Making Sense - Sam Harris - #225 — Republic of Lies

After the election, I wrote a tweet about how we need to thread the needle in order to make sense of the chaos in the world, and how the far-left is trying to take credit for Trump's election loss. And I think it's safe to say that a lot of people are missing the point. There's a much bigger problem at the bottom of the problem, and it's not Trump. It's the deep-rooted corruption, incompetence, and incompetence at the highest levels of our society. And the deeper problem is that we have a sitting president who is essentially a Qanavirus to the conspiracist conspiracist conspiracy theories that have been circulating online since the election. I think we can all agree that this is a problem we all need to address, and that it's a symptom of a larger, deeper, deeper problem, which is the lack of trust in our political and economic institutions. And that's a problem that needs to be addressed, not just in the media, but in our society as a whole, and I think that we're all to blame for this crisis of legitimacy and trust in the political system, not only in the mainstream media but also in our own institutions and our political institutions. Today's episode is a mashup of a few of my favorite pieces from the past two weeks, and my thoughts on this topic, and some of the things I've been thinking about since the results of the mid-term elections and what we can do to try to address the problem. I hope you'll join me in making sense of what's going on the next two weeks in the rest of the coming days and months, and what it means for our society and the future of our country. Make sense? -Sam Harris Make Sense? (Make Sense? What do you think of it? - tweet me and let me know what you think about it in the comments you think you agree with it! or disagree with it in a tweet if you have any thoughts or thoughts on the post-fact or thoughts you'd like to hear me respond to this? or are looking for more on the topic? in a new episode of Making Sense, please tweet me out there! or share it on your own podcast? and I'll be listening to it on Insta: :) Sam Harris: . Timestamps: 4:00 - What's your favorite conspiracy theory? 5:30 - What s the worst conspiracy theory you ve ever heard about Trump? 6:10 - What does it mean? 7:20 - Why is it bad? 8:15 - Why are we all a conspiracy? 9:40 - Why does it matter? 11:00

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris.

00:00:24.380 Okay, well, it has been two weeks since the election, and those of you who don't spend

00:00:33.900 a lot of time on social media may not be seeing how crazy it is out there.

00:00:40.100 All I can say is we appear to be living through a very dangerous moment, and Trump and his

00:00:47.420 enablers, in their desperation to hold on to power, are making our situation much more

00:00:53.220 dangerous. I want to elaborate on something I tweeted after it became obvious that Biden

00:00:58.700 had won the election. This was around November 6th, I think. I wrote,

00:01:06.160 There's a needle that we really must thread successfully. Contempt for Trump and his

00:01:12.440 enablers in government is a patriotic necessity. Contempt for 70 million Trump voters is a serious

00:01:19.220 error. Life is complicated. So, I want to spell this out a little more because very few people

00:01:27.540 are threading this needle successfully, or even attempting to thread it. And some people

00:01:32.780 have confused what I was saying there with people like AOC seeming to call for vengeance

00:01:39.300 against Trump supporters. She went so far as to encourage people to keep lists of everyone

00:01:44.140 who had supported Trump in any capacity. I think it's quite clear that nothing good is waiting

00:01:51.200 for us down that path. Over 70 million people voted for Trump. And there are many reasons for

00:02:00.880 people to have done this, or to have found that they just couldn't vote for Biden. And Trump

00:02:06.640 is as much a symptom as a cause of the division in our society now. I mean, he is not Stalin. He is not

00:02:15.000 Hitler. He is a vindictive little con man who got plucked out of a carnival somewhere by Mark Burnett 0.99

00:02:24.140 and put on television for over a decade. Trump is the quintessential American fake. And it's been 1.00

00:02:32.900 astounding to watch such a bizarre and insubstantial person accomplish one crazy stage

00:02:40.840 dive after the next, because there were millions of upraised hands waiting to catch him and to bear

00:02:47.960 his weight. So there are real social problems at the bottom of all this that we have to address.

