TRIGGERnometry - How the Radical Left Has Inflamed Mental Illness, Addiction and Homelessness ｜ Michael Shellenberger

00:00:00.000 If the radical left come up with a good solution to this issue, I will happily back it.

00:00:04.980 If the right do, I will happily back it.

00:00:07.360 I care about solving the problem.

00:00:10.720 And to me, it seems just ridiculous that we go, oh, but conservatives and, you know,

00:00:16.080 why can't we just leave this to people who actually know what they're doing?

00:00:19.900 Have we lost the ability to do that entirely?

00:00:24.020 Sure feels like that.

00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:34.020 I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:35.400 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:36.560 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:42.200 Our brilliant guest today, I am delighted to say, is the one and only Michael Schellenberger,

00:00:46.460 who's here to talk about the second of a trilogy of books.

00:00:49.240 This one is called San Francisco, and it's about the way progressives ruin cities.

00:00:53.520 Michael, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:55.500 Thanks so much for having me on, guys.

00:00:57.000 I'm a huge fan.

00:00:58.120 Well, we are huge fans of yours as well, so we really appreciate you finding the time

00:01:02.080 to talk to us.

00:01:03.200 Let's get straight into it.

00:01:04.600 Before we do, though, tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you

00:01:09.280 are, what has been your journey through life?

00:01:10.720 Because you've done a lot of stuff.

00:01:11.840 You've run for governor in California.

00:01:13.860 You've written a ton of books.

00:01:14.900 You've done all sorts of stuff.

00:01:15.960 So give us, give our audience a little flavor of what you've been up to.

00:01:19.740 Sure.

00:01:20.060 So I am a 27-year resident of California.

00:01:26.560 I'm 50.

00:01:27.420 I'm a lifelong liberal activist.

00:01:30.840 I really came out of the radical left.

00:01:33.260 I'm now a journalist and an author.

00:01:35.820 I have a small research organization in Berkeley, California.

00:01:39.080 Best known for my work on the environment.

00:01:41.120 I had a book on the environment come out last year called Apocalypse Never, Why Environmental

00:01:44.720 Alarmism Hurts Us All.

00:01:46.500 I'm a big advocate of nuclear energy, have been for 10 years, been helping to build a

00:01:51.380 pro-nuclear movement around the world.

00:01:54.080 But I'm also someone that's been very concerned about the growing homeless problem where I live

00:01:59.180 in California.

00:02:00.140 It's something I've always been concerned about, have always understood is a problem of

00:02:04.520 addiction, mental illness.

00:02:06.900 Also, expensive housing plays a role.

00:02:08.540 And I wanted to understand more about what was happening to my city, state, and country.

00:02:17.040 And therefore, I did this book, San Francisco, which came out last month.

00:02:22.180 And a very good book it is.

00:02:23.540 And Michael, I imagine you being a very smart and well-researched man, you'll be aware of

00:02:27.680 this.

00:02:27.880 But it's not just California.

00:02:29.620 It's not just San Francisco.

00:02:30.780 The one thing that always horrified Francis and I when we used to walk around London before

00:02:35.640 the pandemic was there's tents everywhere, people on the streets everywhere.

00:02:41.360 There's, you know, you go to Trafalgar Square, supposedly one of the greatest tourist attractions

00:02:45.160 in London, and often you'll see a massive queue of people just queuing up to be served

00:02:50.240 hot food in the middle of winter.

00:02:52.860 You know, it seems to be happening all over the Western world.

00:02:56.160 Why are so many people now living on the streets of our cities?

00:03:01.040 Yeah, the big issue is untreated mental illness and addiction everywhere.

00:03:04.860 That's true for Europe as much as the United States.

00:03:08.300 There are some migrants that constitute the European homeless population.

00:03:13.360 There's obviously always been Roma that have also been part of the European homeless population.

00:03:18.280 But the big increases that you're seeing, the people that look like they're drug addicts,

00:03:22.980 dirty clothing, you know, been on the streets for a long time.

00:03:28.140 Those are folks suffering from serious mental, untreated mental illness or addiction.

00:03:32.780 And some, we can get to the difference.

00:03:34.540 Some people think that there's no difference.

00:03:37.820 That's a big cause of the increase.

00:03:39.600 And the major, one of the major factors for it is that hard drugs became a lot less, a lot less expensive.

00:03:45.740 The first so-called homeless crisis in the 80s was really driven by cheap crack.

00:03:50.160 Cocaine 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.

00:04:02.620 And then we had a heroin shows up more in the late 80s, early 1990s in Europe and the United States.

00:04:08.300 And 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.

00:04:21.520 You know, there is huge differences.

00:04:23.240 Scotland has a worse drug problem than the United States right now.

00:04:26.760 But the Netherlands has a fraction of the deaths that we have in the United States.

00:04:33.560 I think it's somewhere around, you know, two or three percent of the death toll that we have.

00:04:40.060 So San Francisco argues that this is a totally solvable problem.

00:04:42.680 But we have to first recognize that we're dealing with a problem of addiction and untreated mental illness.

00:04:46.720 And has mental illness increased in in recent years?

00:04:51.940 You know, people might I think more people feel that they have mental illness now.

00:04:56.020 Is that borne out by the statistics and more people actually mentally ill?

00:05:01.160 That's a very interesting question.

00:05:03.220 And even the way you asked is very, very interesting.

00:05:06.280 So 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.

00:05:15.840 And there's a lot of disciplines where there's debates around the existence of a central category like an anthropology.

00:05:21.860 It's not clear what culture is exactly.

00:05:24.500 But mental illness has always been contested.

00:05:26.320 There's always definitely been people that felt like so-called mentally ill people are not really mentally ill.

00:05:30.760 They might even be spiritually superior.

00:05:33.460 They might be what we now politically correct called neuro atypical.

00:05:37.480 There'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.

00:05:45.840 The most distinctive version of it is schizophrenia.

00:05:48.360 But interestingly enough, you know, British doc, British, like there's a famous study of British psychiatrists and American psychiatrists diagnosing the same people.

00:05:56.660 But as I think the Brits would label things more likely as bipolar disorder and American psychiatrists as schizophrenia.

00:06:04.860 So the very question of what mental illness is, has come under question.

00:06:09.260 Then 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,

00:06:21.280 really argued that mental illness was socially constructed as a way to control different people.

00:06:28.460 And 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.

00:06:37.360 And 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.

00:06:51.460 But that was there was a broader agenda there that then influenced how we see mental illness.

00:06:56.740 So now I think, Konstantin, I may have already digressed too far from your original question.

00:07:03.020 Am I going where you want me to go or did you have some?

00:07:05.220 No, no, no. Well, actually, I mean, the problem we have is we are keen to sort of spend less time talking about wokeness.

00:07:13.080 But wherever every rock we lift, Michel Foucault pops out.

