Making Sense - Sam Harris - #216 — A Conversation with Graeme Wood

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.460 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.460 I am here with Graham Wood.

00:00:48.340 Graham, thanks for joining me.

00:00:50.080 My pleasure, Sam.

00:00:51.100 So where am I reaching you?

00:00:52.600 I get the sense you're not at home.

00:00:55.640 I'm usually not at home, and right now I'm in Oslo, Norway.

00:00:59.060 Home for me is the United States, and usually I'm traveling around.

00:01:03.080 It's harder than it usually is, but I have family over here.

00:01:06.700 I got jailbroken from the U.S. and made it out.

00:01:10.020 Have you been traveling throughout COVID, or have you been locked down for a period?

00:01:15.160 This has been the most sedentary period of six months or so in my life.

00:01:19.540 So I've been locked down with the exception of one reporting trip to Florida.

00:01:25.180 And you've been on the podcast before.

00:01:26.980 You wrote a great book on the Islamic State, which we discussed, The Way of the Strangers.

00:01:33.780 So people are encouraged to listen to that if they want to get your expertise on all things

00:01:40.860 related to jihad.

00:01:43.380 But generally, can you summarize your focus as a writer?

00:01:47.400 I mean, you write mainly for The Atlantic and cover really interesting stuff.

00:01:51.860 What sort of things are you focused on these days?

00:01:54.460 These days, I've been not traveling around so much.

00:01:59.080 So I've been writing a lot of opinion columns.

00:02:02.020 I've been writing a fair bit on COVID, usually with an international focus.

00:02:06.940 But my bread and butter is traveling around, finding things that are interesting, wherever

00:02:12.100 they might be.

00:02:13.500 And as you mentioned, for a few years, the main thing that I've been writing about has

00:02:18.320 been the Islamic State and the development of jihadism.

00:02:21.100 So domestically, I think I want to focus on all the ways in which the United States has

00:02:30.260 begun to resemble a failing state.

00:02:33.560 You obviously know what it's like to be in a failed state or to focus on it.

00:02:38.300 But it seems to me we're dealing with trends in public opinion and disinformation and failures

00:02:45.460 of sense-making, a breakdown of trust in institutions, political polarization, failures of leadership at a level that I

00:02:55.580 haven't even contemplated in my lifetime, I don't think.

00:02:58.620 I mean, perhaps I was just too young to understand how bad it was at various points earlier in my life.

00:03:05.540 But this just seems like an unraveling that is fairly disconcerting.

00:03:10.180 And, you know, I'm happy to go wherever you want to go, but I thought we could talk through

00:03:13.940 what's been going on with social protests and police violence and the political ramifications

00:03:21.680 of what happened in Kenosha and Portland.

00:03:25.340 And actually, now I recall that the first time we met was around this topic of violence.

00:03:30.960 Yeah, actually, I got into Brazilian jiu-jitsu and you wrote a piece in the Atlantic on that.

00:03:36.520 You came out and I sort of introduced you to my midlife crisis around all things jiu-jitsu

00:03:42.800 and self-defensive.

00:03:45.000 So it's kind of full circle for our conversation.

00:03:48.820 But give me your general sense of what we're living through at the moment in the U.S.

00:03:56.160 Yeah.

00:03:56.360 So like I mentioned, a lot of my reporting has been going overseas to places that have

00:04:02.540 had some level of social breakdown, some level of political breakdown.

00:04:08.440 And so, yeah, there are some aspects of that that you definitely see in the United States.

00:04:12.520 When I think of societies that have really broken down, though, I think of places like

00:04:17.440 Somalia, like Iraq, places where the government just has ceased to exist.

00:04:22.220 And we don't have that.

00:04:23.820 We have touches of that.

00:04:25.840 And we have a kind of relative breakdown that I think is we experience both as an absolute

00:04:33.320 loss of standards and performance of government, but also a relative loss when we look at other

00:04:39.900 countries that seem to be doing much better than we are.

00:04:43.860 And that, you know, we thought we were in their league or they were not quite in our league,

00:04:49.540 but below us.

00:04:50.580 And somewhere like, say, Vietnam or Thailand has just been cleaning our clock when it comes 0.98

00:05:00.040 to dealing with COVID.

00:05:02.700 So what does breakdown look like in another place, the kind of places where I would have

00:05:08.340 been sent a couple of years ago, 10 years ago to report?

00:05:11.920 I think of places like Zimbabwe, where the government has no longer any control over its

00:05:18.000 currency, can't be trusted to maintain law and order because it insists on destroying

00:05:25.720 any kind of law and order that might exist.

00:05:29.460 So we see bits of that right now.

00:05:32.640 I mean, there are cities that are pretty much acknowledged to be no longer under control of

00:05:38.680 the forces, law enforcement, or any other kind of discernible powers that we would want

00:05:44.280 to have a monopoly on the use of legitimate force.

00:05:47.360 So there's touches of that.

00:05:50.060 Now, what I've found in looking at other countries is that the really dangerous combination is a

00:05:58.540 place like Iraq, where at one point you have total control by the government, way too much

00:06:05.180 control, control over the life and death of its citizens, say during the Saddam Hussein regime,

00:06:11.120 that's replaced by total anarchy.

00:06:13.780 So in the United States, you see touches of that too.

00:06:16.800 You see the government irrigating to itself all sorts of kinds of power that we shouldn't

00:06:24.420 really be comfortable with.

00:06:26.180 And then at the same time, you see the total breakdown of law and order in certain pockets

00:06:31.400 of urban America.

00:06:33.160 So I am, yeah, I'm terrified to see that combination of both consolidation of power and then total

00:06:43.660 chaos.

00:06:44.260 It's a really ugly combination to see.

00:06:47.860 Yeah.

00:06:47.940 I remember I did a podcast in the beginning of April with Stanley McChrystal and Chris Fussell,

00:06:55.280 his partner.

00:06:56.580 Forgive me, Chris.

00:06:57.200 I can't recall whether you pronounce your last name Fussell or Fussell or some other variant

00:07:01.940 there.

00:07:02.180 But anyway, I remember having this conversation with them and talking about the prospect of

00:07:09.440 a breakdown in social cohesion under COVID.

00:07:13.140 And I remember, I think I actually telegraphed this in the conversation, but if I didn't,

00:07:19.280 I was certainly thinking it, that I was worried that I was being a scaremonger for even just

00:07:25.900 hypothesizing that this was possibly on the menu or worth thinking through, right?

00:07:32.140 Just that things could fray enough so that there would be violence in the streets, that

00:07:37.820 our political partisanship could turn violent.

00:07:41.100 It really did seem, you know, as recently as the beginning of April, far-fetched to me.

00:07:48.180 And I just felt like it was worth talking about because it was possible.

00:07:53.940 But, you know, if you'd asked me then, I certainly didn't feel it was likely.

00:07:58.800 And so now I'm interested to consider how many of us have now kind of reset our expectations.

00:08:05.000 And this seems like the new normal.

00:08:07.420 And we're not actually entertaining how much worse things could get.

00:08:12.320 And it would seem like scaremongering to sincerely entertain that.

00:08:16.480 But there is a kind of slide towards something unrecognizable, at least in our lifetimes here.

00:08:23.440 Obviously, there are comparisons with the 60s.

00:08:26.620 And there was a, you know, a fair amount of social unrest then.

00:08:30.120 I don't know if, you know, I'm sure there are many disanalogies there as well.

