TRIGGERnometry - How Do We Save America? Live with Bret Weinstein

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Bret Weinstein is a biologist, evolutionary theorist and host of The Dark Horse Podcast available on podcasts and YouTube. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod 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

Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Trigonometry. It's great to have you here. We have a fantastic guest. If you're a first time viewer of the show, we have a very special slogan, don't we, Francis? It is. It's honest conversations with fascinating people. And it does not get any more fascinating than the guest we have for you today. The last time we spoke to him, the title of that episode was,

we can stop a civil war. let's find out if he still thinks so. Brett Weinstein, welcome back to Trigonometry. Well, thanks for having me. It's good to be here, guys. Yeah, can we stop a Civil War? That's the question, huh? Yeah.

Well, why don't we just start right there? Yeah, I would say it's still possible, but, you know, the more times we kick the can down the road, the harder it gets. And that's really, at some level, the lesson of the last several decades. This is not a problem that can be ignored forever. And, you know, it's a bit like quitting smoking. The fact that it's difficult is not an argument against doing it right now because it only gets more so. Well, before we get into the analysis of everything that happened yesterday and the bigger picture,

because it's something you've been talking for a while. I should just say, I forgot to mention at the top. For everybody watching, welcome. If you want to ask a question, please send it in the PayPal link. There's a link in the Pint comment, or you can use the super chat function on YouTube. And after we've spoken for about 45, 50 minutes here with Brett, we will get to those questions for another 30, 40 minutes and try and get as many answers as we can. But Brett, what happened yesterday in your analysis, rather than looking at the minutiae of it, what is the big picture events that we're seeing unfolded in front of our eyes at the moment? Well, you know, I think we're seeing physical manifestations of processes that we're all in some sense familiar with, even if we don't necessarily understand them.

We interface with them all the time on social media. And so the question is really, what is the ideal place to stand to see this for what it is? And, you know, we have a problem. The problem has a lot to do with something that we typically call echo chambers. But I think we don't properly understand that echo chambers come about in a variety of different ways. Some of them automatic. You know, these algorithms have. a purpose, but they have side effects.

And the side effects involve the divergence of our shared narrative such that, frankly, people on one side stop recognizing people on the other as even humans whose opinion is worth considering. And when that happens, you know, you enter a kind of fission process that is not dissimilar to what you would see in baboons or chimpanzee. where one group just simply decides to part company with the other and strikes out on its own. And until we address the divergence of our narratives, I think we're going to keep seeing variations on that theme. And isn't part of the problem, Brett, that you've used the word narrative, is that both left and right,

however you want to classify these two factions, have their own narratives, which a lot of the time really have no basis in reality. They're just that, a narrative. and people don't engage with it, they just parrot these words and these arguments. Well, that's one part of the problem, but you know, you could do a fairly good taxonomy. I would say that, you know, what we would loosely call the left and the right narrative are both downstream of a style of thought in which basically, and, you know, in scientific terms, we might call it verificationism or confirmation bias. And so you have a wide range of facts in a complex system, and you have people trying to filter it for meaning. But unless they are well-schooled in the dangers of confirmation bias, what they will end up doing is either shoehorning things into a narrative that they already believe, what we might call overfitting, or they will simply cherry-pick the data so that only those things. things that seem to match that narrative are even processed.

And when that happens, they become very convinced that they are seeing reality, when in fact, what they are seeing at best is a highly biased edit. And part of the problem as well is that we have these narratives, and that's just been exacerbated by social media. So people can essentially isolate themselves, can't they, and only be exposed to their own narrative? Well, even worse than that. I mean, that's certainly where this starts is that, you know, you follow people who, when they speak, it flatters your worldview rather than challenges it.

But then the media companies, the social media companies, exacerbate this problem for what are presumably mostly narrow economic reasons. In other words, to keep you on their site, they'll train their algorithm to either, you know, enrage you and keep you engaged or flatter you or something. combination of the two. But then even further down the road, we get to the point where they start declaring certain viewpoints persona non grata and tossing people off, which causes the people who have these other viewpoints to gather in an echo chamber that actually is physically held elsewhere. And that echo chamber doesn't check in with the standard narratives. It doesn't face the critique that it would if it were intermingled with them. And this is just simply a very dangerous process. And if we were to get wise about it, what we would realize is that all of the

variations on that theme, all of the ones that we've seen and all of the ones that are yet to be invented are a danger to civilization. And whatever instinct it is that causes us to think another one of these reinforcement mechanisms is a good thing. We have to get in front of that and stop doing it. Brett, I want to get a little bit into some of what happened yesterday because I do think it's important. So as we were talking before we started the show, we've been criticizing the tactics of the far left for the last four years on this show. The reason we are in the current studio is we got kicked out of our last one for saying that BLM shouldn't be looting and writing. And it's amazing to me that people now are there are a lot of people on the right particularly who are

condoning what happened yesterday and that level of cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling to me surely if it's wrong when they do it it must be wrong when when the side that you've become attached to does it as well how are people not seeing that well a good many of them are i've heard a lot of people yeah that i respect on the right recognizing that as as much as there are some distinctions to be drawn here, the overarching lesson is the same, which is we don't all get to decide that, you know, we've had it and that it's time to mutiny. Now, the problem, I would say, for the U.S. especially, is that because the U.S. was born in an insurrection, it is very hard for us to say insurrection is simply wrong, right? Because insurrection,

is our origin story. And what that means is that we have to have some very well thought out description of what the circumstances are that would have to be true in order to justify fighting back out of patriotism rather than a desire to tear the nation down. And, you know, this is in some sense an asymmetry. I don't think in the end it makes any difference in this case, but because what you really had is a small number of ill-informed people deciding that they had had enough. And, you know, we obviously can't have a civilization in which everybody gets to decide to do this. But the cognitive dissonance really is, again, a manifestation of a system in which we, because the institutions and the mechanisms,

that are supposed to help us make sense of the world have, I think, universally been captured, the official ones at least, we are left to cobble together our own worldview. And that worldview can be postmodern nonsense, as we've seen on the BLM left. It can be an insubstantial conspiracy hypotheses elevated to the level of fact, as we've seen on the Q&ONR right. And, you know, what it is is just a low-quality mechanism filling the vacuum left by the capture of the high-quality mechanism. I'm really glad you brought up the point of America's birth story,

the founding story of America being the revolution against British rule. So in terms of the narratives that would be on the MAGA right right now, is what they would say, and I personally don't agree with this, but they would say the election was stolen in a wide-scale electoral fraud. As a result of this, they made a large number of legal cases, which weren't properly investigated. They were dismissed on standing instead of being looked at on merit. And when that became clear that the legal avenue wasn't going to happen, they tried to stop Congress from certifying it via a few people who were, who were.

