The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 100 ｜ Why the Elites Have Lost Control ｜ Martin Gurri ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Believe it or not, and I think you will, we're in the middle of a revolution, a global revolution, technological information revolution, and a lot of really powerful people don't like it one bit.

00:00:14.180 We have witnessed the collapse of state and institutions from corporations to systems of government. The elites have lost control. Journalists have lost power. Academics have lost power and control.

00:00:33.300 The old status quo is under attack or destroyed, and it's happening all over the world. And the new status quo is chaotic and aggressive. Every day, it seems like there's another battle being fought.

00:00:49.180 The public revolt against the elite class has shattered every domain of authority. We don't trust any institution anymore. And that's not just an American thing. Now the elites are scrambling to maintain power.

00:01:05.360 They flourished under the industrial society. But now, as a result of the information revolution, it has been gutted of its legitimacy with no signs of recovery, only a power grab or something else that is yet to be defined.

00:01:22.140 The elites want us to believe that our issues are economic, better yet, socioeconomic, because that's even more divisive, a better diversion. But the real issues is with the elites themselves. The real problem is corruption.

00:01:39.220 And all of it has happened as a result of the Internet, not the corruption, but the exposure and the networking with one another. Elites can no longer hide their failures and their corruption, nor can they silence people easily.

00:01:56.760 When we finally saw the elites for who they really are, we were really kind of disgusted, both the Republicans and the Democrats, by their lack of morality.

00:02:07.600 It's why 50 percent of the public says, I don't belong to either party.

00:02:12.160 The public has become ungovernable, at least from the elite's perspective.

00:02:19.200 Martin Gurry was a media analyst for the CIA, as all of this was unfolding early in the 21st century.

00:02:26.760 He saw this shift up close and he understands media theory, I think, at a higher level than most academics.

00:02:35.140 He bests them in practical knowledge and he has the perfect message.

00:02:42.600 That America needs to understand the understanding, the new American oligarchy or whatever it is that is on the other side of this thing.

00:02:54.000 I found him by reading his book, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.

00:03:02.880 It foreshadowed all of this.

00:03:05.260 It was written in 2016, but I find it extraordinarily timely.

00:03:09.500 It is a very fair book, a balanced book, and one that I think everyone who's trying to figure out what's coming, that you read it.

00:03:21.140 I wanted to go through a little bit of the book with him, but also expand and go beyond that.

00:03:26.680 I think this book is really crucial for everyone to read.

00:03:30.780 He was way ahead of his time.

00:03:32.660 And you don't want to miss a minute of this podcast because we talk about the reasons why all the chaos is enfolding around us.

00:03:40.640 What Martin says relates directly to what's happening in your life.

00:03:45.640 And his greatest concern for the future of liberal democracy is something that should concern all of us.

00:03:53.240 In fact, it should make all of us break out in a cold sweat because it's real.

00:03:58.660 We're seeing it now.

00:04:00.120 And if it grows to an uncontrollable strength, God help us all.

00:04:06.360 Please welcome Martin Gurry.

00:04:08.860 Martin, it is rare for me to read a book that I can't sense the political agenda because I don't think there is one with you.

00:04:32.500 Um, I, uh, I don't know much about the author except, uh, he really seems open to being wrong and open to just learn.

00:04:46.860 Uh, that is rare, uh, today.

00:04:50.240 And I can't thank you enough.

00:04:52.040 I wish I would have read your book in 2016 when it first came out because it has answered so many questions on what's happening in our world right now.

00:05:01.420 So, so first, welcome, um, let me, let me, I, I want to first get you to start with the premise of the book.

00:05:13.300 So describe it for anybody who hasn't read it yet.

00:05:18.040 Well, the book was kind of a journey.

00:05:19.640 So let me just kind of tell you a story about how the book came to be because it pretty much encapsulates that.

00:05:25.440 I was a, um, an analyst of global media at CIA, possibly the least sexy job you could have at CIA, right?

00:05:35.500 Um, but, but at that moment, it turned out to be, um, the most significant perch probably in the world to be sitting at because I had been, um, obviously dealing with very, very small volumes of information.

00:05:51.320 And in those days, uh, open media was a tiny, tiny trickle.

00:05:54.980 And I was there when suddenly this digital earthquake epicenter, say Palo Alto, um, suddenly propelled this tsunami of information in volumes that were unprecedented in human history.

00:06:11.160 Okay.

00:06:11.280 I want to, I want to stop here because I want to write, uh, read what you actually write.

00:06:16.980 Because it is profound the way you put this more information was generated in 2001 than all of the previous existence of our species on earth.

00:06:29.320 In fact, 2001 doubled the previous total and 2002 doubled the amount present in 2001.

00:06:38.660 That is astounding.

00:06:43.060 Correct.

00:06:43.620 So what we're going through, I've been saying for a while that we're going through a revolution like the industrial revolution, except this one is just compressed, not over a hundred years, but a period of like 10 or 20 years.

00:06:58.200 And everything seems like it's coming apart at the seams.

00:07:01.960 This was a really important place to start.

00:07:05.000 Talk about that and then continue with your story.

00:07:07.820 Talk about what this information explosion means.

00:07:11.300 Right.

00:07:12.640 And I mean, it's, it's, that doubling every year has continued.

00:07:18.080 So, um, if you charted, it really looks like a gigantic wave.

00:07:25.400 It looks like a tsunami.

00:07:26.160 So I speak a lot about the information tsunami.

00:07:28.280 That's a metaphor in a way.

00:07:29.500 But when you look at the chart, it looks like a tsunami, like this thing that just keeps rising.

00:07:33.760 Um, I, I don't necessarily agree with you in the sense that it's being compressed.

00:07:41.480 I think we are in the very early stages of it.

00:07:44.820 In other words, I think we're just seeing, we're only seeing the very initial, uh, shock, I guess, trauma, uh, that the collision of this old hierarchical 20th century top down.

00:07:57.580 And I talk, you listen, the world with this enormous information tsunami and, and the implications that it has for the legitimacy and the authority of every institution, including all our democratic institutions.

00:08:10.500 So, um, I was sitting there watching this happen, uh, with many others, uh, uh, as CIA and of the first thing that we responded to was what you responded to, which was, holy mackerel, this is vast.

00:08:28.480 We're used to, we're used to looking at France as being mainly two newspapers.

00:08:33.040 Suddenly it's like this enormous range of stuff, all of it very original, but who are these people?

00:08:38.720 What, how could we even cite them, uh, in the Arab world, in Egypt?

00:08:42.860 Um, I mean, the Egyptian media was a tiny little thing, all Mubarak all the time, right? 0.99

00:08:47.960 So suddenly you get all the, and Syria is boring. 0.92

00:08:52.260 Suddenly you get these bloggers, you know, bloggers who blogged in English because at that time, uh, there wasn't any software for Arabic and blogging and we're hilarious and we're all against the system.

00:09:03.920 I mean, and you were reading this and going, what is this?

00:09:05.940 Right.

