Making Sense - Sam Harris - July 03, 2018


#131 — Dictators, Immigration, #MeToo, and Other Imponderables


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

152.39886

Word Count

5,562

Sentence Count

296

Hate Speech Sentences

18


Summary

Masha Gessen is a writer for The New Yorker. She's been publishing there since 2014, and joined the staff in 2017. She s the author of nine books, including The Future is History, How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, and The Man Without a Face, The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She writes for the New York Review of Books, as well as The New York Times, and she s also been a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics. She once wrote for a popular science magazine in Russia, but then got fired for refusing to send a reporter to observe the great Vladimir Putin hang gliding with Siberian cranes. She is a visiting professor at Amherst College, she s won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Carnegie Fellowship, and a Neiman Fellowship. And I ve long wanted to get Masha on the podcast. I ve been a fan of her writing for years, and I m increasingly worried that any false note here becomes just so counterproductive that, in the aggregate, it just seems guaranteed to get Trump re-elected. In this episode, we cover a lot of topics, including: Russia, the Me Too movement, and immigration. And perhaps, if we have time at the end, we can talk about immigration, which might seem unrelated, but is almost unified in the character who currently occupies the presidency of the United States. And I want to cover many of my topics, and these may seem unrelated. I m in no way related to these, but they re both real and real in my mind, and they ve got to do it in a way that s not just about Trump and Russia and the U.S. And they can do it that way because they can be real and they can t do it so well, can they do it right? - The Making Sense Podcast is a podcast by Sam Harris, a writer, a professor, a friend, a researcher, a fellow traveler, a poet, a humanist, a nerd, a good friend, and so much more. Please consider becoming a supporter of what we re doing here. Thank you for listening to the podcast, I really appreciate what we're doing here, I hope you like it. - Sam Harris - Thank you, too, byeeeeeee - your support is making sense? - Your support is helping us make sense of it, too much so that we re making it so much of it helps us all a good thing.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.
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00:00:46.620 My guest today is Masha Gessen.
00:00:49.460 Masha is a writer for The New Yorker.
00:00:51.860 She's been publishing there since 2014, and joined the staff in 2017.
00:00:58.760 She's the author of nine books, including The Future is History, How Totalitarianism Reclaimed
00:01:04.620 Russia, which won the National Book Award in 2017, and The Man Without a Face, The Unlikely
00:01:11.120 Rise of Vladimir Putin.
00:01:13.120 She writes for the New York Review of Books as well, and the New York Times.
00:01:16.340 And she's also been a science journalist, writing about AIDS and medical genetics, mathematics.
00:01:23.360 She once wrote for a popular science magazine in Russia, but then got fired for refusing to
00:01:29.100 send a reporter to observe the great Vladimir Putin hang gliding with Siberian cranes.
00:01:34.940 She's a visiting professor at Amherst College.
00:01:38.100 She's won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Carnegie Fellowship, a Neiman Fellowship.
00:01:43.720 And I've long wanted to get Masha on the podcast.
00:01:47.080 I've been a fan of her writing for years.
00:01:49.520 We cover many controversial topics here, Russia and Putin and Trump, but also the Me Too movement.
00:01:59.440 And we touch concerns about immigration and the differences between Christian and Muslim
00:02:04.660 intolerance a bit, fake news, the health of journalism.
00:02:09.040 And I found it very satisfying to get Masha's point of view on the podcast.
00:02:12.360 So, without further delay, I bring you Masha Gessen.
00:02:22.140 I am here with Masha Gessen.
00:02:23.820 Masha, thanks for coming on the podcast.
00:02:26.160 Thank you for having me.
00:02:27.640 So, there's a lot I want to talk to you about.
00:02:30.320 I will obviously properly introduce you in the intro and link to your books.
00:02:35.320 But I don't think we'll be focusing on your books here.
00:02:38.140 I want to cover many of the topics you cover so well for the New Yorker.
00:02:44.340 And these may seem unrelated.
00:02:46.760 I want to talk about Russia and what's going on there and the relationship between Russia
00:02:51.820 and the U.S.
00:02:53.160 I want to talk about the Me Too movement.
00:02:55.940 And perhaps, well, if we have time at the end, we can talk about immigration, which you've
00:03:01.800 touched on recently.