were willing to do that. And at this point, this is what they would argue, just a reminder, these brave patriots felt the need to storm in and essentially, you know, save America from leftist tyranny. This is what they would argue. How do you dissuade someone from that worldview? Well, I don't know because the abdication of responsibility by the major institutions, by journalists, by virtually every pillar of society, set the stage for this. So as much as it is very important to recognize the responsibility of confused individuals, they're not confused for nothing. And they're also, I would say, Americans generally are not wrong in detecting that something

about our system is fundamentally broken, right? And so, you know, the irony is that the frustration that motivates the attack on the Capitol that we saw yesterday and the George Floyd riots is in some sense just a near universal, right? Anybody who's paying attention and it's not being richly rewarded by the system as we find it has the sense it's rigged. It's not rigged in our favor. And that's a problem. And, you know, the other irony is that anyone who attempts to bootstrap a proper solution gets demonized and, in fact, gets painted as if they are part of one of these cabals on the fringes. You know, and I've faced that myself, as we've talked about before, right? Anybody who tries to, you know, carve out a stable space in the middle in which to discuss what's really going on and what's at stake and what ought to be unifying us is portrayed as.

as a partisan or a fool or or any one of these things. I mean, as recently as a couple weeks ago, IDW was declared far right in an academic paper that ultimately there was acknowledgement that this was preposterous. But I mean, it was just simply a clear attack from the truth-seeking wing of civilization on the sense-making wing. and, you know, no wonder things have begun to decoher. And Brett, you said that the system is broken. Could you delve into that a little bit more for people overseas or people who is not as Ophay with the American political system as you might be?

Sure. Now, it's a little bit subtle because what we have is a pervasive culture of political corruption. But the corruption is almost in. entirely legal. That is to say, it is very difficult to meet the American standard of proof with respect to violations of the protections we have against corruption, right? So revolving door, politics being one mechanism, nepotism, you know, bribery being delivered to the kin and friends of elected officials to keep their fingerprints off things. All of these mechanisms exist. And in In fact, they are loopholes that were carved out and enlarged by effectively corporate interests that we should have expected to attempt to do their own bidding at public expense by figuring out how to corrupt the process.

And what is hard to appreciate is just the degree to which this actually governs policy. In effect, what we have is a political apparatus that serves the public interest only incidentally. That is to say, you know, there are certain things on which the public well-being aligns with special interests, and then the public's bidding will be done to an extent. But as soon as they depart, there's no question whose interests govern. So that said, the system because it is born in the explicit recognition of the importance of checks and balances, and because the founders thoroughly understood the hazards of the market in principle, they couldn't have understood the challenges that would be faced in a technological environment, but they did understand the danger of, conflicts of interest, our system is rescuable, but we have to recognize the degree to which corruption has taken it over and has caused people to be an afterthought to policy rather than

its focus. So essentially what you're saying is that American democracy is in crisis? I mean, I think, you know, that's a very safe statement we could go a lot. It's been in crisis for almost my entire life. You know, we have a process. It's confusing because in some sense, our general elections appear to be more or less fair, whereas our primaries are where the dirty deeds are done. And so to the extent that the fanfare in general surrounds the general election, it looks much healthier than it actually is.

but in any case, yes, democracy in the U.S. is in serious trouble. The hazard to it is mundane as can be, but it is going to break apart in spectacular fashion in events like we saw yesterday. And I suppose a bigger question is where America leads, the rest of the world follows. I was talking to my Venezuelan cousin last night, and I said to him, know things that the world's going down the pan when even the gringoes are going insane. So if America is in crisis, what do you think is going to happen around the rest of the world? And how is this going to impact every liberal democracy? Well, this is another, I don't want to say uniquely

American defect, but it is a defect that we have to a much greater degree than a large part of the world, which is, I think because of the history of the 20th century, and the ascension to an unparalleled state of power that the US went through, Americans, modern Americans, tend to see the rest of the world only dimly. We see our own issues as paramount and everything else is very remote. But what we don't easily understand is the role

that the US has played, not only in, effectively demonstrating a path to a better style of governance, a style of governance that is built on the idea that governmental legitimacy is and must be founded in the consent of the governed. But we don't understand the role we play in stabilizing the world. And so my sense is we are going to have an absurd battle in the U.S. over largely fictional substitutes for a proper analysis of what has gone wrong. And the result of that is going to be, we are going to sideline ourselves and leave a vacuum that is certain to be filled by countries that are not remotely as committed to the values that we hold dear. Therefore, even just a simple

analysis of, you know, do you like equality? Right? We can fight over the difference between equality and equity. But if you like the idea of equality, the last thing you want to do is create a power vacuum that empowers China and Russia, right? That would be a terrible error. And, Brett, there's some other things that I wanted to cover in addition to the main issue, which of course is very important. But as I think we're starting to zone in in the course of this conversation on the issue of social media and their influence, I think while Francis and I have both been openly and outwardly critical of what happened last night and Donald Trump in his role in it. I think what he did and what those protesters did was very damaging and

irresponsible. At the same time, it's hard to ignore the fact that a very, in my opinion, dangerous precedent was set last night when Twitter and later Facebook unilaterally decided to suspend President Trump's account on Twitter. I don't know how you feel about it. We haven't spoken about it. But in my view, the precedent of a social media company, a big tech company, essentially cutting the president's pipeline to people off from him in a crucial moment, in a very heated dispute about the outcome of an election. The precedent that sets to me, if you play that movie forward, it does not look good to me. What did you make of it? Oh, I find it absolutely terrifying. I mean, no matter who this person is and what he's doing,

he is the president. Any reasonable person should agree to that. And the idea that those who, you know, sell pencils and paper or, you know, are vendors of electrical power or happen to own the conduits through which we communicate, that those people have the right to censor is so absurd on its face. And in fact, what we're seeing is really, a variation on another theme, where we've seen these same tech giants behave incredibly irresponsibly, barring people left and right for whom there is no argument that they are jeopardizing anything important. In fact, people who are trying to prevent events like this, like, you know, the Articles of Unity account that Twitter banned. It was built to prevent this kind of catastrophe.

