Making Sense - Sam Harris - #285 — American Division

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:32.500 therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers so if you enjoy

00:00:36.540 what we're doing here please consider becoming one today i'm speaking with david french david is a

00:00:49.860 senior editor at the dispatch and a contributing writer for the atlantic he is a graduate of harvard

00:00:56.760 law school and he was previously a senior writer for national review and a columnist for time

00:01:03.520 magazine he is a former constitutional litigator and past president of the foundation for individual

00:01:10.220 rights and education he's also a new york times best-selling author and his most recent book

00:01:16.960 is divided we fall america's secession threat and how to restore our nation david is also a former

00:01:24.480 major in the united states army reserve and a veteran of operation iraqi freedom where he was

00:01:30.780 awarded the bronze star and in this conversation we talk about all of the forces that are pulling

00:01:37.200 american society apart we discuss david's experience as a jag officer in iraq and his experience of being

00:01:44.880 harassed to really an extraordinary degree by the far right for coming out against trump we talk about

00:01:52.400 the way that real grievances drive political derangement the liberalism on both the left and the right

00:01:58.400 the role of prophecy in evangelical support for trump honor culture the response to hunter biden's laptop

00:02:08.080 the january 6 hearings the personality cult of trumpism federalism geographic sorting group polarization

00:02:18.580 cultural divisions in sports and entertainment the gun rights movement the ethics of gun ownership

00:02:26.080 whether trump will be prosecuted the looming 2024 presidential campaign the dangers of online activism

00:02:34.500 and other topics anyway it was great to finally get david here i've been an admirer of his work for a long

00:02:41.040 time even though i know there are many topics on which we disagree he is after all a religious

00:02:47.000 conservative but that made his perspective on the issues we did discuss all the more valuable

00:02:52.200 and now i bring you david french

00:02:55.420 i am here with david french david thanks for joining me thanks so much for having me i'm honored

00:03:06.760 uh yeah me too i've been long been an admirer of your short form writing i haven't it's your last book is

00:03:16.680 the first book uh of yours i've read in anticipation of this podcast uh which we'll talk about but um

00:03:22.600 yeah it's great to finally speak with you because your political commentary has been more than edifying

00:03:27.640 uh lo these these many years where everything seems to have gone toward the brink and in many cases into

00:03:34.440 the abyss yeah it's i i did not have this level of extremism if you talked to me 20 years ago i would not

00:03:43.400 have seen this level of extremism but it started emerging pretty soon after that and and now here

00:03:50.120 we are yeah yeah well so so let's catch people up on your background here to before we get started

00:03:57.640 your most recent book which came out in 2020 is divided we fall uh which talks about this problem of

00:04:05.400 american division that we're going to get into and and you focus on the prospect of secession uh you know

00:04:13.080 actual secession the actual fragmentation of the political union of the united states and we'll

00:04:18.840 talk about that as well i mean that you know on its face that has always seemed like a highly

00:04:24.200 implausible threat and yet you make it sound all too plausible when you get into the details in the

00:04:29.320 book and i can only imagine since the book came out nearly two years ago it came out right before

00:04:35.960 yeah the 2020 election uh i i assume things have only gotten worse in the meantime is there any is

00:04:44.040 that right or do you well how do you how do you view the last 18 plus months since you published the

00:04:48.920 book yeah i would say that things have accelerated in a worse they've accelerated more than i thought they

00:04:55.800 would i was pessimistic but i did not see for example january 6th occurring when i when i wrote the book i

00:05:02.920 did not see for example things like the texas gop you know one of the largest and most influential

00:05:09.320 wings of the republican party in the united states calling for a secession referendum in texas now

00:05:15.160 doubtful it will happen anytime soon but this you know this kind of conversation and this this level of

00:05:22.360 polarization is absolutely something that's accelerated and and when i wrote the book i was nervous about

00:05:29.800 using the word secession i was nervous about introducing the con the concept but what i saw

00:05:37.080 was that we didn't have and this is something i say right up front that there is no single truly

00:05:42.040 important cultural political religious social trend that is pulling us together more than it's pushing us

00:05:48.280 apart and it's not just politics it's where we live it's how we live it's our pop culture it's so many

00:05:55.000 different fronts for sort of pushing us apart yeah i mean so i must admit i have a i had a knee-jerk

00:06:02.520 reaction to the concept of secession as just being a bridge or or several bridges too far and it just

00:06:09.480 sounds so implausible but when i actually look at the assumptions that are that are anchoring that

00:06:15.960 reaction it's just there's so many assumptions like these that have been destroyed in recent years i mean

00:06:22.680 right i never would have imagined uh i mean the truth is i still can't imagine that trump was ever