00:08:35.700 But, you know, with Trump in the White House and the prospect of either him being re-elected

00:08:43.160 or there being, you know, a real unwillingness to accept the results of an election that goes

00:08:49.440 against him, it seems like a very risky time we're in.

00:08:54.280 And the thing that is so disconcerting for me, just on an hourly basis, is to see how things

00:09:01.080 are distorted in what used to be the most reliable sources of news for us, right?

00:09:07.980 I mean, I feel like now I can count on the New York Times to get crucial things wrong with

00:09:13.760 respect to what's happening with protests and police violence, say, and wrong in a way

00:09:19.720 that just amplifies political partisanship and hysteria on the part of people who actually

00:09:27.220 decide to go in the streets, you know, and certainly hysteria on social media.

00:09:31.740 And so I feel like there's a kind of a moral panic component to a lot of what's going on.

00:09:37.540 And there are very few level-headed people in the media whose inclination is to turn down

00:09:45.100 the temperature on things.

00:09:47.220 The business model of media is to be as shrill and sensational as possible so that the partisans 0.82

00:09:54.120 amplify your message.

00:09:55.320 So yeah, I just, there's a way in which this is a runaway train, or at least feels like

00:10:00.580 one that worries me and for which I really don't have any, it just seems deeply unfamiliar

00:10:05.740 to be living through.

00:10:07.620 Yeah, I think there's a definite recalibration that's taking place within media and a recalibration

00:10:13.840 that as citizens, we've got to kind of work through in our own minds.

00:10:17.380 You know, we notice things that we didn't notice before about stories getting covered or not

00:10:22.800 getting covered that should be.

00:10:24.640 And, you know, I would still take the New York Times over my Facebook feed, say, as a way

00:10:31.680 to understand what's happening in the United States.

00:10:35.120 That said, you know, it's been tough.

00:10:40.060 At The Atlantic, which is where I write most of the time, the magazine has endorsed a candidate.

00:10:46.440 In the last election, it endorsed Hillary Clinton.

00:10:49.280 Very odd thing for The Atlantic to do, just because we don't endorse candidates most of

00:10:55.600 the time.

00:10:56.120 But to have announced ourselves as having been on one side, now readers have to take that

00:11:02.760 into account.

00:11:03.340 And it's just our being honest.

00:11:04.960 I mean, there were basically nobody at the magazine who was in favor of Donald Trump.

00:11:09.560 And so it was important that we come right out and say that.

00:11:14.360 And so when readers read us, they know that that's where our origin point is going to be

00:11:21.640 in our opinions.

00:11:22.680 That said, we still, I've been told by more than one editor that if Donald Trump does something

00:11:28.940 right, then it's our duty to say so.

00:11:32.280 So there is still a standard of truth that we're working toward.

00:11:36.220 It's just that we're in a different media environment.

00:11:40.840 I would also hasten to add that it's not just media.

00:11:44.200 I mean, there are so many other sources of truth that we would have taken for granted in

00:11:49.400 the past that we no longer can.

00:11:51.020 You may have seen Harold Varmus co-wrote an op-ed in the New York Times just in the last

00:11:55.900 couple of days.

00:11:56.720 It's the former head of the NIH, one of the most Nobel Prize winner, basically said, don't

00:12:01.800 trust the CDC.

00:12:03.540 CDC has been politicized.

00:12:04.740 So if you've got Harold Varmus telling you not to trust the CDC, then you really have

00:12:11.180 a breakdown in the sources of medical information when you need to have that information coming

00:12:19.160 through loud and clear with the consensus of the best medical minds.

00:12:23.240 Yeah.

00:12:23.360 Don't trust the CDC in the middle of a pandemic when you have to decide whether to send your

00:12:28.140 kids back to school.

00:12:29.520 It really is unbelievable we're in this situation.

00:12:32.700 Well, let's talk a little bit about the violence we've seen, because this is a place where I

00:12:39.140 see everyone left of center seeming to get virtually every specific claim wrong.

00:12:49.300 And, you know, I'm someone who, as I think you know, is more concerned that we not re-elect

00:12:57.040 Donald Trump than most people.

00:12:59.920 I mean, certainly I would put my anti-Trump bona fides up against anybody on the left or the center or

00:13:06.920 among the never-Trump Republicans.

00:13:09.100 But it is crazy-making and deeply concerning that the left seems to, the bar is nowhere near where you put it at the Atlantic.

00:13:21.020 Not only would they not acknowledge that he gets anything right, but just everything is upside down in how they describe what's happening with police violence and social protests.

00:13:32.640 I mean, NPR just published a wonderful interview, which I think you noticed, informing all of humanity that looting was essentially a moral imperative and a great form of social protest because small business owners are really no better than big business owners, and they all deserve to have their stuff stolen.

00:13:51.580 And this was presented on the NPR website without any, there wasn't a single critical question, if I recall correctly.

00:13:59.580 It was just like, this is practically NPR's position on looting.

00:14:03.580 Yeah, it was, that was shocking to read.

00:14:05.280 I've actually subjected myself to the book.

00:14:07.640 I've read it cover to cover by now and have reviewed it for the Atlantic.

00:14:12.080 It is, if anything, it's more radical than the NPR interview would have you believe.

00:14:20.940 The NPR interview really took the title of the book as the jumping off point, In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil.

00:14:28.840 The book is actually mostly about a defense of violence.

00:14:34.040 So looting is an afterthought.

00:14:35.400 I think there are whole chapters where looting isn't mentioned explicitly.

00:14:39.420 What it's really trying to argue is that America is conceived in sin, racial sin, capitalist sin, you name it, that the system that we've inherited in the present is bad, it's screwed up, and that it must be destroyed.

00:14:55.280 So, you know, if it sounds like the kind of thing that would destroy our society to just have people smash open shops, take everything in them and burn them down, then that is very much the point.

00:15:07.000 There's a desire on the part of the author to recreate society in what I can only assume is some kind of, she doesn't say explicitly, but a Marxist anarchist revolution that is born out of violence, wiping away the old order.

00:15:23.400 And yes, the NPR interview that introduced this book to, I think, most of the people who have heard about it was totally uncritical.

00:15:32.280 And I will say this word, I think that NPR did the right thing by interviewing this writer, because there are a lot of people who have, if not explicitly positive things to say about looting, think that looting is a reasonable response to the injustices of American history or the present in the American system.

00:15:54.400 And I think that those people need to articulate what they really think that they can't just get away with saying, I don't want to criticize the looters.

00:16:03.400 No, I want them to say I'm on the side of Vicky Osterweil or say that they have a different view of looting.

00:16:11.820 But being able to be kind of mealy-mouthed about these things has not worked out very well.

00:16:18.720 And it's allowed, for example, Donald Trump to conflate the position of, say, Joe Biden with the position of, say, someone who throws a brick through a window and steals an iPad, which is completely unfair.

00:16:32.460 Making sure that these differences are as sharp as possible, I think, is one of the things that journalists should do.

00:16:37.760 So NPR, they started to do that.

00:16:41.500 Unfortunately, they weren't as critical as they could have been of the author when they had her in their clutches.

00:16:49.360 Yeah, so Biden, as of yesterday, I think we'll release this a few days hence, but we're recording the day after he gave his speech in Pittsburgh.

00:16:58.360 And the purpose of which was to put some daylight between him and the caricature of him that Donald Trump tried to paint, aligning him with the left and the pro-chaos, pro-looting, anti-capitalist, far left, which exists and is clearly worth disavowing.

00:17:20.380 I assume you saw that speech. I was pleasantly surprised that he took the line that he did, and I thought it was pretty effective.