00:07:17.980 So I don't really know where to go with that. 0.70

00:07:20.480 But I guess the basic point is, are we seeing an increase in people who are mentally ill?

00:07:27.660 OK. 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?

00:07:38.320 You know, that was my basic question. And Francis has a ton of questions for you as well.

00:07:41.760 OK, well, let me get to the first. So the first is that there is basic agreement.

00:07:45.480 I would say there's pretty broad agreement among experts and even probably policymakers and activists that serious mental illness is a separate category.

00:07:54.440 And 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.

00:08:13.320 And then there's sort of everyday anxiety and depression that that I think a lot of us have.

00:08:18.700 If 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.

00:08:28.900 Do I have a mental illness? I'm sure somebody could argue that I do. 0.98

00:08:33.220 That'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.

00:08:41.180 You know, the runner's high is real. That was a study a few years ago.

00:08:45.120 But I think there's evidence that a lot of us benefit from physical activity at a mental level.

00:08:49.420 And I think there's a lot of evidence that we're not getting that.

00:08:52.560 And that also there's been big changes to the Western diet in particular that have been quite negative.

00:08:58.600 In Apocalypse Never, I reviewed the evidence showing that that high levels of carbohydrate consumption, a high level of protein consumption,

00:09:05.700 even all foods obviously has negative physical effects, but also potentially mental health effects.

00:09:10.400 And 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.

00:09:25.140 You 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.

00:09:36.920 You 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,

00:09:51.780 the goal here should not be to create passionless people or to or to get rid of sadness.

00:09:57.440 That would be pointless. But I do think it's fair to say, and I think it even accelerated significantly more in the pandemic.

00:10:03.280 I 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.

00:10:17.640 I think those things clearly have been increasing for decades, arguably for even longer.

00:10:24.440 If you kind of go, these are really problems that emerge as you move from the farm to the city with urbanization.

00:10:29.740 So, yeah, I would say there's a long term trend towards rising mental illness and other sort of mental disorders.

00:10:37.700 And 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.

00:10:48.560 We see declining sex among young people.

00:10:51.240 We see a lot of declining risk taking, which is a real problem.

00:10:55.640 Similarly, Jonathan Haidt.

00:10:57.500 So, 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.

00:11:08.080 Michael, in the 1980s in this country, you probably know this.

00:11:12.640 Margaret Thatcher, one of her policies was closing down a lot of mental health hospitals in this country, 0.89

00:11:18.040 putting in what is called care in the community and essentially leaving a lot of these people to fend for themselves.

00:11:25.300 Has that been a major cause of what we're now seeing?

00:11:30.100 For sure it has.

00:11:31.020 And the United States is at an even more extreme level than Britain.

00:11:34.180 But 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, 1.00

00:11:42.500 which constitute a significant amount of the people on the streets.

00:11:45.080 Basically, 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,

00:11:55.960 out of barns where they were being chained up.

00:11:58.700 Mentally, seriously mentally ill people were killed a lot in the past.

00:12:01.320 Very difficult people to deal with, people having delusions, including delusions of grandeur or what we call lack of insight now,

00:12:11.040 which is this phenomenon where crazy people that are insane, mentally ill,

00:12:16.260 think 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 0.95

00:12:22.840 and that everybody else is crazy or not.

00:12:26.720 And those are very difficult people in general because it's part of the mental illness.

00:12:33.260 So, yeah.

00:12:33.900 Nowadays, Michael, we give them a YouTube channel.

00:12:36.400 Bring time to get on with it.

00:12:39.540 I was going to say, yeah, exactly.

00:12:42.420 So, yeah, we all podcast.

00:12:45.940 So, yeah, I mean, so there was then a backlash.

00:12:49.040 Then basically what happens, you go through the Great Depression, you go through World War II in the United States,

00:12:53.240 really around the Western world, and there's a lot of mistreatment of people in these hospitals,

00:12:57.580 these mental hospitals, these mental institutions, Bedlam, of course, being the most famous of Bethlehem and in Britain, 1.00

00:13:03.760 you know, that these hospitals just were understaffed.

00:13:08.400 You know, the societies didn't take care of them because it's a difficult population.

00:13:12.620 Families with mentally ill family members often don't properly take care of their own family members because they're so difficult.

00:13:20.620 So then we overreacted and there was a lot of utopianism in terms of how we could help integrate people into the community.

00:13:28.780 In some places that they did a better job than others.

00:13:31.260 They did a better job in Netherlands than they did in Britain,

00:13:34.600 and they did a better job in Britain than they did in the United States.

00:13:38.500 And this was also politicized.

00:13:40.780 And so there was basically the radical left was using mentally ill people as pawns in

00:13:48.960 pursuing a utopian view that the mentally ill should be roaming free and that they should be completely integrated.

00:13:58.380 I mean, there's the most I thought there's a movie called Minari that won a bunch of awards in the United States,

00:14:05.340 I think a couple of years ago about a Korean family that starts a small farm in the South in the United States in like the 1980s.

00:14:12.520 And there's a character.

00:14:13.980 He's a farm laborer who clearly suffers from some kind of mental illness because he has delusions.

00:14:19.360 And it's a sweet portrayal of a well-integrated mentally ill person into a family's life in a community.

00:14:31.380 That's very difficult to do and very, very inarguably impossible to do at the mass level, at the urban cityscape level.

00:14:39.200 And so, yes, in answer to your question, that's been a big part of it.

00:14:43.460 And when those folks discover hard drugs, which make everybody's problems disappear for, you know, two to six hours,

00:14:51.540 it's really hard when you have addiction and mental illness.

00:14:54.580 And that's a big part of the of the so-called homeless population.

00:14:57.840 And it's also just as you touched on there, if we had communities which had families and there were core family structures

00:15:10.200 and 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.

00:15:19.100 They'd be more able to give them support.

00:15:21.140 But because we've all been so atomized now, it just seems more of these people, unfortunately, just fall through the cracks in society.

00:15:27.840 That's right. And so obviously one one approach.

00:15:33.900 I 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.

00:15:42.160 And that, interestingly enough, was the position taken by the radical left in relationship to mental illness in the 60s.

00:15:49.340 And other other countries, Netherlands, France, Japan, they're dealing with mentally ill people would just became more institutionalized.

00:16:01.000 They 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.

00:16:11.820 But not as much. And so my view is that we have to be pretty realistic.

00:16:17.940 And 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.

00:16:26.200 I 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.

00:16:33.100 At 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.

00:16:43.200 And 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.

00:16:53.160 Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many people on the street.

00:16:55.020 But we don't seem to be want to dealing with this because it's still a taboo subject, isn't it?

00:17:01.700 Like one of my cousins who developed schizophrenia had a breakdown and we gave her support and we did what was best for her.

00:17:10.940 But we didn't really talk about it. And that's an important part of the problem, isn't it?

00:17:15.160 Just talking about it and sharing, because unfortunately, there are schizophrenic people.