00:03:02.980 And these might seem unrelated, but they really are almost unified in the character who currently
00:03:10.460 occupies the presidency of the United States as problems that are both real but also easy
00:03:17.240 to exaggerate or misconstrue as a kind of political overreaction to Trump.
00:03:22.680 And I'm increasingly worried that any false note here, any dishonesty in how we treat these
00:03:31.660 issues becomes just so counterproductive that, you know, in the aggregate, just seems guaranteed
00:03:38.200 to get him re-elected.
00:03:40.540 Let's just, before we dive into all of that, let's just start with your background because
00:03:44.280 you have a fascinating story.
00:03:46.440 For those who don't know you, how is it that you came to be writing what you're writing and
00:03:50.640 doing it in the U.S.?
00:03:52.680 So, I was born in the Soviet Union in 1967.
00:03:56.520 I came to this country with my parents when I was 14, so in 1981.
00:04:01.920 So, I was educated here.
00:04:04.640 And I got my start as a journalist in the gay press in the 1980s.
00:04:10.140 I spent several years writing about AIDS, which was great training.
00:04:13.440 And then in 1991, I went back to the Soviet Union, still the Soviet Union, on assignment.
00:04:20.380 And that sort of shifted my entire journalistic career.
00:04:24.340 And eventually, I moved back to Russia and lived there for more than 20 years.
00:04:28.560 And then I was, and I became both, I kept writing for American publications and writing books in English.
00:04:37.220 But I was also writing for Russian magazines and then edited several Russian magazines in succession.
00:04:43.540 And then I was kind of driven out of the country at the same time that many people were driven out of the country during the crackdown that began after Putin's reascension to the so-called presidency in 2012.
00:04:59.460 So, I came here at the end of 2013 and gradually sort of stopped writing for Russian publications and then became a staff writer at the New Yorker.
00:05:11.700 So, let's focus on the Russia piece first.
00:05:14.640 Why were you specifically forced to leave Russia?
00:05:17.680 Was it just the reality of what it was like to be gay and Jewish or both gay and Jewish in Russia at that point?
00:05:26.760 Or was it because something you were doing journalistically?
00:05:30.660 Yeah, actually being Jewish, I think, had nothing to do with it.
00:05:33.440 But, you know, there are a couple of ways to look at it.
00:05:37.720 One is that it's just that the reality of being queer in Russia and being a queer parent in particular,
00:05:44.340 I was threatened specifically by name in the media by politicians with having my children taken away.
00:05:52.540 And my oldest son is adopted.
00:05:54.260 So, that was not an empty threat.
00:05:56.760 The social services could have gone after me and could have sought probably successfully to annul the adoption.
00:06:05.060 So, that sent me into a panic and basically packing all of our bags.
00:06:10.580 Another way to look at it is that a large number of people who were active in the protests of 2011, 2012,
00:06:19.940 and I was very active in those protests, I organized a thing called the protest workshop,
00:06:26.980 which was modeled after ACT UP.
00:06:29.640 It was a large sort of clearinghouse for protest actions.
00:06:33.120 So, I was, I sort of was coordinating a lot of the street level stuff that was happening in Moscow in 2011, 2012.
00:06:43.480 Everyone who was visible in leading the protests at the time was either jailed or killed or driven out of the country.
00:06:51.900 And obviously, you know, being driven out of the country is the best case scenario in that case.
00:06:55.100 Now, these are protests against Putin generically, or these are protests over some specific issue?
00:07:02.300 Well, that depends on who you ask.
00:07:04.160 I think that the protests were framed by most people as protests against rigged elections.
00:07:10.380 I think that the catalyst in, to a large extent, the catalyst was sort of the blatant spectacle of the transfer of power from Dmitry Medvedev,
00:07:24.360 if you remember such a character, back to Vladimir Putin, in what they made clear was a prearranged transfer of power.
00:07:32.600 And the voters were expected to rubber stamp it.
00:07:36.340 Now, it's not like Russia had had real elections for more than a dozen years.
00:07:40.800 You know, elections had become an empty ritual.
00:07:44.240 But somehow, I think that exposing how empty that ritual was, was insulting to people.
00:07:50.400 I mean, there's a way in which things can become obscene when they're exposed, even if everybody knows that they exist, you know, kind of like genitalia.