00:17:28.900 But he does still get enough wrong as part of his talking points that, given enough time, he doesn't do himself too many favors here.

00:17:40.040 So, like, when he talks about police violence, virtually everything he says seems to me to be pandering to Black Lives Matter in a way that's just inaccurate.

00:17:49.240 I should, you know, explain why I think that.

00:17:52.560 But, you know, I think he also said that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist at one point, not in his speech, but I think on Twitter.

00:18:00.700 I think that, you know, his campaign released something about white supremacists in a way that was clearly referencing the Rittenhouse shooting.

00:18:07.840 I don't think there's any evidence that Rittenhouse is a white supremacist, is there?

00:18:11.460 I mean, obviously, things can change by the day, but at the time we're having this conversation, do you know of any evidence that suggests that?

00:18:17.040 No, unless you think that a white supremacist is someone who believes that there is such thing as private property and it should be defended by the state.

00:18:26.000 And, you know, there are such people who are so radical that they would say that that alone will make you a white supremacist.

00:18:31.340 But as far as I know, all the reporting about Kyle Rittenhouse's social media suggests that he was a big cop enthusiast, a big gun enthusiast.

00:18:42.160 And if that makes you a white supremacist, then I guess he's a white supremacist.

00:18:45.000 But I tend to be more restrictive in my definition.

00:18:47.560 Yeah, well, I think our sanity depends on our being that way.

00:18:52.260 So let's just wind this all the way back to the Jacob Blake shooting, which was the proximate cause of all of this chaos.

00:18:59.160 What happened there, to my eye, again, we're talking at one point in time and, you know, who knows what facts will come out in subsequent days or weeks.

00:19:09.700 We might learn a lot about the cops there.

00:19:11.680 We might learn that they're all members of the local chapter of the KKK and therefore racism could have been a conscious motive on their parts.

00:19:19.520 But when I see a shooting like that, within the frame of that video, the color of everyone's skin is totally irrelevant.

00:19:29.340 I've seen videos like that where white people are getting shot. 0.99

00:19:32.340 I've seen videos like that where black people are getting shot by black cops. 0.91

00:19:36.680 And, you know, I've talked at sufficient length about the statistics of all of these encounters with cops and applications of violence, lethal and not, and justified and not,

00:19:48.280 to say that the story is not, is certainly not a clean Black Lives Matter story of us having an epidemic of racist police violence against young black men.

00:20:02.280 That is just, the statistics don't bear that out.

00:20:04.720 You know, I would just say to our listeners, you have to listen to my two-hour walkthrough this morass titled,

00:20:12.660 Can We Step Back from the Brink? Or Can We Pull Back from the Brink? One of those.

00:20:16.360 But, so when I look at a video like this, and I'd be interested to know if you see this differently,

00:20:22.560 we clearly see a person who has been resisting arrest.

00:20:28.300 I don't know to what degree he fought with the cops before the video starts.

00:20:34.360 And we see him just essentially moving away from the cops, you know, and their guns are already drawn at this point.

00:20:40.000 But I think it's, from other video, I think it's pretty clear that there was a kind of a wrestling match happening,

00:20:43.760 and then he broke away, and then you have fully three cops, if memory serves,

00:20:49.500 pursuing him around his car, and he's, you know, now opening his door to either get into his car to drive away,

00:20:55.920 or reaching into the driver's side of the car for something.

00:20:59.760 It's not clear from the video.

00:21:01.040 And then he gets shot seven times in the back,

00:21:03.420 and now he is, I believe, still in some terrible state, and very likely paralyzed.

00:21:10.220 Though, I think it seems likely he'll survive at this point.

00:21:13.240 And this encounter gets summarized virtually everywhere in mainstream media as,

00:21:22.640 this is not a verbatim quote, but this is a paraphrase of virtually every summary I've seen,

00:21:27.700 you know, yet another black man shot by white cops, 0.86

00:21:33.540 or a black man shot in the back seven times in front of his kids by white cops, right? 0.97

00:21:39.920 You know, and it is just, it's an article of faith that the skin color of all involved

00:21:45.560 is absolutely relevant here, and worth emphasizing.

00:21:49.580 And it's also an article of faith that all of these details have some moral opprobrium

00:21:57.760 attached to them, like, it is assumed that the cop could never be justified

00:22:02.900 in shooting someone in the back in an encounter like this.

00:22:06.440 Whereas if you understand how violence evolves,

00:22:11.980 and you understand that we're living in a society in the U.S.

00:22:15.800 where every police officer has to assume that everyone they are dealing with

00:22:21.760 is either potentially armed, and if they're reaching for something in their car,

00:22:26.900 they're very likely reaching for a gun.

00:22:28.600 I mean, this is not the default assumption, perhaps, in Western Europe,

00:22:32.220 but in the U.S., it absolutely has to be.

00:22:35.400 Our failures of, you know, gun control are relevant here.

00:22:38.260 But the idea that cops are performing some kind of lynching

00:22:43.560 by shooting someone in the back because he has fought them off,

00:22:47.400 ran around his car, and opened the door and reached in,

00:22:50.620 that's just, it's just completely untrue, given a cop's eye view of the world.

00:22:56.960 I think that the only thing I want to say here, and I'll turn it over to you,

00:23:00.380 that really does put the onus on the cops is,

00:23:02.720 clearly, they lacked the training or capacity to control him physically

00:23:10.880 and take him down so that they wouldn't have to use lethal force, right?

00:23:15.300 I mean, like, cops who actually could restrain somebody

00:23:18.260 could have easily restrained him.

00:23:20.320 He was outnumbered.

00:23:21.700 He was walking away from them in a way that allowed for any cop

00:23:25.380 with a modicum of training to take him down and hold him down.

00:23:29.420 And the fact that they couldn't do that suggests that there's a serious

00:23:33.680 recruitment problem and training problem, you know,

00:23:36.400 and we know this is true, you know, nationwide.

00:23:39.280 And so that's something to be worried about and rectified.

00:23:43.380 But, I mean, even there, people's intuitions about what cops should be doing,

00:23:48.660 should be allowed to do, all of this has run off the rails in mainstream media.

00:23:53.000 I mean, it's a point of seemingly absolute consensus

00:23:55.840 that cops should never use, you know, a rear neck restraint,

00:24:00.000 otherwise known as a rear naked choke,

00:24:02.120 because some number of people have died under those conditions

00:24:05.320 or seem to have died under those conditions.

00:24:07.460 I think in many cases that that was not, in fact, their cause of death.

00:24:10.900 Whereas a rear naked choke is, in fact,

00:24:14.480 if done appropriately, a remarkably safe procedure.

00:24:19.560 I mean, it's done in every jiu-jitsu school in the country every day of the year.

00:24:24.960 And if it had any high rate of lethality,

00:24:27.880 you would just be seeing people die all over the country all the time in jiu-jitsu training.

00:24:32.860 And this is now, I think it's illegal in New York now

00:24:37.240 and maybe illegal in other states for cops to even attempt this.

00:24:40.320 What you have done when you remove that tool,

00:24:42.860 you have made it far more likely that cops are going to have to resort to lethal force

00:24:47.140 because they can't, it's really one of the only ways to incapacitate someone

00:24:52.680 so that you can cuff them if you're going to rely on your grappling skills.

00:24:57.600 And so it's just, everything is upside down here.

00:24:59.900 But again, I would love to know if you disagree with anything I said

00:25:03.300 about what we can glean from that video.

