In this episode, Michael Schellenberger joins us to talk about his new book, San Francisco: How Progressives Ruin Cities, about the growing problem of homeless people living on the streets of America s most important cities.
00:03:39.600And the major, one of the major factors for it is that hard drugs became a lot less, a lot less expensive.
00:03:45.740The first so-called homeless crisis in the 80s was really driven by cheap crack.
00:03:50.160Cocaine was a luxury drug for affluent people until they were able to kind of synthesize it chemically and make it a shorter high, cheaper high as crack.
00:04:02.620And then we had a heroin shows up more in the late 80s, early 1990s in Europe and the United States.
00:04:08.300And now we're dealing with successive waves of cheaper methamphetamine, cheap heroin, and now fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin and is causing a huge amount of drug deaths.
00:05:03.220And even the way you asked is very, very interesting.
00:05:06.280So one of the first things that you when you realize when you understand the history of mental illness is that the question of what mental illness is, is a huge question.
00:05:15.840And there's a lot of disciplines where there's debates around the existence of a central category like an anthropology.
00:05:21.860It's not clear what culture is exactly.
00:05:24.500But mental illness has always been contested.
00:05:26.320There's always definitely been people that felt like so-called mentally ill people are not really mentally ill.
00:05:30.760They might even be spiritually superior.
00:05:33.460They might be what we now politically correct called neuro atypical.
00:05:37.480There's other people that have always felt there's clearly a genetic component to this or a genetic component that's clearly released in adolescence.
00:05:45.840The most distinctive version of it is schizophrenia.
00:05:48.360But interestingly enough, you know, British doc, British, like there's a famous study of British psychiatrists and American psychiatrists diagnosing the same people.
00:05:56.660But as I think the Brits would label things more likely as bipolar disorder and American psychiatrists as schizophrenia.
00:06:04.860So the very question of what mental illness is, has come under question.
00:06:09.260Then in the post-war era, particularly in the 60s, a bunch of radical, politically radical anti-psychiatrists, the most famous of whom is the French historian Michel Foucault,
00:06:21.280really argued that mental illness was socially constructed as a way to control different people.
00:06:28.460And that really it was just a way to sort of oppress people, but also maintain the fiction of rationality, maintain the fiction of enlightenment reason.
00:06:37.360And that was really the big prey for Michel Foucault was really taking on this whole history of particularly Cartesian or Kantian enlightenment rationality, though in some ways Foucault was a Kantian.
00:06:51.460But that was there was a broader agenda there that then influenced how we see mental illness.
00:06:56.740So now I think, Konstantin, I may have already digressed too far from your original question.
00:07:03.020Am I going where you want me to go or did you have some?
00:07:05.220No, no, no. Well, actually, I mean, the problem we have is we are keen to sort of spend less time talking about wokeness.
00:07:13.080But wherever every rock we lift, Michel Foucault pops out.
00:07:17.980So I don't really know where to go with that.
00:07:20.480But I guess the basic point is, are we seeing an increase in people who are mentally ill?
00:07:27.660OK. Are we seeing fewer mentally ill people being kept in facilities where they're being, you know, kept from just living on the street where they're not?
00:07:38.320You know, that was my basic question. And Francis has a ton of questions for you as well.
00:07:41.760OK, well, let me get to the first. So the first is that there is basic agreement.
00:07:45.480I would say there's pretty broad agreement among experts and even probably policymakers and activists that serious mental illness is a separate category.
00:07:54.440And serious mental illness would include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, being somewhat distinctive, although there's even differences of opinion about that from bipolar disorder, that those can be diagnosable because they're just in a really extreme state.
00:08:13.320And then there's sort of everyday anxiety and depression that that I think a lot of us have.
00:08:18.700If I don't exercise enough, I get anxious and depressed, for example, and I need to do aerobic exercise in particular to feel really at my best psychologically.
00:08:28.900Do I have a mental illness? I'm sure somebody could argue that I do.
00:08:33.220That's not a word I would use. I think that there's a there's some amount of us, a lot of us that I think that needs there's good evidence.
00:08:41.180You know, the runner's high is real. That was a study a few years ago.
00:08:45.120But I think there's evidence that a lot of us benefit from physical activity at a mental level.
00:08:49.420And I think there's a lot of evidence that we're not getting that.
00:08:52.560And that also there's been big changes to the Western diet in particular that have been quite negative.
00:08:58.600In Apocalypse Never, I reviewed the evidence showing that that high levels of carbohydrate consumption, a high level of protein consumption,
00:09:05.700even all foods obviously has negative physical effects, but also potentially mental health effects.
00:09:10.400And now we're seeing that social media, I think Jonathan Haidt has established conclusively that social media is having we know it is Facebook has acknowledged it having impacts on if you want to call it mental illness.
00:09:25.140You know, I sometimes worry. I think there is reason to be concerned about overly pathologizing, you know, some amount of anxiety and depression, I think, is actually normal and healthy.
00:09:36.920You know what I mean? So that's the other part of it is that it's OK to have moods, you know, and and so so there's a there's a kind of a left wing critique or libertarian critique of psychiatry and psychology, which kind of goes,
00:09:51.780the goal here should not be to create passionless people or to or to get rid of sadness.
00:09:57.440That would be pointless. But I do think it's fair to say, and I think it even accelerated significantly more in the pandemic.
00:10:03.280I mean, one of the many things that one of the many existing trends that the pandemic intensified, I think, is greater mental illness or psychological disorders, anxiety, depression.
00:10:17.640I think those things clearly have been increasing for decades, arguably for even longer.
00:10:24.440If you kind of go, these are really problems that emerge as you move from the farm to the city with urbanization.
00:10:29.740So, yeah, I would say there's a long term trend towards rising mental illness and other sort of mental disorders.
00:10:37.700And that's been intensified even more so in the recent decades as we've, you know, you know, moved increasingly to a digital world from a real world.
00:10:48.560We see declining sex among young people.
00:10:51.240We see a lot of declining risk taking, which is a real problem.
00:10:57.500So, yeah, I mean, I do think we are seeing an increase in that in some and to some extent that explains some amount of the increase of addiction and overdose.