00:08:00.080 It's a common knowledge problem.
00:08:02.720 It's in game theory, it's often referred to by that term of jargon.
00:08:06.560 It's just, it's different if everyone can know it, but once everyone knows it, everyone else knows it, it's impossible to not react to it.
00:08:14.700 The classic example is, you know, if you're, if you're drinking in public out of a paper bag,
00:08:19.340 well, every cop that looks at you knows that you're drinking alcohol out of that bag.
00:08:23.900 But because there's a bag there, they can decide to ignore it.
00:08:26.380 But if the naked bottle of alcohol is out there, well, then they can't ignore it.
00:08:30.860 And it's that sort of thing.
00:08:32.660 That's, that's an interesting analogy.
00:08:34.240 I'm not sure that it holds because it suggests that Russian citizens generally feel like they,
00:08:40.820 they have civic duty that they need to perform if they're forced to do so.
00:08:44.020 I'm not sure that that's, that's actually the case.
00:08:46.080 I think that, I think there was something sort of deeply offensive to people's sensibilities when it was made clear, you know, how, how little they mattered,
00:08:54.780 even though each one of them individually felt that they mattered very little.
00:08:58.740 Yeah.
00:08:59.320 So, so the, the, that's how the protests were framed.
00:09:01.520 For me, you know, the, they were really anti-Putin protests.
00:09:05.000 I mean, that's, that's, that's what drove me.
00:09:06.460 I don't, I didn't want Vladimir Putin to preside over free and clear elections because I don't actually think it's possible.
00:09:15.340 But I thought that if the rest of my compatriots were willing to, for once, pay attention to the fact that the entire electoral system had been dismantled, then that was a good thing.
00:09:25.680 And certainly, you know, the protests were incredibly inspiring and invigorating.
00:09:29.140 Well, so what do we actually know about Putin that is uncontroversial?
00:09:35.380 I mean, we're living in this surreal moment now where Putin appears to be popular, at least among Republicans in the U.S.
00:09:44.100 And we have a president who will not say a bad word about him.
00:09:48.200 And I want to talk ultimately about the consequences and implications of that.
00:09:52.860 But what can you say as a journalist about Putin that is, that you really feel is not, in fact, disputable?
00:10:03.280 That's kind of a huge question.
00:10:05.080 I mean, you know, I wrote a fairly long book about Putin that, that was essentially a compilation of, of things that we know about Putin.
00:10:15.480 And if someone were to say, well, listen, he's, you know, all leaders of countries, you know, have to take a hard line from time to time.
00:10:24.740 And he's, he's not better, but he's certainly not much worse than any other prominent leader on the world stage.
00:10:31.960 And it's not a terrifying obscenity that we have a president of the United States who treats him as a normal leader.
00:10:39.420 What would be the first things you would say to, you know, what would you pick out of Putin's bio that would argue against that kind of carefree attitude?
00:10:50.180 Putin is a bloody dictator who jails and kills his opponents and has waged several illegal wars to the tune of hundreds of thousands of lives.
00:11:03.060 And so I do not think it is okay to treat him as a normal leader, no matter how much the current American president aspires to be like him.
00:11:12.780 And what's the status of public opinion generally in Russia now, insofar as you can gauge it, both toward Putin and toward the U.S. and Europe?
00:11:24.880 Because what we see, at least what someone pretty far from the facts, like myself, sees in the media is the suggestion that there is a, an extraordinary degree of anti-U.S. and anti-European sentiment there.
00:11:42.480 And that some of this is kind of framed as of a piece with Putin's popularity as a leader, that he's kind of bringing back the strong country of Russia that has been so demeaned really since the fall of the Soviet Union.
00:11:58.200 How would you describe public opinion in Russia?
00:12:01.020 Well, I wouldn't describe public opinion in Russia.
00:12:03.140 What I would say is that in a country that has no public and no opinions, it is very difficult to talk about public opinion.
00:12:10.820 And I mean that literally.
00:12:13.660 Putin, over his 18-year reign, has presided over the near-complete destruction of the public sphere.
00:12:20.500 You can't have public opinion without a public sphere.