00:02:54.640 And we won't address any of them by writing off everyone who voted for Trump as racist or otherwise

00:03:00.980 irredeemable. But there are many people in my circle, friends and colleagues and podcast guests,

00:03:09.720 who are making the opposite error. Many of them are almost exclusively focused on the problem of the

00:03:15.680 far left. And this is causing them to significantly discount the harm that Trump has caused and is

00:03:21.740 actively causing to our society. Some of these people are Trump supporters, but many aren't. And

00:03:28.800 they've been taking the Trump team's allegations that the election was stolen through massive voter

00:03:33.960 fraud way too seriously. And they're extending a principle of charity to Trump and to the rest of

00:03:41.080 his team that is frankly delusional. Again, there is a needle to thread here, and many people don't

00:03:47.720 appear to even see it. Insofar as I've noticed what others in the so-called intellectual dark web have

00:03:53.580 been saying is generally not something I want to be associated with. I don't want to single anyone

00:03:59.440 out in particular, but allow me to take this moment to turn in my imaginary membership card

00:04:05.520 to this imaginary organization. I mean, the IDW was always tongue-in-cheek from my point of view.

00:04:12.960 It was a funny name for a group of people who were willing to discuss difficult topics in public,

00:04:17.920 mostly on podcasts, but it never made sense for us to be grouped together as though we shared a common

00:04:23.360 worldview. I never saw much downside to it, and I didn't much think about it. But in the aftermath

00:04:30.140 of this election, with some members of this fictional group sounding fairly bonkers, I just want to make

00:04:37.640 it clear that I'm not part of any group. So if you want to criticize my ideas, that's great, but I only

00:04:44.200 represent myself here, and no one else speaks for me. We have a crisis of legitimacy now on all fronts.

00:04:52.860 People have lost their trust in our institutions, and this is understandable given all that's happened

00:04:58.520 over the last four years. Trust in media has almost collapsed, but that doesn't mean there still isn't a

00:05:05.840 difference between the New York Times and Breitbart, or between journalists who are doing their best to

00:05:11.240 report facts, even while they harbor their own political biases, and political operatives are

00:05:16.560 conspiracy theorists who are obviously spreading lies. So as bad as things are in mainstream media,

00:05:24.100 and don't get me wrong, they're quite bad, you simply can't place equal blame on both sides,

00:05:29.720 politically, at this moment. And we have a sitting president who is essentially a QAnon conspiracist.

00:05:36.680 So if you find yourself saying things like, all politicians lie, or Biden is just as corrupt as

00:05:43.560 Trump, you have become part of the problem of misinformation in our society. Biden would have

00:05:50.160 to be a supporter of Antifa and lying about literally everything to be comparable to Trump.

00:05:56.960 Biden's next tweet would have to say something like, we have evidence that the CIA invented the 0.99

00:06:03.040 coronavirus to kill black people. He would have to be that maniacal, and the whole Democratic Party 0.99

00:06:09.300 along with him, for there to be an equivalence between Trump and Biden, or between Republicans

00:06:14.220 and Democrats, at this moment. Yes, there is influence peddling, and bad incentives, and opportunism,

00:06:22.320 and cowardice, and the whole carnival of human error on both sides of our politics. But the Republican

00:06:29.460 Party has become a personality cult devoted to a fake strongman who really is doing his best to

00:06:37.440 undermine our democracy. So a special focus on Trump and his enablers is totally warranted right now.

00:06:46.100 And again, there is a needle to thread here. There is a difference between Trump and his inner circle

00:06:51.900 and his most abject supporters in Congress. There's a difference between these people who are attempting to

00:06:58.680 hold on to power, illegitimately, by vomiting lies on everything in sight, and the millions of people

00:07:05.300 who voted for Trump, who are to one or another degree taken in by these lies. Now, at the time I'm

00:07:12.440 recording this, it seems safe to claim the following. There appears to be no credible evidence of

00:07:19.320 significant voter fraud in the 2020 election. And whatever the Trump campaign is bringing forward

00:07:24.460 is being looked at by the courts. And so far, it's being thrown out by the courts. Ironically,

00:07:30.220 because we have such an uncoordinated election system, it appears to be very difficult to

00:07:35.400 manufacture fraud at scale. And what is being alleged here is massive fraud across many states,