00:11:08.080Michael, in the 1980s in this country, you probably know this.
00:11:12.640Margaret Thatcher, one of her policies was closing down a lot of mental health hospitals in this country,
00:11:18.040putting in what is called care in the community and essentially leaving a lot of these people to fend for themselves.
00:11:25.300Has that been a major cause of what we're now seeing?
00:11:31.020And the United States is at an even more extreme level than Britain.
00:11:34.180But Europe did a much better job than I think both the UK and the United States in terms of dealing with the seriously mentally ill,
00:11:42.500which constitute a significant amount of the people on the streets.
00:11:45.080Basically, the simple way to think of it is that we had a period in the 19th century when progressive reformers got mentally ill people out of the dungeons and basements,
00:11:55.960out of barns where they were being chained up.
00:11:58.700Mentally, seriously mentally ill people were killed a lot in the past.
00:12:01.320Very difficult people to deal with, people having delusions, including delusions of grandeur or what we call lack of insight now,
00:12:11.040which is this phenomenon where crazy people that are insane, mentally ill,
00:12:16.260think that they're having conversations with aliens or the CIA and that they have some inside view of the secret plot to run the world
00:12:22.840and that everybody else is crazy or not.
00:12:26.720And those are very difficult people in general because it's part of the mental illness.
00:14:13.980He's a farm laborer who clearly suffers from some kind of mental illness because he has delusions.
00:14:19.360And it's a sweet portrayal of a well-integrated mentally ill person into a family's life in a community.
00:14:31.380That's very difficult to do and very, very inarguably impossible to do at the mass level, at the urban cityscape level.
00:14:39.200And so, yes, in answer to your question, that's been a big part of it.
00:14:43.460And when those folks discover hard drugs, which make everybody's problems disappear for, you know, two to six hours,
00:14:51.540it's really hard when you have addiction and mental illness.
00:14:54.580And that's a big part of the of the so-called homeless population.
00:14:57.840And it's also just as you touched on there, if we had communities which had families and there were core family structures
00:15:10.200and the family was much more stable, then people would be would be more able to look after a family member who wasn't particularly well.
00:15:19.100They'd be more able to give them support.
00:15:21.140But because we've all been so atomized now, it just seems more of these people, unfortunately, just fall through the cracks in society.
00:15:27.840That's right. And so obviously one one approach.
00:15:33.900I think one might call the conservative approach, you know, would be like you just have to emphasize the need for families, communities and private charity.
00:15:42.160And that, interestingly enough, was the position taken by the radical left in relationship to mental illness in the 60s.
00:15:49.340And other other countries, Netherlands, France, Japan, they're dealing with mentally ill people would just became more institutionalized.
00:16:01.000They they did do a fair amount of deinstitutionalization like like Britain and the United States did in the 19 after World War Two and really up through the 70s.
00:16:11.820But not as much. And so my view is that we have to be pretty realistic.
00:16:17.940And while I do think I'm a huge as especially as I get older and my kids get older, I'm just I really I appreciate family more than ever.
00:16:26.200I am very sympathetic to the idea that there's a lot of functions that can only be done by the family and can't be done by governments.
00:16:33.100At the same time, the fact of the matter is that family members can't deal with their schizophrenic, you know, or even severely depressed family members, particularly if they become addicts.
00:16:43.200And that that's going to end up being the role of the government and just trying to kind of wave our hands and say, let's hope the private charity takes care of it has has obviously failed.
00:16:53.160Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many people on the street.
00:16:55.020But we don't seem to be want to dealing with this because it's still a taboo subject, isn't it?
00:17:01.700Like one of my cousins who developed schizophrenia had a breakdown and we gave her support and we did what was best for her.
00:17:10.940But we didn't really talk about it. And that's an important part of the problem, isn't it?
00:17:15.160Just talking about it and sharing, because unfortunately, there are schizophrenic people.
00:17:20.360And if we actually discussed this and were more honest, we'd be able to deal with the situation better.
00:17:27.200Yeah, absolutely. Right. I agree with you so much.
00:17:30.780And, you know, my aunt, as I mentioned, my aunt has schizophrenia.
00:17:35.240My parents are all psychologists, you know, like psychologists and teachers.
00:17:40.380And so it's something that we talk and think a lot about.
00:17:44.080But when it came time, I was like, well, I'm really excited to write about my aunt.
00:17:47.480And I didn't find a lot of interest among my family members in talking about it.
00:17:52.840And it took I'm sort of slow, you know, on the uptake.
00:17:55.180And it took me a little bit to figure out kind of why nobody was really wanting to talk about it.
00:18:03.240Schizophrenia is a really difficult mental illness.
00:18:06.700And I think the good thing is for people that have had that in the family is that they know that.
00:18:11.700And so there's a passage in San Francisco that I think is a really important passage on mental illness, which is the main the main social worker character is a Dutch guy named Rene.
00:18:23.340And I point out he looks just like the British action hero, Jason Statham.
00:18:27.320You know, kind of a tough guy, but also super soft.
00:18:35.460And they were trying to help drug addicts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just giving them needles and methadone, just all the helping approaches.
00:18:42.700And they realized they had to arrest some of them.
00:18:46.680They had to intervene in the lives of addicts.
00:18:48.540But he told a story where a friend of the family had a man, had the son, you know, just got schizophrenia.
00:18:56.640You know, and part of the reason that most people think there's some genetic origin here is that schizophrenia tends to show up when you're in college or when you're between the ages of 17 and 21, 22.
00:19:09.340You know, it's really suggests some sort of biological mechanism, genetic mechanism is being triggered.
00:19:15.660It's not to say there's no environmental role, but so anyway, this young man came, had schizophrenia, you know, and the family's dealing with it, you know, with the delusions.
00:19:27.040And Rene, he says, you know, he goes, sometimes you do some things you're not supposed to do, you know, that are off book, you know, and.
00:19:37.540And so he grabbed him by the lapels, basically got him in the hospital a couple of times, took him to a shelter one time, kind of muscled him.