And so the idea that these people are going to appoint themselves to a position where they get to decide who gets to speak to whom and, you know, even a duly elected president is unable to communicate with the public is, you know, clearly that's a good many steps down the road to hell. And there's an extra step that I, and again, I don't know whether you'd agree with me on this, but you've got the U.S. House and Senate now controlled by the Democrats and the presidency. So they have complete control there. And my view is it's highly likely that one of the terrible outcomes that results from this will be that the Democratic Party, the Democratic presidential administration, say, well, look what happens when you allow dangerous speech to be available online. Look what happens when one man can have 70 or 80 million followers on Twitter

and spread fake news or whatever it might be. We need to crack down. We need to make sure this never happens again. As Google executives were filmed saying in 2016 after Trump was elected the first time. And so my fear is that not only have the big tech companies awaken to the tremendous power that they now have, they're going to wield it in combination with the democratic establishment

now against people like us, people like you, people like me, people like Francis, other people trying to have sensible conversations online, that are actually addressing some of the underlying issues you talk about. They're going to come down on all of us, like a ton of bricks, aren't they? Oh, I see this coming, and we've all been talking about it for so long that, yes, what's happened now is going to accelerate it. When, you know, again, there's just going to be no end to the ironies.

What really happened yesterday, in some sense, was that the feeble response to BLM violence, in particular, the sustained attack on federal buildings here in Portland actually set a precedent. And, you know, I've been involved in a number of discussions with very smart, well-informed people offline, about how one compares the attack on, you know, a courthouse in federal courthouse in Portland to an attack on the Capitol. And obviously, an attack on the Capitol is a good deal more serious in one regard. But then again, it was a momentary attack, whereas what has happened in Portland was a sustained attack on a federal building allowed to continue night after night. And so, you know, that people are beginning to understand what it is that restrains the behavior of the force that is supposed to enforce the law, right?

And that they are availing themselves of opportunities that they should not have because we have effectively carved out a loophole for one group of people over here that's going to be predictably enough exploited by other people over there. We have to stop that process. You absolutely have to have the law. Now, unfortunately, so much here has been politicized that even the phrase that is being used is law and order, which is, in fact, a dog whistle, right? Law and order is a dog whistle. The proper, nonpartisan way to say this is rule of law. Yes. You have to have the rule of law.

And the rule of law can be applied blind. The point is, are you attacking a federal building? That's a crime. We have mechanisms. We're not going to provide a way out because, you know, we want to signal that we are sympathetic to something you're saying. The point is you're not allowed to do that. It's outside the rules. So, yeah, we've set the stage for ourselves here, and we are now seeing just how far it goes.

And we will see exactly the same thing censorship-wise, right? To the extent that you have these arrogant corporations that live, I don't even want to say, on one side of the ideological spectrum because I think it's far more political than anything. But to the extent that they see one set of things that they will violate norms like free speech to address, of course, those very same rights that they are generating for themselves will be turned on exactly the people that they would want to protect. So, yeah, we've created a predicament for our... that is going to require some very careful counterintuitive thinking to escape.

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That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. And Brett, you know, we're talking about what the BLM riots are particularly in Portland. Why is it that we cannot be consistent in our thinking? Why is it that people who are on that side are fully able to condemn Trump, fully able to say this is, you know, disgusting, this is, whatever it may be? But when it comes to their own side, they go, well, what they're doing is, trying to abolish systemic racism?

Well, you know, I have just a personal rule about this. I don't think that what's going on on the two sides is exactly symmetrical, right? There are lots of nuances. However, my feeling is if you were condemning BLM and you are not at least trying to figure out what part of what happened yesterday is completely unacceptable and for the same reasons, you're not really a part of the actual conversation. You're just a partisan. And so if you were to limit the conversation to only people who are recognizably behaving in a nonpartisan and even-handed fashion, the quality of the conversation would immediately skyrocket. The problem is everybody wants to amplify that which leans

in their direction. And so what you get is a lot of people making arguments. Many of those arguments may be true, but they're making them for the wrong reason, right? They're not legitimate arguments because what's motivating them is, hey, that works in my favor rather than that's actually accurate. So anyway, we, it would be wise if we figured out how to narrow the conversation to only those people who've proven that when a point goes against whatever their side might be, that they still recognize it. Well, I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, to put it as pessimistically as I can, but what I think maybe it's time to start talking about is the big tech incentivization of ever spiraling extremism. Because we know, you know, your brilliant podcast that you do with Heather, the Dark Horse podcast, we do this show to thousands of people. We know that if we called this live interview with you, you know, If we wanted to please a left-wing audience, we would say fascism in America. And if we wanted to please a right-wing audience, we'd say patriots succeed in whatever it would be. Or patriots unite.

Patriots unite, even better. That'd be great. That would be great. So if we do either of those things, we would have 10 times as many people in here and 10 times as much passion and 10 times as many superchats. And that is the way you do things if you want to get. attention. And we've done our very best to stay away from that. We don't always succeed, but we've done our best. But the platforms incentivize that kind of behavior. And I think

part of the solution must be surely in addressing the way that those systems encourage people to behave. Because human beings are very simple. We respond to incentives, don't we? Well, we do. I think, you know, the thing about patriotism, the sort of synquanon of the structure, is a willingness to pay a cost for something that you believe in. And I think many of us are showing that we do that naturally. I don't find that terribly surprising. I think patriotism is a real phenomenon and there are always, it's not the most common property,

but it's not uncommon to find people who are willing to sacrifice for their nation or for values that are worth fighting for. But the problem is, I mean, you know, let's just, I, it's hard for me to make this point because I'm at the center of it. But, you know, Facebook has now tossed the president off their platform, right? That would be much easier to interpret generously if they hadn't also tossed me off their platform. Right? I mean, the problem is Facebook has displayed a willingness to evict people who are simply pointing out the corruption of both parties, right? And so in effect, they have come out pro-corruption.

And having done so, now they're throwing the president off reads in a particular way. So I should say for those who don't know the story under a great deal of pressure that was exerted when I announced on Twitter that I had been thrown off Facebook. Facebook did reverse course and claim that it had been an error. Nothing they said about the issue made any sense. But the point is, do you really want Facebook empowered to decide who is going to get to speak? And if you do, what do you think they will do with that power? One thing they will do is they will go after people who are non-ideological and non-partisan, right? Because they are fiercely partisan.

We can't have partisans in charge of who gets to speak, even when there's somebody doing things, which I think are genuinely troubling, which I would say is quite true of Trump, especially in recent weeks. So what do we do, Brett? We have these companies, four or five of them, and they're in charge, and they're the ones get to decide. to decimate the information. What can we do as a society to take back control? Francis bringing out Brexit slogan there, just for the hardcore facts. Take back control of our tech.

All right. So let's just first notice one of the facts that works in our favor. You've got three kinds of people inside of all. all of our institutions. You've got people who are committed to doing the right thing in an institution that is fiercely committed to doing the expedient thing. Those people will not last long. They will be in very short supply.