00:06:30.120 president of the united states i mean it's true it's like i i feel like you know i keep waking up in some

00:06:36.520 alternate universe where that black mirror fiction has become a reality but it will always seem implausible

00:06:44.520 to me even though it's already happened and the idea that we would have you know a republican party that is

00:06:51.800 not only accepting but enthusiastically embracing a president a you know a former president who

00:07:00.280 not only failed to commit to a peaceful transfer of power but engineered a a violent one right you

00:07:07.960 know it's just beyond shocking so it's a you know the the idea that we could live in a world where

00:07:13.000 texas or california could ultimately secede uh i mean that just you know not that many more dominoes have

00:07:19.480 to fall to make those events seem plausible right well you know think about what we've learned about

00:07:25.640 january 6th since january 6th that you know if you're thinking there are two things both before

00:07:31.160 the 6th and after the 6th that are particularly sobering to me so before the 6th what's incredibly

00:07:36.360 sobering is that there was as we've now learned this incredibly comprehensive effort to overturn the

00:07:42.440 results of the election that depended a great deal on if mike pence had just said yes where would we

00:07:50.920 have been we would have been through the looking glass on a constitutional crisis if it in all of

00:07:55.720 this pressure focused on mike pence saying yes to this comprehensive scheme to either flip their results

00:08:03.160 right there on january 6th or send them back to the states and then creating an enormous amount of chaos

00:08:08.120 and then after mike pence says no this is one thing that's incredibly sobering to me is if you look at

00:08:15.480 the approval ratings of donald trump and mike pence after january 6th one of their only one of the two

00:08:22.680 their approval rating plunges and it's mike pence not donald trump incredible so what that told me is

00:08:29.160 that you had a republican party that was so fully committed to this election steel effort that even a

00:08:36.040 long-time republican who had stood by donald trump's side every moment of his presidency who then

00:08:42.920 appeals to his faith as an evangelical who is sort of the representative of the evangelical base and the

00:08:48.520 trump administration appeals to his faith to do the right thing and he's rejected by his own movement

00:08:57.000 in favor of donald trump and to me in some ways that was as sobering as all of the events that happened

00:09:04.360 before that not even the shock of the moment of january 6th could shake people from this hyper

00:09:10.920 partisanship and animosity and distrust that led them to down the road to of the stop the steel effort

00:09:18.200 well i want to get to january 6th and trump and all the attendant horrors there uh but i i promise to

00:09:25.480 properly introduce you uh which i will have done in the in the intro but i think you should say something

00:09:31.240 about your orientation here because lest you be mistaken for the the usual libtard who has the 1.00

00:09:38.680 who's just nodding along with my with my libtard blasphemy here what is your political background 0.69

00:09:44.200 yes so i i grew up a republican i was a reagan republican from way back conservative lawyer pro-life religious

00:09:52.680 liberty attorney uh ran for a while the foundation for individual rights and education which is a civil

00:09:58.200 liberties non-profit defending free speech and due process and religious freedom and higher education

00:10:03.800 and then was a part of christian conservative legal organizations uh was a delegate to the 2012

00:10:10.760 republican national convention so i was definitely republican a romney delegate and then um in 2016 i broke

00:10:19.480 with their gop over trump so going all the way back to the early phase of the primary season i i could not

00:10:27.000 continue to continue to support a party that would put that person as its leader so did you break the

00:10:32.360 moment he became the the candidate before well i i broke with the republican party the moment he became

00:10:40.040 the candidate i i became never trump you know to use that phrase or much earlier when he was a front

00:10:46.200 runner once i began to realize who this person truly was because you know like a lot of americans my main

00:10:52.760 exposure to donald trump was as an entertainer not as a politician and then you begin to see

00:10:58.120 the sort of the true dimensions of his character or lack thereof during the campaign and i just realized

00:11:03.720 that i i could not look at myself in the mirror much less my fellow citizens who i'm you know in the 1990s

00:11:11.080 i'm somebody's standing and yelling character matters character matters character matters about bill

00:11:16.360 clinton i couldn't do that in 1998 and then turn around in 2016 and say oh well you know forget all

00:11:22.760 that yeah and also you're a a veteran right you were in the army mm-hmm yes i was in the army reserve

00:11:28.840 and i was active duty serving in the iraq war during the surge in 2007 2008 i was a jag officer army

00:11:36.120 lawyer i served with the third armored cavalry regiment in diala during the diala province during the surge

00:11:41.160 mm-hmm and what's the experience of a lawyer in combat i mean do you actually are you just you

00:11:48.200 know cowering in the green zone looking at legal briefs are you out there uh risking your life in

00:11:55.000 various uh operations that require the presence of a lawyer what's going on there so it's a mix so i i