00:19:44.080And my staff, you know, my research colleagues and I were kind of like, they were like, that's pretty edgy.
00:19:51.980And, you know, because it sounds like you're endorsing it.
00:19:54.180And I'm like, well, let's let's put it in context.
00:19:58.060You know, people with schizophrenia that don't get the proper treatment or care in California, they end up in prison in these plexiglass cells by themselves.
00:20:06.080Bad things happen, you know, plexiglass, so they can kind of wash down the walls that get filthy.
00:20:13.760Um, this person in that Rene saved has his own car, has his own apartment, has a job.
00:20:23.020He still sometimes has psychotic delusions.
00:20:25.620Like Rene said, he just called me this week and he was like, there's people staring at me through my window.
00:20:30.500And Rene goes, try closing the curtains.
00:20:33.700And, you know, and he goes, okay, that works.
00:20:56.480You know, and so you're, so I think you're right, because I think we do need to talk about it because, you know, we need to know that I think the big lessons are it's really hard.
00:21:07.480Some amount of coercion, some amount of involuntary hospitalization is definitely the right way to go.
00:21:13.460And also is the right way to go, according to people with, who have had schizophrenia.
00:21:19.020You know, nobody wants to get to a situation where the people with schizophrenia, they tell horror stories of being restrained.
00:21:24.620And anything to avoid restraints, anything to avoid really harsh physical treatment of people with mental illness, we should try to do.
00:21:34.740And if that means sometimes you've got to kind of grab them by the lapels and get them into the hospital, that's going to be justifiable over much worse treatment later on.
00:21:43.440And Michael, before we move on to the drugs issue, because obviously that will be a big part of the conversation.
00:21:48.940The one thing that I always find incredibly frustrating and confusing is that these very simple, not simple, but these very practical, practical, that's what I was looking at.
00:22:01.620These very practical problems become politicized.
00:22:06.000Why is solving a practical problem like the fact that there are a lot of people who don't have somewhere to live and who are addicted to drugs or who are mentally ill on the streets?
00:22:15.060Why do we have to look at that through the lens of conservatism or progressivism or whatever?
00:22:20.880Why can't that just be a thing that gets solved by people who understand how that the Rene's of the world?
00:22:26.380Why can't we just get a Rene in charge of it and a bunch of other Rene's to run the thing and let the people who are professionals and experts in that field do the best that they know to do?
00:22:36.340And instead, we seem to be listening to French philosophers and whoever else about how we should address this issue.
00:22:46.640And that's a huge motivation of mine for both of my books.
00:22:50.380And then the third one, which is what's going what's driving this, you know, what's what's really behind it.
00:22:58.120And so, you know, I mean, you know, the short answer is ideology.
00:23:02.580I want to go a little further and actually suggest that it is a religion, that it's a substitute religion, and that it engages in supernatural thinking and also is imposing a numerality.
00:23:15.860So, you know, yeah, I mean, there's sort of you go, there's a period in the late 19th century when we're, you know, struggling, but they're trying to, you know, deal with schizophrenia.
00:23:26.240There's all sorts of terrible treatments, but there's also some more positive ones.
00:23:32.440They did start to get some new drugs in the 50s.
00:23:34.860And we were probably on a path, we could have been on a path to really just treating psychiatry, you know, schizophrenics in the way that, that the Dutch do, which I think is, you know, I would say that's the best available treatment.
00:24:04.860Well, that story I just told, you know, is a big part of it, but it's, it's a significant, there's more, there's less of this kind of, you know, on the one hand, it's kind of namby-pamby liberal.
00:24:20.120And on the other hand, it's kind of more radical left.
00:24:22.900It's not like, well, who can really say who's mentally ill?
00:24:34.580Like, we can actually, we can have confidence in our ability to identify.
00:24:38.740Like, that guy, I just did an interview with a guy, I don't know if there was underlying mental illness or it was just addiction, but he tried to tell me he had the grand unified theory of physics, quantum, relativity, everything, string theory.
00:24:50.640Like, I asked him to explain to me, and he actually forgot one of the main branches of science.
00:25:01.000What he was saying didn't make any sense.
00:25:04.200Like, you don't, like, stop relativizing him.
00:25:07.160So the people that would relativize and go, well, who's to say maybe he's, no, he's obviously mentally ill or suffering drug addiction or both.
00:26:10.640Like I was watching this recent film on the Black Panthers and there was a moment where it was not just the Panthers, but also the Latino and the white radicals.
00:26:21.300And they were like, the police are, are, are, you know, abusing people.
00:26:42.840Like you're like, that just goes too far.
00:26:44.260On the other hand, it's not just going too far.
00:26:47.120It's also, there's something more, much more profound going on, which is an effort to undo these, these institutions of civilization.
00:26:56.260And I think that's where, that's where you get to this trilogy I'm working on is that it's impossible for me not to connect this effort to shut down mental hospitals and psychiatric hospitals, not reform them, shut them down and empty everybody into the streets.
00:27:11.460That looked, just the way in which that occurred, the people involved, the timing is that it is identical to kind of shutting down nuclear power plants, not wanting to build nuclear power plants in the 1960s.
00:27:26.000There's a kind of dogmatism behind it.
00:27:49.620They view them as barriers to creating an alternative society.
00:27:56.620And so there is a kind of, it's not just going too far.
00:27:59.000There's a specific group of people, what we call the radical left, and really, I believe, is a kind of religious movement that is looking to tear down these institutions because they have a really spiritual, supernatural view of what should replace them.
00:28:14.320No, that is obviously, I think anyone who watches our channel will appreciate that perspective on it.
00:28:21.440And it's one that I share wholeheartedly.
00:28:24.020The question I am still trying to work out for myself, Mike, and this is perhaps where you can help with your background being from that part of the political spectrum is why, let me put it simply, why do we give a shit what these crazy utopians say and what they want?
00:28:40.700Why does government listen to these people?
00:28:42.760Why are they seemingly running a lot of the major institutions, the education system?
00:28:47.860Why do we give them the opportunity to do this as a society?