00:12:24.380 If only a particular position, a hysterical, mobilizing, you know, country under siege position as it happens, but really any position becomes the singular position that dominates the entire public sphere, then you can't have any meaningful opinion either.
00:12:39.820 Right. And that's why the subtitle of my book is How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, because the lived experience of being in Russia now is the lived experience of being under totalitarianism.
00:12:56.060 Even though Russia doesn't have a totalitarian regime, it doesn't have a regime of state terror, but what it does have is total domination over the thoughts and feelings and perceptions of its citizens.
00:13:07.960 So, there is no such thing as public opinion.
00:13:11.280 But that view, the view that dominates, that emanates from the Kremlin and that dominates the public sphere or what passes for a public sphere in Russia, is the opinion that Russia is a country under siege and that it is at war with the United States.
00:13:26.700 And that war is being fought by proxy in Ukraine and in Syria.
00:13:31.400 So, well, that's scary because even if you can imagine most Russians are not happy with how Russia is being governed, if you think that there's a consensus that really the real enemy is outside and it's the U.S., it paints a picture of the potential for a dangerous level of support for a ramping up of aggression.
00:13:59.320 I remember hearing at one point that the prospect of nuclear war with the U.S. was being kind of casually referenced in the context of some political campaign.
00:14:11.120 I don't know if it was Putin's or someone else's in Russia.
00:14:14.100 And there's nobody else in Russia or one of its political campaigns.
00:14:19.760 Yeah. But, you know, the idea that the prospect of nuclear war in particular between Russia and the United States could be a kind of happy talking point over there.
00:14:31.760 First of all, do I have that? Is that factually correct? Or what is that story that I'm dimly recalling?
00:14:36.820 It's an understatement. It's not just a step of political campaigning.
00:14:41.960 It is enshrined in Russia's military doctrine that I believe was changed in 2012.
00:14:49.500 Don't quote me on that. It may have been 2013.
00:14:51.080 But the Russian military doctrine reserves the right of first strike in response to any attack, including a non-nuclear one, that threatens the integrity of the Russian Federation.
00:15:06.520 And the Russian military doctrine also identifies the United States and NATO member countries as its primary strategic enemies.
00:15:14.780 Well, I can only imagine we have a similar doctrine, right? We haven't disavowed any possibility of first strike on our side, have we?
00:15:23.000 I would have to check, but I believe that according to the military doctrine, first strike is actually reserved for immediate nuclear threat or nuclear strike.
00:15:34.760 And that is a difference.
00:15:36.380 Right. So the bar is higher.
00:15:37.880 So the belief that America is the enemy is, insofar as you can, you say you can't really judge public opinion, but you feel that this notion is fairly well-subscribed, however cynical people might be about the information that comes to them through state-run media?
00:15:58.520 I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying, or maybe I'm not making myself very clear.
00:16:01.760 That's quite possible.
00:16:02.320 I'm not saying that public opinion can't be judged. I'm not saying that people are cynical. I'm saying that public opinion actually doesn't exist.
00:16:09.400 I'm saying that people have been robbed of the ability to form their own opinions, right? So it's just not a thing that is.
00:16:16.900 So all we have to deal with is what, you know, what we see in the Russian media.
00:16:21.940 You believe you can't gauge how much the products of the Russian media that we see significantly influences the view of people on the ground in Russia.
00:16:33.900 No, no, no, Sam. I'm saying people don't have views.
00:16:36.580 But how is that possible? Like if you were, if we're going to ask everyone in Russia whether they thought America was a good place or a bad place,
00:16:44.500 and they all answered that question one way or the other, you would say that the answer would be meaningless or?
00:16:50.040 Yes, I would say that the answer would be meaningless because you can predict with 90% accuracy, or actually 86% accuracy, as the polls show,
00:16:58.500 that people will say exactly what was last on television.
00:17:02.840 So if a television is talking about the United States being the enemy, then if you conduct a public opinion poll,
00:17:09.760 then you would get 86% of people saying, yes, the United States is our enemy.
00:17:13.440 If tomorrow we become best friends with the United States, people will say exactly that.
00:17:18.820 That's what a totalitarian society looks like.
00:17:22.340 And that's what I mean when I say that people don't actually have views or, you know, they are,
00:17:29.220 it is a matter of survival in a totalitarian state to be able to accurately mirror the signal that comes from above.
