolationism if you want to use a pejorative term. But you might call it just Americanism, but we escaped history. We don't want to have to reenact it.

We certainly don't see the point from the middle of Colorado of why we have to expend, possibly risk the survival of the earth over the integrity of the island of Taiwan. God knows how far away, which was always part of China anyway, that's going to be a breaking point.

So but but that's quite, because once the Cold War was done, once the great ideological enemies of Nazism, communism were defeated, the more natural interests of a great continental power over here will assert itself. So in some ways, I think that element, the neo-conservative remake the world for democracy stuff, the Wilsonian stuff, that's in retreat. But I don't, that's just one kind of American. This is another completely, a more rational Americanism, I think. If you just look at the geography and if you look at the economics,

you look at all the, it's natural for America to be a distant power that kind of balances other powers rather than running the whole fucking place. And I think that will assert itself. But I also don't, I mean, is it true really about Britain? Everyone's given up? I mean, there is a sense in which Britain will never, could never be what it was. I mean, there's a point, I mean, Churchill kind of fucked with us with the greatest speech ever. If the British government lasts a thousand years, this was their finest hour.

I grew up being told that the finest hour of my country was already passed. And I should be proud of that. And there was this sense in the Second World War that we kind of sacrificed ourselves for the greater good, as it were, of the world. and of democratic values and of resistance to total terrorism. Not entirely untrue to some extent. But there's no way Britain could be the country it was in the 19th century. There's no way even conceive of being such a thing. Of course.

But I was going to say, Andrew, but hang on, you came of age in the 80s and in the early 90s. You're a child of Thatcher. Britain was booming. The city, loads of money. We were successful. We were a powerhouse. Well, you Not quite.

I mean, there was it was more of the collapse of the previous regime and then the rebooting of it that I was very much in favor of and supported. But, and so I agree with that.

I do think that some of the massive social economic quality that has resulted from that and also mass immigration has made economic policy more complicated and difficult in terms of the Conservatives helping more.

I mean, Thatcher was, her biggest basis of support were people selling their council houses for their own property. I mean, that's how she, and she was a middle class, low middle class, appealing person. So, but, and it's still possible, I think. It's still possible.

Isn't Brexit really a decision by the British that they do have a future by themselves? I don't know, man. We live in a country where more than half the point, population get more in benefits than they pay in tax? How are you going to change that? And also the tax system and the way that and the cultural attitudes are such that being aspirational is punished or at least disincentivized.

I sort of hope that had changed. Yeah, it's changed for the worst since you were there, I think, honestly. There was a period in the 80s and 90s where it was more of a defense of aggression and enterprise and free markets. Right. And now, if you look at the polls, that sort of, at least economic Thatcherism, it represents about 6% of the public. Well, partly because it was a victim of its own success in some respects. And people acknowledge that things change. And it's not like a conservative doesn't have a permanent ideology of free markets. It's free markets as a function of a political society, which Thatcher did.

But you should have grown up, I mean, I was also growing up in the 70s, as it were. I mean, the 70s? As a kid, you learn about your country, you're walking around, you see that every new building is shittier than every previous year. By a mile. No one gives a shit. The country's shut down for four days of the week with no electricity.

I mean, the whole place was just a shambles. But again, I think, you know, not to defend Britain, but to go from being the greatest, global empire to being a middle-sized economy in the G7, I think the Brits have actually been psychologically quite good at handling that compared to the way other countries might deal with their decline in such a way. And I think it shows a tenaciousness and also a sense of the English nation and the British nation existed long before empire.

It was no less something to be proud of under Elizabeth I than under Victoria and that we have our own resources and our own cultural resources. I just think that when you both lose power internationally and then kind of tear up your own cultural traditions at the same time, you're going to create a very unhappy, listless, meaningless civic experience. And that's what we have to be concerned about.

And the experience with other people try and fill with meaning. And patriotism as a tribal entity, as an expression of tribalism, is a lot healthier than identity politics as an expression of tribalism. Because the one brings us together, the other tears us apart. The difficulty we have is it's very difficult to be patriotic. And I'm patriotic about Britain, I truly am, is very difficult to be patriotic about a country whose values you are not able or allowed to define. And that's where we are.