00:28:54.060Well, I think there's sort of the, so then you kind of go, okay, so let's assume that there's only really a radical minority, a radical left minority that wants to truly tear down the institutions, which I believe and agree with.
00:29:04.820If you poll, if you take surveys, public opinion surveys, and you were asked that question, it would be a very small minority.
00:29:11.360I mean, maybe 5%, maybe, maybe more now.
00:29:14.820Most people, in fact, I did, I did poll people, by the way, I did surveys of the public, vast majority of people are on board with the kind of program that I'm describing 70 to 80% majority.
00:29:28.200Well, look, I mean, obviously a big part of this is just appealing to the heartstrings, you know, and that's involved misinformation.
00:29:34.720So the radical left, which knows very well that the people on the street are addicted to hard drugs, they, you know, they, I don't know if they are explicit about it, but they, they, they're using them to advocate for housing, for subsidized housing.
00:29:47.820They kind of wave away the addiction as a result of poverty rather than the cause of it.
00:29:52.760And then they, they kind of then just tried to trick everybody, you know, and it's kind of like, you know, I'm not, some of them are not even consciously doing it, but it's kind of like, oh, don't you care about this poor person?
00:30:34.560And there's something at its worst, there's something almost sociopathic about it.
00:30:38.780You know, there's something, there's dark, what we call the dark triad, which is sociopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism on the part of the, of the real leaders of this movement that really are,
00:30:49.160are doing this stuff to manipulate people.
00:30:52.580And then I think there's a, and then I have a, so that's kind of your average liberal type person.
00:30:57.620There are those conservatives who I think have had some part of this correct, which is that you can't just give things to people without asking for anything in return.
00:31:07.980That's something that I think the right, the political right has been saying for decades.
00:31:14.140So then the question is, why hasn't that succeeded politically?
00:31:18.680And in fact, why has it in some ways lost power over the last 30 years?
00:31:23.560And to some extent, I think there's reasons that have nothing to do with the political right.
00:31:27.280Right. Just, we're all much more coddled and spoiled and, and liberal and privileged.
00:31:31.960And there's just not a lot of sympathy for the more stoic, harder approach to life.
00:31:38.240I think another part of it though, is that the right has been unwilling to talk about the need for things like universal psychiatric care.
00:31:47.800And even has just been uncomfortable with psychology and psychiatry in general.
00:31:54.360I'm not totally sure I got to the bottom of it, but, you know, when you look at the deinstitutionalization of the psychiatric hospitals, both in Britain and the United States, it's being pushed by the radical left.
00:32:05.420But the kind of liberals then were like, yeah, it's got to be right because it's because everyone's intentions are good.
00:32:10.840And then conservatives kind of went along with it for cost-saving measures and also out of discomfort with psychiatry.
00:32:18.100Now, I think that's then changed in the Netherlands.
00:32:21.280Rene, my character from the Netherlands, and his wife, Delon, who, by the way, you know, could be prime minister one day.
00:32:29.420They are part of a center-right political party that actually formed in part in backlash to the open street, the open drug scenes in Amsterdam in the late 80s and early 1990s.
00:32:44.960So I guess I would say I have part of the reason I'm so obsessed with the Netherlands, because I also love them on the environment and energy.
00:32:53.040You know, they live below sea level and prove that sea level rise is not the end of the world.
00:32:56.920And part of the reason I love the Dutch so much is I do think they're a bit ahead of us.
00:33:01.040And so my hope is that there would be some sort of center-right, although I think it could possibly sit on the center-left, but maybe more difficultly, center-right political formation that would have majority power and governing power in the United States and other Western countries,
00:33:17.600because the Dutch have shown that that sort of political formation is not only viable, but then can actually fix the problem.
00:33:24.520Michael, before we move on to the drugs, the last question I want to ask you is this.
00:33:30.140We've been talking about, you know, the religion, progressivism and conservative.
00:33:35.840Isn't there also just a very human element to this, which is we don't want to admit to ourselves that just some people are always going to need to be looked after.
00:33:47.520Some people are never going to get better.
00:33:49.060Some people are always going to be vulnerable, and that is just the way it is.
00:33:55.240And that isn't something that we want to accept.
00:33:58.580I actually, oh, I was, I agreed with everything you were about to say until the very last thing you said.
00:34:04.560I think that that is what you said, what you said, that there's just some people that are going to have to be taken care of that are just, if we're honest, call them wards of the state, to use an ugly expression.
00:34:16.400But I think an honest one, that's, I find, I found that to be the place of the most common ground, including from dissident, radical left folks.
00:34:27.320I actually quote a few of them in the book.
00:34:29.960There's so, and in fact, on, on Twitter, there's some Marxists and socialist critics of liberalism.
00:34:38.280There are people that talk, they use the, they talk, they talk a lot of trash about the so-called professional managerial class.
00:34:45.800You know, sort of the spiked types, you know, former lefties or lefties where they have a more class-based view.
00:34:52.480Also, Christopher Lash is an important thinker in this tradition.
00:34:58.480This is not, you know, they're like, basically, they would say something like, socialists, you know, don't think it's humane to leave schizophrenics on the street.
00:35:07.420Like, there's nothing about Marx or socialism that would have you leave people with schizophrenia on the streets.
00:35:12.820At the same time, I find a number, I mean, I quote conservatives at the end of San Francisco saying, look, we just know that conservatives, intelligent conservatives know there's just a set of people you have to take care of.
00:35:24.760So, in some ways, I go, I like that as a starting place for some agreement.
00:35:39.080And I'm sorry, but there's just a handful, a tiny handful of people that are going to deny that somebody with schizophrenia has schizophrenia or some serious mental illness.
00:35:48.800And then you can kind of build from there.
00:35:50.700Then you, I think you're dealing with people with, you know, non-serious mental illness, including people suffering from drug addiction.
00:35:58.320And then there's some effort to make them independent.
00:36:00.520But, you know, honestly, even with some of those so-called wards of the state or people with schizophrenia, some of them can work.
00:36:05.660Like, you know, I mean, and so I think it's also a way to say we're never going to give up on anybody.