00:12:01.400 was with a combat arms unit so i was not in the green zone so i was out in diala province far far away

00:12:06.520 from the green zone uh in baghdad and my commander my squadron commander i was with an armored cavalry

00:12:12.840 squadron was very clear he said you you cannot make decisions that impact the lives of soldiers

00:12:18.600 until you experience in my cav troopers until you experience what they experience so i was in the

00:12:25.880 base a lot and i was outside of it a lot so i was doing detainee operations i was doing law of arm

00:12:32.040 conflict assisting the command and making decisions you know shoot don't shoot bomb don't bomb i was

00:12:38.280 out doing tribal relations work uh but you know one of the things if i'm going to be in an armored

00:12:43.800 cavalry squadron i got an under i have to understand what the area of operations is like and so i was

00:12:50.920 outside the wire quite a bit doing you know various aspects of my job mm-hmm and i get the sense i think

00:12:58.280 you mention it briefly in the book but i i get the sense that your experience in iraq has um primed

00:13:05.880 you for various epiphanies and concerns about the fragmentation you you're witnessing in our own

00:13:13.160 society how how do you see what's happening in the u.s i mean it's not just the u.s but we're focused

00:13:20.760 at home here through the lens of the failed state of iraq yeah there was one specific aspect of the

00:13:28.680 iraqi civil war that really stood out to me as an alarm bell for us and it was it was essentially if

00:13:36.600 you talk to sunni or if you talk to shia at the height of the war the underlying divisions between

00:13:42.040 them at some level seemed quite solvable in other words you you could have a degree of of religious

00:13:49.480 tolerance where both sunni and shia could practice their the different you know their faiths which

00:13:54.120 are somewhat different but you know they're both islamic faiths but somewhat different with full

00:13:59.080 liberty oil revenue divisions are super are certainly manageable man differences in in governance of each

00:14:06.840 region certainly manageable but the thing that was truly difficult to deal with with was the grievances

00:14:14.840 and when i say grievances i mean real grievances in other words if you talk to a shia you know shia 0.87

00:14:20.920 militiamen and you start to explain explore why they've taken up arms they're going to have a

00:14:26.360 terrible story of what the sunni have done to their family or to done to their tribe and vice versa 1.00

00:14:31.880 vice versa with the sunni telling about shia atrocities and what really strikes me about our divisions here

00:14:38.840 is if you really if you boil down a lot of the political disputes are subject to compromise i mean

00:14:44.760 there there's not an ins they're not unsolvable i mean even if you look at an issue like abortion which

00:14:50.760 the you know pro-choice and pro-life seem miles apart but the large majority of americans are in a

00:14:56.440 more middle position that the political issues seem pretty darn solvable but the level of animosity is what's

00:15:05.080 really driving our polarization and this story of grievance and anger and that's what struck me in

00:15:11.880 iraq was this constant feeling of grievance and anger that was rooted in very real things that

00:15:17.640 happened we're starting to see replicate itself here you know to a lesser degree thankfully it's not

00:15:24.200 you know we're not in a situation like sunia and shia were in iraq but if you talk to a republican they

00:15:29.480 can tell you chapter and verse of terrible things that the left has done if you talk to

00:15:34.600 a a progressive they can tell you chapter and verse of terrible things that the right has done and

00:15:39.400 they're real things you know so they're actual real outrages that people that are driving a lot of our

00:15:45.160 division yeah yeah i think i noticed that in again it's a somewhat more abstract way in the careers of

00:15:53.800 several people i know you know who have a an experience i i share to some degree i mean i you

00:15:59.640 know i know many people on the left or who are formerly on the left who with the the eruption of of

00:16:06.920 wokeness you know pre and post trump experienced something like an attempted reputational murder from their

00:16:16.840 fellow liberals right and you know you you send the wrong tweet or you you have the wrong position on

00:16:24.600 black lives matter say and what you meet among your your former co-tribalists is nothing but

00:16:34.920 contempt grading into a a fully weaponized sociopathic attempt to destroy your life right and then

00:16:43.480 twitter is the the medium upon which most of this happens and then i've noticed these people you

00:16:49.880 know many of whom have podcasts or they're out there spreading their views to one degree or another

00:16:55.960 i've noticed them migrate toward trumpistan and some of them have been fully absorbed by it and yes

00:17:03.800 clearly a a psychosocial phenomenon for them i mean it's not like these are people who

00:17:10.360 who who were real liberals and it's not that they're the foundation of their political views

00:17:17.320 has shifted it's that they have been enrolled in a kind of psychological experiment which from my

00:17:23.800 point of view they they failed right i mean this you know they became intellectually dishonest to a

00:17:29.880 degree that it should seem impossible in order to kind of do the emotional arithmetic on what you know