You've got people who are ruthless and do whatever is in their own interest, irrespective of what the cost may be. Those people will exist at some level inside of all of our institutions. And then you have people who are caught in a bind. These are people who probably are sympathetic to the idea that the system isn't working very well, that it could be fixed to advance values that we actually all share, but they are willing to make massive compromises in order to stay employed, in order to advance the narrow interests of their families, etc. And my point would be those people can actually be liberated to do the right thing inside of all of these institutions. And we are foolish to simply read the fact that they routinely disappoint us as evidence that they wouldn't prefer to live in a better system and be ready to go along with it if there was some plan to get there. So this is a long-winded way of saying that strategically speaking, you've got a lot of people who are capable of leveling up being good and collaborating who can't be seen because their day-to-day activities look corrupt like everything else about our system.

And so I would say we need to start reaching those people and they need to start reaching those people. And they need to start reaching across political, ideological lines to their partners in competing institutions, right? Now, you can say this about our political structure, for example, in the U.S., there are, I think it's a small number of high-quality people in the Congress, for example, who could partner with people across the aisle to, to write the ship of state. If we do what those who are taking advantage of the situation would have us do, things will simply get worse. And we will periodically come back to Trigrapod to talk about the new infuriating film that we've all seen and what its implications are for the collapse of the West and all of these things.

But if people who see the importance of preserving the nation, in the case of the U.S. and the West more generally start behaving like patriots and contacting those with different views who share that same priority, there's a lot of good that can be done. So the question is, can those people, what are they paying attention to? What are they reading, right? Either they're paying attention to channels like this one, in which case there's hope of reaching them, or are they paying attention to officially sanctioned channels that are so fiercely partisan that that even though this is the moment for them to take control and partner across these traditional lines, that they will just miss the call because they won't know it's out there.

And Brett, what would you say to, and this is a very, very left-wing argument that has been put to me, and I can't really see a way around it, that this is the inevitable result of capitalism. This is what happens when you have monopolies in charge of disseminating information. they are ultimately going to act in their own interests, and their own interest is in the bottom line. It's in the profit margin. I would say a number of things. One, I'm increasingly wary of any argument

that is predicated on the term capitalism if the person delivering the argument isn't willing to define exactly what they mean. Because in general, when I talk to people on the left about their their concerns about capitalism. In effect, what I frequently hear is that they don't like markets. And I know from several decades of encountering the problem that markets are both the source of many of our greatest hazards and also our best hope, right?

Markets are very good at solving certain kinds of problems. And so what we should really be doing is figuring out how to get markets to address those problems rather than demonizing them wholesale because many of their products are destructive. So in any case, I guess what I would say is, yes, capitalism needs to be intelligently regulated, right? And if I say well regulated, people on the right will hear that as intensely regulated. What I want to see is it elegantly regulated so that it actually solves problems rather than have market forces turned over to the faith that if you simply allow them to run rampant, that they will fix everything, which they clearly don't. Brett, we've got about another seven, eight minutes of the interview, and then we'll go to our questions from the audience. So, guys, if you're watching, remember, there's a link in the pinned comment or send us a super chat, and we'll be. pull them all up at the end and go through the most appropriate and interesting questions.

Brett, what do you see? We've seen this, I would say, cataclysmic event yesterday. And I know that a lot of people on the right feel like the media coverage is disproportionate when compared to what happened with BLM. And I have some sensitivity to that in terms of the physical damage, in terms of the cost of the damage, in terms of number of people who were injured or killed. Yes, it wasn't quite as bad as six months of BLM burning down central Portland and whatever else, but it happened in one night and it was the capital during the certification of an election.

That is political violence on a completely different scale. And that's what makes it so important, right? So to me, there is no doubt that this is a cataclysmic event with huge impacts down the line. Do you think this will become a sort of Cuban missile crisis moment where we all wake up to the madness that we've been living in? We see how close we've come to the brink and we go, we must step back. We must find a sensible way. Even if we continue to fight the so-called Cold War or whatever cultural war, we can't fight it in a way that leads us to this. Well, it absolutely should be that moment.

I know from experience that many things that should be that moment come and go and it doesn't happen. So the question is, is there some force that we can exert that can cause people to understand what this means? And I would say, you know, again, I alluded earlier to the fact that a solution here will have to be counterintuitive, right? The intuitive thing for people on all sides is to figure out what this does to the cause they were advancing and, you know, play from there. And if we do that, we will end up on a continuing escalator of mandacity and essentially a treadmill of retribution, right? It is this retributive instinct that I think is the greatest danger to us now. Many people were enraged by what they saw yesterday, understandably. But you cannot analyze it in isolation.

It is the result of many things. It is the result of the corruption of the system. It is the result of the amplifying influence of social media. And if we're going to dig our way out of this, we are going to have to confront those processes in ways that are new and therefore likely to be easy to dismiss. So go ahead. No, no, sorry. And one thing that I really wanted to talk to you about, Brett, before we move on to the superchats and all the rest of it, is I have a lot of friends on the left. I still consider myself to be of the left,

although I don't think they would. But anyway, and I hear the term fascist used around Trump, and there's been lots of pictures of people with fascist insignia and T-shirts and all the rest of it. Would you consider Trump to be a fascist, and do you consider his actions fascistic, especially those of last night? No.

I consider Trump to be. be a genuine threat to the established order. I consider him to be the leader of a cult of personality. I consider to him to have severe personal defects that make it impossible for him to responsibly wield the power that he has. I would say the evidence, the number of times he has simply not take an advantage of a crisis to institute fascistic reforms that would have been expected is many. And so what we have is, are there elements of fascism that one can find over in Trump space and the movement that surrounds him? Sure, but you can say the exact same thing about what's going on over in DNC space, right? The fusion, for example,

example of the state with the corporate is classic fascism. And where that's going on most clearly has to do with the tech sector and the Democratic Party. So I guess my point would be, look, I'm not even sure that we're going to see fascism again, right? Will we see variations on that theme? We will. Where will they come from? That's anybody's guess because, you know, the whole thing, the whole apparatus has become corrupted. And the way that that corruption manifests is simply, it's non-traditional, right? We're dealing with a novel environment. And so fascism has been defined against historical realities that simply don't exist anymore.

So are there things as frightening as fascism that we should be afraid of? Absolutely. But if, you know, if we're waiting for it to, you know, goostep onto the stage, it's not going to happen. Well, right. And I think even what happened yesterday in my assessment is probably more product of his lack of imagination of what might happen if you continue to whip up these frenzies, as opposed to him like deliberately orchestrating mobs to take over the capital. So I think it's probably a false accusation that often comes from the left against him. But speaking of presidents, what do you make of what will happen under his opposite number? Because it looks like Donald Trump has acknowledged that there's going to be a peaceful transfer of power on January the 20th. What do you think the Biden presidency, particularly, as I mentioned, with having control over both chambers of Congress, what do you think that's going to look like and what will America look like with President Joe Biden?