00:17:38.900 Well, that's interesting. It's sort of, well, so I'll just put the question to you.
00:17:43.440 Given that, is there potentially a silver lining to Trump's approach to Russia?
00:17:50.900 The fact that we have this glad-handing narcissist who simply does not care or maybe even seem to know
00:17:59.040 about the human rights violations of the people he's creating photo ops with,
00:18:03.720 the fact that Trump is taking that approach to Putin, and we'll leave aside the Russian hacking scandal
00:18:11.300 and everything else that might trouble us, is there a potential silver lining there in that
00:18:16.040 relations can thaw between the U.S. and Russia, and then a different message gets passed to the Russian population
00:18:25.620 and we essentially de-escalate a very tense situation, albeit with various casualties.
00:18:32.300 I mean, it doesn't help people in Syria, it doesn't help people in Russia all that much,
00:18:36.820 but it does possibly close the door a little bit to the prospect of some horrible conflagration between Russia and the U.S.
00:18:46.320 I don't see how that happens because, you know, the imaginary mortal combat between the United States and Russia
00:18:57.140 is not a function of American politics or American behavior.
00:19:02.100 It is a function of Putin's need to have a mobilizing idea.
00:19:08.620 The only mobilizing idea large enough to fit sort of the superpower ambitions left over from the Soviet Union
00:19:18.820 is the idea of conflict with the United States.
00:19:23.840 Putin has absolutely no interest in having that conflict diffused
00:19:28.600 because his entire politics is constructed around that conflict.
00:19:34.480 So that's interesting.
00:19:35.380 So we have this summit or this meeting coming up between Trump and Putin.
00:19:42.060 Let's say that is yet another instance of just happy talk between the two leaders.
00:19:47.900 How will Putin represent that internally to Russia?
00:19:51.420 He will show that the American president has come asking for a meeting.
00:19:58.600 That that acknowledges that Russia is regaining its superpower status.
00:20:04.380 I mean, that is the ultimate ambition.
00:20:05.800 The ultimate sort of insult, as Putin has framed it,
00:20:10.180 is Russia's loss of its place as one of the two poles of power in the world.
00:20:16.280 And Russia's ambition is to reclaim that place.
00:20:19.720 And so Trump's desire, his near begging for a summit with Putin is a reflection of Putin's success.
00:20:30.680 And that's how it's going to be framed in Russia.
00:20:32.920 So if we had a different president and a different policy,
00:20:37.440 what would you want the U.S. posture to be with respect to Russia now?
00:20:42.540 Is there anything that would, in your mind, reliably move us in a productive direction
00:20:47.640 or put pressure on Putin that would be not merely edging us toward conflict,
00:20:54.340 but actually destabilize him within Russia?
00:20:58.300 I don't know that that's possible.
00:21:00.140 And so I don't think that that's how we need to think about foreign policy.
00:21:04.500 You know, Republicans are terribly fond of talking about values-based foreign policy,
00:21:10.040 which they haven't practiced since, you know, at least the times of Reagan, if ever.
00:21:16.120 But I think that that's actually how we need to be thinking about it.
00:21:20.560 And that requires a real reframing.
00:21:23.700 You have to admit that it's extremely unlikely that any American actions
00:21:30.920 will actually influence Putin's politics.
00:21:33.940 Putin's politics are determined by his own logic of survival.
00:21:37.980 So the question becomes not how do we destabilize Putin,
00:21:42.040 but what is the right thing to do?
00:21:45.320 Or perhaps more productively, what are the wrong things to do?
00:21:50.560 It is wrong to sit down with a dictator who merges his opponents.
00:21:56.700 It is wrong to seek to have common ground with a dictator.
00:22:00.920 It is wrong to even entertain the possibility of an alliance
00:22:08.220 with a leader who is waging illegal wars.
00:22:14.140 So everything you just said, at least for me, could be said about North Korea.
00:22:19.420 Do you view them as similar situations?
00:22:21.800 Absolutely.
00:22:22.540 Yeah.
00:22:23.300 So let's just talk about Trump in the U.S. context.
00:22:28.920 Well, first of all, what do you believe is true that explains Trump's unwillingness
00:22:37.340 to notice anything unsavory about Putin?
00:22:40.580 The Mueller investigation runs its course.