00:07:42.700 several of which have Republicans in key positions of power. And strangely, the Democrats are alleged to

00:07:47.960 have rigged the election for president, but they didn't think to also win the Senate and to get rid of

00:07:52.980 Mitch McConnell. And they lost seats in the House. So this election fraud was really a work of subtle

00:07:58.320 genius. And needless to say, all the Republicans in Congress have celebrated their victories in the

00:08:04.020 House and the Senate. And these votes were cast on the same ballots they're disputing in the

00:08:08.380 presidential race. This is the very essence of incoherence and hypocrisy, just as it was when

00:08:15.840 Trump's campaign began demanding that we stop counting ballots in states where he was ahead,

00:08:20.100 while simultaneously demanding that we keep counting them in states where he was behind.

00:08:25.080 There is now such a degradation of our politics that people don't even feel the need to lie coherently. 0.99

00:08:32.080 It's just a continuous carpet bombing of our information landscape with bullshit. 0.94

00:08:37.860 So, at this moment, it certainly appears that Biden won the 2020 election far more decisively than 0.98

00:08:45.060 Trump won in 2016. And Trump claimed massive voter fraud in that election, too.

00:08:50.420 Right? The election he won to become president. He even claimed that Ted Cruz was guilty of voter

00:08:55.360 fraud in the Iowa caucus. This is what he does. And it's part of the authoritarian playbook.

00:09:02.880 Trump is a conman who has no respect for anything beyond himself. And he certainly has no concern for 0.88

00:09:11.820 the health of our democracy. These are facts about his mind that he confirms for us on a daily basis.

00:09:21.200 Now, obviously, any credible accusation of voter fraud should be looked at by the courts. But it's very

00:09:26.920 important to point out that no one has been denying this basic principle of election fairness.

00:09:33.240 Okay, but this was not like Bush versus Gore in 2000, which came down to 500 votes in a single state.

00:09:38.900 Here we are talking about tens of thousands of votes in several states, a bigger margin than Trump won

00:09:45.280 by in 2016, to which Hillary Clinton quickly conceded, right, even though she won the popular vote.

00:09:53.740 And President Obama immediately began cooperating with the transition team, while Trump is still

00:09:58.580 refusing to cooperate with Bidens, two weeks into this process. And more importantly, so are the

00:10:04.140 leaders in the Republican Party. That's how perverse this has gotten. Right now, Biden should be getting

00:10:11.500 a daily security briefing. And his team should be speaking with foreign leaders on secure lines,

00:10:17.380 facilitated by the State Department. They should be able to speak with officials in every branch of

00:10:21.560 our own government, so they can get up to speed. Normally, all this would be going on while the

00:10:27.240 election gets certified in the coming weeks. And normally, the transition team would be given funds

00:10:32.300 and access to government buildings at this point. And yet, all of these resources are being denied

00:10:38.560 to them. The real problem is that all of this controversy is being manufactured by bad faith

00:10:46.800 actors. You can be confident that no one on Trump's team thinks he lost due to election fraud. Rather,

00:10:55.720 they're attempting to delegitimize our democracy by pretending to think there was massive election fraud.

00:11:02.300 It's like a soccer player who takes a dive and begins writhing around on the ground,

00:11:06.560 right? Hoping to deceive the ref and to win a penalty kick, and possibly win the game that way.

00:11:14.480 No matter how good he makes it look, the soccer player knows he wasn't fouled.

00:11:20.500 This is cheating. Trump and his enablers are hoping to hold on to the presidency by pretending

00:11:28.660 they were fouled. And they're looking for a referee, whether a court or a state legislature,

00:11:34.920 who just might award them a winning penalty kick. Short of that, they're trying to motivate the base

00:11:40.060 in Georgia so they can hold on to the two Senate seats that will be decided in a runoff election in

00:11:44.580 January. And beyond that, Trump and his family are clearly trying to monetize their cult so they can

00:11:51.540 do who knows what to further debase American society after Trump leaves office. Again, let me be clear.