Well, unfortunately, it's going to be a disaster. That's essentially guaranteed, but it's going to be a... I should say sorry to interrupt Brett. For people who are watching for the first time, not all of our interviews are upbeat and cheeriest this one. Please carry on. Yes. Well, the thing is, Joe Biden is a machine politician

from the heart of the Democratic National Committee. So what this moment is, is an old corrupt order reasserting itself after a period of new corruption and chaos. And I don't, you know, as I said during the election cycle, I don't know which is more troubling. Certainly the events of yesterday suggest one very particular hazard that seems to exist on one side. of this in a very potent and concentrated form. But in terms of, you know, it is very dangerous to have mainstream, especially powerful Americans reassured that normalcy is back and that there's nothing to worry about because everything, including Trump, is a consequence of a system that

has been in crisis for decades in which rational options do not exist. They are systematically eliminated for very mundane economic reasons. And that is the problem that has to be cured, because this was never about Trump. Trump is a symptom. And if you don't cure the problem, worse, if you decide that the problem is cured by reestablishing the old corrupt order, then you will generate a next version of Trump. And it could easily be, you can easily be, you be far more dangerous. It could be smarter. It could be much more interested in wielding power in an authoritarian fashion. And, you know, this is this is the trial run that is supposed to alert us to that. And if we don't take the hint, then I guess what's coming is on us.

well on all of those many happy note brett let's get to some of the questions i'm starting to hear a bit of an echo i don't know what that's about but uh anton if we could have some of the things that people have been saying uh breg give us a second he's already sent us through a portion yeah so let me have a look so anton says i'm learning more and more towards labeling 21 as yeah we're going to have some of these that i can't read out brett just because they're they're more jokes than anything else. A question for Brett, says Holby Camelton, did anyone learn anything positive from the Evergreen debacle?

If so, how do we encourage and replicate positive growth among the masses? Well, we have to divide that question. Did anyone at Evergreen learn anything valuable? I will say the evidence that is coming out of the Evergreen State College would suggest that absolutely nothing was learned, if anything, the opposite. Somehow the events of Evergreen seem to have reassured people that they were on exactly

the right track, and they have managed to dismiss all pushback as somehow evidence that they were right all along. Did anybody in the outside world learn anything from it? Well, a good many people clearly did. It wasn't enough, and the fact that the Evergreen... pattern has reemerged all over the place, continues to be seen at colleges like Bryn Marn and Haverford, and has spilled out into the streets, would suggest we didn't learn enough, fast enough, but I would say lots of people are wide awake, and in part, the reason that they

are wide awake is that they saw a very clear example in the Evergreen story of what this was. and just how broken the ideology that drove it was. And we have a question here from the wonderfully named Jez Giant Chicken. He says, who's asked the question, it's actually a very good question. Voters seem to have reached the end of their tether with the Republican Democrat circus now. Will 2024 see more independence running? Well, you know, I don't know. It certainly should.

but the mechanisms that exist to prevent people from escaping the duopoly are subtle, powerful, and many. And so I think people need to be alert to the fact that they are being steered into a structure that is already controlled because that structure knows that if people had a choice outside of it, a rational choice, that that choice would be wildly popular. Someone just as an aside, John Bowering with a tenor says, Bloody Hell is Brett on trigonometry. It looks like we've got two Christmases this year. Love you all, guys. Well, we might not have any Christmases this year the way this one is going.

But this is an interesting point, and this is a point that people on the right often make about this issue, Brett. Colin says, do you remember when it was acceptable to storm the Senate during the Kavanaugh hearings? The narrative has been decided. did for you. In other words, that hypocrisy that both you and us acknowledged is that that's a central driving force of the whole process here, isn't it? Yes, and I would say in order that we do not just continue to see a series of this in which people point out, oh, well, you think this is

bad. What about when it was the other side and you said nothing? We can do an infinite series of that. Yeah. What has to happen is we have to make a hard break, right? We have to declare a moment at which behavior like this is not tolerated and move forward under a different set of rules where a, you know, the idea of colorblindness has been misportrayed and falsely tarnished. But really, it is a variation on equal protection under the law. The law must be blind to who you are and what you believe, and it must be applied

equally. And so we should all be able to subscribe to that. And to the extent that it is violated by anyone, we ought to be able to say, that's not good for us. Even if the people who got the exception were saying things that we have to be have some sympathy with. But how is that going to happen, Brett? We've seen what the Democratic Party has represented in the last four years.

Now that they control every possible lever of government, how is that going to happen? Well, you know, you correctly detect that I'm not optimistic that having the Democrats in full charge is going to result in this. On the other hand, I do believe that people wake up. And many people who signed up for some kind of control on the basis that they thought it spoke to values that they believed in are going to realize that in fact they are putting something much bigger and more important in danger. You can't sacrifice the West over virtue signaling, right? It's an absurdity. And so anyway, what we can do is we can hope that those people emerge and we can recognize them when they do.

We can protect them. And to the extent that they don't emerge, we're going to have to force the issue because the thing that has just reasserted its control is hostile to the public's interest and is in large measure a cause of the problem that we saw boil over. today. Christopher McMahon has asked you a question, which is, Brett, any plans for Unity 2024? There are certainly plans for unity going forward. There are questions about what unity should be. Obviously, I think people understood unity as very much about an electoral play. And There's certainly room for that going forward, but I don't think it's the only thing that unity should be about. Unity is about the fact that very frequently no one speaks for our collective nonpartisan interests, and that is putting us in jeopardy.

And therefore, I think the proper role for unity going forward is to always give voice to the patriotic center. and to provide safe haven for people from all parts of the political spectrum who wish to meet in that center so that we can navigate the way forward. I have to say that the names in the superchats are brilliant. So someone called Batser People 2 says, how do we increase empathy on Earth? Which I thought was actually an interesting question, not least because we're talking with you as a sort of social analyst,

political commentator. but actually, you know, your day job and your profession is evolutionary biology. So is there a way to increase empathy on Earth? Is it even desirable to do so? Yes. We've done an amazing job on this front over the course of thousands of years. And only in, you know, the last five minutes of history have we begun to bungle it so badly. The way you increase empathy is you allow people.

to see through your eyes or an enhanced mechanism would involve the building of characters and the running them through scenarios so that you understand it from their perspective. And, you know, this is this is so simple. We don't even comment on it most of the time. But how is it that, you know, a man can know how a woman sees the world? Well, you know, a really good story written from a woman's perspective is a darn good upgrade. So the point is any mechanism that causes you to see through the well-drawn eyes of somebody else is an enhancement to empathy. It is a very good thing.