00:22:42.820 We find out everything.
00:22:43.900 We're going to find out.
00:22:45.480 Is there a there there in your mind, whether it's financial entanglements or something more
00:22:53.180 unseemly?
00:22:54.460 What do you think is true?
00:22:56.180 And what do you think the consequences are of our seems that half the U.S. population
00:23:02.680 simply doesn't care what may or may not be true and just views it as a witch hunt?
00:23:08.560 So first of all, I don't think that you can ask, you know, what do you think is true?
00:23:14.000 So there are things I know to be true and there are things I know that I don't know.
00:23:19.960 Right.
00:23:20.100 But given what you know to be true, what would not surprise you?
00:23:23.580 I mean, first, obviously, I would like I appreciate the bright line between what you think you
00:23:27.220 know to be true and everything else is conjecture.
00:23:29.840 But conjecture is as much as you're comfortable with, I guess.
00:23:32.900 Well, so what we know to be true is that Trump has never met a dictator he didn't like.
00:23:37.640 So in a sense, we don't need the Mueller investigation to explain his evident affinity for Putin.
00:23:47.500 He has a desperate desire to be liked and affirmed by the dictators of the world.
00:23:53.860 He has an understanding of power that is as close to the understanding of power that, you
00:24:07.640 or even Bibi Netanyahu, as close, you know, that's his understanding of power.
00:24:12.880 That's what he understands.
00:24:14.420 He does not understand sort of the imperfect, incomplete power wielded by elected officials
00:24:23.100 in actual democracies.
00:24:25.900 Yes.
00:24:26.780 The strongman archetype of the leader is the one he recognizes and seems to want to embody.
00:24:33.320 Yeah, and he wants 100% of Americans to support him.
00:24:38.320 He thinks that that is the desired outcome.
00:24:40.640 He doesn't understand that that's what happens in a totalitarian society.
00:24:44.940 So how much have you gone down the rabbit hole of thinking about, reading about, wondering about
00:24:50.400 more of a ulterior motive for not criticizing Putin?
00:24:58.380 I mean, his own financial needs for his real estate branding empire.
00:25:04.960 Well, again, evidently, we don't need to find an ulterior motive to understand what's going on here.
00:25:12.240 A crucial difference would be in revealing the latter.
00:25:16.860 You know, that would seem impeachable.
00:25:18.380 A fondness for dictators, while perhaps it should be impeachable, is not the kind of thing
00:25:24.640 that can be made salient enough, it seems, to his fellow Republicans that they will even
00:25:29.960 comment on it, much less act against it.
00:25:32.880 I don't think anything is impeachable until, you know, at least the House of Representatives
00:25:37.700 is majority Democrat.
00:25:39.680 Yeah, well, that may be the case.
00:25:41.000 So, you know, again, it's like, if you're asking me about sort of the instrumental, the
00:25:48.180 instrumental truth, I'm kind of not terribly interested in that.
00:25:52.820 I think we have a fairly clear understanding of the Trump phenomenon and his affinity for
00:25:59.420 dictators.
00:26:00.220 I mean, I'm not saying that the Mueller investigation shouldn't proceed, it should absolutely proceed.
00:26:04.120 And I think the more we learn from it, the better.
00:26:06.600 I don't expect it to be revelatory.
00:26:08.700 Well, so then, how concerned are you, given Trump's apparent affinity for dictators, how
00:26:17.380 concerned are you that our own democratic institutions might not be up to the challenge
00:26:24.260 of fully reigning him in?
00:26:26.580 I mean, just let's imagine, for argument's sake, that he gets re-elected in 2020.
00:26:31.500 You've written somewhat about this, that just what it's like to be in a totalitarian society
00:26:38.980 or society that is losing its democratic moorings.
00:26:43.680 Again, it's hard to imagine that we're here and that we have such a difference of perception
00:26:49.920 across the aisle politically.
00:26:52.500 We have something like half of American society that doesn't seem to notice or care about all
00:27:01.840 of the things you and I notice and care a lot about in Trump.
00:27:06.000 I mean, it's the fact that we have a leader who has all of the instincts you just described,
00:27:10.180 who's more concerned about applause and the size of his crowds and hankers for military
00:27:15.600 parades and everything out of him seems like just the most benign interpretation is just
00:27:23.040 the dumb ejaculation of a teenager's ego, essentially.