00:11:58.000 I believe that everything I'm saying about Trump's attempt to undermine our democracy is as objective

00:12:04.240 and uncontroversial and non-partisan as saying something like, Trump doesn't want to release

00:12:11.080 his tax returns. I mean, how can I say that Trump doesn't want to release his tax returns? What am I,

00:12:16.920 a mind reader? He's even said on a few occasions that he wants to release his tax returns.

00:12:21.580 It's just that they're under audit, you see. Why not take the man at his word?

00:12:27.940 Well, if you are that confused about who this man is, then there really is nothing I or anyone else

00:12:34.920 can say to persuade you on these points. So let me just bracket what will otherwise be

00:12:40.820 totally unacceptable to you by saying that my adamance on these points is coming from a very

00:12:48.220 clear sense that what I'm saying is not just my opinion about Donald Trump. I believe I'm making

00:12:54.760 factual statements about what he has done and why he has done it. The man really doesn't want to

00:13:01.780 release his tax returns, for whatever reason. I don't have to be a clairvoyant to know that.

00:13:08.440 It's the only rational interpretation of his actions.

00:13:11.480 And he really did try to steal the presidency two weeks ago. And he appears to still be trying,

00:13:19.980 however hopeless that might be. I mean, think about this chain of events. We have a president

00:13:25.600 who, for months, railed about how unreliable our election system was, and about how mail-in ballots,

00:13:33.500 in particular, were guaranteed to produce massive fraud. And he made these claims entirely without

00:13:39.940 evidence, while being someone who votes by mail himself in Florida. And he said over and over

00:13:46.300 again that we need a result on election night, knowing that the vote count always continues

00:13:52.240 over subsequent days, and that in this election, the later votes would disproportionately be weighted

00:13:57.960 toward Biden. Literally for months, Trump stigmatized mail-in ballots in a calculated effort

00:14:06.380 to get his supporters to vote in person, knowing that in-person returns are generally counted first

00:14:13.780 on election night. In fact, Republican lawmakers seem to have collaborated in this scheme by not

00:14:19.480 allowing mail-in ballots to be counted early in several key states. And in fact, the Republicans

00:14:24.260 tried to starve the post office of funding over the summer. And Trump admitted that this was to keep

00:14:30.340 them from being able to handle a surge in mail-in ballots. And all of this occurred during the COVID

00:14:36.240 pandemic, during which for nearly nine months, Trump downplayed the risk of the disease, even as a

00:14:42.680 quarter of a million people died from it. So he knew that concern about the coronavirus was also heavily

00:14:47.680 biased along political lines, because he had worked hard to bias it himself. And this caused in-person

00:14:54.060 voting to be even more heavily weighted toward his supporters. I mean, it sounds totally fantastical,

00:15:00.340 but all of this happened in plain sight. Trump tried to engineer an episode of reality television

00:15:07.120 that could have ushered in the end of our democracy. He was obviously hoping to step before the cameras in

00:15:14.220 the wee hours of Wednesday morning, with a significant lead in the polls, and to then demand that the vote

00:15:20.240 counting stop. He was stage managing an attempted theft of the election, all the while encouraging his

00:15:28.140 supporters to believe that the election was being stolen from him as the counting of ballots continued.

00:15:34.160 And he did this all in a context in which he, as the sitting president of the United States,

00:15:40.540 refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. So it's really hard to

00:15:46.940 exaggerate how far from normal we had drifted when Trump stepped in front of the microphone on election

00:15:53.440 night. We had a president of the United States declaring that he had won re-election by a large

00:16:00.400 margin when there were millions of votes still being counted, and every reason to believe that most of

00:16:06.500 those votes would be for his opponent. And the most prominent members of the Republican Party

00:16:11.360 supported him in this. That is what has become of our politics.

00:16:16.160 So, in my view, this was a terrifying lurch toward authoritarianism, even if in many ways Trump is

00:16:24.940 a fake authoritarian. And it could have worked. We could have lost our democracy two weeks ago.

00:16:33.020 But the problem is, nearly half of our society doesn't know that. In fact, nearly half of our society

00:16:40.540 is being told, right now, that we have lost our democracy because the election of Joe Biden was a fraud.