00:25:06.120 Yeah, there's a few things that I see when I watch that video,

00:25:08.740 in addition to just being horrified at seeing violence of any type.

00:25:13.660 First of all, Sam, I think you're kind of like me

00:25:17.400 in that you've probably spent a fair bit of time

00:25:19.640 watching encounters like this on YouTube or wherever.

00:25:24.160 Videos of police subduing, failing to subdue someone,

00:25:28.980 police doling out violence and being the victims of it.

00:25:32.240 And I think many people who see that scene,

00:25:35.780 they start off being rightfully horrified

00:25:38.680 at having witnessed an act of violence.

00:25:41.780 And then they don't have some of the context that you might have

00:25:46.140 if you've gone down some of those YouTube rapid holes

00:25:48.200 and watched lots of violence like this

00:25:51.360 and seen how this kind of thing could turn out

00:25:55.320 in other scenarios, how that does turn out in other scenarios.

00:25:58.580 Like, you know, the fact that he's lunging into his car,

00:26:02.900 who knows what he's lunging for?

00:26:04.600 Apparently there's a knife there.

00:26:05.920 It's not a crime to have a knife in your car,

00:26:09.700 as far as I know.

00:26:10.220 However, if you're a cop and someone grabs a knife

00:26:13.600 and you're right behind him

00:26:14.760 and that person wants to stab you, 0.99

00:26:17.260 you could have a gun. 0.97

00:26:18.340 But I don't think the average person knows

00:26:20.060 whether you should expect to get stabbed

00:26:21.960 if someone is four feet away from you,

00:26:24.980 you have a gun and they have a knife.

00:26:26.480 And the answer is almost certainly, 0.99

00:26:28.360 you're going to get stabbed. 0.97

00:26:29.520 That's what you are dealing with. 0.99

00:26:32.260 If you have someone who wants to stab you

00:26:34.200 and you're that close, 0.86

00:26:36.200 it's not unless you get one really good shot 0.99

00:26:39.360 right in the head, 0.86

00:26:40.160 it's very likely that the person's going to get to you 0.73

00:26:43.200 and be on top of you with a knife, 0.51

00:26:45.040 even if you've put a round in him already.

00:26:48.720 So, yeah, I think there's not a great intuition

00:26:52.940 on the part of the general public

00:26:54.400 about the kind of threat that's being faced,

00:26:57.820 about the type of mindset that you might be in

00:27:01.800 if you're aware of those threats, too.

00:27:03.680 And I think, too, that that's a problem

00:27:07.080 that not just with police training,

00:27:10.220 not just with the poor intuitions of the general public,

00:27:13.160 but also with Kyle Rittenhouse.

00:27:15.440 You know, if you are spending a lot of time

00:27:18.640 thinking about guns, thinking about law enforcement,

00:27:20.700 you are going to be aware of these things

00:27:22.080 and maybe primed to overreact a bit, too,

00:27:25.320 if your politics suggest it.

00:27:27.900 The other thing in that video

00:27:30.380 and what you're describing

00:27:32.420 is the failure to describe it properly.

00:27:35.880 You know, as a journalist,

00:27:37.520 what I tend to do is I look for incidents

00:27:40.520 that turn out to be more complicated

00:27:42.100 than they originally appear.

00:27:44.500 And what you're describing

00:27:45.580 is the exact opposite of this.

00:27:47.940 And people seem to like doing that,

00:27:50.120 both sides, liberals, conservatives, left, far right.

00:27:53.340 You find a situation of moral complexity,

00:27:58.500 of deep ambiguity like this,

00:28:00.940 and people are not as interested in what I do

00:28:04.380 as in turning it into a black and white morality play.

00:28:11.420 It takes a lot of investigation

00:28:13.700 to find out what's actually happening.

00:28:15.920 Just watching a few seconds of a video

00:28:17.680 is not going to tell you

00:28:18.320 why the cops are there in the first place,

00:28:19.780 what the interaction has been like

00:28:21.220 up until the point where we see them

00:28:23.200 shoot a guy seven times in the back.

00:28:26.280 And I'm not sure we'll ever know that.

00:28:28.580 I mean, half the people I talk to about that shooting

00:28:32.360 think that the guy died on the scene.

00:28:34.480 They're not aware that he's still alive right now.

00:28:37.760 So if they're not aware of that detail

00:28:40.000 and they're unaware of pretty much every aspect

00:28:42.260 of the context of that shooting,

00:28:45.060 and it can be used for one of these

00:28:47.880 binary political purposes,

00:28:50.140 either to suggest that he's a demon

00:28:52.440 or to suggest that the people who shot him are.

00:28:55.520 Yeah, well, I want to talk about

00:28:56.680 the Kyle Rittenhouse episode

00:28:58.920 because that does strike me as more complex

00:29:02.840 and interesting in the end

00:29:05.640 and has pretty wide implications.

00:29:08.220 But yeah, just to reiterate something you said there

00:29:11.700 about the Jacob Blake shooting

00:29:13.240 and what it's like to have seen a lot of these videos,

00:29:15.540 I mean, what you have to know is that

00:29:18.260 every permutation of this kind of encounter

00:29:21.920 has happened.

00:29:23.540 So you can find video, again,

00:29:25.640 with the race of everyone swapped in and out, right?

00:29:29.240 You can find video where the guy reaches into his car,

00:29:32.660 pulls out a gun, and shoots the cop in the face

00:29:34.920 and kills him, right? 1.00

00:29:36.020 And every cop knows about those kinds of encounters, right?

00:29:39.700 So it's just, you have to game this out more fully

00:29:43.540 than your knee-jerk reaction may admit of,

00:29:47.960 which is, it is just awful

00:29:49.960 that we're living in a society

00:29:51.640 where cops shoot a guy in the back

00:29:55.500 in front of his kids, right?

00:29:57.240 With an apparent intent of killing him, right? 0.88

00:30:00.300 As a way to pacify him.

00:30:02.560 I mean, how did we get here?

00:30:03.720 This is completely insane and unacceptable.

00:30:05.800 But once the wheels begin to come off

00:30:09.140 in an encounter like this,

00:30:10.600 there are very few options open to people

00:30:13.560 who don't have, you know,

00:30:15.820 all the tools that might be possible there.

00:30:18.420 I mean, again, cops of sufficient strength

00:30:21.400 and training could have easily taken this guy down

00:30:25.140 and held him down.

00:30:26.220 He wouldn't have been injured in the end, right?

00:30:28.520 So there's an absolute deficit of training

00:30:31.100 and recruitment there that is visible to the eye

00:30:33.420 of anyone who knows what is going on.

00:30:35.800 And then there's the fact that

00:30:37.600 I think a taser was used

00:30:39.480 before the video picks up and failed.

00:30:41.920 But, you know, people think that tasers are magic.

00:30:45.220 You know, why not always use them?

00:30:47.000 Well, they're not magic and they often fail

00:30:49.700 and they're more dangerous than a neck restraint,

00:30:52.680 which has now been ruled illegal, right?

00:30:54.360 Because it's, if you tase someone and it works

00:30:56.940 and they fall to the concrete and hit their head,

00:31:00.520 you know, that is virtually always worse

00:31:01.920 than actually being choked out,

00:31:04.100 you know, in a jiu-jitsu class.

00:31:05.740 So people have to become better students

00:31:08.560 of this kind of violence

00:31:10.060 before they have these reactions

00:31:12.260 that seem to justify burning down half a city

00:31:15.840 or writing headlines,

00:31:17.640 which attest yet again,

00:31:19.980 in the loudest possible way,

00:31:21.380 that we have a real problem

00:31:24.260 of lethal racist violence perpetuated by cops.