00:17:20.360 And if we actually discussed this and were more honest, we'd be able to deal with the situation better.

00:17:27.200 Yeah, absolutely. Right. I agree with you so much.

00:17:30.780 And, you know, my aunt, as I mentioned, my aunt has schizophrenia.

00:17:35.240 My parents are all psychologists, you know, like psychologists and teachers.

00:17:40.380 And so it's something that we talk and think a lot about.

00:17:44.080 But when it came time, I was like, well, I'm really excited to write about my aunt.

00:17:47.480 And I didn't find a lot of interest among my family members in talking about it.

00:17:52.840 And it took I'm sort of slow, you know, on the uptake.

00:17:55.180 And it took me a little bit to figure out kind of why nobody was really wanting to talk about it.

00:18:00.840 She was a really difficult person.

00:18:03.240 Schizophrenia is a really difficult mental illness.

00:18:06.700 And I think the good thing is for people that have had that in the family is that they know that.

00:18:11.700 And 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.

00:18:23.340 And I point out he looks just like the British action hero, Jason Statham.

00:18:27.320 You know, kind of a tough guy, but also super soft.

00:18:33.040 You know, he was actually a nurse.

00:18:35.460 And 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.

00:18:42.700 And they realized they had to arrest some of them.

00:18:45.420 They had to put pressure on them.

00:18:46.680 They had to intervene in the lives of addicts.

00:18:48.540 But he told a story where a friend of the family had a man, had the son, you know, just got schizophrenia.

00:18:56.640 You 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.

00:19:09.340 You know, it's really suggests some sort of biological mechanism, genetic mechanism is being triggered.

00:19:15.660 It'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.

00:19:27.040 And 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.

00:19:37.540 And 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.

00:19:44.080 And my staff, you know, my research colleagues and I were kind of like, they were like, that's pretty edgy.

00:19:51.980 And, you know, because it sounds like you're endorsing it.

00:19:54.180 And I'm like, well, let's let's put it in context.

00:19:58.060 You 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.

00:20:06.080 Bad things happen, you know, plexiglass, so they can kind of wash down the walls that get filthy.

00:20:13.760 Um, this person in that Rene saved has his own car, has his own apartment, has a job.

00:20:23.020 He still sometimes has psychotic delusions.

00:20:25.620 Like Rene said, he just called me this week and he was like, there's people staring at me through my window.

00:20:30.500 And Rene goes, try closing the curtains.

00:20:33.700 And, you know, and he goes, okay, that works.

00:20:36.760 I closed the curtains.

00:20:39.000 Um, that's a good outcome.

00:20:41.320 You know, people need to know that's a great outcome.

00:20:43.780 My aunt living in a group home never became an addict.

00:20:47.600 Never, as far as we know, you know, turned to sex work.

00:20:51.440 You know, smoked cigarettes and flirted with guys all day and chatted them up.

00:20:54.960 And that was it.

00:20:55.480 That's a good outcome.

00:20:56.480 You 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.

00:21:07.480 Some amount of coercion, some amount of involuntary hospitalization is definitely the right way to go.

00:21:13.460 And also is the right way to go, according to people with, who have had schizophrenia.

00:21:19.020 You know, nobody wants to get to a situation where the people with schizophrenia, they tell horror stories of being restrained.

00:21:24.620 And anything to avoid restraints, anything to avoid really harsh physical treatment of people with mental illness, we should try to do.

00:21:34.740 And 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.

00:21:43.440 And Michael, before we move on to the drugs issue, because obviously that will be a big part of the conversation.

00:21:48.940 The 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.

00:22:01.620 These very practical problems become politicized.

00:22:06.000 Why 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?

00:22:15.060 Why do we have to look at that through the lens of conservatism or progressivism or whatever?

00:22:20.880 Why can't that just be a thing that gets solved by people who understand how that the Rene's of the world? 1.00

00:22:26.380 Why 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?

00:22:36.340 And instead, we seem to be listening to French philosophers and whoever else about how we should address this issue.

00:22:42.680 Right, exactly. Great question.

00:22:46.640 And that's a huge motivation of mine for both of my books.

00:22:50.380 And then the third one, which is what's going what's driving this, you know, what's what's really behind it.

00:22:58.120 And so, you know, I mean, you know, the short answer is ideology.

00:23:02.580 I 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.

00:23:15.860 So, 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.

00:23:26.240 There's all sorts of terrible treatments, but there's also some more positive ones.

00:23:30.060 I think they're making progress.

00:23:31.500 It wasn't perfect.

00:23:32.440 They did start to get some new drugs in the 50s.

00:23:34.860 And 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. 0.98

00:23:47.980 It's gold standard.

00:23:49.060 That's the best we know how to do is what my, my, my character, Renee did.

00:23:53.320 It's can be kind of messy, but they basically have the best outcomes for the people with schizophrenia.

00:23:59.120 Why didn't you show?

00:24:00.740 Sorry to interrupt.

00:24:02.300 What do the Dutch do? 1.00

00:24:04.860 Well, 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.

00:24:20.120 And on the other hand, it's kind of more radical left.

00:24:22.900 It's not like, well, who can really say who's mentally ill? 0.99

00:24:28.220 It's like, no, like, shut up. 1.00

00:24:30.900 That's stupid. 1.00

00:24:31.660 Like, you know what I mean? 1.00

00:24:33.680 Like, we can do that.

00:24:34.580 Like, we can actually, we can have confidence in our ability to identify.

00:24:38.740 Like, 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.

00:24:50.640 Like, I asked him to explain to me, and he actually forgot one of the main branches of science.

00:24:58.800 He couldn't remember quantum mechanics.

00:25:01.000 What he was saying didn't make any sense.

00:25:04.200 Like, you don't, like, stop relativizing him.

00:25:07.160 So 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.

00:25:15.680 So there's some of that.

00:25:17.160 And then you kind of go, well, where does that come from?

00:25:18.940 Well, it really came from the radical left.

00:25:20.740 So sorry, but it does come from, this does come from Foucault.

00:25:24.140 So the question is, why do we listen to Foucault, right?

00:25:27.740 Like, why did Foucault, why was Foucault instantly an international bestseller?

00:25:33.040 I mean, he was first the darling of French mainstream news media.

00:25:37.140 I mean, I point out, too, people always look at the 60s as radical, but really the 50s is when it starts.

00:25:42.480 You know, why did all the Hollywood celebrities go and try to save a murderer and rapist from the death penalty in California?

00:25:50.980 They felt like it was cool.

00:25:52.480 It was and then it became, well, not just the death penalty, but really, we don't think people should be in prison.

00:25:58.800 You know, so there's this this is there's one idea that kind of goes, you know, progressives just go too far.

00:26:05.640 And I think there's a lot of that's a pretty good way to think about a lot of things.

00:26:09.060 I think they just go too far.

00:26:10.640 Like 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.