00:09:06.160 So at first we were just overtaken by the size of the tsunami, but something most people don't really think about much.

00:09:13.340 It's the effects that have mattered.

00:09:16.360 Information has effects.

00:09:18.840 It changes mind.

00:09:20.240 It changes the furniture for the drama of society.

00:09:23.800 So the behavior is going to be different because your, your, your stage settings are different.

00:09:29.100 Um, so.

00:09:30.560 Well, I mean, isn't that the, isn't that the really the driving force of having a CIA knowledge and information is power.

00:09:39.160 I mean, information can, can free.

00:09:43.600 And in some ways it, it feels like, uh, it, it can also enslave you if you're, if you're just, you're hit by a tsunami of it.

00:09:53.500 Well, I mean, I think it orients you and I think it can disorient you.

00:09:56.880 I think we're at a very disorienting moment.

00:10:00.380 Right.

00:10:00.540 And I think CIA, uh, my experience of it was, is very tactical.

00:10:04.360 And what I'm talking about is, is global and strategic.

00:10:07.940 I mean, this is just happening all over the world all the time.

00:10:10.380 Every institution, practically, practically every human life today has been transformed.

00:10:16.160 Okay.

00:10:17.000 Um, so behind that tsunami, we suddenly saw.

00:10:22.000 Massive increases in social and political turbulence.

00:10:25.620 And it all sounds very naive today because it all seems like it's intuitive.

00:10:29.920 But at the time we asked, well, what's one thing got to do with the other?

00:10:33.580 You know, you have the internet, we have the internet, a communications device, and we have all this political turmoil.

00:10:39.380 Why the two?

00:10:40.860 Right.

00:10:41.460 Right.

00:10:41.760 So that's become much clearer.

00:10:44.380 When I left government, I dedicated myself to researching the subject.

00:10:48.600 Uh, and, and what became clear to me was that our institutions of the, the great institutions of the 21st century, including our political or democratic institutions,

00:10:59.020 were set up, received their shape, their form, their substance, their legitimacy, and their authority in the 20th.

00:11:07.040 And the 20th century was the heyday of, I talk, you listen, top down, I'm legitimate because, you know, these sets of institutions that we are,

00:11:18.620 because I have reached this particular place and institution, you must listen to me.

00:11:22.380 In, informationally, um, it was a moment of information scarcity.

00:11:26.980 These institutions possessed, each of them, a little semi-monopoly over the information in their own domains that gave them authority.

00:11:36.440 What the tsunami did was blow all that away.

00:11:38.780 The moment the tsunami hit each one of those institutions, including our government and including our political parties,

00:11:44.840 all our political and governmental institutions lapsed into a state of crisis.

00:11:49.720 That's where we are today.

00:11:50.980 It began long, I wrote the book because I, several of us were seeing this, and, um, part of the effect that I think, uh, this, this, this, uh, disorienting movement has had is

00:12:02.760 a lot of the old political categories don't really make a whole lot of sense.

00:12:06.860 Right.

00:12:06.980 And I kept watching people talk about Republican and Democrat and conservative and liberal.

00:12:11.400 These terms are honestly, you know, are at least, uh, 19th century.

00:12:15.720 Some of them are 18th century.

00:12:16.940 Um, and while they brought brush, explained some things, they completely missed the big, the big divide, uh, of our moment, which I think is between a public that used to be a silent audience and now is vociferous, is very loud and very angry.

00:12:35.300 And the elites who are still clinging to these old 20th century type institutions and are terribly demoralized, uh, and, and, uh, don't particularly care much, uh, about the public.

00:12:46.880 You have a feeling that if they could disband the public and summon a whole new version of it, that was a little more obedient, that they would do it in a second.

00:12:53.520 So, there seems to be two choices.

00:12:59.540 If you're looking at this, you, you, you see how the elites are kind of now banning together because they kind of all need each other.

00:13:09.040 I feel like it's, you know, uh, King Louie and they learned their lesson.

00:13:14.060 Don't say, let them eat cake until you have all of the reinforcements and the fences up.

00:13:20.880 But screw the public, we've got our own little world and we do not want it to change.

00:13:27.460 Um, it, and it is, it's been fed for a long time by electing people and they don't really do what they say they're going to do.

00:13:36.820 Now we have this ability to connect with one another, to network with one another, to see that we're not alone.

00:13:43.940 It's not just us that feels this way or me that just feels this way.

00:13:47.920 There's a lot of people.

00:13:49.940 And so what's seemingly happening is what might've started out as, Hey, hope and change or the tea party.

00:13:59.520 Hey, we want to, we want some, some restraint here on our government has now turned into burn it all down or total control.

00:14:09.160 Yeah, I don't see anybody asking for total control.

00:14:13.840 And I think the elites would love to have total control, but are, are far from it, are far from it.

00:14:20.300 And every day, I think if you inhabit their heads and read their writings, uh, you realize that these are people who are very scared and, and they know that, that the world is slipping from them.

00:14:30.100 They are not adapted to the digital era.

00:14:32.620 Their institutions are totally maladapted to it.

00:14:36.020 Uh, and then they're, they're watching outside their windows and there are all these people out there yelling and screaming and they're going, who are they?

00:14:44.960 Why are they there?

00:14:46.000 What can I do?

00:14:47.100 And there are no real answers.

00:14:49.040 Um, I, I think, I think there are, um, you know, two sides to this issue.

00:14:54.360 I, I started writing the book thinking that I had a side, that I, I was a member of the public, so I, I felt like that was my side.

00:15:02.320 But honestly, the public has its own pathologies, all right?

00:15:06.860 Um, the public, and I'm talking globally now, um, I know we love to talk about the United States as if there was no world, but this actually happens all over the world.

00:15:16.100 And in fact, began that the first manifestations were not in the United States.

00:15:20.160 But the public is not one, it's many, it's fractured.

00:15:25.640 It's the old passive mass audience, which was like, I always like to say a gigantic mirror.

00:15:33.840 I mean, I'm an old guy.

00:15:35.240 I remember those days, right?

00:15:36.800 Where we all saw ourselves reflected.

00:15:39.760 Uh, we all bought the same cars.

00:15:42.560 We'll watch the same TV show.

00:15:44.280 There were all were.

00:15:45.440 That mirror has toppled and fallen and shattered.

00:15:48.120 And the public, the public that lives in all the broken pieces, and they're mutually hostile.

00:15:53.940 They don't like each other much, even, you know, within what is considered to be their, the right wing, the conservative side, the Republican side, the left wing, the Democratic side, progressive side.

00:16:05.780 The people inside those groups hate each other almost more than they hate the other side, right?

00:16:10.300 So, how do you unify and mobilize them?

00:16:13.940 Well, the one unifying force, both sides, everywhere, is they absolutely loathed the established order, the system.

00:16:21.340 So, everything is kind of focused against.

00:16:24.160 You can't, the second you say, well, let's be for this thing or for that, let's have a little program about this.