00:17:37.560 what has happened to them they got love bombed by the right for everything they said against wokeness

00:17:43.320 and uh they got nothing but hate from the left and so they just decided to just flip everything

00:17:49.960 upside down in their politics and ignore all of the obvious problems with what's happening on the on the

00:17:58.440 right you know you know including trump the problems of trump himself but it does capture the the

00:18:04.840 dynamics you just described which is you know when you ask these people what the hell's going on

00:18:09.560 they have a a long list of grievances right i mean they have been yes attacked endlessly by the left

00:18:16.600 in the most dishonest ways possible and it's um you know it just that is what you know that explains their

00:18:24.760 their pilgrim's progress to uh to the dark lord yeah well you know and and we are as just as human

00:18:31.320 beings we long for relationship and community and and if you have been rejected by one community if

00:18:39.240 you've been purged if you've been subject to a camp you know a storm of hatred you're going to look

00:18:45.320 for another community it's the it's the most natural thing in the world in a way but at the same time

00:18:52.520 if you're longing for community and then you're going to ignore

00:18:55.960 some of the real problems within that new community you become in a

00:19:01.320 in a sad way part of the problem that you know you're just switching from one flawed partisan

00:19:07.320 tribe to another flawed partisan tribe because one of them rejected you you know contributes to

00:19:13.320 our crisis in some important ways because what it does is it causes this other this your new tribe to 0.95

00:19:18.920 sort of feel validated by your presence see they're so bad you know they're so bad and look we're much

00:19:24.840 more welcoming but you know if you if you drill down into what's happened in this country there is not a

00:19:31.800 if you're going to talk about cancel culture which a lot of people think of as mainly a left-wing

00:19:36.040 phenomenon it's all over the place on the right all over the place and you know one of the things

00:19:42.600 when i was researching the book that was very helpful for me i was talking to some experts in in

00:19:49.720 conflict in the developing world who were beginning to refocus a lot of their efforts here in the united

00:19:54.680 states because they were seeing some of the same things that caused civil strife overseas

00:19:59.640 they're seeing some of these same phenomenon here in the united states and one of the most enlightening

00:20:04.760 conversations i had was with a scholar who said what you're when there is a revolutionary or an

00:20:11.800 extremist moment the first target of the extremists often isn't the other side it's the quote in-group

00:20:19.960 moderate of their own side yeah the near enemy yes the near enemy you have to purge the near enemy

00:20:27.640 or the in-group moderate to create the solidarity necessary to fight that next battle and when you

00:20:34.360 when you see that phenomenon you just see it everywhere some of the most vicious cancel culturing

00:20:39.800 or canceling you'll see is left on left is blue on blue or red on red

00:20:44.920 uh in fact it's actually pretty hard for blue to cancel red or red to cancel blue because you have

00:20:50.920 that community that will rally to your side yeah so what was your experience remind me where were you

00:20:58.840 working as a journalist when you announced that you were a never trumper and what was that experience

00:21:05.480 like so i was at national review and this is in 2015 when i first became very strongly critical of

00:21:13.560 trump and then 20 early 2016 was when i said i was going to be a never trump and we faced a hell

00:21:21.000 storm from the beginning i mean in august 2015 i'll never forget is when the first round of death

00:21:28.680 threats came in the first round of really horrific uh social media harassment including you know taking

00:21:39.880 pictures of my then seven year old youngest daughter who's who's adopted and she's adopted from ethiopia

00:21:46.760 and photoshopping her picture into uh her face into gas chambers into slave pictures threats aimed at my 1.00

00:21:54.840 wife threats aimed at me at my family online harassment all of this started happening in 2015 2016 and it's

00:22:02.840 never fully stopped it just comes and goes and remind me so the national review did the was it the

00:22:11.160 editorial position of the magazine to go against trump or were you just an outlier within the organization

00:22:18.680 so the magazine had a cover story called against trump that was against him in the primaries so the

00:22:25.640 magazine formally came out against trump in the primaries but then did not endorse

00:22:30.840 anyone in the general election so the editorial position of the magazine in the election was

00:22:36.600 neutral and so i had a number of colleagues who voted for trump and a number of colleagues who did not

00:22:42.760 and national review because it's sort of historically been the flagship intellectual journal of the right

00:22:49.400 became the center of just an enormous amount of contention and pressure now the magazine itself

00:22:56.840 did a great job in sort of granting academic freedom to each one of its writers that we were

00:23:02.760 you know no one told me to change my mind in leadership that i needed to support trump if i

00:23:08.280 if i was going to stay at national review but the pressures being put on national review were incredibly

00:23:14.360 strong and and look a lot of the guys who are my friends you know my friends to this day i'm not at national

00:23:20.040 review currently anymore but who are my friends to this day they they were pretty darn courageous and