00:26:21.300 And they were like, the police are, are, are, you know, abusing people.

00:26:25.340 And I'm like, yeah, that's terrible.

00:26:26.760 We got to stop that.

00:26:27.440 And then they go, there should be no more police in our neighborhoods.

00:26:30.220 And I was like, whoa, whoa, that's where you go too far.

00:26:32.540 Like, I just saw the moment right there.

00:26:34.420 Like, police abuse should not happen.

00:26:38.160 That's yes, correct.

00:26:39.560 And we should fix that to there should be no police.

00:26:42.480 Right.

00:26:42.840 Like you're like, that just goes too far.

00:26:44.260 On the other hand, it's not just going too far.

00:26:47.120 It's also, there's something more, much more profound going on, which is an effort to undo these, these institutions of civilization.

00:26:56.260 And 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.

00:27:11.460 That 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.

00:27:26.000 There's a kind of dogmatism behind it.

00:27:30.220 There's a kind of irrationality.

00:27:32.420 There's a sense in which it's actually, it's not about the nuclear plants or the mental hospitals.

00:27:37.080 It's actually, they want to remake society in a utopian way.

00:27:41.000 And they view these institutions, which are really civilizing institutions.

00:27:45.480 They're actually liberal institutions.

00:27:47.660 They're actually progressive institutions.

00:27:49.620 They view them as barriers to creating an alternative society.

00:27:56.620 And so there is a kind of, it's not just going too far.

00:27:59.000 There'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.

00:28:14.320 No, that is obviously, I think anyone who watches our channel will appreciate that perspective on it.

00:28:21.440 And it's one that I share wholeheartedly. 0.99

00:28:24.020 The 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? 0.98

00:28:40.700 Why does government listen to these people? 0.99

00:28:42.760 Why are they seemingly running a lot of the major institutions, the education system?

00:28:47.860 Why do we give them the opportunity to do this as a society?

00:28:53.500 Right.

00:28:54.060 Well, 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.

00:29:04.820 If you poll, if you take surveys, public opinion surveys, and you were asked that question, it would be a very small minority.

00:29:11.360 I mean, maybe 5%, maybe, maybe more now.

00:29:14.820 Most 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.

00:29:26.900 So then what's going on?

00:29:28.200 Well, look, I mean, obviously a big part of this is just appealing to the heartstrings, you know, and that's involved misinformation.

00:29:34.720 So 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.

00:29:47.820 They kind of wave away the addiction as a result of poverty rather than the cause of it.

00:29:52.760 And 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?

00:30:05.460 Don't we just want to help them?

00:30:06.960 It's just that, you know, it's simple.

00:30:08.880 And most people don't think about this stuff.

00:30:11.260 And, and it's just at the level of charity.

00:30:13.940 And so it's sort of masking a much more radical agenda as charity.

00:30:19.160 And then charity appeals to basically everybody.

00:30:23.060 I mean, we probably have.

00:30:23.920 It's what I call weaponized empathy, Michael.

00:30:26.180 Weaponized empathy.

00:30:27.500 That's what it is.

00:30:28.060 I call it pathological altruism.

00:30:31.060 It's just as good.

00:30:32.740 Yeah.

00:30:33.120 Yeah.

00:30:33.400 But there's definitely, yeah.

00:30:34.560 And there's something at its worst, there's something almost sociopathic about it.

00:30:38.780 You 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,

00:30:49.160 are doing this stuff to manipulate people.

00:30:52.580 And then I think there's a, and then I have a, so that's kind of your average liberal type person.

00:30:57.620 There 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.

00:31:07.980 That's something that I think the right, the political right has been saying for decades.

00:31:14.140 So then the question is, why hasn't that succeeded politically?

00:31:18.680 And in fact, why has it in some ways lost power over the last 30 years?

00:31:23.560 And to some extent, I think there's reasons that have nothing to do with the political right.

00:31:27.280 Right. Just, we're all much more coddled and spoiled and, and liberal and privileged.

00:31:31.960 And there's just not a lot of sympathy for the more stoic, harder approach to life.

00:31:38.240 I think another part of it though, is that the right has been unwilling to talk about the need for things like universal psychiatric care.

00:31:47.800 And even has just been uncomfortable with psychology and psychiatry in general.

00:31:54.360 I'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.

00:32:05.420 But the kind of liberals then were like, yeah, it's got to be right because it's because everyone's intentions are good.

00:32:10.840 And then conservatives kind of went along with it for cost-saving measures and also out of discomfort with psychiatry.

00:32:18.100 Now, I think that's then changed in the Netherlands.

00:32:21.280 Rene, my character from the Netherlands, and his wife, Delon, who, by the way, you know, could be prime minister one day.

00:32:28.220 She's a very successful politician. 1.00

00:32:29.420 They 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.

00:32:44.960 So 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.

00:32:53.040 You know, they live below sea level and prove that sea level rise is not the end of the world.

00:32:56.920 And part of the reason I love the Dutch so much is I do think they're a bit ahead of us. 1.00

00:33:01.040 And 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,

00:33:17.600 because the Dutch have shown that that sort of political formation is not only viable, but then can actually fix the problem.

00:33:24.520 Michael, before we move on to the drugs, the last question I want to ask you is this.

00:33:30.140 We've been talking about, you know, the religion, progressivism and conservative.

00:33:35.840 Isn'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.

00:33:47.520 Some people are never going to get better.

00:33:49.060 Some people are always going to be vulnerable, and that is just the way it is.

00:33:55.240 And that isn't something that we want to accept.

00:33:58.580 I actually, oh, I was, I agreed with everything you were about to say until the very last thing you said.

00:34:04.560 I 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.

00:34:16.400 But 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.

00:34:27.320 I actually quote a few of them in the book.

00:34:29.960 There's so, and in fact, on, on Twitter, there's some Marxists and socialist critics of liberalism.

00:34:38.280 There are people that talk, they use the, they talk, they talk a lot of trash about the so-called professional managerial class.

00:34:45.800 You know, sort of the spiked types, you know, former lefties or lefties where they have a more class-based view.

00:34:52.480 Also, Christopher Lash is an important thinker in this tradition.

00:34:54.760 But they kind of go, this is bonkers.

00:34:58.480 This 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. 0.97

00:35:07.420 Like, there's nothing about Marx or socialism that would have you leave people with schizophrenia on the streets.

00:35:12.820 At 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.

00:35:24.760 So, in some ways, I go, I like that as a starting place for some agreement.

00:35:31.820 And that's why we call it cal-psych.

00:35:33.240 I mean, you start with people that, look, everybody agrees, people have schizophrenia.

00:35:36.760 I mean, Michel Foucault is dead.

00:35:39.080 And 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.

00:35:48.800 And then you can kind of build from there.

00:35:50.700 Then you, I think you're dealing with people with, you know, non-serious mental illness, including people suffering from drug addiction.

00:35:58.320 And then there's some effort to make them independent.