00:16:49.020 This is a dangerous loss of social cohesion, and it has been engineered by Trump and the Republican Party.

00:16:57.680 Imagine you're on a plane at 30,000 feet, and the pilot comes over the PA system and says,

00:17:04.820 I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we've heard credible reports that there's a bomb somewhere on the aircraft.

00:17:10.920 Some people are saying it's in the luggage. Some people are saying it might have been smuggled on board by

00:17:15.100 food service, and it might have been placed in an overhead compartment by one of your fellow

00:17:18.780 passengers. But just sit tight. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Imagine the panic that would

00:17:26.520 cause. And now imagine what you would think of the pilot if you knew that he was lying. Imagine the mind

00:17:35.180 of a pilot who has assumed so much control over the lives of his passengers who would tell a lie

00:17:43.640 like that. What sort of person would do that? That's the president right now. The situation is almost

00:17:54.600 certainly worse, in fact. I mean, the Trump campaign is aggressively fundraising on the back of their

00:18:01.220 fake allegations of election fraud. The fundraising is ostensibly for all their legal actions, but most

00:18:07.100 of the money will be used for other purposes, to pay down their campaign debt and to form a Trump

00:18:12.240 political action committee. Trump's even threatening to run for president again in 2024.

00:18:16.560 So the president is like a pilot who's just announced that there's a bomb on the airplane.

00:18:22.420 But if you just get out your credit card and donate generously to the Trump Bomb Squad Fund,

00:18:27.680 he might be able to land the plane safely. But it's a fake crisis, and he's just stealing money

00:18:34.200 from millions of frightened and angry people, and creating more division in our society in the

00:18:39.360 process. And actually increasing the likelihood that the plane we're all on at this moment will crash.

00:18:46.560 And this is why it is appropriate to be outraged over this behavior. Trump and the people closest to

00:18:55.160 him know exactly what they're attempting to do to our democracy. They understand that amplifying

00:19:02.740 conspiracy theories increases the risk of serious violence and social disorder. And they absolutely

00:19:09.420 know that they're putting our country at needless risk by not giving the Biden team the resources they

00:19:15.500 need for a smooth transition. And this is not at all analogous to what's happening on the left.

00:19:22.940 I mean, yes, it also sows division in our society to call half the country racist. But the people who

00:19:30.100 are doing that really are confused, right? They think half the country is racist. And I'm sure the

00:19:37.620 confusion extends all the way up to the top, right? Someone like AOC thinks half the country is racist.

00:19:45.160 But Trump and his team know that they lost the election. They know why they're doing what they're doing.

00:19:52.480 They know they are trying to eke out some personal advantage at massive social cost.

00:19:57.860 That's what's so reprehensible. Obviously, I don't know what's going to happen next. I am reasonably

00:20:04.440 confident that the tide has turned here and that our institutions are strong enough. And when push

00:20:12.440 comes to shove, the military and law enforcement are professional and apolitical enough that Trump can

00:20:18.740 be dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House in January, if need be. But honestly, I think this

00:20:26.000 pressure test of our institutions nearly failed. And that's scary. A few days after the election,

00:20:35.240 on November 6th, the journalist Jim Sciutto tweeted, a new restricted national defense airspace

00:20:43.380 has been put in place over presidential candidate Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware. And then

00:20:50.480 Samantha Power, who was our UN ambassador under President Obama, she also happens to be married

00:20:56.340 to Cass Sunstein, who is a constitutional law scholar who's been on this podcast. Samantha forwarded this

00:21:03.020 tweet with the comment, it's real. Our institutions will hold. Now, I practically burst into tears when I read

00:21:12.520 that tweet. And here's why. The fact that that was ever in doubt, that our institutions would hold.

00:21:22.020 The fact that there was even a question as to how the military would respond if we had a madman in

00:21:27.840 the White House refusing to admit that he had lost an election and demanding that we stop counting votes

00:21:33.420 in states where he was ahead and continue counting them in states where he was behind.

00:21:37.300 For the fact that I can even understand Samantha's tweet, it's real. Our institutions will hold.