00:23:27.160 resisting the the pressure to turn to make national review sort of a house organ of the trump administration

00:23:33.160 which it never was hmm so um let's see i was thinking we would save trump until the end but um

00:23:43.000 the tractor beam pull of his awfulness is uh being felt with every sentence here let's uh well we may

00:23:51.000 bounce around i mean this is a generic problem of hyperpolarization and uh what you refer to in the

00:23:57.800 book as negative polarization which we should describe and just you know the loss of trust in

00:24:03.320 our institutions the fragmentation of media the breakdown of civility the upregulation of tribalism

00:24:11.720 um the conspiracy thinking so there's the generic problem that visits the left and the right

00:24:19.560 i think it does so with some important differences which we might discuss but i think we'll probably spend

00:24:25.800 more time on the right the problem of the right um i think you and i will fully agree about the

00:24:31.880 problem on the left and the right frankly and it's it's interesting to consider that because

00:24:37.800 you know on paper you and i you know are not in the same tribe right i mean you're an evangelical

00:24:45.720 christian i'm a famous atheist i've said some very nasty things about your faith which is you know

00:24:52.360 you i gotta think is it has not uh you know warmed you up for this conversation and yet you and i are

00:24:58.840 going to have a an entirely civil conversation about all of these things uh so what tribe are we in is

00:25:06.040 you know is the rhetorical question i would ask all of the people who accuse me i don't know about you

00:25:11.080 but i'm often accused of tribalism even though i attack the left and i attack the right and i have

00:25:16.680 positions that are not entirely predictable for instance you and i i'm pretty sure we'll disagree

00:25:23.800 about abortion and yet we're going to agree about guns and so it's just tribalism does not capture

00:25:31.320 the animus you and i are going to express on the various topics that uh will provoke our animus and

00:25:38.280 that's a good thing because i mean tribalism in my view is is one of our greatest problems at this

00:25:43.960 point the idea that people feel this social pressure to conform to the the sway of ascendant

00:25:51.560 bad ideas and in many cases ideas which are obviously bad and and claims which are obviously

00:25:57.320 false i guess uh before we we lurch into trumpistan is there something general you can say about the

00:26:04.520 the different expression of this problem on the left and the right politically yeah and well you know

00:26:10.120 one thing just going back to what you were saying a moment ago about our differences i think that

00:26:14.760 while we certainly have differences on a number of fronts we're both small l liberals and both

00:26:22.360 committed to american pluralism yeah so in other words you know we both see a role in a place and should

00:26:29.240 and there should be a role in a place for for each of us in the american system and the american

00:26:35.800 american system is supposed to exist is supposed to provide a place where atheists atheists and

00:26:43.560 christian can live side by side and both communities can flourish that's sort of a a hallmark of the

00:26:49.240 american classical liberal system when it's functioning well and so i've always perceived you as being quite

00:26:55.080 committed to american pluralism and this is i think where a lot of the new there's an old culture war which is

00:27:03.160 over things like gun control or abortion or religious liberty and and there's an it's being supplanted

00:27:10.360 i think by a new culture war that is really quite frankly over liberalism and pluralism itself

00:27:17.720 and and this is where i feel like the far right and the far left actually have a lot more in common

00:27:24.120 than one might think uh woke and anti-woke have a lot in common and and the thing that they have in common

00:27:31.560 is they are deeply questioning that american small l liberalism they're deeply questioning pluralism

00:27:38.840 and you know for example the critical race theory argument now there are elements of critical race

00:27:44.040 theory that i've learned from and and i've i've read crt stuff for 30 plus years since my first day of

00:27:50.760 law school and but there are elements that i find to be quite troubling including the way in which it

00:27:56.200 directly confronts american uh small l liberalism american classical liberalism and you see a lot

00:28:03.400 of that arising on the right as well so while on one hand you might say well the left is quite different

00:28:10.200 from the right because it's going to be very very aggressive on trans rights and the right is going to

00:28:15.640 be very aggressive in combating that move what you'll see when you scratch below the surface of both

00:28:22.280 efforts is you'll see a a lot of illiberalism a lot of willingness to use the power of the state

00:28:29.720 to force sort of compliance or to sort to force by main force to sort of defeat your opponents not

00:28:38.360 just in the marketplace of ideas convincing other people that they're wrong but actually using the

00:28:43.480 power of the state to punish your political opponents and that's something that i think

00:28:47.240 you're actually seeing a commonality between a right and left that's disguised by the different

00:28:53.560 issues that they advance yes yeah i guess that the the important asymmetry for me and i know you've

00:29:01.960 commented on this in other forums is that um when you're talking about the derangement of the left