that's if you walk up to a random person in the British street and ask them what are British values they will not be able to say provided they don't run away at the question itself and that's where we are now doesn't mean I don't love Britain I do but one of the most influential assets I wrote growing up

with the line and the unicorn by Orwell and which was also repacketed was it my country whatever because it was a socialist this celebration of the particulars of Englishness and English culture and English life that was conveyed with such warmth and love, even in its stern criticisms, that it sort of, it was the first thing I read as a kid that talked about Englishness or what the English

nation could be or what its values ultimately were. And if you would, and so it came down to heavy currency, ugly advertising, love of gardens, all sorts of things he noted that you even a sense of humor see I would say if you ask me that I would say common sense

decency civility pragmatism prickly defense of one's own autonomy and freedom it's still greater I think in England than many other places

oh for sure you know it takes a lot to kill a culture we'd definitely We're definitely putting that to the test. But I always have faith in your average. We can also get lost because we're in educated circles, and you don't see the very natural patriotism that exists at a lower level. And this is true of the intellectuals forever,

as Orwell was constantly telling us. I don't see my life as one in which I rejected Britain for America because I love both places. I just think I personally was temperate. temperamentally, much more likely to be happy here. And I think that has proven to be the case, although you never know. I wanted to be doing things because of what they were, as opposed to proving to that person, I wasn't, this person, this, avoiding that trap, all those social signals that are sending

into your brain telling you to do things. And I was like, fuck that shit. What I want to do, how do I want to express myself? and I've done that, and the country has been incredibly generous to me. I mean, I say that given they try to keep me out for 19 years because I was HIV-positive. That's the other part of this. It's also crazy-ass thing. It has these bizarre obsessions sometimes.

I mean, it's the country that gave us this incredible burst of freedom, but also the Hollywood blacklist Salem Witch Trials, the lavender menace of the 50s. It has these convulsions. This wonderful country of freedom constantly actually put in its constitution you could not drink alcohol. Does a country ever done anything that insane before

or since in its constitution? It wouldn't even allow localities to have. I mean, when you think about our debates about trans health care, you realize it's absolutely completely trivial compared to what was going on before. The demand of the American Protestant establishment to purify the people is constant. And in some ways, wokeness should be better understood as the final manifestation of this liberal Protestant ethic of moral improvement for people. In other words, Harvard has

now gone back to its roots as the Divinity School teaching the elite how to better represent the religion that they, down to the words they use, the way they date. All of it is, it's basically a reincarnation of the old American Puritanism. And that gives wokeness a lot of its force. It's cultural force. I mean, when we call it the Great Awakening, it's because there have been great awakenings. And if you think America is always going to have these semi-religious revivals,

but in the 21st centuries, I had a collapse of actual formal and organized religion. It's not so surprising it might take a form like this. The disgust etched into your face of the idea that people should not be like to drink alcohol proves to me you're still a Brit. Oh, absolutely. Even though I don't, I'm a complete stoner, I don't drink at all, I barely drink at all. But yeah, a country that allows people to get drunk is okay by me. I mean, this is why I loved about Boris in so many ways. Is that element of Englishness? I mean, it is, you know, the consequences are, you know, basically a country of functional

alcoholics. It is, by the way, when you go over there, that's the first thing that. I can't, I mean, within a day, I can't possibly keep up. Yeah. How on earth do you drink lunchtime, after work? It's like, what the hell? I can't do it. That's how you know you've become an American. Well, that's how, yeah. Yeah, some of the most.

He's both, as he told us. He loves both countries. Andrew, we will wrap up with you there. What a varied and brilliant conversation with you. It's great to have you back on the show. As always, we're going to do some questions from our local supporters that only they will get to see the answers to. But before we do,

final question is always the same, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? Circumcision. In America, about half infant boys, a little more than that, are automatically, have the dixclips. We're having this ginormous debate about whether children can consent to irreversible changes in which we are desperately, and this occurs. Again, it's not people selecting in for religious reasons of some sort.

It is a way in which hospitals lie to parents in telling them they need to do this. And secondly, make money in all the labor and delivery services that they can have to. And it's gross. It's an act of invasion of bodily integrity. And the weird thing is, in this country, when you raise that point, and I don't raise it all the time, I'm just bringing it up to be a little provocative here. Oh, I agree with you, by the way. People were polled, and I would say that.

They get really, really defensive if I call someone's dick mutilated. But it is mutilated at some level. No one wants to hear about their own penis. They know, and they certainly don't want to admit that they did something bad to their kid or that they themselves have something wrong with them. So there's this pushback. It's slowly declining. That's a rather trivial answer to that question,

but we've talked about so much that maybe a little trivial thing like that is worth noting. Yeah, I was going to say, do you want to ask another question? No, I'm done with Andrew. No, what I was going to say is, Andrew, it's been a pleasure having you back. I recommend everyone read The Weekly Dish. Please, subscribe to the weekly dish. Well, you have to now to read it. It's all paywold as far as I can tell.

No, it's not at all. You can get the column every week and a bunch of other little things for free, and you can get an hour of the podcast for free. just the last half hour you have to pay a little bit for and full a range of things at the dish offers you have to pay something. Fantastic. Well, I really recommend everybody do that, follow you on Twitter, etc.

Andrew, we're going to take you over to locals, that camera, I think. Join us on locals. Head on over there. We're going to ask your bonus questions to Andrew. Do you believe that US government agencies have gone too far in their quest to eliminate so-called disinformation,

misinformation, and malinformation? I'd love to know your thoughts about Matt Taeeby's Twitter files reporting.