Unfortunately, what social media, I think, has accidentally done is the exact opposite, where what it does is it makes people whose viewpoint is different seem alien and defective, and it makes people who share your exact viewpoint seem like the only people who get it. And so it's like an anti-emphathy environment. And I would say in the short term, people need to violate whatever boundaries are supposed to keep them from interacting with others. They need to extend the benefit of the doubt to people and really hear what they're trying to say. And having gone down this road and partnered with many others who do this routinely, I would say it's surprising easy and more important, it's rewarding.

When you meet people whose perspective is different and they articulate it and you hear what they're saying and you suddenly understand why it is that people are so convinced of something that you didn't initially see, you'll feel better. You'll feel more grounded. So anyway, yes, plenty of mechanisms and we should avail ourselves of them and be afraid of any mechanism that goes in the other direction. Annie asks, how do you show people they're stuck in a particular narrow, and when they automatically assume your inverted commas far right, but even suggesting a different

point of view. And you could even substitute far right, far left, woke, anti-woke, whatever it is. How do you have conversations in this world that you've just described? Well, you know, it's a little slow going. I think the problem is that the question in some sense comes from a perspective in which, you know, you might ask, how can you make sure nobody misunderstands where you're coming from and you can't? But what you can do is make progress so that over time, more and more people understand that that's not where you are and it's not what's motivating you. And I would say the key tool for this is to trigger their minds to rise to consciousness. That by and large, human beings hour to hour are on autopilot and they only rise to consciousness when something requires the attention of the conscious mind because it isn't standard. And so the way you get that to happen in conversation is you raise points that do not reconcile by some normal scheme, right?

So, you know, to the extent that one holds positions that are not from either slate but are actually a mixture that is what you arrive at if you start from first principles, then pointing out the juxtaposition, of perspectives that don't usually travel together causes people to have to think in order to process what you're saying so to take just one example people tend to be either uh covid hawks in which case they're enthusiastic about masks under all circumstances um they are absolutely believing of medical uh wisdom on the topic or they tend to be covid skeptics in which case, they have the sense that this isn't a very serious disease, that masks don't work and are unnecessary, that lockdowns are inherently about authoritarianism. And to the extent that one says something like, I am a believer that COVID is much more dangerous than our focus on death rates

would have us believe. On the other hand, I believe we are making a mistake, not pointing out to people the relative safety of the outside environment and that masks are a socially costly phenomenon and we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to take them off when we're in an environment where the virus doesn't transmit right that borrows from both sides and it doesn't adhere to anybody's script and it will cause the mind to have to process it especially well if you don't mind me saying an even better and shorter example would be the way you use the word Patriot because it's interesting to me that you talk about patriotism quite a lot because for a sort of leftist professor from Evergreen, or formerly, of course, that is not a word

that most people would associate with you, but the way you frame that word is essentially about love of country, love of people, of your fellow man and woman in your country. And I think in a world in which the word patriot seems to be mostly a preserve of the right, that actually is something that even when I listen to you pulls me out of the sort of that very, very binary thinking that we often have on these issues. And actually speaking about that

very issue, Holly Mathneur, who is a big fan of both a big supporter and a big friend of both our show and yours, says, is it possible that the Overton window has shifted so far that those of us who believe in free speech, scientific reality and individualism, actually

are right of sentiment. out. Well, I can't imagine why right of center would be the right description. Knowing Holly, I'm sure that there is a good defense of her perspective. But what I would say, what I have met is a good many people whose top priorities include, you know, logic analysis, evidence-based reasoning, hypothetical deductive approach, a good many of those people are effectively sheltering on the center right because the left has become hostile to these things. And I don't think that has anything to do with where these things natively live. You know, of course, you know, in the not so distant past, the left would have been, you know, the defender of science against people who

wanted a religious exemption from it. But it is important not, we don't want to mistake science for that which scientists do. Science is a method, right? Anything that adheres to that method is science. And likewise, we don't want to mistake a set of beliefs as resident on some part of the political spectrum where they happen to reside at the moment. The point is these are part of our collective birthright, the very features that Holly is pointing to, are so essential to the successes of the West that I think the fact is their communal property. And I'm grateful to anybody who will defend them, irrespective of what side of the political spectrum they're on, but ultimately they have to reside on both. And Iron Shirt has a very, very good question,

charming name as well. Although the gender equity, in yesterday's capital deaths. I think you can skip that one, man. Oh, sorry. Yep. That was absolutely. We're trying to give you the ones that actually are going to provoke

an interesting response for me. There's plenty. Because when we normally do live streams, there's a lot of jokes flying around and stuff like that. But when we've got you on the show, we don't want to waste your time with that. So let me see.

There was a great one about peer review. Oh, here it is. Yes. So this is from Boha Hav, which is, can the Academy be improved? by making peer review financially rewarding. Oh, boy. You know, the academy is so broken and has, you know, it is suffering from a lethal number of self-inflicted wounds.

And so, you know, would it be better if peer review was financially rewarding? Maybe a little. But, you know, that's far from the deepest problem with peer review. So what I would say is we need, if the academy is to survive, it needs a radical rethink. There's no question about this. Absent to radical rethink, it will perish from its own absurdities and paradoxes. And the real question is, how do we not go down with that ship? How do we generate something that does not have peer reviews defects in the outwee?

outside world where we are going to have to navigate the questions of what is true while the academy, you know, suffers its death throws. Yeah, it does sound a little bit like sort of saying, would the cancer patient was stage four cancer be better off if the room temperature was one degree higher? There's a bigger problem going on there, right? And that's a subject for another whole conversation, I think, because what's happened in academy is largely feeding into all the things we've been talking about. and is very sad to see, and it probably even sadder for you, someone who was of that world.