00:29:09.080 you are talking about something that has spread like a proper social contagion and moral panic

00:29:17.480 in our most elite institutions right so if the the true decision makers don't quite believe this

00:29:25.720 stuff they are they are swayed sufficiently by the people who do that you see the you know the

00:29:31.080 capitulation of the new york times and scientific journals like you know science and nature and the lancet

00:29:39.800 you see the aclu become the the antithesis of what it used to be to say nothing of the southern

00:29:46.600 poverty law center you see there's just a breakdown in in elite institutions and you know hollywood etc

00:29:53.880 along these lines or on these issues and what you see on the right is not apart from the fact that

00:30:01.160 we had a sitting president of the united states who was effectively the psychological and social

00:30:07.480 equivalent of alex jones i mean it's that's its own unique danger and derangement but when you talk

00:30:14.040 about what the extreme of the right you know you talk about white supremacy say that is not i mean it

00:30:21.400 is you know politically odious and it's no doubt it's a reservoir of potential violence that we should

00:30:27.480 worry about but it doesn't drive culture in the same way that what's happening on the left

00:30:33.880 drives culture and i guess you know that's a yeah it's a distinction that may ultimately not

00:30:39.880 matter all that much but it it's mattered to me because what's wrong with white supremacy you know

00:30:46.440 what's wrong with the kkk what's wrong with someone like david duke is so obvious right it takes absolutely

00:30:52.520 no intellectual fuel to point out what's what's wrong with that and to disparage it and to consider it

00:30:58.920 you know disqualifying but when you when you ask you know what's wrong with you know the all of the

00:31:04.520 intersectional confusion that is you know causing people to call for the the you know the firings of

00:31:12.120 people who simply you know balk at at any claim that you know there are no difference between men and

00:31:18.600 women say right right like like that is that's so confusing to so many people and it's having such a 0.96

00:31:25.880 outside influence on our yes conversation that it's much closer to home for me i mean when the new york

00:31:31.640 times is reliably wrong about you know trans issues or jihadism or whatever the the issue is and not

00:31:38.760 only wrong but dishonest well then you know then we just have the most important newspaper in the world

00:31:44.680 you know visibly destroying itself and that's different than some lunatics with ar-15s claiming 0.79

00:31:51.720 they're going to take over the united states you know with their militia i mean that's its own problem

00:31:56.760 but it's not the same kind of cultural problem i i would i would agree that with the caveat i would

00:32:01.960 agree that when you're talking about significant problems in a place like the new york times or say

00:32:08.600 harvard or yale these are institutions that have enormous influence not just you know in the united

00:32:15.880 states but globally yeah and and so if you have deep deep dysfunction in these institutions the effect

00:32:22.840 of that radiates far beyond you know the walls of the new york times building or the you know the the

00:32:30.280 far beyond harvard yard but the caveat that i would say is that there is a deep dysfunction in many

00:32:36.440 very very very important conservative institutions they don't have as much purchase like the sort of

00:32:43.320 dysfunction in evangelical christianity doesn't have as much purchase say in los angeles or in

00:32:48.040 cambridge massachusetts but it has immense amount of impact in in middle tennessee where i live yeah

00:32:55.960 or dysfunctions within the broader gun culture that doesn't have as much of an impact in again in la or

00:33:03.080 boston where there's not just just not that not so many people who own weapons i mean of course the

00:33:08.280 crime problems are are deeply troublesome but you know when there's problems with gun culture that's 0.97

00:33:15.160 that's quite influential where i am and and so and a lot of people on the right then downplay their

00:33:21.400 own cultural influence by sort of saying well we don't really have to worry about our cultural maladies

00:33:26.200 because the new york times is so much more powerful or the harvard is so much more powerful but where i am

00:33:32.200 where i live the southern baptist convention is much more potent culturally than harvard or the new

00:33:39.080 york times and so i agree with you i think sort of as from an objective standpoint i would say

00:33:45.160 objectively dysfunction at the new york times or harvard is has an enormous radiating influence

00:33:51.000 throughout the culture but i would also say that a lot of people on the right just i don't know what the

00:33:57.320 right term is they minimize or rationalize their own cultural dysfunction is somehow less important

00:34:03.000 than it really is yeah well the asymmetry that cuts the other way on the right is that on the right you

00:34:09.480 have the capitulation of the republican party yeah to a full-on personality cult and crazy conspiracy

00:34:18.440 right i mean it's just right basically the republican party is is halfway to q anon now in terms of what the

00:34:25.160 kinds of things that will claim to be true about what happened in the 2020 election what happened

00:34:30.520 on january 6th the forward-looking dangers of uh to our democracy you know that that um it will uh

00:34:39.160 ample it you know work to amplify apparently i mean it's just it's virtually anything you want to say