00:36:00.520 But, you know, honestly, even with some of those so-called wards of the state or people with schizophrenia, some of them can work.

00:36:05.660 Like, you know, I mean, and so I think it's also a way to say we're never going to give up on anybody.

00:36:12.840 You 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.

00:36:30.520 Hmm. Michael, as you're talking, I just can't help this feeling like I know I've asked you this question before.

00:36:38.100 I'm going to try again. Why is it about politics?

00:36:41.380 This is not an issue that should be about.

00:36:43.780 I don't I don't care if the I'm not on the radical left.

00:36:47.960 I'm not on the right either.

00:36:49.240 But let's say that the people I oppose the most are the two extremes, the radical left and the far right.

00:36:55.400 I don't care if the solution to this problem, if the radical left come up with a good solution to this issue, I will happily back it.

00:37:03.040 If the right do, I will happily back it.

00:37:05.440 I care about solving the problem.

00:37:08.800 And 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?

00:37:17.440 Like, have we lost the ability to do that entirely?

00:37:22.180 Sure. Feels like that.

00:37:23.760 I mean, so, yes, on the one hand, obviously we have.

00:37:28.580 Otherwise, it wouldn't the situation wouldn't be so bad.

00:37:30.440 We wouldn't have 100000 deaths last year from this issue in the United States and many deaths in Britain and Scotland, too.

00:37:36.820 And in Europe, not as bad.

00:37:38.140 But obviously, it's something that we have.

00:37:40.940 And, you know, you're right in the sense that there is a kind of marriage of left and right in the sense that the left is correct.

00:37:45.980 You need universal psychiatric care.

00:37:48.240 That's something the left has been saying for a really long time.

00:37:50.760 They go further and say you need universal health care.

00:37:52.780 I tend to agree.

00:37:54.700 You need that.

00:37:56.040 The right has been saying that you have to have obligations with your rights and there should be some individual responsibility.

00:38:05.480 That's obviously correct.

00:38:06.880 I think you're going to even have a hard time getting many people on the left to disagree with that.

00:38:10.980 So this is that's that's it.

00:38:12.460 I mean, you kind of go.

00:38:13.100 Those are that's it.

00:38:13.840 It's just carrots and sticks.

00:38:15.660 Right.

00:38:16.200 Each one of those has been owned by left and right.

00:38:18.220 But you need both of them.

00:38:19.980 I 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.

00:38:27.280 I mean, the book is still called Why Progressives Ruin Cities because it wasn't an equal role played by conservatives and progressives.

00:38:34.980 And 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?

00:38:48.320 It's it's really the radical left that was doing that.

00:38:51.560 It wasn't conservatives in part because conservatives had their own religion or have their own religion.

00:38:56.520 Actually, 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.

00:39:06.700 And 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.

00:39:25.700 The 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.

00:39:34.440 That 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.

00:39:47.480 And without that, most people, including people who think that they're secular, will construct an alternative religion.

00:39:55.260 And they've done that with that's what wokeism is, complete with an apocalyptic view of climate change, a supernatural view of race.

00:40:03.780 You 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.

00:40:11.860 But if I came out as African-American, I would be demonized and ostracized.

00:40:16.340 The only explanation for that arbitrary, you know, identity, identity categorization is a supernatural view, you know, both of gender and of race, actually.

00:40:27.800 So this is we're dealing with a, you know, we're as my friend John McWhorter points out in his new book, Woke Racism.

00:40:35.420 You 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.

00:40:43.440 I don't think it can survive in the sense that it's it's destroys civilization.

00:40:49.100 If 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.

00:41:05.660 More addicted to hard drugs.

00:41:08.300 It's it creates too many contradictions.

00:41:10.320 It creates too many problems.

00:41:11.280 So I do kind of go, I mean, I've been saying for like three years, I'm like, I can't get any worse.

00:41:16.160 And then it gets worse.

00:41:17.540 I do.

00:41:18.400 I do believe, particularly because my environmental work shows it, too.

00:41:22.800 You know, these trends are nonlinear.

00:41:25.500 You know, pollution does go down.

00:41:28.820 Societies do respond to drug crises.

00:41:33.040 Societies, institutions do change.

00:41:35.760 You know, like we're the West. 0.99

00:41:37.260 God damn it. 0.99

00:41:37.960 We're liberal and we're democratic and our institutions fix themselves. 0.99

00:41:41.820 But 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.

00:41:58.340 And 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.

00:42:13.220 Is that what we need to do, Michael?

00:42:14.900 We need to decriminalize drugs.

00:42:16.900 And these people are addicted to hard drugs, whether it be fentanyl, heroin, whatever it may be.

00:42:22.780 They need the proper help given to them.

00:42:25.500 Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, in terms of I think it all depends, as you might imagine, on what we mean by decriminalization.

00:42:34.500 So 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.

00:42:45.360 But addicts, particularly ones who were breaking the laws, would be would be mandated rehabilitation.

00:42:52.920 That didn't happen.

00:42:55.580 We 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.

00:43:07.040 So.

00:43:07.240 So, yes, if you have consequences for behavioral disorders, decriminalization can work.

00:43:15.060 Now, decriminalization doesn't mean there's no consequences.

00:43:17.880 It just means that it's not a felony to be using drugs.

00:43:22.120 There are benefits to that because it does mean that people can get help without fearing prison.

00:43:27.100 But if you don't have the mandatory rehab, then it's not going to work.

00:43:31.620 So 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.

00:43:39.880 Not at all.

00:43:40.760 You could have a lot more.

00:43:42.820 You know, people when drugs become cheaper and more available, addiction goes up.

00:43:47.420 I 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.

00:43:55.500 In part, just through supply chain efficiencies, you know, drug dealers are really good at bringing drugs into different countries.

00:44:02.880 Really amazing.

00:44:04.260 And clearly have outpaced law enforcement every step of the way.

00:44:06.960 I 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.

00:44:16.220 It's too easy to get drugs into countries, especially when they're so concentrated.

00:44:21.020 So that's why I tend to focus on dealing with behavioral disorders of addicts in public.

00:44:28.160 I just don't think there's much stomach.

00:44:29.920 I don't have it.

00:44:30.620 I don't think my fellow citizens have it of arresting addicts who want to even smoke fentanyl in the privacy of their own homes.

00:44:38.720 I think it's nuts.

00:44:40.260 I don't think you should.

00:44:41.840 I think it should be stigmatized.

00:44:43.940 But I don't think it should be a law enforcement priority.

00:44:46.720 On 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.

00:44:57.260 And 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,

00:45:07.860 is 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,

00:45:20.520 to 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.

00:45:31.900 You've got decriminalization of theft.

00:45:35.240 So if you walk into a store in California in certain places and you steal things from that store,

00:45:42.120 if it's under like $1,000 or $900, you don't get prosecuted for that, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:49.740 I mean, this sounds to me as an outsider, and again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:45:53.860 I really genuinely hope it's not as bad.