Let's look at some paypals as well. David says, please keep me anonymous. Is it possible that we are witnessing what we are witnessing? And this is something I've talked about frequently is that what we're witnessing are symptoms of a declining civilization and not just the United States, but also the West in general. Yeah, this, I'll try to make this succinct, but I have argued in a couple of places, including on a recent Dark Horse podcast, that the United States is suffering that actually born of its corruption is suffering something that is the exact analog of the process that causes a body to degrade and fail over time. That in effect, what makes a body fail is that many genes

have two or more properties. And when a property is very good for you early, in life, it tends to be captured, collected, and amplified by selection in spite of its late life downside because many individuals don't live to suffer the late life effects and those who do have already done most of the reproduction. So anyway, that's the biological part of this. But what we have in the U.S. in very potent form is a system in which when a process, let's say an industrial process has very good early benefits, that is to say it's wildly profitable. And it comes with late life effects that are very destructive, like let's say it deranges

civilization by causing people only to hear viewpoints that reinforce what they already think. That process by the time we recognize the hazard is unstoppable. We cannot go in reverse even when we discover that we are in mortal jeopardy because the process puts us in danger. So that's the exact same thing as the process that causes a body to fail. So in effect, civilization is experiencing what we call senescence. But I would point out, this is not a death sentence because we have a mechanism for self-upgrade. And that mechanism for self-upgrade, which is very well formalized in the American system, but exists across the West,

is to effectively take the values at the core of the system. the mechanisms that are understood to function well and to separate them and put them into a 2.0 structure in exactly the same way that a failing human body produces children that pick up the smart things that the adult knows, the relevant things, and jettisons the antiquated and wrong things, right? So we need a rebirth process for the West or we will die and leave no air. And this is from body skies. As an evolutionary biologist, what are your thoughts on Tennis McCarran's McEnnor's Stone 8 theory?

And to what extent do you think American politicians would benefit from guided psychedelic experiences as a way to instill empathy for their fellow humans in nature? This may be reframed as the Joe Rogan, have you ever smoked DMT question? Well, let's put it this way. The number of cultures that have innovated a mechanism for inducing hallucinations is indefinitely large. Right? It's not always molecules. Sometimes it's sweat lodges and things. But nonetheless, we have to understand this as a positive process, which doesn't mean that simply getting stoned is good for you. But what it does mean is that many cultures have discovered a mechanism. for breaking through the normal boundaries of consciousness and that by architecting that in a special

way have gotten benefits from it. Now, I would point out, it's typically the shaman who has the visions, not the chief, right? Now, there are going to be cases where that's not the case, but there's some protection in having the person who is making the calls, not be the person who is seeing the visions, and we may need some analog, whereby we can avail ourselves of the insight that comes from what is essentially a high cognitive mutation rate without suffering the hazard of driving while tripping. So yes, there is something down this road. Do I think that our leaders need to be given entheogens, well, A, the question are asked under

proper guidance. Were you to have proper guidance, that would be essential for such a thing. But B, it doesn't have to be them, you know, and in fact, maybe our, you know, unfortunately, maybe markets have taken the fanciful narrative generating mechanism that would play that role for society and harness it to a uninteresting and dangerous economic plow. But yes, we have to resurrect something. that we can think outside the box and see what might be possible without being limited by, you know, the normal rules. I couldn't agree with you more, bro.

I think the only thing that could possibly make this situation better if Joe Biden and Donald Trump are simultaneously hallucinating while this was happening. I would take things up a level, wouldn't it? What could go wrong? Yeah, one of our American supporters, Colby Hamilton, from Texas, he says that he likes your idea of drafting a better quality of candidate for president. But his concern is how that works within a system where we're all human. So he said, for example, you think McRaven is center right, which I presume doesn't agree with. What about like in 2024, Tulsi Gabbard, Dan Crenshaw

ticket? Both very certainly interesting people, I would say, have shown themselves to be quite sensible in many things. Neither appears to be extremists. Both have served. It's both. Both could be described as Patriot without any sort of question over them. What do you make of his question and those two in particular? Well, how can I put this? I think if you meet a small number of characteristics and you come up with a power sharing arrangement where things have to be hashed out to the point of consensus, you've solved almost all of the problem. Now, in the Unity 2020 proposal, I did say someone from the center left and someone from the center right would need to be paired. In large measure, I don't think it's necessary that that be the case, but I do think it's necessary in order for the public to understand that their interests will definitely be represented no matter where they are on the political spectrum.

So from my perspective, look, all I want is rational people who are courageous enough to do the right thing and not corrupted by finances or anything else. If you had such people, they would make errors. There would be hazards. But we'd be so far ahead of where we are now, it would be a slam dunk winner. So anything that will do the job, as far as pairing somebody from the center left and center right in order to know, neutralize whatever political considerations would tend to walk into the room with the people in question. It's nice, but it's really not needed. A rational person faced with the evidence, faced with an understanding of the full range of possibilities will tend to do the right thing.

And if you had two of them and I'll have to hash it out, I'm not concerned, even though I'm from what I would say is the far left if you had two people who were right of center but were committed to the well-being of the nation and open to hearing arguments from all sides about what the best course forward was. I could be very comfortable with that. We have a question from Madhatter, which is, will we ever see another Republican president in the next 20-plus years? And I think this ties into this fact that a lot of conservatives are very, very worried that Donald Trump has done irreparable damage to the party and its reputation. Yeah, I must say I'm so concerned about.

both of these deeply corrupt parties that I find it hard to get animated over whether or not we'll see another Republican president. What I want to see is a president who's up to the challenge, right? Any president from any party who's seriously up to the challenge would be great. Who was the last one that the United States have had who described us having that, fitting those criteria? Well, I would say I have to put a special asterisk by Barack. Obama's name because I still cannot explain to myself why he was so terrible as a president, because he does strike me as a guy. He's plenty smart. It seemed to me that his heart was in the right place. You know, he was a marvelous orator who had the power to inspire people, and yet

at a policy level, he was no better and arguably worse than George Bush. So I don't know why Obama fails to test, but he does. I would say the last one who had the requisite characteristic, was largely understood to be a failure of a president. It was Jimmy Carter. And the fact is, Jimmy Carter had a very difficult set of hazards to deal with, the energy crisis in particular, the Iran hostage situation. And, you know, he, I don't know how much better he might have done, but he is not regarded as a great president because so little was accomplished.

However, he's very clearly, you know, a decent man and a smart man and patriotic. And so I think in other circumstances, he might have shined. But the world since then has been, has routinely generated presidential paradoxes. I guess I should also put an asterisk by Ronald Reagan, who I think, history has shown to have been a better president than many of us thought he was. Now, in some sense, the asterisk in his case is about the fact that I'm not really sure that what he was was president, right? He was an inspiring orator who was effectively hired to do a job and, you know, may have gambled in a way that was unacceptable, but worked out with respect to the Soviet Union, for example.

but nonetheless, you know, again, it's not that none of the characteristics were right for Ronald Reagan, but the sum total wasn't. That's really interesting, Brad. Before I read out another question, are you okay to go for another 10 minutes? Sure. Yep, cool. I should just say that while we've been on air for people who are watching, you might want to know that we'll be doing another live interview this Saturday, two days from now with Douglas Murray, who's a regular on the show, talking about this very issue. And he wrote a piece yesterday talking about Donald Trump's responsibility for what had happened and what needs to happen now. And I think, again, adding to your very sensible voice, Brett, I think that's a voice from the center right or the right that also needs to be heard on this issue.