00:34:46.040 against the democratic party i would probably agree with at this point but it hasn't become anti-democratic

00:34:52.520 to the degree that that the republican party has to the to the degree where the republican party many

00:34:57.880 people in the republican party will actually scorn the idea that they should be democratic yeah that

00:35:03.640 so they'll you know they they fall back on the idea that the united states is a republic and they'll

00:35:08.520 say no we're not a democracy we're a public well we're a democratic republic you know our our foundational

00:35:17.720 institutions governmental institutions are elect either elected or appointed by elected officials

00:35:23.960 i mean even the counter-majoritarian constitution can be amended by strong majorities so the idea that

00:35:30.920 you know this sort of notion that republicans republicans are splitting hairs when they they reject

00:35:36.360 this idea of that we're a democracy yeah we are a republic yes our republic is a constitutional republic

00:35:42.040 and has counter-majoritarian elements to it but it's still a democracy so

00:35:47.080 one question about trump and uh the fact that he succeeded in becoming president that has just

00:35:56.520 never been satisfactorily answered for me and you seem well placed to consider it is just how is it

00:36:05.000 that evangelicals finally and so fully embraced him i mean like this this guy was practically the

00:36:14.120 antichrist with respect to the the degree to which he violated the values or the professed values

00:36:20.760 of of evangelical christianity how is it that he succeeded in getting their support to that degree

00:36:29.400 and then and that i mean i have to think that in the you know the aftermath of january 6 that you just

00:36:35.560 described where you have mike pence is suffering a kind of you know reputational defenestration uh

00:36:43.560 for his you know maintaining his uh oath to protect the constitution and trump's reputation only rising

00:36:53.080 i gotta think that was true among evangelicals as well and mike pence is you know in my world

00:36:58.200 practically an evangelical theocrat right i mean it's just he's he is as right i mean every single

00:37:04.200 box you need to check to be in good standing with the evangelical church i think he has checked so

00:37:10.520 explain what has happened there okay well i there's a one thing that i think people have really pegged

00:37:18.200 uh and then another thing that people an underappreciated factor that people don't talk about enough so

00:37:23.960 the one that i think that people have pegged is that if you spend 20 25 30 years telling a community

00:37:32.760 of people uh that it's six minutes to midnight on their religious liberty that america is about to

00:37:38.200 fall that the democrats represent an existential threat to their faith not just to the country but

00:37:43.400 to their faith then what that's going to have a distorting effect on a community it's going to cause

00:37:48.760 them to have a constant sense of emergency and it's going to cause them to feel as if they have to

00:37:55.960 take desperate desperate times call for desperate measures so if you have the flight 93 election essay

00:38:02.760 where this guy named michael anton said you know look we have to charge the cockpit or this plane is going

00:38:08.680 down that was a message that a lot of evangelicals were ready to hear now the shame of that is that it's

00:38:16.840 utterly contradicted by scripture so you know let me let me put on my bible quoting hat for a minute

00:38:23.800 and and the apostle paul wrote that god did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and he's not

00:38:29.800 talking about political power there but confidence in the power of god power love and of sound mind

00:38:37.000 and yet how much did that spirit of fear drive so many evangelicals towards an unsound mind i mean this

00:38:44.200 was the the conspiracy theories and everything that you saw so that's the thing that i think

00:38:49.080 people have accurately pegged and that's you know that's the conventional wisdom that has a lot of

00:38:54.200 truth to it now here's the part that i don't think people fully understand and this is to me even more

00:39:00.280 troubling and more dangerous the role of prophecy there are quite a quite a few sort of self-proclaimed

00:39:07.800 prophets who not only declared that trump was god's and you know that that god was going to

00:39:14.920 decree that trump was going to be president they not only prophesied that trump would be president

00:39:20.200 but their prophecy included this really dangerous element that was donald trump has a special

00:39:28.280 anointing or a special divine purpose to save this country so donald trump is god's man and he's god's

00:39:36.520 man for a very particular purpose who are these prophets are these some mega church pastors so

00:39:43.240 these would be pentecostal large pentecostal mega churches and movements a lot of people who are

00:39:48.920 completely not household names you would know if you're on twitter you don't know this movement exists

00:39:56.120 you would have more consciousness of it maybe if you're on facebook but it's totally outside of

00:40:01.560 sort of the american elite you know that the pentecostal world is something that the new york

00:40:06.200 times world just by and large doesn't comprehend and so these are people who have huge platforms in

00:40:12.760 religious media and they would say you know trump is god's man to save this country now what does that do

00:40:20.680 one it creates an unfalsifiable kind of argument i've debated people about trump as a christian i've

00:40:28.120 debated uh for example a guy named eric metaxas who was a reasonably well-known christian intellectual