00:45:56.700 This is like the breakdown of society happening on a localized scale on certain pockets and certain streets in a major Western city.

00:46:04.520 It's the breakdown of the city.

00:46:08.540 It's the breakdown of the civilization.

00:46:10.620 It's one of the many ways in which Western civilization is falling apart, a trend that was accelerated by COVID.

00:46:19.700 I mean, basically, every important institution is under attack.

00:46:25.080 We have 400 fewer police officers in San Francisco than we need for the minimum.

00:46:30.180 We have these spectacular crimes going on.

00:46:32.540 They've boarded up all of the luxury, I mean, not just luxury, but also the mid-range shops in Union Square,

00:46:40.000 which is the kind of world-famous shopping center of San Francisco.

00:46:44.220 You know, it's where the ice skating rink is, and it's the romantic Christmas, Macy's Christmas tree part of San Francisco.

00:46:52.060 So, yeah, it's, you know, we used to have these, you know, slum neighborhoods or the ghetto where there would be open drug use.

00:47:01.300 And the city had a policy of containment, just trying to contain all of the dysfunction in a single neighborhood.

00:47:07.800 Basically, 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.

00:47:20.420 You know, yeah, human feces everywhere.

00:47:22.180 They'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.

00:47:33.260 So the problem is that San Francisco is so wealthy, it just ends up paying more and more money for different services.

00:47:38.020 We spend about $100,000 per homeless person to let them sleep in tents on the street.

00:47:43.680 So, you know, it's an amazing situation.

00:47:48.880 But yeah, I view civilization as under attack.

00:47:52.640 It 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.

00:48:06.680 Our universities no longer teach what you would consider a liberal arts education.

00:48:12.240 They teach really something more like victim ideology or woke ideology.

00:48:18.120 Our psychiatric hospitals are not allowed to function.

00:48:21.260 Our 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.

00:48:43.320 It's not great, it's not great, it's not great, guys, makes for interesting, makes for interesting journalism.

00:48:51.660 I mean, I find myself writing stories now about crime and I never was interested in crime.

00:49:00.060 But now crime, I think, is like the most interesting, one of the most interesting subjects in American life right now.

00:49:07.440 That's a bad, that shows that things are in a bad way here.

00:49:13.320 What you have just said, Michael, isn't a society falling apart.

00:49:18.040 The picture that you've just painted is a society that's failed.

00:49:22.820 To me, that is a society that has reached crisis point.

00:49:27.080 And if something isn't done soon, it's over, isn't it?

00:49:31.260 If that's the case.

00:49:34.540 Looks bad.

00:49:36.240 I mean, non-linear trends, faith in something.

00:49:40.980 You 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.

00:49:50.740 But 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. 0.82

00:50:00.360 And, you know, New York had a big garbage strike in the 70s.

00:50:03.660 And, you know, everybody says, everybody's talking about, and I agree, you're like, it is just like the 70s.

00:50:10.180 Like, are we headed for stagflation next, which is like a complete vacuum of political leadership, particularly on the left.

00:50:19.800 But even a significant amount of confusion on the right in some places, although some of that may be changing.

00:50:30.000 You know, I think that the moment is clearly ripe for some political leadership.

00:50:34.140 I mean, I wrote the book with the hope that somebody would seize that mantle.

00:50:37.100 But, 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.

00:50:48.440 That makes a lot of sense.

00:50:49.840 I 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.

00:51:01.900 And that's generally the people that tend to win elections historically and make big progress in society.

00:51:09.320 You 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.

00:51:22.060 They delivered big, positive change in society that made made people's lives better.

00:51:27.100 So you're right. It's right.

00:51:28.700 But 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.

00:51:40.260 And 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.

00:51:48.520 They just took their business and went elsewhere.

00:51:50.440 Do 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?

00:52:01.720 Do you think that will be the sort of thing that pushes this agenda forward?

00:52:05.000 Or do you think that the progressives are so obsessed with the ideological side of this that they genuinely don't care about the consequences?

00:52:11.680 Yeah, I mean, I mean, I agree with what you said.

00:52:16.640 I mean, I think there's going to be a political response.

00:52:19.500 It'll have to be a political response.

00:52:21.320 There is a political response going on.

00:52:23.480 You know, you saw there's a big upset election in Virginia.

00:52:25.900 Virginia, you know, important state in the United States should have been won by the Democrat, won by the Republican.

00:52:31.860 Republican, very disciplined person, very disciplined campaign.

00:52:37.020 They figured out, you know, I mean, I mean that in contrast to Donald Trump.

00:52:41.680 I 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.

00:52:54.340 And then Republicans almost won in New Jersey.

00:52:57.280 Something like that is going to happen a lot more.

00:53:00.000 And, you know, I do think the right is is going to divide is divided over Trump.

00:53:09.380 And the left is now has a vacuum of leadership at the very top.

00:53:14.820 Right. I mean, neither the and not only I mean, it's really interesting.

00:53:19.020 Neither our president or our vice president is really leading in the sense of even being the leader of their own party.

00:53:26.220 If there's a leader of the Democratic Party now, it's Nancy Pelosi who runs, you know, one of the houses of Congress. 0.99

00:53:31.680 So I think we're in a really interesting vacuum of leadership now.

00:53:38.400 I do think that, you know, nature abhors a vacuum.

00:53:41.460 So there will be that vacuum will be occupied by new leaders.

00:53:45.440 And so in some ways, I do think we're headed for a really interesting period.

00:53:50.340 You know, I think we're definitely in the post neoliberal.

00:53:53.860 You know, we're in the post Clintonian, post Blairian period.

00:53:58.480 And it does seem like it's things are going to shift back more to the political right.

00:54:04.480 You 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.

00:54:17.820 They have control of the Supreme Court.

00:54:21.960 But 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.

00:54:32.140 So anyway, I don't mean to get into current events too much because.

00:54:34.540 No, no, no, that's interesting.

00:54:36.060 I was actually going to ask you when you talk about the situation on the right with Donald Trump.

00:54:42.260 I 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.

00:54:56.260 Is that broadly your position?

00:54:59.320 Yeah, absolutely. 0.93

00:55:00.320 I mean, I view Trump as a transitional figure, as a as chaos, as super clown energy, maybe coyote.

00:55:14.640 I 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.

00:55:23.840 You know, I mean, one thing you have to remember about Trump is he's really funny, actually.

00:55:27.280 Liberals don't liberals don't like it and they don't get it, but he's funny.

00:55:33.720 And I mean, I don't like all of it. 1.00

00:55:37.080 Some of I think some of it I think is funny, but but some of it's just kind of stupid. 1.00

00:55:40.960 But he's a clown. 1.00

00:55:43.120 So he's not Reagan. 0.99

00:55:45.540 Right.

00:55:47.040 I can't figure out historical parallels to him in politics.