00:36:12.840You know, we're always going to be trying to help people to live their best possible selves and to be, you know, I think embracing, I think, into the center right, if that's what this is, a more psychologically aware, a more pro-psychiatry, a more psychiatry-positive outlook.
00:36:30.520Hmm. Michael, as you're talking, I just can't help this feeling like I know I've asked you this question before.
00:36:38.100I'm going to try again. Why is it about politics?
00:36:41.380This is not an issue that should be about.
00:36:43.780I don't I don't care if the I'm not on the radical left.
00:37:08.800And to me, it seems just ridiculous that we go, oh, but conservatives and, you know, why can't we just leave this to people who actually know what they're doing?
00:37:17.440Like, have we lost the ability to do that entirely?
00:38:19.980I will say, though, that while I think that's the right solution, I don't think it's it wouldn't be accurate to describe.
00:38:27.280I mean, the book is still called Why Progressives Ruin Cities because it wasn't an equal role played by conservatives and progressives.
00:38:34.980And so I think when I go all the way to the bottom to answer your question, how did something that should be dealt with as a medical issue, as it's almost a technical question or a scientific question, how did it get politicized?
00:38:48.320It's it's really the radical left that was doing that.
00:38:51.560It wasn't conservatives in part because conservatives had their own religion or have their own religion.
00:38:56.520Actually, I'm working on a piece called, you know, the reason, you know, basically explaining the reason that that the radical left is doing this is because they're looking for a new God.
00:39:06.700And so my my underlying argument is that the death of what Friedrich Nietzsche called the death of God, which sociologists call secularization, which is basically the broad the increasing disbelief and traditional religion in afterlife, heaven or reincarnation or an all powerful, all seen God.
00:39:25.700The growing disbelief in that and the belief that our lives have no intrinsic meaning, that we don't have a soul, that there's no real reason or purpose for us to be here.
00:39:34.440That as that that alternative, that so-called atheistic or secular view has grown, it's increased anxiety and that part of the purpose of religion and what religion does is it provides us with comfort and and security.
00:39:47.480And without that, most people, including people who think that they're secular, will construct an alternative religion.
00:39:55.260And they've done that with that's what wokeism is, complete with an apocalyptic view of climate change, a supernatural view of race.
00:40:03.780You know, I always point out, you know, why is it that if I became a woman, if I declare myself a woman tomorrow, I would be applauded by progressives.
00:40:11.860But if I came out as African-American, I would be demonized and ostracized.
00:40:16.340The only explanation for that arbitrary, you know, identity, identity categorization is a supernatural view, you know, both of gender and of race, actually.
00:40:27.800So this is we're dealing with a, you know, we're as my friend John McWhorter points out in his new book, Woke Racism.
00:40:35.420You know, it's like we're witnessing the emergence of a new pagan religion in the same way that the Romans witnessed the birth of Christianity.
00:40:43.440I don't think it can survive in the sense that it's it's destroys civilization.
00:40:49.100If you if you are basically saying that we should not enforce the laws equally, which is what woke religion is saying, which is what the radical left is saying, which is what they're doing, which is why we have, you know, 200,000 people in the streets.
00:41:37.960We're liberal and we're democratic and our institutions fix themselves.
00:41:41.820But we're definitely in the midst of an epical change, I believe, that's going on right now as we speak around politics, around what left and right even mean and around what what are the big issues of the day and what we need to be worried about and how to solve them.
00:41:58.340And one of the issues that we're talking about a lot is the decriminalization of drugs, particularly of marijuana, in order to one of the things in order to solve this problem.
00:42:16.900And these people are addicted to hard drugs, whether it be fentanyl, heroin, whatever it may be.
00:42:22.780They need the proper help given to them.
00:42:25.500Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, in terms of I think it all depends, as you might imagine, on what we mean by decriminalization.
00:42:34.500So when I stopped doing this, I when I was doing this work in the late 90s and I got out of it around 2000, my understanding was that there would be decriminalization.
00:42:45.360But addicts, particularly ones who were breaking the laws, would be would be mandated rehabilitation.
00:42:55.580We just did the decriminalization part without mandating rehabilitate without mandating rehab or even enforcing the laws when addicts break the law and they break the law like every day.
00:43:07.240So, yes, if you have consequences for behavioral disorders, decriminalization can work.
00:43:15.060Now, decriminalization doesn't mean there's no consequences.
00:43:17.880It just means that it's not a felony to be using drugs.
00:43:22.120There are benefits to that because it does mean that people can get help without fearing prison.
00:43:27.100But if you don't have the mandatory rehab, then it's not going to work.
00:43:31.620So I actually went in because one of the things you hear people sometimes say, well, if we just had more if we had decriminalization, then there'd be less addiction.
00:43:42.820You know, people when drugs become cheaper and more available, addiction goes up.
00:43:47.420I mean, that's part of how we had the crack epidemic method is part of why we have a drug problem is that drugs have become much cheaper and more available.
00:43:55.500In part, just through supply chain efficiencies, you know, drug dealers are really good at bringing drugs into different countries.
00:44:04.260And clearly have outpaced law enforcement every step of the way.
00:44:06.960I personally, that's one issue where I remain, I hold a continue to have a left of center view, which is that I just don't think you can stop the drugs from coming in.
00:44:16.220It's too easy to get drugs into countries, especially when they're so concentrated.
00:44:21.020So that's why I tend to focus on dealing with behavioral disorders of addicts in public.
00:44:28.160I just don't think there's much stomach.
00:44:43.940But I don't think it should be a law enforcement priority.
00:44:46.720On the other hand, if your addiction is leading you to break the law, defecate in public, camp in public, steal, commit crimes, then you should be arrested and you should be given the choice of prison or rehab.
00:44:57.260And Michael, one of the things that I think a lot of people haven't quite got a grasp of, certainly here in the UK and perhaps much around the world,
00:45:07.860is the extent to which this lack of enforcement of the law and the decriminalization of certain disruptive behavior has occurred in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco,
00:45:20.520to the point where, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm seeing reports of the bubonic plague making a comeback in certain quarters because of the human feces that are everywhere.