00:27:27.140 But, you know, I think you are concerned that it's more sinister than that.
00:27:31.720 So what do you, how do you view American democracy in the age of Trump now?
00:27:36.880 Yeah.
00:27:37.100 So I don't, you know, I don't think there's anything more sinister than the dumb ejaculations
00:27:41.820 of a teenager's ego that's beautifully put, um, in, in power.
00:27:47.500 Yeah.
00:27:48.320 Right.
00:27:48.820 Um, in fact, you know, democratic institutions are not designed for bad faith actors.
00:27:57.260 They can't withstand it.
00:27:58.780 They depend on, on everybody more or less playing by the rules.
00:28:04.020 And, and it's, you know, that, the, the, the sort of the bad faith acting did not begin
00:28:08.800 with Trump.
00:28:09.500 It certainly, you know, began much earlier.
00:28:11.060 Um, with the gridlock in Congress and, and now, you know, we're reminded once again of
00:28:17.040 the, of the shameful spectacle of the non-confirmation or, of, of, of, of Merrick Garland.
00:28:23.700 But, um, but what we have seen, for example, with the travel ban over the last year and a
00:28:28.180 half, I think is a very good example of what happens, um, when on the one hand you have
00:28:37.060 democratic institutions that are designed to be collaborative and deliberative and, on the
00:28:46.980 other hand, a dumb blunt force.
00:28:49.320 The dumb blunt force will actually win, right?
00:28:53.840 If one side tries to find an imperfect solution and a temporary consensus and the other side is
00:29:00.360 not at all interested in any of that and just wants to push through, it will succeed in pushing
00:29:07.740 through.
00:29:07.980 Well, on the travel ban, I would think some of my audience would want to know what I think
00:29:12.980 about that.
00:29:13.400 I've commented on it elsewhere.
00:29:15.480 As you probably know, I've been very worried about the spread of jihadism and Islamism and
00:29:20.340 those contagious ideas that jump borders, whether or not people move across them.
00:29:27.000 And I think the travel ban is an, is an idiotic response to a, a real challenge.
00:29:32.540 So, you know, I don't support it, but, you know, that my non-support of it is in no way
00:29:37.340 minimizing the challenge we have with Islamism and, and the, you know, and there's nothing to
00:29:43.860 envy in Europe now with unchecked immigration leading to this rise of, you know, right-wing
00:29:53.340 populism.
00:29:54.260 And I mean, it's just, you know, we're just by dint of good luck surrounded by oceans and
00:29:58.120 not having to, to respond to precisely that same problem.
00:30:01.900 But I do think that, you know, even acknowledging the challenges in Europe, I think the travel
00:30:08.880 ban is certainly the wrong approach here.
00:30:11.560 I don't know if you have, if you have any thoughts on that, but.
00:30:14.500 Well, I think that we, we agree that the travel ban is the wrong approach.
00:30:18.480 I think we disagree on, on the comparison you just made between the United States and
00:30:25.300 Europe, because I don't think that, I mean, to the extent that you can link the rise of
00:30:31.940 the right in Europe to the influx of refugees, you can do the same thing here.
00:30:37.760 Even the specter of immigration in the public imagination is enough to fuel the fear that
00:30:47.960 in turn fuels Trump's politics.
00:30:51.160 The fact that the United States took 11 refugees last year doesn't change this, you know, this
00:30:58.000 sense of, of, of coming doom.
00:31:01.160 And that, of course, is also true of several European countries that took a piddling number
00:31:06.880 of refugees, but are seeing the far right rise in, in response to, to perceived threat.
00:31:12.900 It doesn't help that you can actually find the cases where the fears can seem justified in
00:31:18.600 Germany or in England or, I mean, it's just that there's clearly a less than ideal situation,
00:31:23.600 which the basic problem there is, forget about the recent refugee crisis.
00:31:28.660 There's just a problem with the failure of assimilation there, which you have to take
00:31:35.880 England as the, as the clearest case.
00:31:38.100 If, you know, if you run a poll among not even immigrants, but, you know, second generation
00:31:43.380 British citizens who happen to be Muslim asking, you know, whether homosexuality is morally
00:31:49.020 acceptable, the response is zero percent finding it morally acceptable.