00:16:28.880 The public disintegrates its component parts.

00:16:31.740 So, to get it mobilized, you need to be against.

00:16:34.820 Now, if you are against, if you repudiate, if you negate, and you don't provide an alternative, in the end, that becomes nihilism, right?

00:16:43.480 Which is the belief that destruction is a form of progress.

00:16:48.300 So, that has been a mantra of mine since hope and change.

00:16:52.280 I felt the same way as many people who were voting for Obama felt.

00:16:57.720 I wanted change of the system.

00:17:00.000 I wanted hope and belief in something.

00:17:02.920 I didn't vote for him, but I thought that was such an effective thing.

00:17:07.200 But the thing I kept asking was, change to what?

00:17:12.220 And no one is providing that.

00:17:14.460 So, that is the answer of why we're not hearing any new solutions, because there is nothing to unite on?

00:17:22.280 Well, the smart politicians will give you just that. 0.61

00:17:27.180 They will say something that sounds like it has content in it, but when you start analyzing a little bit, you realize that, well, this could fit almost anything, right?

00:17:36.880 So, you could have hope and change.

00:17:38.540 That's a very good one.

00:17:39.680 And it got Obama elected.

00:17:41.420 Or you could say, make America great again.

00:17:43.680 Okay?

00:17:44.020 And what does that mean?

00:17:45.260 You could put any kind of content into that little slogan.

00:17:49.420 I think, therefore, when they are elected, two things happen.

00:17:55.140 They feel like they've escaped because they got elected without actually promising a program.

00:18:00.480 But actually, the opposite is the case for the public.

00:18:02.720 The public listens to these slogans and builds up these enormous expectations of making America great again.

00:18:07.720 Hope and change.

00:18:08.540 And it's almost impossible for these politicians to deliver on those.

00:18:13.580 So, I think...

00:18:14.260 I don't want to make this about politics at all.

00:18:17.940 But if you're going to do it, I'd prefer that you do it to both sides.

00:18:21.900 Because I don't want you to...

00:18:24.720 I think you did a really good job in your book of not playing politics.

00:18:29.340 But you do excoriate hope and change.

00:18:33.500 You do excoriate President Obama.

00:18:38.020 And in fairness, this was written before Donald Trump.

00:18:40.880 And I'm sure you can excoriate him.

00:18:43.700 But can you go on why that was important to put in the book?

00:18:49.840 Yeah.

00:18:50.300 I mean, I honestly didn't consider it excoriating.

00:18:52.760 And you're 100% right.

00:18:53.740 I am an analyst.

00:18:55.600 And if you can tell what my political opinions are, then I probably failed you.

00:19:01.180 Right?

00:19:01.680 So, I thought that Obama...

00:19:04.000 I think that the public as a whole in these digital networks has what I call a sectarian mindset.

00:19:12.420 The sectarian mindset is very defined.

00:19:14.840 Sociologists have talked about this.

00:19:16.640 It was very egalitarian.

00:19:18.440 It doesn't accept leaders.

00:19:19.780 It doesn't accept programs.

00:19:21.100 It stands against the center of the institutions, which are considered sinful.

00:19:26.780 Right?

00:19:27.000 And rather than provide an alternative in terms of programs, they model behavior.

00:19:31.400 In other words, I am in my virtuous behavior countering this sinful world.

00:19:36.380 Right?

00:19:36.820 And that is what you get from a lot of these protests and a lot of these movements.

00:19:40.820 And I think President Obama was the first sectarian in powers of his sectarian office. 0.60

00:19:45.440 Right?

00:19:45.920 You could...

00:19:46.960 And I found that fascinating.

00:19:48.280 It was just a product of my research.

00:19:49.540 I mean, I started reading his speeches, and I was just amazed.

00:19:53.180 Your typical American president, almost invariably every American president up to that moment,

00:19:58.200 was supposed to be a man of action who said, this is what's wrong.

00:20:02.280 There's a problem.

00:20:03.060 And I don't have a solution.

00:20:04.000 I'm going to fix it.

00:20:04.660 President Obama, after he lost his governing majority in, I guess it was 2010, resumed what I think was his actual natural state, which he was like a prophet in the wilderness who was kind of like an accuser in chief.

00:20:25.020 He would point to, for example, economic inequality, give a long speech about economic inequality, how terrible it was in America, even in comparison with third world countries.

00:20:36.000 It was bad.

00:20:36.560 And that was it.

00:20:39.220 That was all you heard.

00:20:40.920 No solutions, no fixes.

00:20:43.220 Many of the fixes in the olden days were bogus.

00:20:46.400 So maybe it's better if you don't have a fix not to say it.

00:20:49.040 But that was not what he was interested in.

00:20:50.720 He was interested in being president.

00:20:53.420 He presided over the country, and yet he rejected the system over which he was presiding.

00:20:59.260 He was telling us all the time how that system was corrupt and unjust.

00:21:03.900 And Trump did the same thing.

00:21:06.440 Yes.

00:21:07.320 Yeah.

00:21:08.800 I don't give myself credit for much, but I watched Obama and I wrote in the book, I said he was so successful at this, there's bound to be imitators.

00:21:16.560 Yeah.

00:21:19.660 People, people, you know, blame Trump on a lot of things.

00:21:23.740 You know, the reason why Donald Trump came to his XYZ.

00:21:26.260 I think it was a lot of things that brought Donald Trump to it.

00:21:30.340 But the the one thing that surprised me listening to people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 was the burn it all down kind of thing.

00:21:42.380 That it was a we have tried to work within the system.

00:21:47.320 The system is so far gone.

00:21:50.220 Burn it down.

00:21:51.320 And that's what you're hearing now.

00:21:53.400 And you go into nihilism a lot.

00:21:57.080 Can you explain, for instance, is nihilism what we saw on January 6th at the Capitol?

00:22:04.520 Is it what we saw over the summer, the summer of love, which is oddly titled?

00:22:12.300 Is it both?

00:22:13.460 Is it more?

00:22:14.520 What is nihilism? 0.99

00:22:15.680 I mean, the ultimate expression of nihilism today is when a person picks up a gun and walks into a room full of innocent strangers and start shooting them, sometimes for sometimes for a reason, because they are, you know, jihadis or because they are white supremacists. 0.95

00:22:36.560 Sometimes for no reason at all, because you represent an impure society. 0.99

00:22:41.380 And I am an exterminating angel. 0.67

00:22:44.000 All right.

00:22:44.560 I am the Internet rant made flesh. 1.00

00:22:47.980 And I'm going to exterminate you. 0.97

00:22:50.020 You know, these are basically when you read these these people who do these terrible things online. 0.99

00:22:55.840 They sound just like everybody else online.

00:22:58.520 They're ranters, except these people actually take it a further step.

00:23:02.000 I think institutionally, when you start bashing at our existing institutions, which, like I said before, have many reasons to be criticized, but don't offer a solution or alternative.

00:23:16.500 Then you are engaging in essentially a nihilistic exercise, whether you're a nihilist or not.