00:21:46.760 The fact that I can parse the fucking sentence is evidence of a crime that has been committed against 0.99

00:21:55.000 all of us. And everyone who's been accusing Trump's critics of having Trump derangement syndrome 0.99

00:22:01.180 has been party to this crime. You really have played a game of chicken with our democracy.

00:22:09.520 And in my view, you actually do have a lot to apologize for. This is not partisanship. This has

00:22:16.860 never been a difference of opinion. We can have those. But you have protected a man who was

00:22:24.640 manifestly unfit to be president. And that has been obvious since day one. And long before day one.

00:22:33.920 Yes, as I said, there is corruption and confusion and bad incentives and ordinary human frailty

00:22:40.480 on both sides of our politics. And yes, we have a crisis of legitimacy in our society

00:22:46.240 that is bigger than Trump. 0.95

00:22:47.900 But Trump is the most malicious exploiter of it. And you cannot let your gaze wander from the core 0.83

00:22:56.060 truth of this moment. We have a sitting U.S. president who is trying to hold on to power

00:23:03.180 by shattering every democratic norm we have. And failing that, he is trying to sabotage the presidency

00:23:11.120 of his successor for his own personal gain. And he has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of

00:23:18.980 power. This is probably the lowest point in our democracy since the Civil War. Now, of course,

00:23:26.620 there is a silver lining to this. If the worst doesn't happen, if Trump's attempt to delegitimize

00:23:33.060 the election fails, and it now seems virtually certain that it will, and if we don't see some crazy

00:23:39.300 degree of violence or political assassinations sparked by his conspiracy theories, we have

00:23:45.780 discovered that much of what keeps our democracy intact is not a matter of our laws, but of our

00:23:51.840 political norms. So many safeguards against corruption and abuses of power and a creep toward

00:23:58.880 authoritarianism depend on the decency of the people in power. And what Trump has taught us,

00:24:04.420 beyond any possibility of doubt, is that we can't rely on human decency. We need a system that can

00:24:12.220 handle a psychopath in the White House. However, it seems clear that most Trump voters really don't

00:24:18.780 understand what's happening. And I know that sounds patronizing, but it's not meant to be. I mean, there are

00:24:26.080 reports of people in ICUs right now dying from COVID who still think COVID is a hoax. That's how crazy

00:24:35.500 our information landscape has become. And Trump has worked tirelessly to make it that crazy. Remember,

00:24:43.780 Trump launched his political career with the birther conspiracy. And when he came to office in 2016,

00:24:49.800 about a third of Americans believed the birther conspiracy. And 72% of Republicans believed it.

00:24:57.780 Let that sink in. During the 2016 campaign, 72% of registered Republicans believed that Barack Obama

00:25:07.260 was born in Kenya, and therefore that his presidency was illegal and illegitimate. And things have only 0.91

00:25:14.060 gotten worse. Trump is president of the United States. He has tweeted QAnon articles suggesting that

00:25:21.980 Obama and Biden had members of SEAL Team 6 murdered to conceal the fact that they never actually killed

00:25:28.060 Osama bin Laden. The president of the United States tweeted that. Now, if you don't think that's a 0.51

00:25:36.740 catastrophe for a catastrophe for our country and for the world, to have promoted such a person to the

00:25:43.380 highest position of power, I'm afraid that's on you. Caring about this sort of thing isn't Trump

00:25:51.020 derangement syndrome. If you don't care about a U.S. president who lies as freely as he breathes,

00:25:58.600 who makes a laughingstock out of our country with nearly every utterance, that's on you.

00:26:05.100 These things actually matter, whether they matter to you or not.

00:26:11.780 So, who do we hold accountable for what has happened here, and for what has almost happened,

00:26:18.560 and for what may yet happen? I mean, I do think we need to give something like 70 million people

00:26:25.140 a mulligan here, and then make a serious effort to solve the social problems that cause so many of

00:26:31.160 them to support Trump. No doubt this is a conversation that will absorb many future episodes of this

00:26:36.640 podcast. But we run a serious risk of moral hazard if there are no consequences for the people who

00:26:44.680 decided to torch our democracy on the chance that they might personally gain from it.