And we're always delighted to have Douglas on the social. That will be on Saturday, same time 7 p.m. UK. I'm looking forward to it. Douglas is a friend, and he's one of a small number of people whose opinion I take very seriously. do we with tremendous respect for that man but rocky says and this is a really good question we've got i want to acknowledge a bunch of people who've sent us very significant superchance but uh jason mcconnell in particular and others but rocky from canada says breaking up is on the rise as an idea and this is something that worries me tremendously brett when i see what i think is deeply irresponsible

talk of secession and breaking up and all this sort of thing but it is you can't deny it it's been the idea look at brexit in canada uh you know we're talking about Scotland splitting off in the United Kingdom. There are Spanish pieces of that country that want to break off and have been trying to. It seems to be in the zeitgeist. Is that right? Is that wrong? What do you think?

Oh, it's a terrible idea, especially in the U.S. case. I mean, for one thing, we don't, there is no geographical boundary you could draw that would allow that separation. So the carnage in question would be unthinkable. But it's also, it's not the solution to the problem. Right. We have a problem where we've lost the ability to see the humanity in each other. And we've begun to imagine that the people on the other side are just, you know, too dumb to be left on the ship. And it's not true, right? Are there people too dumb? Yes, on both sides. But the fact is understanding what is being said, right? It really is true. If you work from first principles and you attempt to figure out what is true and what it implies about. policy, you don't end up with a slate that is blue or red. It's very mixed. And so what that means is if your viewpoint is blue or red, you're missing a big part of the puzzle, right? And so anyway,

what I would say is the idea of splitting apart is it is a cure that is worse than the disease. by far and the right thing to do is to start patching the nation and the West together on the basis that actually we have all lost our minds to an extent and recovering them is job number one. And we've got a question from Manuel, which is, what would be a better version of social media than the one we currently have? What would be a better version? Well, you know, it's a hard, it's a little bit like the question about peer review in the sense that

we could dance around the edges of various things that are wrong. The censorious instinct is itself a huge hazard. It being wielded by people who are clearly partisan makes it ten times worse. So for starters,

what we need is some kind of 2.0 version of our constitutional rights that tells us what we are allowed to do online, where we are guaranteed the right to do it, and, you know, lays these things out in a manner that would give us some mechanism for redress of grievances. You know, it simply can't be that you log in one morning and discover you're no longer on the platform and that the decision is final and there's nobody to talk to. That happened to me, just that exact thing. And the point. is at the very least, right, the founders of the U.S.

understood that you had a right to see the evidence against you, to face your accusers. You needed a court, right? And in this case, we've uninvented all of that insight over a largely artificial distinction between public and private. Just, I should say, and Ken Dodd's super chat summarizes this, he says, the right man, the right conversation at the right time. Thanks, guys.

So there's a lot of love for you, Brett. and for the approach you've taken. And thank you very much for coming on the show. But Ryan asked a question, also from Canada, interestingly. And this is an interesting question that I think Francis and I, as well, you should answer. Does everyone agree that none of this is about Biden? Which I find an interesting question. I would say I would agree that this isn't about Biden.

What it is about is what Biden is not. If Biden had been a very different candidate, then this would have gone very differently. but the fact that he's so he's not been able to capture anyone's imagination, he's just not Donald Trump. That seems to be his strongest strength, his biggest strength. That is probably the thing that has made this worse. What do you think? I think that Biden is a representation of the old order. I think what he is is a skin graft and a cancerous wound.

And the problem is that people look at the skin graft, it's gone over the wound. Everyone's like, oh, okay, it's fine. we can all go about our time. We're back to normal, but the infection is still there, and it's still going to eat away at the leg, unfortunately. It's a lovely visual metaphor. That's what we're the sort of thing we're like here. Yep. No, I think this is exactly right. And, you know, I don't even think this is subtle, right? Now, let's leave Biden aside. He may be a perfectly lovely human being at the level of sitting across the table from him and talking to him. But the,

number of places where a major form of financial corruption is just outside the range of where it touches him legally is vast, right? I mean, we've had an impeachment surrounding a business dealings in Ukraine of his son. The Biden laptop also suggests that influence, his influence was being peddled. very directly to other people. And the point is, I can't as an American, say that I much care that this stuff isn't legally provable as corruption. It's clear that either Hunter Biden was pretending to peddle his influence, right, which is one

kind of problem, much less serious, or that he was actually peddling influence and that it was done in a way that, you know, kept Joe Biden's hands off the immediate consequences. But the real point is, hey, we have a corrupt system. It's serving the interests of those who can pay for play rather than the public. And that is the exact opposite of what the system is supposed to do. We have a super chap from Downey Jr. I'm not sure if it's Robert, if it is. We're all a big fan of your work, Robert.

And we want to see Iron Man back in the Marvel universe. But anyway, so he asked, do political systems attract the best people for the job? or are the best people working in the private sector living more happy and prosperous lives? Great question. A few of the best people will be found in the system, but by and large, the system actually makes it almost impossible for them to stick around. And I would point to Tulsi Gabbard leaving office, having run into the entire Democratic bulwark. the prevention of all of the things she would have liked to do. And this isn't the only place that it happens also.

I would say, you know, many of the people who it would be wonderful to have in a university structure, the people who would be, you know, scientifically the most capable and the most likely to make major breakthroughs end up in the private sector because the hoops they're forced to jump through in academia and the low rate of pay just simply makes it not worth it. So in effect, in any place that you have the best people showing up in a system that is not their equal, it is the result of what I'm calling patriotism, which is a willingness to sacrifice for something larger. And in effect, if you want the system to work better, then make sure it rewards the people who contribute best. You know, you want the patriots to do well, frankly. And if you did that, you'd see a lot more of them in the places where they stood to do the most good.

again as i said lots of love thank cats us thank you so much for such a balanced well-thought-out analysis it's a wonderful interview uh brett i think we better let you go because we've had you for an hour and a half and it's it's a real privilege and a treat for us and i want to wish you well i hope that your commentary and analysis remains a central part of american life because i think it's people like you who actually have a positive role to play when so few people are playing a positive role now in the world. So thank you very much for coming back. All the best you and your family and I hope your country recovers from this

because frankly, if it doesn't, we're all fucked as well. Yeah, I really appreciate that you guys are out there and that you're holding the line and so anyway, right back at you. Thanks very much, Brett. And thank you for watching. As I mentioned, Douglas

Murray will be on the show on Saturday but we'll be back tomorrow with our usual live stream and we'll keep you updated on everything's going on. Thank you for watching and we'll see you very soon. Take care and see you soon guys.