00:23:22.940 I think the Black Lives Matter movement and the crazy QAnon people on January 6th have a lot more in common than it's given credit for. 1.00

00:23:33.040 These are they were basically angry.

00:23:36.320 They basically want to change.

00:23:38.340 They had no idea inside their heads what that change would be.

00:23:41.380 And then they had no organization, no leaders, no programs so that in that moment when they said, I mean, Black Lives Matter, they took over a couple of autonomous zones out west.

00:23:52.420 And and the protesters of January 6th, you know, basically violated the Capitol building.

00:23:58.900 But once you do that, it's like you can see, you know, the deer in the headlights.

00:24:03.620 It's like now what?

00:24:04.860 And then what the what is they kind of model their superiority and then they go away because they have nothing, nothing to offer.

00:24:10.740 So I have described this in the past.

00:24:14.040 I'd like you to correct me.

00:24:15.640 Show me what where I have this wrong.

00:24:20.060 I've described the the climate in America that there is. 0.99

00:24:24.620 If you look at a football field from the five yard line, maybe 10 yard line of each each end zone, there are these absolutely bat crap, crazy people who just are they're just angry and they don't care what happens next. 0.99

00:24:43.640 They just want an end to this. 0.98

00:24:46.640 Then you have everybody else kind of, you know, in the 40 yard line that is like, no, you know, this is all kind of good.

00:24:54.960 I I agree it's not working, but, you know, let's let's not be crazy here.

00:24:59.440 But everyone is focusing attention on those two end zones.

00:25:04.160 And so they're controlling their they're they're pushing us into into a place that the rest of the public doesn't really want to go.

00:25:14.800 Is that accurate or is the the people in the center?

00:25:19.100 Are they nihilistic now, too?

00:25:22.040 That's a really hard question.

00:25:23.680 That's a really hard question.

00:25:25.000 And I I'll say a couple of things about it.

00:25:29.560 Number one, the the the I think the football metaphor is wrong because we're all kind of crunched together.

00:25:38.620 And but I think essentially the anger is structural.

00:25:45.760 In other words, in our information environment, in this tsunami that I'm talking about, in this blizzard of voices.

00:25:52.520 Right. If you are the calm, moderating force and you say the reasonable things, you have no audience.

00:26:00.260 Nothing. Right.

00:26:01.420 So if you want to have an audience, the first thing you do is scream.

00:26:05.480 The second thing you want to do is scream angrily.

00:26:08.080 The third thing, and that's where you make the breakthrough, right, is you find somebody on the other side that's now screaming at you.

00:26:13.680 And now the screaming match begins. 0.98

00:26:15.400 And then the people on your side start to line up behind you because now the other guys are attacking you.

00:26:19.680 And suddenly you build a following and you become somebody.

00:26:22.980 Right. That's structurally how you get attention in this environment.

00:26:28.040 So there's a structural side to it.

00:26:30.920 I where the public stands, the actual majority of the public, that's a really interesting question.

00:26:37.540 And it's hard to get at.

00:26:38.920 There are a lot of people who are intermittently angry, I think.

00:26:42.380 But when we talk about, for example, political polarization, which I keep getting thrown at me as the defining way to look at our political environment, it makes no sense to think that.

00:26:58.480 I mean, Gallup just came out with a poll that said that 50 percent of Americans identify as independents, a record number.

00:27:06.380 How is that polarizing between parties?

00:27:08.200 Another poll, I forget who did it, also record numbers saying they wanted a third party.

00:27:14.780 So how is that polarized between Republican and Democrat?

00:27:17.900 So I think part of what we're dealing with is the dysfunction of our information environment.

00:27:23.860 Part of it is the dysfunction of the institutions.

00:27:25.840 The fact that at the top of our institutions, it really is everybody kind of glomming together and trying to say, well, it's my side or nothing.

00:27:33.660 But where the actual majority of the public stands, honestly, Glenn, if you ask me my gut feeling, I would agree with you.

00:27:44.340 People just want to live on their lives.

00:27:46.480 They're not really interested in getting into these scrums.

00:27:52.760 I was in Israel and I spent time with Jews.

00:27:57.940 I spent time with Palestinians.

00:28:00.300 And what I heard from both sides when the cameras were off and when people were alone, I just want my kids to have a safe school.

00:28:08.680 I just I just want to I want to be with my family.

00:28:11.460 And I realized when the cameras are off, everybody wants the same thing.

00:28:17.340 Yeah.

00:28:18.240 And I and I think that's true about most of America.

00:28:21.860 But we are.

00:28:24.220 It's hard to get it.

00:28:25.800 Go ahead.

00:28:26.240 Hard to get it.

00:28:27.120 Hard to get data on that.

00:28:29.140 Right.

00:28:29.340 But I do have I do have a little incident, which is kind of kind of sealed that in my head.

00:28:35.680 And, you know, I was writing I was one of these back and forth that get published online where they somebody publishes something and you respond.

00:28:44.020 And it was all about how we're in an incipient civil war and our politics have become warlike.

00:28:49.440 And, you know, I'm sitting here in front of my laptop right above that is my window.

00:28:54.760 And I'm reading all the stuff about war.

00:28:56.420 I'm watching my neighbors.

00:28:57.500 Right.

00:28:58.020 Walk around social distancing, waving at one another.

00:29:00.960 And I'm thinking, well, I'm not seeing it.

00:29:03.160 I don't see civil war.

00:29:04.600 OK.

00:29:04.860 And I think also one last thing is most people don't ingest massive amounts of news.

00:29:13.620 And that's probably healthy.

00:29:15.000 I think those of us who who ingest too many news tend to have a very distorted idea of how important even politics are.

00:29:24.020 OK.

00:29:24.520 Like most American lives live very detached from politics and its family and its church and its community and, you know, its sports league.

00:29:33.760 Again, it's many things other than who passed the latest law that you didn't like or that you were advocating or whatever.

00:29:41.600 I will tell you, I have the same feeling when I'm at work, I feel one way when I'm anywhere else in the country except for the coast or the power centers.

00:29:53.620 I see people getting along, everybody is kind of back to, yeah, I don't agree with that person, but that's, you know, that's that's kind of cool.

00:30:04.040 One thing that is is, however, I think, frightening sign is the cancel culture that is happening right now.

00:30:17.720 How does this fit into your theories?

00:30:20.480 What's happening there?

00:30:23.400 Because when I said one side wants total control, there is one side and I don't even know where it belongs, but there is one side that's like my way or the highway.

00:30:33.760 Yeah, I, basically, it's as much a generational thing as anything, but I mean, I think you have in the Internet a lot of identity instability.

00:30:55.440 The Internet is a mangler of identity, okay?

00:31:00.160 You have to sort of, your organic, you, the person that you're looking at right here, I have to mangle myself if I want to join Wall Street Betsy, if I want to join Black Lives Matter, if I want to join all the, you basically have to join hands with a digital them, you have to mutilate yourself, right? 0.91

00:31:20.560 And that creates all kinds of uncertainties and doubts, and the more you do that, the more it gets confusing, what pronoun do you use, what's the right word, what should I avoid?