00:55:52.740 You know, maybe Bolsonaro currently in Brazil, you know, but, you know, he's not like, you know, people are always like he's a strong man.

00:56:04.960 Strong men are really disciplined.

00:56:07.300 You know, strong men, especially if they're from the military, these are disciplined people.

00:56:11.080 He'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.

00:56:23.860 And 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. 0.90

00:56:39.820 They're not anti-gay anymore.

00:56:44.280 And it's a nationalist party like you kind of go.

00:56:46.700 That's kind of what gets left over after you remove Trump from the equation.

00:56:50.020 But 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.

00:56:59.880 He's too chaotic.

00:57:00.840 And of course, he'll be much older.

00:57:03.840 He's too chaotic.

00:57:05.300 And his opponents, there would be no one for him to kind of work with on the other side.

00:57:10.460 Whereas 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.

00:57:25.300 And in really forcing the Democrats to make some compromises because of his political popularity and strength.

00:57:31.700 Michael, do you think we're going to see a resurgence of populism?

00:57:36.200 Particularly in America with all with all the with all the problems that you've just detailed.

00:57:40.520 Well, 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.

00:57:49.240 Matt Goodwin.

00:57:49.740 And nationalism.

00:57:50.920 Matt Goodwin.

00:57:51.660 Yeah.

00:57:51.860 Well, he really, I think, convincingly shows that we're we're in a populist period.

00:58:01.560 I think it got accelerated by covid and in the pandemic.

00:58:05.980 I think we're going to see much more of it after the pandemic.

00:58:08.420 I think we are seeing more of it.

00:58:09.760 I mean, just the case, go back to the case of the Virginia guy.

00:58:13.120 He ran basically saying, stop letting the elitist teachers teach our kids wacky, racist stuff.

00:58:22.000 And parents have a right parents staying up for parents.

00:58:27.140 I mean, it's a very populist thing.

00:58:29.100 Right.

00:58:29.400 So for sure it's happening.

00:58:31.760 It's going to happen a ton more, I think.

00:58:35.560 And 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.

00:58:45.900 I mean, that's like, you know, that's the moment that we're in, though.

00:58:48.480 Right.

00:58:50.000 Yeah, it is.

00:58:50.980 And 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.

00:59:00.540 And you talk about people are going to have a populist appetite.

00:59:04.180 I mean, that is a nightmare waiting to happen altogether, if you ask me, because you bring that together.

00:59:11.760 And look, you know, you mentioned Donald Trump being the strong man.

00:59:15.140 I didn't feel that I didn't see any authoritarianism out of his presidency.

00:59:20.160 You might have you could argue there was, you know, lack of focus, there was incompetence, there was inability to work with across the aisle.

00:59:29.340 All of those things, I think, are true.

00:59:30.680 But to me, the biggest thing was actually just the hysteria from the establishment in respect of him.

00:59:37.600 I 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.

00:59:53.520 And that's not even necessarily a criticism of him directly, I would say.

00:59:57.880 But anyway, what you're predicting sounds to me like we're in for some absolute chaos coming going forward.

01:00:05.760 Yeah, you're scaring me, Constantine.

01:00:07.800 Well, you're scaring me.

01:00:08.820 You're the one that said it.

01:00:12.740 Well, yeah, I mean, let's let's.

01:00:14.600 OK, so then that means that we should take a really hard look at some of the positive trends.

01:00:19.660 Right.

01:00:20.440 You know, so.

01:00:21.860 So, 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.

01:00:32.520 And 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. 0.69

01:00:42.200 And I don't even care if you agree, because I just go, you're IDW.

01:00:45.340 I say so.

01:00:46.020 But I mentioned this to Joe Rogan and he was, what's that?

01:00:50.760 I said, we've been conscripted into it by you.

01:00:54.240 Yes.

01:00:54.900 Thank you.

01:00:55.560 Yeah, you're in it. 1.00

01:00:57.360 And Joe was like, no, like, that's a stupid word. 1.00

01:01:01.740 That's a stupid name. 1.00

01:01:02.780 And I was like, OK, maybe. 1.00

01:01:04.300 But like, it's like you kind of go stupid. 1.00

01:01:07.260 But yet we all know who's in it. 1.00

01:01:08.940 Like, we all like you can kind of go, you can kind of go.

01:01:12.840 There's like and I was even drawing these like.

01:01:15.900 Like, I was like, OK, there's like the pro vaxxer IDW types and then there's the anti vax IDW types.

01:01:22.080 And it basically overlaps with who likes Trump and who doesn't.

01:01:25.080 You know, and it's like, is it IDW left and right or is it like relationship to government?

01:01:31.840 But you kind of go, you know, OK.

01:01:34.320 And then there's some people that don't like each other that are in it.

01:01:36.620 That's part of it.

01:01:38.040 Right. 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.

01:01:54.080 That's what Daniel Kahneman calls slow thinking.

01:01:58.680 It's it's, you know, it's not Fox News.

01:02:02.200 You know, there might be parts of Tucker Carlson that are IDW, but it's not it's long form.

01:02:08.360 It's podcast. It's thoughtful.

01:02:10.380 It has a kind of it's totally fine with gays and lesbians and frankly, with trans people. 0.97

01:02:17.320 But 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. 0.97

01:02:25.520 We should do something about it. But it's anti apocalyptic. 0.97

01:02:28.520 It's pushing back against the new religion. 0.99

01:02:30.620 It's pushing back against the new dogmatism.

01:02:35.160 I think it's very serious.

01:02:36.900 I think it's a very significant group of people.

01:02:39.260 It's you know, it's you all.

01:02:42.560 Everyone knows who it is.

01:02:43.420 It's Barry Weiss.

01:02:44.200 It's Nellie Bowles.

01:02:45.120 It's Joe Rogan.

01:02:46.000 It's it's Jordan Peterson.

01:02:50.600 It's Brett and Heather.

01:02:52.920 Brett and Heather.

01:02:54.100 It's Claire Lehman and Quillette, even though those two those guys hate each other right now because they're fighting about COVID.

01:02:59.960 And part of me goes, you know, COVID's it's not going to go away.

01:03:04.320 In fact, it's going to become endemic.

01:03:05.400 It is becoming endemic.

01:03:07.220 But as an issue of debate, it's going to become a lot smaller.

01:03:11.260 And afterwards, there's still going to be the IDW.

01:03:13.680 And Heather and Claire will become friends again or maybe not.

01:03:16.940 But but they'll still be in the IDW.

01:03:18.900 And there's still a kind of so I kind of go there's that is real.

01:03:23.040 And 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.

01:03:31.880 It may not be the center of the Overton window right now, but it's driving this debate.

01:03:36.680 It's actually leading the conversation.

01:03:40.520 The 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.

01:03:51.140 You know, he identifies at this point as Republican and conservative, but he's just clearly not like your dad's Republican.

01:04:02.180 Right.