00:40:34.920 and it was very clear to me that he was under the influence of prophecy well how do you debate that

00:40:40.440 how do you how do you reason with somebody who's under the influence of prophecy in that way and then the

00:40:45.960 other thing is when the prophecy is so quiet is so clear that trump is on a divine mission

00:40:52.920 then that means that resistance to trump comes from where satan resistance from trump is rooted in

00:41:00.680 evil and so it really created this extreme level of religious commitment to trump and hostility towards

00:41:09.480 his opponents and i remember when there was this ridiculous jericho march that was several days before

00:41:17.160 a couple weeks before january 6th in december and i wrote i wrote in december watch out because the

00:41:25.800 the logic of this movement is going to lead towards violence and and sure enough i mean january 6th was the

00:41:32.840 most predictable thing in the world once you saw the religious intensity of the support for trump and that

00:41:39.560 religious intensity went way beyond the hey i'm afraid that america is going you know that the democrats are

00:41:47.000 going to hurt america and went much more towards if you are against trump you are thwarting

00:41:52.520 god's divine plan and that's where you saw that level of fanaticism that you saw on january 6th

00:41:58.360 yeah so um just get kind of get my head around that for a second the um it's a lot it just seems like it could

00:42:05.960 if you rewind to 2015 and i mean this is something i legitimately didn't track which is you know before trump

00:42:14.600 won the candidacy and when you had a field of you know 15 or so candidates what was evangelical and

00:42:25.080 pentecostal opinion at that point did the prophecies only get um articulated once he was the only choice

00:42:35.560 in the face of the utter sacrilege of a hillary clinton presidency 1.00

00:42:39.240 well some were early so so you know trump gained a lot of support pretty quickly now the interesting

00:42:47.160 thing was the data indicates that trump's initial support was a lot of it was located in non-church

00:42:54.920 going evangelicals i know that sounds like a strange thing to say non-church going evangelicals but

00:43:01.080 sort of the more disconnected you were the more the the disconnected you were from civic institutions

00:43:08.120 including a congregation the more likely you were to support trump early on but then once trump

00:43:14.120 gained the nomination and it was him and hillary then of course the dynamic changed and so i think

00:43:20.120 you you began to have a snowball effect so there were some who were early in on trump but then the

00:43:25.880 snowball effect locked in and then the other thing that was really important to sort of this faith and

00:43:32.680 prophecy-based mindset was the shocking victory yeah so the fact that nobody predicted or very few

00:43:40.040 people predicted that he'd win and he did win yeah sent a message to millions of christians that this

00:43:45.480 was divine intervention and i think that was the moment where a lot of this loyalty locked in in a

00:43:51.400 way that a lot of people don't truly appreciate it and i saw it happen in my community and i saw it

00:43:55.800 happen with my own eyes yeah that is actually something that i've never thought about but i it

00:44:02.360 resonates with me based on my own experience i mean it was so anomalous right to have been so sure

00:44:08.520 that he wasn't going to win and then to have him win was such a discombobulating experience the

00:44:16.280 purely secular version of it was still something that almost seemed to cry out for you know some

00:44:24.520 non-ordinary cause right yeah it just it seemed like we woke up in an alternate universe right

00:44:32.280 like the laws of physics had been suspended to our horror and so yeah i could easily imagine

00:44:38.920 that you if you put on the lens of prophecy uh it seems like okay this is the part of the movie where

00:44:45.000 god makes his presence known right exactly exactly and in in that's again something you know so i live

00:44:53.800 my neighborhood is uh there's this new york times calculator where you can put in your address and

00:44:58.680 it'll tell you sort of how thick is your bubble mm-hmm my neighborhood is 85 republican the neighborhood

00:45:05.080 i lived in in 2016 we moved in 2018 was about 80 to 90 between 80 and 90 republican and i watched all this

00:45:14.440 happen i watched this sort of sense of despair on election day when everyone thought that hillary was

00:45:19.880 going to win turn into a sense of you know really it's not just joy it was sort of beyond joy it's

00:45:26.440 almost like a sense of ecstasy that hillary wasn't didn't win and in it it created this bond with trump

00:45:35.640 that is difficult to really fully explain and and i woke up the morning after or the day after trump's

00:45:42.280 victory and the bond between him and his base after that victory was extraordinary and it was

00:45:49.320 directly rooted in the surprise and the surprise for a lot of people was directly rooted in divine

00:45:54.200 intervention and once that happened you couldn't wedge some of these people away from trump if you

00:45:59.080 tried well one of the things that many of us have speculated that explains trump's appeal to people who

00:46:09.320 you would think uh wouldn't view him as an ally if you'd like to continue listening to this

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - June 24, 2022

#285 — American Division

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