00:45:31.900You've got decriminalization of theft.
00:45:35.240So if you walk into a store in California in certain places and you steal things from that store,
00:45:42.120if it's under like $1,000 or $900, you don't get prosecuted for that, et cetera, et cetera.
00:45:49.740I mean, this sounds to me as an outsider, and again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
00:45:53.860I really genuinely hope it's not as bad.
00:45:56.700This is like the breakdown of society happening on a localized scale on certain pockets and certain streets in a major Western city.
00:46:08.540It's the breakdown of the civilization.
00:46:10.620It's one of the many ways in which Western civilization is falling apart, a trend that was accelerated by COVID.
00:46:19.700I mean, basically, every important institution is under attack.
00:46:25.080We have 400 fewer police officers in San Francisco than we need for the minimum.
00:46:30.180We have these spectacular crimes going on.
00:46:32.540They've boarded up all of the luxury, I mean, not just luxury, but also the mid-range shops in Union Square,
00:46:40.000which is the kind of world-famous shopping center of San Francisco.
00:46:44.220You know, it's where the ice skating rink is, and it's the romantic Christmas, Macy's Christmas tree part of San Francisco.
00:46:52.060So, yeah, it's, you know, we used to have these, you know, slum neighborhoods or the ghetto where there would be open drug use.
00:47:01.300And the city had a policy of containment, just trying to contain all of the dysfunction in a single neighborhood.
00:47:07.800Basically, what's happened, I mean, the reason I have a book out on this issue is because they were no longer able to contain the problem in a few neighborhoods, and it just spreads all over the city.
00:47:20.420You know, yeah, human feces everywhere.
00:47:22.180They've decided to solve it not by, you know, requiring people to sleep indoors and use the bathrooms indoors, but actually just having either port-a-potties and also just doing a lot of street cleaning.
00:47:33.260So the problem is that San Francisco is so wealthy, it just ends up paying more and more money for different services.
00:47:38.020We spend about $100,000 per homeless person to let them sleep in tents on the street.
00:47:43.680So, you know, it's an amazing situation.
00:47:48.880But yeah, I view civilization as under attack.
00:47:52.640It sounds very melodramatic, I know, but the electrical, our energy systems are, you know, we're basically in a global energy crisis in part because there is a big effort to move away from reliable energy to unreliable energy.
00:48:06.680Our universities no longer teach what you would consider a liberal arts education.
00:48:12.240They teach really something more like victim ideology or woke ideology.
00:48:18.120Our psychiatric hospitals are not allowed to function.
00:48:21.260Our police departments are under attack and the police are leaving because they don't want to work in conditions of ongoing harassment from radical left activists who throw feces and urine at them and call them fascists and sue them and try to get them to commit violence so that they can attack the police some more.
00:48:43.320It's not great, it's not great, it's not great, guys, makes for interesting, makes for interesting journalism.
00:48:51.660I mean, I find myself writing stories now about crime and I never was interested in crime.
00:49:00.060But now crime, I think, is like the most interesting, one of the most interesting subjects in American life right now.
00:49:07.440That's a bad, that shows that things are in a bad way here.
00:49:13.320What you have just said, Michael, isn't a society falling apart.
00:49:18.040The picture that you've just painted is a society that's failed.
00:49:22.820To me, that is a society that has reached crisis point.
00:49:27.080And if something isn't done soon, it's over, isn't it?
00:49:36.240I mean, non-linear trends, faith in something.
00:49:40.980You know, I mean, you know, I laugh at like the thing I'm about to say, but I mean, because I do come from the left.
00:49:50.740But I mean, a friend of mine was like describing Margaret Thatcher and how she came to power against a complete shutdowns, you know, by the coal miners and by, I think, the garbage unions.
00:50:00.360And, you know, New York had a big garbage strike in the 70s.
00:50:03.660And, you know, everybody says, everybody's talking about, and I agree, you're like, it is just like the 70s.
00:50:10.180Like, are we headed for stagflation next, which is like a complete vacuum of political leadership, particularly on the left.
00:50:19.800But even a significant amount of confusion on the right in some places, although some of that may be changing.
00:50:30.000You know, I think that the moment is clearly ripe for some political leadership.
00:50:34.140I mean, I wrote the book with the hope that somebody would seize that mantle.
00:50:37.100But, you know, I do think you need something that is not what left and right have traditionally been to articulate a solution to this crisis.
00:50:49.840I mean, I think, as you suggested, what you need is someone who can bring people together around that 70, 80 percent of people who are who are not insane on either extreme.
00:51:01.900And that's generally the people that tend to win elections historically and make big progress in society.
00:51:09.320You know, whatever you think of Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher, they commanded the respect of the majority of the society at the time because they delivered big pro whatever your definition of the word progress is.
00:51:22.060They delivered big, positive change in society that made made people's lives better.
00:51:28.700But the one thing that I always admire very much about the American system, Michael, is that you have 50 states and each state has the ability to do things the way it wants.
00:51:40.260And what you've seen in California in particular is a lot of people who are creative, who are successful, who don't want to live in human feces.
00:51:48.520They just took their business and went elsewhere.
00:51:50.440Do you think some of those market forces will will help to drive like, you know, when California runs out of money because there's nobody generating tax revenue there?
00:52:01.720Do you think that will be the sort of thing that pushes this agenda forward?
00:52:05.000Or do you think that the progressives are so obsessed with the ideological side of this that they genuinely don't care about the consequences?
00:52:11.680Yeah, I mean, I mean, I agree with what you said.
00:52:16.640I mean, I think there's going to be a political response.
00:52:19.500It'll have to be a political response.
00:52:21.320There is a political response going on.
00:52:23.480You know, you saw there's a big upset election in Virginia.
00:52:25.900Virginia, you know, important state in the United States should have been won by the Democrat, won by the Republican.
00:52:31.860Republican, very disciplined person, very disciplined campaign.
00:52:37.020They figured out, you know, I mean, I mean that in contrast to Donald Trump.