00:31:32.520 And the more that that happens, I think somebody is going to step up and decide, well, I'm the Inquisitioner, and I'm going to gain power of a sort by canceling you, right?

00:31:44.400 By saying, you said the wrong word, or you used the wrong pronoun, or you don't get it right, and it becomes very intense and very, very dogmatic, even though we're talking about trivial things.

00:31:57.840 I honestly don't think it's, I mean, it's important if you belong to that generation.

00:32:02.320 I guess to an old geezer like me is much less important.

00:32:04.820 I mean, you can cancel me 20 times from Sunday, and I don't care, you know?

00:32:08.260 But if you're young, it does matter.

00:32:12.440 And I think what you have is a generation, you know, this Zoomer generation that's coming up, it's a generation of conformists who basically keep their nose to the grindstone because they're afraid that if they just lift up their heads and say the wrong thing, they're going to get canceled. 1.00

00:32:27.320 So did I misunderstand some of the direction of the book?

00:32:32.900 Because you talked about the media scrambling to try to keep control of things and seeing that Facebook and all of this stuff has unleashed people to make their own networks.

00:32:51.760 And it's the networks that they're afraid of.

00:32:54.980 And as I read that, I'm looking at what Google is doing.

00:32:59.360 I'm looking at what these algorithms are starting to do to if you say something that is deemed hateful, it's not just you, but they look then at everyone who is liking you, following you, reading you, posting with you.

00:33:14.760 And they are squashing those voices as much as they can.

00:33:21.640 And you talk about this in the book about a 15 percent, I can't remember what you called it, dilution or something that they're squashing these networks and these voices.

00:33:34.200 Can you go into that?

00:33:35.320 Because maybe I misunderstood it.

00:33:37.740 Yeah, I mean, I think we happen to be, every action has reaction, right?

00:33:42.840 So we've spent 10 years of the revolt of the public.

00:33:46.820 And I think certainly here in the United States, this is a moment of reaction.

00:33:50.600 The elites are trying to reassert themselves.

00:33:53.120 They elected Joe Biden, who is basically that was his one qualification.

00:33:57.100 He was an old elite and he was safe.

00:34:00.700 And they now want to turn the great digital platforms into the front page of The New York Times circa 1980.

00:34:09.880 The thing is, it can't be done.

00:34:12.000 It cannot be done.

00:34:14.120 It basically, they're trying 20th century information control techniques.

00:34:20.860 But it works in China.

00:34:23.960 No, it doesn't.

00:34:25.700 No, it doesn't.

00:34:26.600 The Chinese public knows everything that it wants.

00:34:29.340 All right.

00:34:30.140 Now they keep their heads low and they don't say much.

00:34:33.040 Right.

00:34:33.100 But they can get, any person determined to get information in China can get it.

00:34:38.120 So, no, I don't think it does.

00:34:41.500 You cannot cancel the information tsunami.

00:34:45.020 I think the elites would love to do that somehow, to just kind of, okay, let's go back to the way things were.

00:34:51.120 We get to write little articles to each other.

00:34:54.580 And they show up in The New York Times op-ed.

00:34:56.840 And we read the front page for the informational news.

00:35:00.800 And that is never going to happen.

00:35:02.940 And I think, honestly, it'll be interesting to watch this moment of reaction.

00:35:10.380 It'll be interesting to see how far that can go.

00:35:13.000 But there will be a lot of pushback.

00:35:14.360 There already has been a lot of pushback.

00:35:16.200 I think, honestly, the big platforms know that there's a new sheriff in town, a new administration.

00:35:24.120 And they're playing up to it, right?

00:35:26.220 They know they have been threatened with all kinds of, you know, antitrust action and so forth by government.

00:35:35.000 And they're playing up to the new sheriff in town.

00:35:38.000 We'll see what's going on a year or two down the road.

00:35:40.340 So tell me about the media itself, because that's what you used to, you know, that was your job at the CIA.

00:35:47.520 So let's talk about American media here and its bias or its direction or what's happening with the old guard.

00:36:02.460 Because The New York Times itself is not even what The New York Times used to be.

00:36:08.120 It's changed direction.

00:36:10.640 So what's happening there?

00:36:12.100 And what does that mean for the future of that, those, quote, trusted sources, as social media would name them?

00:36:22.720 Yeah, I mean, I, the New York Times, here's the thing about the news business that most people don't realize.

00:36:32.160 Nobody ever made a penny selling news.

00:36:35.120 Okay, that just never happened.

00:36:36.600 Right.

00:36:36.680 Not before, not now.

00:36:39.140 In the olden days, the news, if you're a newspaper, but also the sports page, the comics, the advice of the love lord, the crossword puzzle, all those things bought you a bunch of eyeballs, a big audience.

00:36:53.620 And you sold that audience to advertisers, right?

00:36:57.200 So that was the old model.

00:36:58.540 The digital tsunami destroyed that all the advertisers moved online and they're never coming back.

00:37:07.080 That's pretty much the extinction of almost every newspaper that ever was.

00:37:11.000 There's a few, though, that have very prestigious names and histories like The Times and The Washington Post.

00:37:17.560 And they have tried a new model.

00:37:20.360 The model is they lured you, you're a digital subscriber and you're lured behind this paywall.

00:37:26.000 The problem with that model is, so what are you, what's the commodity you're selling?

00:37:30.760 I mean, the world of information that is so overloaded, it's practically an infinite amount of information for practical purposes.

00:37:39.540 The news chases you, Glenn.

00:37:42.200 You know, the olden days when I was a young kid, you have to keep up with the news.

00:37:45.620 Right.

00:37:45.760 The news is, you can't bat it away.

00:37:48.740 It's coming at you whether you want to or not, right?

00:37:51.200 So why on earth would you pay money to go into this little magical garden of news that is The New York Times behind a paywall, right?

00:37:58.800 I think accidentally during the 2016 elections, they hit on a new business model.

00:38:06.500 And that business model was, well, we're not selling news and we're not selling eyeballs to advertisers.

00:38:14.680 We're selling a creed.

00:38:16.580 We're selling, basically, we're selling polarization.

00:38:20.360 We're selling anger, right?

00:38:22.180 You who, and Trump, of course, was the great object of this.

00:38:27.500 You who are terrified of Trump, come within our little garden of news.

00:38:32.240 We will give you good words to use.

00:38:34.060 We will give you good arguments to use.

00:38:35.540 You're like a congregation inside the church of anti-Trump.

00:38:39.360 We all believe in the same thing.

00:38:40.880 They were selling that creed.

00:38:42.640 Well, I mean, it was amazingly successful.

00:38:46.680 Before Trump, The New York Times digital subscriptions were hovering flat below one million.

00:38:53.840 It doubled in a year.

00:38:55.680 By 2016, it was six million, which is the most in the world.