00:26:49.920 Imagine that a man attempts to rob a bank, but it doesn't work out. Let's say that after he's pulled out his gun

00:26:59.160 and started screaming for everyone to get down on the floor, and perhaps after he's pistol-whipped

00:27:04.860 the guard, something goes wrong, and it becomes clear that he won't be able to rob the bank after all.

00:27:10.640 Now, what's the point of no return, reputationally? What's the last moment where you get to say,

00:27:17.700 sorry, this isn't really a bank robbery. I'm not actually a bank robber. Everyone can get up off the

00:27:23.480 floor now. We're just going to have to agree to disagree about what happened here. I do think a line

00:27:30.160 has been crossed here. Again, not necessarily with respect to our laws, but with respect to norms

00:27:35.600 that are even more important than many of our laws. Is it illegal for a sitting president to not

00:27:42.760 commit to a peaceful transfer of power? Is it illegal for him to pretend to think that there

00:27:47.500 was massive election fraud and to claim to have won an election that he really lost? Is it illegal

00:27:53.600 for him to spread socially toxic lies every hour on social media? It doesn't seem so, but that's not

00:28:02.440 the point. Trump has still managed to do tremendous harm to our society, and he seems committed to

00:28:09.880 doing further harm. So, at a minimum, I believe the right way to treat Trump and his crime family

00:28:16.440 after January 20th is the way we treated O.J. Simpson after he was acquitted of a double murder that

00:28:22.900 everyone knew he had actually committed. We should just let them fall into oblivion. Of course, I'm under

00:28:30.700 no illusions that will actually happen, but it should happen. We should all do our best to withdraw

00:28:38.040 our attention from this man who has gotten more attention in the last four years than any person

00:28:44.680 in human history. And for those of you who still think that not acknowledging how bad Trump is is the

00:28:52.160 only way to resist the craziness coming from the left, all I can say is that it seems quite clear

00:28:58.780 that you're wrong. Trump was never an answer to the problem of the far left. In fact, the left has

00:29:07.560 drawn a massive amount of energy and seeming credibility from him. It's true that the problem

00:29:14.500 of illiberalism on the left has been growing for a long time, but it has gotten as bad as it has

00:29:20.620 under Trump. And Trump has been bringing gasoline to that fire. Again, because it has always served his

00:29:28.200 personal interests to do so. What we need is real moderation and pragmatism and professionalism

00:29:36.560 in our politics now. And while I was never very enthusiastic about Biden and Harris, there is a big

00:29:44.180 difference between both of them and AOC. And again, if you want a real parallel for the dangerous

00:29:50.500 insanity that's been encouraged by Trump, you have to go further left than AOC. Trump is President QAnon

00:29:57.920 right now. The most destructive thing about the Trump presidency has been the orgy of lying and 0.98

00:30:05.680 misinformation that has subsumed everything in our public conversation. The utter devaluation of truth

00:30:13.920 has been the worst part, because it affects everything else. Anyway, the next two months

00:30:21.000 should be very interesting. I certainly expect there will be a transition to a Biden presidency.

00:30:28.720 But who knows, really? It still feels like something bad can happen here. But even after a smooth

00:30:38.580 transition, there will still be a lot of hard work to do to steer our culture toward basic sanity on real

00:30:46.420 issues. The pandemic, the economic effects of lockdown, wealth inequality more generally, social

00:30:54.780 cohesion, collisions with foreign adversaries like China and Russia, cybersecurity, climate change.

00:31:02.600 The list of challenges is quite long and daunting. And it seems clear that only a fact-based discussion

00:31:13.160 will help us meet them. And with that, I will leave you. As always, thanks for listening.

00:31:32.600 Film on Zip. 0.98

00:31:33.480 ació fucker Greatest 0.99

00:31:42.740 Calc及 1.00

00:31:44.800 Emmery

00:31:47.420 Emmery

00:31:48.440 Emmery

00:31:51.380 Emmery

Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 18, 2020

#225 — Republic of Lies

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