00:31:28.180 Because, again, you know, unless we find out

00:31:30.460 more about the precursors to that event,

00:31:33.800 there's no reason to even talk about race

00:31:36.000 at this point. 0.73

00:31:37.440 That's what's so sickening.

00:31:39.840 My hypothesis is that virtually every mention of race

00:31:43.760 is counterproductive now in our society.

00:31:47.180 It's virtually only going to push society

00:31:50.340 in one direction,

00:31:51.740 which is greater polarization,

00:31:54.100 greater derangement,

00:31:55.580 greater hysteria,

00:31:57.420 less contact with actual facts,

00:31:59.140 and it's also going to increase the likelihood

00:32:01.420 that we're going to get four more years

00:32:03.000 of Donald Trump.

00:32:04.940 There's one aspect of what you say

00:32:06.160 that I am not so sure about,

00:32:08.940 and we should come back to race in a second,

00:32:11.120 but the idea that we should familiarize ourselves

00:32:13.540 with this kind of interaction

00:32:14.940 used to be very appealing to me.

00:32:16.840 You know, I started watching these videos,

00:32:18.860 and I actually wrote a profile a couple years ago

00:32:22.260 of a guy named John Correa,

00:32:24.360 a very nice guy who does kind of color commentary

00:32:27.540 on videos exactly like this.

00:32:29.300 So it will be badge cam,

00:32:30.960 it'll be CCTV,

00:32:32.800 but it's always violence

00:32:34.000 that either happens or is averted,

00:32:37.220 and then he will minutely dissect what happened.

00:32:41.440 Yeah, and he's a former preacher, right?

00:32:42.940 He went from minister to full-time security cam,

00:32:46.360 self-defense video analysis.

00:32:48.140 Yeah, and he's still a man of God

00:32:51.380 in the sense that he will remind you

00:32:53.440 of the importance of having a good relationship with Jesus

00:32:56.060 and remind you why, you know,

00:32:58.220 Jesus would want you to put in the right amount of time

00:33:02.060 at the range and so forth.

00:33:03.520 Right, right.

00:33:03.800 So he's a great guy,

00:33:05.820 and he's extremely responsible.

00:33:07.560 You know, he's very, I think, evidence-based

00:33:10.980 when he's doing these analyses,

00:33:12.620 and I've learned a great deal.

00:33:15.440 I think that people should watch him,

00:33:17.400 and heed his words of caution as well.

00:33:22.400 I'm also, though, not really certain

00:33:24.800 whether I want people to be thinking about this all the time.

00:33:28.580 For one thing,

00:33:30.000 rarely do you see people, you know,

00:33:33.460 studying encounters that go well.

00:33:36.060 You know, they end up seeing huge numbers of encounters

00:33:39.380 that go very badly,

00:33:41.100 even if these are extremely rare

00:33:44.300 in the life of a cop or a citizen.

00:33:48.440 And I've found by watching them

00:33:50.320 that you have to be extremely scrupulous

00:33:54.080 in making sure that you have

00:33:56.380 kind of kept your head on your shoulders

00:33:58.520 when it comes to understanding

00:34:00.820 what the actual likelihood

00:34:03.000 that this is going to happen to you is.

00:34:04.860 And if you don't do that,

00:34:06.940 your mind will be even more warped

00:34:08.600 than when you went in.

00:34:10.500 You might have a better sense of,

00:34:12.120 yes, this person with this weapon

00:34:14.080 is a danger at this distance

00:34:15.480 when I'm carrying this weapon,

00:34:17.880 when I'm ready for him, when I'm not.

00:34:19.740 But the fact of the matter is,

00:34:21.420 most of us don't get attacked.

00:34:23.300 Very, very few of us are law enforcement.

00:34:24.860 So many of these things

00:34:26.760 are just not relevant to our lives.

00:34:29.220 And when we get too used to them,

00:34:31.420 then I think it can have

00:34:33.060 a really warping effect on our psychology.

00:34:36.020 I know you, Sam, have spent a long time

00:34:38.020 thinking about self-defense,

00:34:39.980 personal security, and so forth, as have I.

00:34:43.280 And I'm not sure I would take back

00:34:45.160 any of that time in my case,

00:34:46.800 but I do worry that people

00:34:49.140 are becoming over-familiar

00:34:50.200 with these types of interactions

00:34:52.660 and what they get out of it

00:34:55.460 is not necessarily healthy for us

00:34:58.540 collectively as a society.

00:35:01.640 Yeah, no, I would totally agree with that.

00:35:03.440 And this is a nice segue

00:35:05.280 into the Kyle Rittenhouse phenomenon,

00:35:08.240 because if you become a student

00:35:10.560 of this kind of violence,

00:35:12.060 yes, you can get an outsized sense

00:35:14.380 of how common it is.

00:35:17.080 I mean, so really what I would,

00:35:17.820 just to make clear what I was recommending,

00:35:19.580 it's like, if you're not someone

00:35:20.800 who really knows a lot about violence,

00:35:23.680 you know, if you haven't studied it,

00:35:25.240 if you haven't trained in anything, right,

00:35:27.240 if you just don't know how hard it is

00:35:28.680 to shoot what you're aiming at,

00:35:31.380 you know, especially when that thing is moving,

00:35:33.140 if you're just not informed,

00:35:35.240 don't have a strong opinion

00:35:36.520 about these things, right?

00:35:38.360 Don't go in like,

00:35:39.460 now's a good time to burn down

00:35:41.080 the local sporting goods store over this,

00:35:44.320 or support others doing likewise,

00:35:46.540 when you just don't know what's going on.

00:35:50.680 I mean, certainly it also attracts,

00:35:52.180 it is a kind of bug light,

00:35:53.960 it attracts a certain kind of mind

00:35:56.420 and a certain kind of person

00:35:58.000 to spend a lot of time doing this,

00:36:00.000 and it's going to select for people

00:36:01.400 who have that, you know,

00:36:04.280 fondness for firearms

00:36:06.600 and self-defense training

00:36:08.460 and, you know, joining militias,

00:36:10.580 and I mean, it's sort of

00:36:11.760 the Kyle Rittenhouse kind of person.

00:36:13.300 And then we wind up

00:36:15.800 in this other terrible place

00:36:17.760 on the landscape,

00:36:18.300 which is once you get

00:36:20.200 any kind of breakdown in social order,

00:36:22.360 once cops get pushed far enough

00:36:25.680 on the back foot

00:36:27.200 such that they're not doing

00:36:29.740 the kind of policing

00:36:31.220 we would expect them to do, right?

00:36:33.400 Once they have essentially announced

00:36:34.800 nationwide that they won't protect property,

00:36:38.000 which they de facto have.

00:36:40.760 Just by example,

00:36:41.740 we saw this in the first wave

00:36:44.480 of protests and riots

00:36:47.300 that even in the most affluent parts

00:36:51.400 of the most affluent cities,

00:36:53.980 cops would not protect property.

00:36:56.100 I mean, you know,

00:36:56.960 potentially there's an argument for that,

00:36:58.600 but it's probably not a great one.

00:37:00.860 And in response to the protests,

00:37:02.900 we had the worst of all possibilities.

00:37:04.980 We had cops essentially saying

00:37:06.860 they would not protect property,

00:37:09.000 and they wouldn't even be diligent

00:37:12.100 in protecting the people

00:37:14.920 who tried to protect their own property

00:37:16.700 from being violently attacked by mobs.