00:38:58.720 So, they basically have an open ideological posture with kind of like a hidden business agenda.

00:39:09.700 Now, now comes the moment of truth, though.

00:39:12.240 I mean, let's face it.

00:39:13.140 Trump, I believe, was an effect, not a cause of this strange information.

00:39:19.720 But he was, but he was, I think, I mean, he had, he sold.

00:39:26.740 Let's put it that way.

00:39:27.060 He was an outrageous person.

00:39:28.480 Now, he was a showman.

00:39:29.260 He was a showtime.

00:39:30.200 So, he's gone.

00:39:32.100 And you have possibly the most boring politician in my lifetime as president, Joe Biden.

00:39:37.920 All right?

00:39:38.060 The opposite of all that excitement that you had with Trump.

00:39:41.000 Can The New York Times survive and maintain that growth under those conditions?

00:39:46.080 Wait and see.

00:39:50.600 When you look at what they're saying now in Washington about there is this vast right-wing white supremacist terror movement out there.

00:40:08.340 And at the same time, you know, calling it the summer of love when horrible riots were going on.

00:40:19.560 What can, talk about that a bit.

00:40:21.940 What does this tell you?

00:40:24.540 And what's really going on?

00:40:26.860 Well, each side sees a moot in its own eye and a beam in the eye of its opponents, right?

00:40:33.260 I think people who are to the left of the spectrum see white supremacists everywhere.

00:40:42.160 People who are to the right of the spectrum see Antifa's everywhere.

00:40:46.260 I think that's to some extent sincere, I'm sure, but also self-serving because then you can pass laws and you can generate that anger.

00:40:56.480 In other words, it's much easier to find yourself railing about white supremacists or Antifas than it is to talk about some boring politician in the Senate or something like that.

00:41:10.400 So you want to portray the other side as the most extreme possible version of it.

00:41:15.520 Some of it is true.

00:41:16.940 Much of it is imaginary.

00:41:18.600 A lot of it is just political posturing, I think.

00:41:21.920 Talk to me about the fifth wave because you talk about that in the book a lot.

00:41:29.680 Explain the fifth wave.

00:41:32.140 Well, I mean, it is a fact that information determines, as I said before, the stage setting of society.

00:41:41.960 So a lot of our behavior depends on that.

00:41:44.280 And also that it has not, as one might imagine, information has not increased in an even flow.

00:41:52.620 It comes in these waves or pulses.

00:41:55.360 And with each one, you see how society arranges itself.

00:41:58.700 You know, so with the invention of writing, you had these societies that were ruled by mandarins and priests, like Egypt or China.

00:42:06.460 The classical republics, you needed the alphabet for.

00:42:09.340 You could not have to have the alphabet.

00:42:11.260 The printing press was, by the way, possibly the most destructive and disorienting of all, including so far the Internet.

00:42:23.900 You could not have.

00:42:24.400 Including, including the Internet.

00:42:26.720 Yes.

00:42:27.440 Oh, yes.

00:42:28.020 And I'll come back to that in a minute if you want.

00:42:31.220 You couldn't have had the scientific revolution.

00:42:33.280 You couldn't have had the American Revolution. 0.77

00:42:34.740 You wouldn't have the French Revolution. 0.81

00:42:36.200 All these things that determine our life today without the printing press, that's the third wave.

00:42:41.880 The fourth wave was that top-down mass media that I actually got to experience when I was a young person, where, you know, we were all kind of brought into the information environment, but in a very authority-driven way.

00:42:58.120 In other words, you weren't participating.

00:42:59.520 You were just being told.

00:43:00.740 And the fifth wave is that tsunami, that digital madness that occurred around the turn of the century that is still very early on, and we don't really know what is it.

00:43:12.800 It may, in the end, be more disruptive than the printing press, but the printing press in its day was horrific.

00:43:19.280 Horrific.

00:43:19.800 You mean for the hierarchy, for society as it was structured?

00:43:26.840 Right.

00:43:27.440 Right.

00:43:28.480 I mean, my friend Antonio Garcia Martinez, smartest man on Twitter, by the way, says, if you, just a thought exercise, if you went to the 30 Years' War, right, and that was the bloodiest war that had ever been experienced in Europe, millions died, took generations for the population of Germany to reconstitute itself.

00:43:54.720 And the war was fought over tiny little religious differences.

00:44:00.000 You know, your book had 10 words that my book didn't have, and my book had many words that you should have had.

00:44:06.860 And over these tiny differences that were very clear and crisp in those books, people slaughtered one another.

00:44:13.160 If you went to that time and said, what do you think of the printing press?

00:44:16.180 People would have said, it's the most horrible and destabilizing and destructive invention of our times, right?

00:44:24.100 It was the early moment.

00:44:27.040 So, we now know that the printing press, in my opinion, anyway, it was the most liberating invention ever.

00:44:36.060 And it may turn out to be that 50 years from now, we say, oh, the Internet, that was a great stabilizing, liberating technology.

00:44:43.780 Right now, let's be thankful.

00:44:45.840 We're not in a 30 Years' War.

00:44:47.180 We're not slaughtering one another.

00:44:48.480 But the printing press was the same kind of thing.

00:44:53.140 It wasn't necessarily the people that were arguing over that.

00:44:57.040 It was the power structures that were arguing over that.

00:45:00.420 It was the kings and the churches that were fighting for their old world or the new world order of the time.

00:45:10.060 Who would dominate whom?

00:45:11.560 It wasn't.

00:45:12.680 I'll bet you you could go back in those times of war.

00:45:15.780 And most of the people were like, I don't want this anymore.

00:45:19.180 I just wish this would stop.

00:45:21.880 Well, that was to some extent true.

00:45:23.980 I think to some extent not.

00:45:25.800 I mean, I don't know the period 100% well.

00:45:27.880 But I know for a fact that there were truly sectarian forces that were unleashed.

00:45:34.080 In other words, small groups that suddenly decided, no, no, no, we really know.

00:45:38.580 And they would go on the war path and the horrible things would happen.

00:45:43.380 And yes, there was a lot of them, you know, the powers that be would try and squelch them.

00:45:47.820 But what was happening in Germany in particular was as much people suddenly feeling empowered because here I have this book.

00:45:54.120 I can now read and I have this book and the book tells me exactly what is right.

00:45:58.440 And those people over there, their book is wrong.

00:46:01.620 And we just have to get rid of them.

00:46:03.900 It's a question of heaven and earth, right?

00:46:07.780 It's a question of God and Satan.

00:46:11.160 There's no compromise to be had.

00:46:13.440 And there wasn't.

00:46:14.620 There wasn't.

00:46:15.120 So I think it was a terrible moment that was as much a question of the public participating as it was of the powers that be then coming in and trying to establish order violently.

00:46:27.700 So is the diminishment of religion a good thing or a bad thing to settle things down?