00:52:41.680I mean, this is a guy that got elected governor of Virginia who really changed who I mean, really presented himself as he needed to do in a really disciplined way and and then won a pretty decisive victory.
00:52:54.340And then Republicans almost won in New Jersey.
00:52:57.280Something like that is going to happen a lot more.
00:53:00.000And, you know, I do think the right is is going to divide is divided over Trump.
00:53:09.380And the left is now has a vacuum of leadership at the very top.
00:53:14.820Right. I mean, neither the and not only I mean, it's really interesting.
00:53:19.020Neither our president or our vice president is really leading in the sense of even being the leader of their own party.
00:53:26.220If there's a leader of the Democratic Party now, it's Nancy Pelosi who runs, you know, one of the houses of Congress.
00:53:31.680So I think we're in a really interesting vacuum of leadership now.
00:53:38.400I do think that, you know, nature abhors a vacuum.
00:53:41.460So there will be that vacuum will be occupied by new leaders.
00:53:45.440And so in some ways, I do think we're headed for a really interesting period.
00:53:50.340You know, I think we're definitely in the post neoliberal.
00:53:53.860You know, we're in the post Clintonian, post Blairian period.
00:53:58.480And it does seem like it's things are going to shift back more to the political right.
00:54:04.480You know, I mean, even the United States, it's interesting because even before the trouble with the current president, you know, there's all these demographic trends that showed that really Republicans were likely to kind of, you know, regain and probably maintain control of the Senate long term.
00:54:17.820They have control of the Supreme Court.
00:54:21.960But now just because of the vacuum of leadership on the left, it does seem like there's an opportunity for for leadership on the right if it's, of course, not blocked by by Trump.
00:54:32.140So anyway, I don't mean to get into current events too much because.
00:54:36.060I was actually going to ask you when you talk about the situation on the right with Donald Trump.
00:54:42.260I take it your interpretation is that he's too incendiary and characters like him cannot unite a majority of the country around in the sort of Thatcher stroke Blair kind of way talking in UK.
00:55:00.320I mean, I view Trump as a transitional figure, as a as chaos, as super clown energy, maybe coyote.
00:55:14.640I mean, you know, like if you kind of mythologically look at it, which sometimes helps, you know, to get away from the kind of day to day, he's like the Joker.
00:55:23.840You know, I mean, one thing you have to remember about Trump is he's really funny, actually.
00:55:27.280Liberals don't liberals don't like it and they don't get it, but he's funny.
00:56:07.300You know, strong men, especially if they're from the military, these are disciplined people.
00:56:11.080He's much more chaotic, you know, much more like Hugo Chavez or something where there are temporary sort of just burst of chaos and clown fire energy and everything burns.
00:56:23.860And then kind of what's left remaining is, OK, Republicans are, you know, after like after all that, you're like, OK, Republicans are mostly against invading other countries in favor of keeping Medicare and Social Security, which are the entitlements.
00:56:44.280And it's a nationalist party like you kind of go.
00:56:46.700That's kind of what gets left over after you remove Trump from the equation.
00:56:50.020But the problem with Trump is that if he gets, you know, if he gets the nomination or if he became president again, it's just it's almost like you couldn't do any of the agenda because there's just too much.
00:57:05.300And his opponents, there would be no one for him to kind of work with on the other side.
00:57:10.460Whereas if you got more of a Reagan type figure who was more disciplined implementing if someone more like the Virginia, the governor of Virginia, the newly elected Republican governor of Virginia, you could see him finding some compromises with Democrats.
00:57:25.300And in really forcing the Democrats to make some compromises because of his political popularity and strength.
00:57:31.700Michael, do you think we're going to see a resurgence of populism?
00:57:36.200Particularly in America with all with all the with all the problems that you've just detailed.
00:57:40.520Well, I mentioned one of the first things I saw of you guys was an incredible conversation you had with this scholar on the rise of populism.
00:58:31.760It's going to happen a ton more, I think.
00:58:35.560And that's going to bring its own set of challenges and chaos could be positive, could be very negative, could be very positive, could be very negative.
00:58:45.900I mean, that's like, you know, that's the moment that we're in, though.
00:58:50.980And given from, you know, we've spoken to people who are close to to the big Don, he's definitely going to run again, it looks like.
00:59:00.540And you talk about people are going to have a populist appetite.
00:59:04.180I mean, that is a nightmare waiting to happen altogether, if you ask me, because you bring that together.
00:59:11.760And look, you know, you mentioned Donald Trump being the strong man.
00:59:15.140I didn't feel that I didn't see any authoritarianism out of his presidency.
00:59:20.160You might have you could argue there was, you know, lack of focus, there was incompetence, there was inability to work with across the aisle.
00:59:29.340All of those things, I think, are true.
00:59:30.680But to me, the biggest thing was actually just the hysteria from the establishment in respect of him.
00:59:37.600I actually personally felt that the bulk of the the things that I might criticize Donald Trump for was not actually what he did, but just simply the fact that he elicited such a visceral reaction in a portion of society that is influential.
00:59:53.520And that's not even necessarily a criticism of him directly, I would say.
00:59:57.880But anyway, what you're predicting sounds to me like we're in for some absolute chaos coming going forward.
01:00:21.860So, yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I wrote I'm writing these books for an intellectual movement that I wanted to be a part of and support.
01:00:32.520And after I got done writing them, there is no more that movement no longer exists, which was the intellectual dark web of which you guys are clearly members.
01:00:42.200And I don't even care if you agree, because I just go, you're IDW.
01:01:38.040Right. But but nonetheless, I go, there's something clearly going on that's that's that I think is intellectual, you know, that is like a salon, that's podcasts, that's that's long.
01:01:54.080That's what Daniel Kahneman calls slow thinking.
01:01:58.680It's it's, you know, it's not Fox News.
01:02:02.200You know, there might be parts of Tucker Carlson that are IDW, but it's not it's long form.
01:02:10.380It has a kind of it's totally fine with gays and lesbians and frankly, with trans people.
01:02:17.320But it will push back against trans, crazy trans activists and crazy, you know, it believes in climate change and thinks climate change is a concern.