00:37:19.660 We all saw footage of store owners

00:37:21.700 being beaten by mobs.

00:37:23.640 But what they would do 1.00

00:37:25.040 is they would kick the shit out 1.00

00:37:26.580 of peaceful protesters, right? 1.00

00:37:28.340 That's what the cops were up for.

00:37:29.740 So it was like,

00:37:30.340 if you wanted to create a machine

00:37:32.800 to amplify cynicism

00:37:36.200 and a commitment

00:37:37.820 to a kind of vigilante,

00:37:39.460 you know,

00:37:40.020 take matters into your own hands ethic,

00:37:42.300 you could not have done better

00:37:43.580 than these last few months

00:37:45.280 with the spectacle of American policing.

00:37:47.940 And, you know,

00:37:48.460 what you have there too

00:37:49.860 is exactly that kind of twin evil force

00:37:53.760 going on

00:37:54.260 where it's the forces of total chaos.

00:37:58.080 That is the cops saying

00:38:00.440 we are not going to enforce

00:38:02.060 laws concerning property,

00:38:04.240 go out, light fires, whatever.

00:38:06.760 But at the same time,

00:38:08.180 claiming for themselves

00:38:09.260 immense power.

00:38:10.860 So chaos and order

00:38:13.760 both being weaponized

00:38:15.540 to just make life hell.

00:38:18.200 If you combine those two,

00:38:19.800 you get what,

00:38:20.880 you know,

00:38:21.180 what I was describing earlier

00:38:22.200 as these characteristics

00:38:23.840 of hellish failed states

00:38:26.540 that I've reported on overseas.

00:38:29.320 You know,

00:38:29.580 it's in micro,

00:38:30.920 it's not beyond recovery,

00:38:33.300 but it's a taste of

00:38:34.460 what life is like

00:38:35.980 in places where

00:38:36.880 everything falls apart.

00:38:39.880 And, you know,

00:38:40.420 what I worry about most too

00:38:41.960 is that

00:38:42.900 these effects

00:38:43.940 are not

00:38:44.900 exactly

00:38:46.220 accidental.

00:38:47.760 You know,

00:38:47.940 the police,

00:38:49.600 they step back

00:38:50.680 from enforcement

00:38:52.140 of property crimes

00:38:53.680 and sometimes

00:38:54.760 in other places

00:38:56.380 where I've reported,

00:38:57.700 it's been pretty clear

00:38:58.520 that they'll say,

00:38:59.640 yes,

00:38:59.880 we stand

00:39:00.560 between you

00:39:01.800 and violence

00:39:03.500 and chaos.

00:39:04.500 If we're not here,

00:39:06.080 then that's

00:39:06.860 what's going to happen.

00:39:07.800 But kind of silently

00:39:09.220 uttered

00:39:09.980 after that,

00:39:11.080 after that promise,

00:39:12.100 that threat is

00:39:12.880 we're going to make sure

00:39:14.160 that that's what's happened,

00:39:15.180 what happens

00:39:15.640 if we're not there.

00:39:16.620 That is,

00:39:17.380 if we're not there

00:39:19.200 to protect you,

00:39:19.960 then things will go badly

00:39:20.980 because we insist

00:39:22.260 that they'll go badly

00:39:23.040 so that you,

00:39:24.200 you know,

00:39:25.140 give us

00:39:25.740 the proper respect

00:39:26.680 and,

00:39:27.820 you know,

00:39:28.880 sign over your security

00:39:30.240 to us

00:39:30.780 along with everything else.

00:39:32.700 So what is your actual

00:39:33.600 allegation

00:39:35.000 or concern there

00:39:35.860 that the cops

00:39:36.700 have

00:39:37.780 put the

00:39:38.920 rioters

00:39:40.240 on a

00:39:41.120 sufficiently long leash

00:39:43.140 for reasons

00:39:44.060 of sort of,

00:39:44.600 you know,

00:39:44.900 justifying their own

00:39:46.100 office?

00:39:47.320 Like,

00:39:47.460 look,

00:39:47.660 are you sure

00:39:48.280 you want to defund us?

00:39:49.380 Well,

00:39:49.540 let's take a look

00:39:50.440 at what's going to happen

00:39:51.220 tonight when we just,

00:39:53.040 you know,

00:39:53.260 sit on our hands.

00:39:54.620 Do you think that's happened?

00:39:55.900 Well,

00:39:56.380 what I think is happening

00:39:57.120 is that incentives exist.

00:39:59.040 So the incentive is to say,

00:40:01.160 first of all,

00:40:01.660 there are some

00:40:02.360 perfectly reasonable incentives.

00:40:04.380 You don't enforce

00:40:05.680 laws concerning property

00:40:07.600 because you're spending

00:40:09.000 your resources

00:40:09.660 making sure that people

00:40:10.620 don't get killed.

00:40:11.880 You try to make sure

00:40:13.080 violence isn't happening.

00:40:14.800 So that's a good reason

00:40:15.900 to do this.

00:40:16.680 But there is an incentive,

00:40:17.640 too,

00:40:18.060 to say,

00:40:19.080 look,

00:40:19.580 we're not going to enforce

00:40:20.580 this because we want

00:40:21.660 to show you

00:40:22.320 what happens

00:40:23.340 when you don't have us.

00:40:25.240 And the incentive is for

00:40:26.600 what happens

00:40:27.620 when you don't have us

00:40:28.480 to be very,

00:40:29.440 very bad,

00:40:30.020 to be as bad as possible

00:40:31.160 so that your appreciation

00:40:32.280 for us,

00:40:33.060 the police,

00:40:34.260 is sufficient.

00:40:37.060 So I'm not alleging

00:40:38.360 that there's some conspiracy

00:40:39.400 where the cops

00:40:40.380 are handing people

00:40:41.320 guns

00:40:42.240 or Molotov cocktails.

00:40:44.140 What I'm saying is

00:40:44.920 that at all levels

00:40:47.220 there are some

00:40:48.320 really,

00:40:49.340 really negative

00:40:50.380 vicious incentives

00:40:51.440 that are at work.

00:40:52.940 And it wouldn't be shocking

00:40:54.240 if there was a downward spiral

00:40:55.720 that's driven by them.

00:40:58.140 Yeah,

00:40:58.220 and all of this

00:40:58.780 is coupled to

00:40:59.960 what is now known

00:41:01.000 as the Ferguson effect

00:41:02.060 where cops,

00:41:03.340 because they don't want

00:41:03.900 to wind up on YouTube

00:41:04.780 on what seems to be

00:41:06.520 the wrong end

00:41:07.800 of yet another

00:41:08.540 lethal encounter

00:41:09.960 which in their world

00:41:11.120 may in fact

00:41:11.760 have been a justified shooting,

00:41:13.840 they're just

00:41:14.340 going to stop

00:41:15.880 policing proactively

00:41:17.320 and crime rates

00:41:18.880 are probably soaring

00:41:20.820 as a result of that.

00:41:22.440 So the Rittenhouse thing

00:41:23.220 is interesting

00:41:23.660 because you have someone

00:41:24.780 who draws

00:41:25.860 the obvious lesson,

00:41:28.400 especially right of center

00:41:29.460 here politically,

00:41:30.840 that, you know,

00:41:31.840 we have the Second Amendment

00:41:33.060 for a reason,

00:41:34.380 it only makes sense

00:41:35.340 to get really

00:41:36.080 into guns

00:41:37.340 and personal protection

00:41:38.960 because you really

00:41:39.880 can't delegate

00:41:41.000 the protection

00:41:41.840 of yourself

00:41:42.380 and your family

00:41:43.100 to the cops

00:41:44.460 at a minimum.