00:31:55.200 And that's a public attitude that suggests a failure of assimilation that, that should be
00:32:02.080 troublesome.
00:32:02.820 Now, granted, the, the farthest of the far right populace are not so concerned about tolerance
00:32:09.300 of homosexuality, one presumes, but that's an example of the kind of lack of assimilation
00:32:15.660 that could worry reasonable people and think that, okay, we've probably had enough of this
00:32:20.660 immigration stuff for a while until we can figure out how to get the various communities
00:32:25.340 in our society to agree about, you know, how to live in a civil society.
00:32:30.120 You know, I mean, as, as a homosexual Jew, I am not willing to exchange sort of my, or let
00:32:38.320 me put it this way, as a homosexual Jew, I am not willing to sacrifice Muslims' sense
00:32:46.200 of safety and security in the society in which I live for my own.
00:32:50.220 And I think that's very much sort of the function of, of the, of the, of the rhetoric that, that,
00:32:55.960 that we hear both in this country and, and much more prominently in Europe.
00:33:01.260 Well, certainly some of the rhetoric, but there's also, there's a problem of assimilation.
00:33:05.320 I mean, there's a problem of Islamism, the, the, the expectation that, that Islam will
00:33:11.400 become an ascendant political force and that the West will eventually bend the knee and
00:33:16.880 Sharia law will be implemented globally, right?
00:33:19.680 This idea that is subscribed by some percentage of the Muslim community, wherever there is a
00:33:26.220 Muslim community, that's a problem of a clash of ideas and worldviews that we have to figure
00:33:32.600 out how to solve.
00:33:35.260 And we shouldn't be eager to import those ideas, those convictions as quickly as possible into
00:33:43.800 our society, no more so than we would want to import any other totalitarian fantasy into
00:33:50.220 our society, if we can help it.
00:33:52.340 That's the concern.
00:33:53.280 I mean, if you, if you tell me that we have a hundred thousand, and this is a bit of a
00:33:58.540 departure from the topic I wanted to hit with you, but just, it's kind of interesting that
00:34:02.360 we're disagreeing here.
00:34:03.620 If we have, if you tell me there's a hundred thousand refugees from the Middle East that
00:34:08.700 really need a home and they, we're going to move them all to San Diego.
00:34:12.320 And you tell me that they're all Christian, beleaguered Christians who are, who require movement to
00:34:22.800 the West to be safe from their highly sectarian neighbors.
00:34:27.560 That's a completely legitimate claim upon asylum, it sounds like to me.
00:34:34.020 And it comes with an assurance insofar as we know who these people are, that none of these
00:34:41.680 people are jihadists, right?
00:34:43.780 None of these people have any fondness for Al-Qaeda or ISIS.
00:34:47.140 And that's all good news.
00:34:48.460 I think you would probably acknowledge that.
00:34:51.420 No, I wouldn't.
00:34:52.620 You wouldn't say that a fondness for ISIS is bad news?
00:34:55.080 Let me, let me, now that I've, I've claimed this identity of the homosexual Jew, you know,
00:34:59.020 I feel much more threatened in this country by the increasingly powerful Christian right
00:35:06.460 than by the power, powerless and marginalized Muslim community.
00:35:12.120 Well, sure, but.
00:35:12.760 They may be equally intolerant of who I am, but, but the ones have the power and the guns
00:35:18.680 and the others don't.
00:35:20.200 So, no.
00:35:21.300 Both of those can be true.
00:35:22.620 I mean, so you're just not acknowledging that there's a.
00:35:25.480 I'm not acknowledging that it's good news.
00:35:27.440 I'm saying that, you know, I think that both groups have valid asylum claims, but, you
00:35:34.340 know, I am not going to get any more excited about an imaginary group of fundamentalist
00:35:39.900 Christians than I am going to get about an imaginary group of fundamentalist Muslims.
00:35:44.940 Well, I didn't say they were fundamentalists, but you wouldn't acknowledge that there's a
00:35:49.240 difference in the level of theocratic hostility toward homosexuality.
00:35:57.400 Absolutely not.
00:35:58.200 There's no difference across Christianity.
00:35:59.340 Because that is simply not true.
00:36:01.940 Look, I just, you know, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just...
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