01:02:25.520We should do something about it. But it's anti apocalyptic.
01:02:28.520It's pushing back against the new religion.
01:02:30.620It's pushing back against the new dogmatism.
01:03:18.900And there's still a kind of so I kind of go there's that is real.
01:03:23.040And as soon as you say as soon as you describe who's in it and the thinking there, you can kind of go, well, it may not be mainstream.
01:03:31.880It may not be the center of the Overton window right now, but it's driving this debate.
01:03:36.680It's actually leading the conversation.
01:03:40.520The New York Times is describing, you know, I think Chris Ruffo is this really interesting person who I've gotten to know, but he's been basically single handedly taking taking down critical race theory in the United States.
01:03:51.140You know, he identifies at this point as Republican and conservative, but he's just clearly not like your dad's Republican.
01:04:02.620And so or what about a guy like Glenn Greenwald?
01:04:05.500You know, like sometimes I read Glenn Greenwald.
01:04:08.180I'm like, he hasn't changed anything in his view.
01:04:11.760Like his views are identical to what they were when I was reading him after 9-11.
01:04:17.700Like, I can't figure out anything he's changed his mind on.
01:04:20.300He's still an anti-imperialist socialist, as far as I can tell.
01:04:25.940But yet you kind of go, ah, it's probably something that has changed.
01:04:29.000You know, like I think there's something happening where us on the IDW side of things or on the kind of IDW left go, hey, I don't think crime is progressive or liberal.
01:04:41.380It seems like all the victims are like poor African-American, you know, like or, you know, disadvantaged people like crime is bad.
01:04:54.080And then you're kind of like, well, that's a pretty mainstream view that crime is bad.
01:04:59.840And and actually the idea that crime is not bad is completely marginal.
01:05:06.380And so you go, well, IDW folks are articulating, I think, a new mainstream view.
01:05:16.100You know, Joe Rogan's not proselytizing ivermectin, but he took it.
01:05:20.340You know, and you kind of go, there's some folks in this movement that you kind of go, you're taking some kind of you sound kind of dogmatic, dude.
01:05:28.700And probably I sound that way to people on things like nuclear power.
01:05:31.660But you kind of go, yeah, ivermectin may not be the right solution.
01:05:40.260But I also kind of go, how much more pressure are we going to put on members of our society to get it, you know, and so you get to some kind of practice.
01:05:49.600I think you were sort of saying, Constantine, like there's a practicalness here in the IDW.
01:05:56.820I think the best of the IDW that we want to hold on to and a kind of populism, too.
01:06:03.940Yeah, Mike, you know, that I think I want to hold on.
01:06:13.600The one thing I hope we can retain now that you've you've conscripted us into that, you're the first person to ever suggest that we are in the IDW.
01:06:21.280And I gratefully accept that with all the consequences that it brings.
01:06:26.300But like the one thing that I think is very important as a new member of the IDW is tolerance of people with different views.
01:06:34.680That's the one thing that will break it if it's not maintained.
01:06:38.960And I think COVID is rapidly stress testing that sense that, look, I love Brett and Heather.
01:07:18.040You know, like there's a respect for difference of opinion.
01:07:21.840I mean, to me, that used to be the sign of intelligent people, that they're able to disagree about important things and retain friendships and retain mutual respect.
01:07:31.460And that's my only hope is that we don't lose that in this process.
01:07:35.820And I do see one or two people straying into territory, which I do think is unhelpful in that respect.
01:07:45.800And so, you know, and you kind of go, it might be that, look, because of course, if IDW is just, we're a bunch of people that are open-minded, then it's not really like a thing.
01:08:03.480And part of me was just more ambitious in the sense that, you know, I kind of was like, I was like, here's what I think the IDW should be, you know, in both Apocalypse Never and in San Francisco.
01:08:19.300I mean, I'm kind of like, I don't know, whatever, I'm not sure what it would mean to not be tolerant, but certainly I'll have the debate or argument with anybody about the ideas in the book.
01:08:26.640But for me, I think the potential of something like the IDW is to have a view of these things.
01:08:35.200And that doesn't mean that you're like kicking people out of the cool kids club because they are ivermectin users.
01:08:42.060But it would be kind of more like, yeah, there's kind of a recognizably IDW take on that.
01:08:53.520Just, you know, happy to be, you know, having these conversations.
01:08:56.620But it does feel to me like IDW had the potential to be something like the, I mean, the classic intellectual movement of late was really the neocons that came out of the radical left, where there was this really influential movement, the neocons that gave rise to Reagan and Thatcher.
01:09:17.600And that there was needing to be something, something like that, again, to kind of revive moribund, a moribund, call it center right politics for lack of a better descriptor, but something that was not, was not exactly Trumpy, Trumpy, but appreciated some of Trump's interventions in the culture, not socialist, but maybe appreciated some things that Bernie Sanders was saying.
01:09:44.520And the need for things like universal healthcare, universal psychiatry, that kind of thing.
01:09:49.300And that there would be something at the end of it that was like a recognizable agenda.
01:09:54.240That was my, that's part of my ambition.
01:09:56.300And it may be, it may not be something that we can realize, but for me, I kind of go, I kind of have some faith that once I get everybody in the IDW to read my books, we'll get you all to agree that that's the right IDW agenda.
01:10:12.080Well, I suppose on that happy note, we're going to, we're going to ask you a couple of questions for our locals, for our members only in a second.
01:10:18.680But before we do that, we've got one more question for you as always.
01:10:20.960Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?
01:10:28.520Do we all, don't we all need a spiritual, don't we all need a spirituality?
01:10:34.740Even if you think you don't, and then if you don't have one, aren't you going to create one?
01:10:42.780Aren't you really going to create one secretly that you're unaware of and unconscious to, and it's going to do bad things to you?
01:10:48.980That's what I want to talk about is like, are humans just, is this just like, like you need food, you need water, you need love, you need work, you need meaningful work.
01:10:58.040But don't you kind of need a sense of spirituality too?
01:11:02.660That's what I think we should talk about.
01:11:04.500Is this the point, Michael, you're going to bring the crystals out?