00:41:45.580 They're just usually

00:41:46.440 not there

00:41:46.940 when you need them

00:41:47.620 and they're going

00:41:48.360 to show up too late

00:41:49.320 to do anything

00:41:50.100 other than hopefully

00:41:50.840 solve the crime

00:41:51.720 that you were

00:41:52.700 the victim of.

00:41:53.340 So if you care

00:41:54.400 about self-defense,

00:41:55.500 well then it really has,

00:41:56.200 you have to put the self

00:41:57.040 back in self-defense

00:41:58.120 and therefore you need

00:42:00.200 guns and you need

00:42:01.120 to train with them

00:42:01.880 and you need to take

00:42:02.780 selfies of yourself

00:42:03.880 walking around

00:42:04.500 in the woods

00:42:04.940 with your AR-15

00:42:05.820 and become one

00:42:07.040 of those guys

00:42:07.620 and then you hear

00:42:08.400 about this breakdown

00:42:10.240 in social order

00:42:11.420 a few miles away

00:42:13.560 from where you live

00:42:14.320 and you decide

00:42:14.940 you're going to be

00:42:15.980 this high testosterone

00:42:18.940 good Samaritan

00:42:20.420 and get out there

00:42:22.540 and put yourself

00:42:23.380 between the forces

00:42:25.220 of chaos

00:42:25.700 and the social order

00:42:27.840 that still needs

00:42:29.000 to be maintained

00:42:29.880 and you're going

00:42:30.700 to protect people's

00:42:31.760 businesses

00:42:32.160 as I think

00:42:33.400 Kyle Rittenhouse

00:42:34.480 was intending to do,

00:42:37.560 at least that's

00:42:38.680 been reported,

00:42:39.360 and there's footage

00:42:41.120 of him cleaning up

00:42:42.880 graffiti earlier

00:42:43.840 in the day I think

00:42:44.680 and then he's

00:42:45.280 interviewed by somebody

00:42:47.180 at various points.

00:42:48.760 In those interviews

00:42:49.800 he seems like

00:42:50.360 a perfectly nice kid.

00:42:52.440 There's no indication

00:42:53.540 that he's intending

00:42:54.860 to shoot somebody. 0.69

00:42:56.280 There's every indication

00:42:57.140 during some portions

00:42:58.980 of it I think

00:42:59.480 he's offering

00:43:00.060 medical assistance,

00:43:01.640 maybe medical assistance

00:43:02.540 that he has

00:43:03.700 no business offering

00:43:04.580 and I don't think

00:43:05.220 many people take him

00:43:06.120 up on it

00:43:06.860 but there's no,

00:43:09.280 as far as I can tell,

00:43:10.880 no recorded evidence

00:43:12.440 in the videos

00:43:13.460 or interviews with him

00:43:14.500 that he's there

00:43:16.200 looking for a fight.

00:43:17.880 That said,

00:43:18.520 you know,

00:43:18.700 he went from Illinois

00:43:20.500 to Wisconsin

00:43:21.220 and picked up an AR-15

00:43:23.140 and went into

00:43:24.180 a really, really,

00:43:25.060 really dangerous place

00:43:25.960 where anything

00:43:26.660 could have happened.

00:43:27.240 So maybe that

00:43:28.220 is, you know,

00:43:29.760 all by itself

00:43:30.460 looking for a fight.

00:43:32.440 Yeah,

00:43:32.640 and I wonder

00:43:33.320 whether he had

00:43:34.260 the right level of,

00:43:35.400 I mean,

00:43:35.660 he obviously did not

00:43:36.480 have the right level

00:43:37.280 of situational awareness,

00:43:40.840 awareness of what

00:43:41.700 he was getting into.

00:43:42.580 I mean,

00:43:42.840 if you're walking around

00:43:44.180 open carrying

00:43:45.020 with any weapon,

00:43:46.980 even if it's

00:43:47.340 a tiny pistol,

00:43:49.400 someone taps you

00:43:50.260 on the shoulder

00:43:50.800 in that scenario

00:43:52.520 in Kenosha

00:43:53.560 when buildings

00:43:55.140 are burning around you

00:43:56.160 and people are screaming

00:43:57.000 in crowds around you,

00:43:59.340 you have to consider

00:44:00.260 that within the next

00:44:01.000 few seconds,

00:44:02.120 someone is going 0.99

00:44:03.100 to try to kill you 1.00

00:44:04.380 with the weapon 1.00

00:44:06.160 that you have brought

00:44:07.440 that could be

00:44:08.520 the weapon

00:44:09.680 that puts a bullet 1.00

00:44:10.700 in your brain. 0.78

00:44:11.400 So I didn't see

00:44:14.000 any awareness

00:44:15.180 in his face.

00:44:16.980 I don't imagine

00:44:17.800 that any awareness

00:44:18.780 could possibly be had

00:44:20.820 if, you know,

00:44:21.720 you're, say,

00:44:22.360 a recent high school graduate

00:44:23.620 who shows up

00:44:24.380 with your AR-15

00:44:25.260 in the middle

00:44:26.340 of a riot

00:44:27.100 in a previously

00:44:29.520 unexampled,

00:44:30.280 horrible situation

00:44:31.220 in this country.

00:44:32.900 This is a situation

00:44:34.340 that he clearly

00:44:35.820 had never been in,

00:44:37.020 that he'd be terrible

00:44:38.080 at assessing

00:44:38.740 the danger to him.

00:44:40.500 You know,

00:44:40.820 when younger reporters

00:44:43.020 go into war zones

00:44:44.100 and I talk to them,

00:44:45.880 sometimes they'll ask,

00:44:47.780 you know,

00:44:47.980 what do you suggest?

00:44:49.420 What should I know?

00:44:50.260 And the first thing

00:44:52.100 that I say

00:44:52.520 is that danger

00:44:54.360 just doesn't always

00:44:55.200 feel like danger.

00:44:55.840 You're going into

00:44:56.900 a situation

00:44:57.660 that is unlike

00:44:59.520 anything you've

00:45:00.540 experienced before.

00:45:02.220 If you've seen movies,

00:45:03.420 then you,

00:45:05.080 they edit out

00:45:05.880 all the boring parts

00:45:06.940 that happen in the movies.

00:45:08.180 Right.

00:45:08.340 So you're going to have

00:45:09.820 a very poor sense

00:45:12.100 of what the actual rhythms

00:45:13.200 of a day

00:45:14.140 in Baghdad will be.

00:45:15.720 And you'll be surprised

00:45:17.180 at how quickly

00:45:18.140 things go bad,

00:45:19.600 how quickly

00:45:20.360 the danger arrives,

00:45:21.900 how quickly

00:45:22.240 it passes.

00:45:23.080 And these things

00:45:25.380 are extremely

00:45:26.400 difficult to train.

00:45:28.040 They're the kind

00:45:28.580 of thing

00:45:28.780 that you learn

00:45:29.980 by accidentally

00:45:30.800 surviving long enough.

00:45:32.980 And, you know,

00:45:33.680 he had one day,

00:45:35.080 one day in Kenosha

00:45:36.540 and they turned bad

00:45:38.480 really, really fast.