00:46:37.920 I mean, I would imagine if you're looking at the world that way, you would say it was the sex of religion that that really kind of edged, you know, egg that on and made things much worse. 0.52

00:46:51.580 Is is this part of the breaking up of networks or quieting of networks?

00:46:57.200 Or is this just what we're going through right now, this diminishment and, you know, in in our in our faith and our churches?

00:47:06.560 Is that just part of the natural that hierarchy doesn't work anymore?

00:47:10.860 Well, I mean, I think that that question can only be answered contextually.

00:47:15.820 Right.

00:47:16.120 I mean, I think if you are slaughtering one another over religion, my liberal democracy emerged from that.

00:47:26.040 Correct.

00:47:26.360 I saw like an arbiter that said, no, though, there are many paths to salvation.

00:47:32.080 There's not just one.

00:47:33.420 And you don't need to kill everybody else.

00:47:35.380 So liberal democracy is kind of a procedural kind of prosaic.

00:47:39.000 Like we manage all the different points of view.

00:47:41.560 There are limits.

00:47:42.100 You can't do this.

00:47:43.040 You can't do that.

00:47:44.520 So religion in that case needed to be managed out of fanaticism.

00:47:50.460 I think where we are today is an entirely different context.

00:47:54.020 And I've been thinking about this a lot, a lot later lately, Glenn, which is not just religion, but OK, what where do people get their meaning?

00:48:06.080 Where do people get their sense of dignity and importance?

00:48:09.000 You know, well, they get it from family.

00:48:10.940 That's in trouble.

00:48:12.000 They get it from community that, you know, you look at the old Masonic lodges and the chambers of commerce.

00:48:18.700 They're gone.

00:48:19.440 You know, and they get it from religion and attendance is in tremendous decline.

00:48:24.840 Right.

00:48:25.680 So.

00:48:27.400 A lot of what is happening today, and this is, again, very hard to prove empirically, but I have a very strong sense that this is true.

00:48:35.260 Is people trying to find meaning in politics, which cannot possibly deliver.

00:48:42.380 So I think I think the critical race theory, you know, the social justice warriors, the ecological war warriors that has become almost a religion.

00:48:53.600 And I think people are and they will find it very, very empty, which will only lead to more bad things.

00:49:01.060 But it is becoming a religion.

00:49:04.500 You know, I think many, many, many of these online groups and many of these academic fantasies like the ones you mentioned are are religion like.

00:49:17.160 Yes.

00:49:18.000 And I think none of them, none of them can deliver what what what people are seeking for them, which is OK.

00:49:27.660 And I think in the olden days, by the way, when people got their sense of who they were, you know, I mean, if you were in a Masonic lodge or in a sports league, you were kind of like a big frog in a tiny little pond.

00:49:42.900 I feel important. And if you had religion, you had consolation and you had you had guide moral guidance.

00:49:50.700 So that when politics, particularly natural politics, came up for discussion, your sense of self, your sense of who you were was that remotely touched by that.

00:50:01.120 So you could engage in in compromises because the stakes were pretty small.

00:50:05.700 Right. I think the problem today when when society is kind of hollow and when you are sort of told that you are you're supposed to express yourself and attain some sort of self-expressive, you know, height.

00:50:18.860 And yet it's unclear how that's ever going to happen without any meaning inside your life, then you will put a lot of burden of expectations on a very slender read, which is, you know, this is the search for justice, a search for political solutions for things that are that are way beyond the scope of politics.

00:50:41.460 And if you ever look at, you know, the young the young warriors of the autonomous zones in Seattle and Portland, tons and tons of YouTube video fascinating to watch.

00:50:57.740 You know, they never give you they never make demands.

00:51:00.820 They never make claims. They never say you have to change this and that and the other.

00:51:03.560 They basically assume the society is unjust and terrible.

00:51:06.260 And then they say, well, look, look, look how great this is.

00:51:09.140 This moment is, you know, there's this autonomous zone moment that everybody's supporting a real virtuous world.

00:51:15.440 And there's like a tiny little moment of of of meaning in these people's lives.

00:51:20.100 Yes, it's very hard. It's very hard to let that go.

00:51:24.040 And it will constantly change as it did in the French Revolution.

00:51:29.220 Yeah.

00:51:29.700 I know you say in the book that you're not a prophet.

00:51:35.360 I can't tell you. Nobody can tell you how this is going to play out.

00:51:39.480 And I completely agree with that.

00:51:41.360 But can you give us some historic maybe comparisons at all on what are the possibilities that are lying in front of what are our choices in front of us?

00:51:52.780 And how do we navigate this?

00:51:56.280 Yeah, I'm really not good at that.

00:51:58.280 I deal with the here and now and believe me, I find it puzzling enough.

00:52:02.460 But I think I think we are OK.

00:52:06.120 We are.

00:52:08.240 At the very early stages of a colossal transformation.

00:52:13.660 And part of the reason I wrote the book is that I think our institutions are going to go through a tremendous reconfiguration crunch.

00:52:24.400 And I I want there to be at the end of that what there is now in terms of liberal democracy, freedom, personal rights, freedom.

00:52:36.140 Right.

00:52:37.100 I am Cuban.

00:52:38.320 I don't know if you know that or not.

00:52:39.540 No.

00:52:39.680 So before I was 10 years old, I had lived through a right wing dictatorship and a left wing dictatorship.

00:52:47.340 And I am here to tell you.

00:52:49.960 Neither are good.

00:52:50.860 Well, the worst, most dysfunctional democracy is infinitely, infinitely superior to the most effective and efficient dictatorship.

00:53:01.860 Yeah.

00:53:02.020 All right.

00:53:02.560 So I would like there to be at the end of all this transformation.

00:53:05.900 Those those freedoms and those possibilities to vote out your your your leaders and so forth.

00:53:13.860 Part of the reason you can't predict, honestly, is because a lot of that there's agency involved.

00:53:19.860 A lot of it is going to depend on you, Glenn, and on me and other people who are watching.

00:53:24.600 We will make decisions.

00:53:26.160 We will.

00:53:27.080 There's a the elites are, in a sense, selected by the public.

00:53:29.900 And if we continue to select elites that are essentially reactionary, this is what we're going to get.

00:53:36.860 We're going to get an explosion.

00:53:37.640 But it's really it's really hard because I've thought about this a lot, that it's hard at this point because everybody on both sides feel like it has gone so far to the edge that you.

00:53:54.560 I've heard this from a lot.

00:53:56.100 I feel this way.

00:53:57.080 If you voted for Donald Trump to change the course of this institutionalized corruption and everything else, he was perfectly suited to kick the walls in.

00:54:11.420 And I think he kicked a lot of walls in that he didn't even know he was kicking in at the time.

00:54:16.040 And if he could be destroyed by this.

00:54:20.060 Who else could it be?

00:54:22.260 And I think we haven't seen the last of the, you know, you say Obama did this and then Trump was a reaction.

00:54:31.020 Well, I think the Biden policies are a reaction.

00:54:35.260 And the the the coalition that was around Biden is a direct response to Trump.