01:04:02.620 And so or what about a guy like Glenn Greenwald?

01:04:05.500 You know, like sometimes I read Glenn Greenwald.

01:04:08.180 I'm like, he hasn't changed anything in his view.

01:04:11.760 Like his views are identical to what they were when I was reading him after 9-11.

01:04:17.700 Like, I can't figure out anything he's changed his mind on.

01:04:20.300 He's still an anti-imperialist socialist, as far as I can tell.

01:04:25.940 But yet you kind of go, ah, it's probably something that has changed.

01:04:29.000 You 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.

01:04:41.380 It seems like all the victims are like poor African-American, you know, like or, you know, disadvantaged people like crime is bad. 0.95

01:04:54.080 And then you're kind of like, well, that's a pretty mainstream view that crime is bad.

01:04:59.840 And and actually the idea that crime is not bad is completely marginal.

01:05:06.380 And so you go, well, IDW folks are articulating, I think, a new mainstream view.

01:05:12.560 It's a practical view.

01:05:14.360 It's pragmatic.

01:05:16.100 You know, Joe Rogan's not proselytizing ivermectin, but he took it.

01:05:20.340 You 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.

01:05:28.700 And probably I sound that way to people on things like nuclear power.

01:05:31.660 But you kind of go, yeah, ivermectin may not be the right solution.

01:05:36.820 Vaccines, I think, are great.

01:05:38.400 I'm a big proponent of vaccines.

01:05:40.260 But 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.

01:05:49.600 I think you were sort of saying, Constantine, like there's a practicalness here in the IDW.

01:05:56.820 I think the best of the IDW that we want to hold on to and a kind of populism, too.

01:06:03.940 Yeah, Mike, you know, that I think I want to hold on.

01:06:06.000 And so I go, that has that's right.

01:06:07.780 When I look for hope, I go, that's where I find the hope.

01:06:10.300 It's in this new media IDW cluster.

01:06:13.600 The 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.

01:06:21.280 And I gratefully accept that with all the consequences that it brings.

01:06:26.300 But like the one thing that I think is very important as a new member of the IDW is tolerance of people with different views.

01:06:34.680 That's the one thing that will break it if it's not maintained.

01:06:38.960 And I think COVID is rapidly stress testing that sense that, look, I love Brett and Heather.

01:06:47.820 I consider them friends.

01:06:49.080 I'm honored that they consider us friends.

01:06:52.200 I think they're wonderful people.

01:06:54.080 Having listened to the stuff, you know, on balance, I'm not sure based on what I've read and the people I've spoken with.

01:07:00.580 I'm not convinced that ivermectin is the answer to this issue.

01:07:05.320 I like Joe.

01:07:06.040 I think he's really cool as well.

01:07:07.900 If I got COVID, I wouldn't take ivermectin myself.

01:07:11.120 But I'm okay with Joe taking it.

01:07:14.140 I think the fact that Brett thinks it's a good idea.

01:07:17.020 Well, that's up to him.

01:07:18.040 You know, like there's a respect for difference of opinion.

01:07:21.840 I 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.

01:07:31.460 And that's my only hope is that we don't lose that in this process.

01:07:35.820 And I do see one or two people straying into territory, which I do think is unhelpful in that respect.

01:07:44.420 Yeah, I agree.

01:07:45.800 And 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.

01:07:57.860 You know what I mean?

01:07:58.640 Then it's just a bunch of nice people that have podcasts.

01:08:02.900 And that's fine.

01:08:03.480 And 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.

01:08:16.660 Like, I'm going to have the argument.

01:08:19.300 I 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.

01:08:26.640 But for me, I think the potential of something like the IDW is to have a view of these things.

01:08:35.200 And that doesn't mean that you're like kicking people out of the cool kids club because they are ivermectin users.

01:08:42.060 But it would be kind of more like, yeah, there's kind of a recognizably IDW take on that.

01:08:49.940 And that may not be possible.

01:08:51.820 And if it's not, that's totally fine.

01:08:53.520 Just, you know, happy to be, you know, having these conversations.

01:08:56.620 But 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.

01:09:17.600 And 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.

01:09:44.520 And the need for things like universal healthcare, universal psychiatry, that kind of thing.

01:09:49.300 And that there would be something at the end of it that was like a recognizable agenda.

01:09:54.240 That was my, that's part of my ambition.

01:09:56.300 And 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.

01:10:11.080 Fantastic, Michael.

01:10:12.080 Well, 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.

01:10:18.680 But before we do that, we've got one more question for you as always.

01:10:20.960 Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

01:10:28.520 Do we all, don't we all need a spiritual, don't we all need a spirituality?

01:10:34.740 Even if you think you don't, and then if you don't have one, aren't you going to create one?

01:10:42.780 Aren'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?

01:10:47.720 That's like, is that a question?

01:10:48.980 That'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.

01:10:58.040 But don't you kind of need a sense of spirituality too?

01:11:02.660 That's what I think we should talk about.

01:11:04.500 Is this the point, Michael, you're going to bring the crystals out?

01:11:07.840 Exactly.

01:11:08.720 Exactly.

01:11:09.200 The incense is burning, guys.

01:11:12.780 Welcome to California.

01:11:14.300 Yeah, Michael launches into a massive thing about how you find Jesus.

01:11:18.200 Michael, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.

01:11:20.880 We are going to ask you a couple of questions for our locals.

01:11:23.220 But in the meantime, the book is San Francisco.

01:11:26.040 I really recommend everybody get it.

01:11:28.020 Where else can people find you online and follow along with what you're doing?

01:11:32.380 Thank you.

01:11:32.720 Yeah.

01:11:33.660 People can find the books on Amazon, San Francisco and Apocalypse Never.

01:11:37.200 I'm on Twitter a lot.

01:11:39.060 My handle is Schellenberger and then my initials MD.

01:11:42.780 I'm not a medical doctor.

01:11:43.860 Those are my initials.

01:11:45.660 But I'm on Twitter.

01:11:46.660 That's a great place to find me.

01:11:47.560 I'm on Facebook.

01:11:48.080 My email is michaelschellenberger at gmail.com.

01:11:50.640 And I generally respond to every substance of the email.

01:11:54.840 So I love to hear from people.

01:11:57.300 Fantastic.

01:11:58.440 Thank you very much, Michael.

01:12:00.620 Thanks for having me, guys.

01:12:02.660 Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure.

01:12:04.360 Guys, if you've enjoyed this interview, why wouldn't you?

01:12:07.360 It's been absolutely brilliant.

01:12:09.040 Please remember, they always go out Wednesday, Sunday, 7 p.m.

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01:12:27.540 Take care and see you soon.

01:12:29.280 We hope you've enjoyed this incredible interview.

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TRIGGERnometry - December 20, 2021

How the Radical Left Has Inflamed Mental Illness, Addiction and Homelessness ｜ Michael Shellenberger

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