00:45:40.820 I'm still very curious

00:45:42.040 about what happened

00:45:42.700 in the actual run-up

00:45:44.940 to the first shooting

00:45:46.040 because, you know,

00:45:47.280 the guy who he shot,

00:45:48.980 Joseph Rosenbaum,

00:45:50.600 doesn't seem to have been

00:45:51.600 the most stable individual

00:45:52.940 and, you know,

00:45:54.240 that there's suggestions

00:45:55.280 that he was furious,

00:45:58.700 that he may have attacked

00:45:59.940 Rittenhouse.

00:46:01.900 And then there's

00:46:02.680 all these moral questions

00:46:03.820 and legal questions

00:46:04.840 that I don't think

00:46:05.500 either of us

00:46:05.920 is really competent

00:46:06.640 to adjudicate

00:46:08.060 about whether Rittenhouse

00:46:09.760 under the laws

00:46:10.960 of the state of Wisconsin

00:46:11.800 would have been justified

00:46:13.820 in shooting him

00:46:15.340 if Rosenbaum, 0.67

00:46:17.280 say,

00:46:17.600 grabbed for his gun,

00:46:18.620 as is,

00:46:19.300 I think,

00:46:19.980 alleged in the criminal

00:46:20.980 complaint against Rittenhouse

00:46:22.100 that he shot Rosenbaum

00:46:23.840 after that happened,

00:46:26.060 that is,

00:46:26.380 after Rosenbaum

00:46:27.240 went for his gun.

00:46:28.920 But, you know,

00:46:30.620 it just has to be said

00:46:31.880 again and again

00:46:32.980 that if you open carry

00:46:35.120 in a situation like that

00:46:37.360 where there is mayhem

00:46:39.160 all around you

00:46:39.960 and crazy people

00:46:41.040 who have literally,

00:46:42.540 you know,

00:46:43.420 flocked there

00:46:44.080 from other states

00:46:45.820 because they're looking

00:46:47.000 for craziness,

00:46:47.760 then you've committed

00:46:50.400 an error

00:46:52.080 that is really

00:46:52.860 sealing your fate.

00:46:54.360 I can't see

00:46:55.280 how to see it

00:46:56.960 any other way.

00:46:57.580 If Rittenhouse

00:46:58.540 had been from Kenosha

00:46:59.580 and had just woken up

00:47:01.200 and rolled out of bed

00:47:01.920 and seen mayhem

00:47:03.000 in his front yard

00:47:03.920 and thought he had

00:47:04.660 to defend himself,

00:47:05.980 that would be one thing.

00:47:07.440 But he made

00:47:08.240 such a terrible decision

00:47:09.320 that almost everything

00:47:10.280 that happened

00:47:10.820 that flowed from that

00:47:12.340 is going to have to be seen

00:47:13.860 in that light.

00:47:14.680 Well, it's a decision

00:47:16.360 that so many people

00:47:17.880 are making.

00:47:19.140 Everyone who shows up

00:47:20.400 to one of these protests

00:47:22.740 or shows up anywhere,

00:47:24.540 you know,

00:47:24.740 whether it's in counter-protests

00:47:26.220 to the protests

00:47:27.680 they don't like

00:47:28.320 or it's their own protest,

00:47:30.580 you know,

00:47:30.860 as we saw against lockdown

00:47:32.180 earlier in the pandemic,

00:47:34.880 anyone who shows up armed,

00:47:36.980 you know,

00:47:37.200 carrying an AR-15

00:47:38.220 or, you know,

00:47:39.160 any firearm,

00:47:40.960 some of these people

00:47:41.660 have thought it through

00:47:42.940 and are just happy

00:47:44.820 to run the risk.

00:47:45.640 But the reality is

00:47:47.080 is that the presence

00:47:48.620 of a gun

00:47:49.260 completely changes

00:47:50.700 the dynamic

00:47:51.920 of any interpersonal violence.

00:47:55.360 When you know

00:47:56.140 you have a gun

00:47:56.880 with concealed carry,

00:47:58.520 that's its own burden

00:48:00.300 ethically and tactically,

00:48:03.320 right?

00:48:03.500 I mean, just,

00:48:04.160 you can have a gun on you

00:48:05.260 and no one can see it

00:48:06.220 and still

00:48:06.900 there are many doors

00:48:08.700 closed to you.

00:48:09.580 You cannot afford

00:48:10.420 to get into a wrestling match

00:48:11.660 with someone

00:48:12.100 or a shoving match

00:48:13.040 or a boxing match,

00:48:14.980 you know,

00:48:15.280 in the kind of ordinary

00:48:16.400 range of interpersonal violence

00:48:18.440 when you have a gun

00:48:19.560 on your belt

00:48:20.060 which at any moment,

00:48:21.580 you know,

00:48:21.860 you might decide to draw

00:48:23.000 or you might fall out,

00:48:25.160 you know,

00:48:25.460 in a scuffle

00:48:26.100 or it might be seen

00:48:27.300 by the other person.

00:48:28.140 I mean, just,

00:48:28.880 everything is potentially lethal

00:48:31.060 and, you know,

00:48:33.600 you have to think through

00:48:34.540 what you're going to do

00:48:35.740 if you start losing a fight

00:48:38.500 and you're armed

00:48:41.480 is a different situation.

00:48:43.680 Now, obviously,

00:48:45.160 anyone who's a true firearms person

00:48:48.660 will, you know,

00:48:49.800 have recourse to,

00:48:51.400 you know,

00:48:51.720 several aphorisms at this point,

00:48:53.220 you know,

00:48:53.360 better to be judged by 12

00:48:54.560 than, you know,

00:48:55.120 carried by six

00:48:55.820 or, you know,

00:48:56.720 in certain cases,

00:48:57.480 obviously,

00:48:57.740 I would agree with that

00:48:58.980 but the real heuristic here

00:49:01.140 is if you're going to be someone

00:49:03.360 who assumes the responsibility,

00:49:05.720 you know,

00:49:06.740 the real responsibility

00:49:07.740 of real self-defense, right?

00:49:09.820 If you're going to have firearms,

00:49:11.520 train with firearms,

00:49:13.300 think of the scenarios

00:49:14.340 under which you would use firearms,

00:49:16.380 right,

00:49:16.660 you're going to be the sheriff

00:49:17.560 of your own life

00:49:19.000 in the end

00:49:20.160 and you understand

00:49:22.180 that calling 911

00:49:23.140 is not actually

00:49:24.280 a self-defense plan.

00:49:26.300 You have to avoid violence

00:49:29.280 at virtually every cost, right?

00:49:33.480 Avoidance has to be

00:49:34.680 your master strategy

00:49:36.040 because it's only

00:49:38.200 if you've practiced

00:49:39.360 that impeccably

00:49:40.800 do you know

00:49:42.380 that you will be justified

00:49:43.680 if you find yourself

00:49:45.440 having to resort

00:49:46.560 to lethal force

00:49:47.640 and if you've decided

00:49:49.060 to just go out

00:49:49.840 to a random car dealership

00:49:51.300 with your AR-15

00:49:52.240 because you don't think

00:49:54.380 the cops are going to defend

00:49:55.400 those precious cars,

00:49:56.700 you're someone

00:49:57.380 who's not avoiding violence

00:49:59.080 at all, right?

00:49:59.940 You're putting yourself

00:50:00.680 in a very tenuous circumstance,

00:50:03.480 in front of a mob

00:50:05.200 and it's totally irresponsible

00:50:07.500 in the end

00:50:08.360 so that part

00:50:09.660 can't be defended

00:50:10.640 and yet

00:50:11.200 everything subsequent to that

00:50:13.040 might have been

00:50:14.420 again

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - September 03, 2020

#216 — A Conversation with Graeme Wood

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