00:54:43.460 I think you're going to see more and more cancel culture and that's going to drive a response even bigger on the other.

00:54:50.660 At some point, you do end up with a horrible dictator.

00:54:55.160 Somebody just grabs the pendulum and says it stops here.

00:54:57.780 So how do we how do we ratchet this down?

00:55:04.260 Well, I mean, I think, number one, I guess as a as an immigrant, I have a tremendous belief in the deep roots of our institutions.

00:55:16.420 There is no question that the current shape, the growth, the outward growth is burned down, but it's got deep roots.

00:55:23.760 It's going to grow back. OK.

00:55:25.440 And number two, I have a deep faith in the common sense of the American people.

00:55:30.780 Sometimes it's more apparent than other times.

00:55:32.800 But I think, as you mentioned before, as we discussed before, I think the majority of the public is probably not into let's fight to the death over immigration.

00:55:47.280 Let's fight to the death over, you know, basically the latest issue that has been made to be some kind of life or death struggle.

00:55:53.980 I mean, I'll tell you something and maybe this is nobody's ever accused me of being a romantic and I don't feel like I am.

00:56:02.580 But I just got my my first COVID vaccine.

00:56:06.780 Right. And there was a line of hundreds of people where I live in Fairfax County, Virginia.

00:56:13.760 And I mean, it was it was a remarkable moment.

00:56:19.240 It was kind of like a ritual of national renewal that I felt that was it.

00:56:23.020 And, OK, Fairfax County has been voting Democratic for many years, but it has lots of Republicans, lots of Trumpets.

00:56:28.540 None of us knew who we were in that line.

00:56:31.340 All right. Right.

00:56:31.880 We're basically we're basically choosing life.

00:56:35.300 That was real.

00:56:36.520 You know, COVID, that's real life and death.

00:56:38.380 OK. And we were all of us of the same party out of the same tribe on that line.

00:56:43.300 And I found that just strangely moving.

00:56:46.740 And I think that's the American public.

00:56:48.480 Right. I mean, we're all in the end.

00:56:50.260 We just want to move on with life.

00:56:51.560 And yes, if we press to the wall, we'll say, well, I like Trump or I hate Trump or I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican.

00:56:59.200 But this is not life or death.

00:57:01.820 This is not this is not what our identities are based on.

00:57:05.340 Mostly, I think.

00:57:07.600 It will never come.

00:57:08.780 This idea that we're at the edge of a civil war.

00:57:10.880 Again, I look at I look at my neighbors walking by and waving at each other.

00:57:15.720 I go over what?

00:57:17.660 Over what are we going to fight?

00:57:19.080 Civil wars are.

00:57:19.940 I hope you're right.

00:57:21.100 I really hope you're right.

00:57:22.720 I I I go back.

00:57:25.040 I go back and forth on the American people.

00:57:27.200 You know, I've always said trust the American people.

00:57:29.740 I've always believed in Jefferson's quote.

00:57:32.280 Trust the American people.

00:57:33.200 They're going to get it wrong, but eventually they'll get it right.

00:57:37.160 But lately I see the slippage of of, you know, our unum e pluribus unum used to be the Bill of Rights.

00:57:47.340 I I don't know how many people still really believe in the Bill of Rights.

00:57:51.480 And if we lose that, then we lose everything.

00:57:55.520 Right.

00:57:56.620 Well, Jefferson was the guy who also talked about eternal vigilance.

00:58:00.120 Right.

00:58:00.340 I mean, it's always a fight.

00:58:01.740 Yeah, it's never easy.

00:58:02.820 And this is a particularly hard moment.

00:58:04.380 I am not denying that.

00:58:05.400 That's what the book is about.

00:58:06.320 Am I concerned?

00:58:07.840 Well, sure, I am.

00:58:09.340 Do I think short term there's going to be probably abuses and warping of democracy?

00:58:16.440 Almost certainly.

00:58:17.980 Long term, do I believe that it's going to emerge possibly even more democratic than before?

00:58:24.060 Because that's something that the digital world makes possible.

00:58:27.580 I would I I'm sorry.

00:58:29.820 I'm going to choose to be optimistic.

00:58:31.820 Maybe it's only an analytic.

00:58:33.780 It's not an analytic judgment.

00:58:35.240 It's an act of faith.

00:58:37.160 Well, I I truly believe that it's going to be the greatest freedom mankind has ever seen or the greatest police state authoritarianism.

00:58:46.440 That the world has ever seen.

00:58:48.880 And it might be both.

00:58:50.240 We might go to authoritarian only to have that collapse and be free at some point.

00:58:57.280 You know, I don't know.

00:58:59.620 You you said at the beginning, I disagree.

00:59:04.060 That'll be a 10 to 20 year.

00:59:05.580 That is that is compressed.

00:59:07.200 Why do you say that?

00:59:10.960 I mean, I think the Internet information and the rate of change is happening in a way that no one has ever experienced in all of human existence.

00:59:21.560 You know, jobs and whole industries can be over overnight.

00:59:27.800 We are not the same country we were even 10 years ago.

00:59:31.920 Definitely not 20.

00:59:33.920 How long do you see this just grind happening?

00:59:38.620 Well, that part of it is absolutely true.

00:59:41.600 The change is accelerated.

00:59:43.480 And that's demonstrable when you look at how fast innovations are being brought online.

00:59:48.200 I mean, you should take decades for something new to become accepted by the population.

00:59:52.820 And when you look at things that with the iPhones, for example, the smartphone, how fast how fast that was adopted.

00:59:59.520 I always say, because I talk to young people a lot, young people are the best, right, because their minds are kind of like, whoa, what's going on?

01:00:06.760 I tell them, I'm not going to see the end of this.

01:00:09.340 I am not going to see.

01:00:10.520 Glenn, Glenn, I'm looking at your gray hairs.

01:00:12.800 You may not see the end.

01:00:13.800 Yeah, I don't think I will.

01:00:15.460 So this is going to go on for quite a while.

01:00:17.760 And my parallel is the printing press.

01:00:19.940 It took like 150 years for us to figure out, well, what is this thing?

01:00:23.620 What do we do with it?

01:00:25.420 And I think this may be just as long.

01:00:27.580 So thank you so much.

01:00:30.080 Thanks for coming on.

01:00:31.140 And thanks for writing the book.

01:00:33.380 I appreciate it.

01:00:34.480 My pleasure.

01:00:35.380 God bless.

01:00:41.300 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:00:57.580 I'm.

01:00:58.180 I'm.

01:01:03.380 I'm.

01:01:03.740 I'm.

01:01:04.500 I'm.

01:01:04.980 I'm.

01:01:05.380 I'm.

01:01:06.860 I'm.

01:01:07.320 I'm.

01:01:07.440 I'm.

01:01:07.460 I'm.

01:01:07.800 I'm.

The Glenn Beck Program - March 06, 2021

Ep 100 ｜ Why the Elites Have Lost Control ｜ Martin Gurri ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript