The COMMENTARY podcast breaks down what the new talking point about the need to “defund the police” is about, which is also ultimately what the staffers’ revolt at the New York Times was about: power. How the public discourse over necessary reforms to policing strategies has been hijacked.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast today's Monday June eighteen, twenty twenty, I jump on words the editor of commentary, the seventy five year old, monthly of intellectual analysis, polluter
probity and cultural criticism. From a conservative perspective, we ask
always invite you to join us at commentary magazine dot com. We give you a few free weeds. We ask you to subscribe
and with me as always senior editor, a green walled, high Abe high John Senor Writer, Christine rows of high Christine
I can add, associate editor no Rossman high. Now, how are you hygiene and well good? Well,
unlike the country you are well, the country is not well. The country
is reeling into three four or five different directions, and I think we need to start with the
radicalization of american politics. That is a case
and by the move, apparently
of the Minneapolis City Council to provide a veto, proof majority for a plan to abolish, abolish knotty fund, not reorganise, not re, imagine but to abolish.
The Minneapolis Police Department, Minneapolis, a city of four hundred and twenty five thousand people. It is the first
the six largest city in the United States, and if its elected political
leaders, not its mayor, who we saw being abused by a mob in Minneapolis
for saying he was not a supporter of the abolition of the police department, though he was elected on a platform of radical change to the police department.
Simply being shouted down and having people scream, shame, shame. Shame like he was then,
it could in game of thrones and having to walk through the crowd home.
Word merrily. I would say that this was a and unpaid,
in ten billion dollar contribution to the Reelect Donald Trump Campaign,
but at the same time as all this is happening, the polling
is just getting worse and worse and worse for tromp, which would seem to suggest a new Paul this morning coming out CNN a fourteen point margin in Joe by
his favour with Joe Biden at fifty five percent and trumpet forty one percent, which
ass to serve a margin of error or a cushion for democratic and liberal and leftist craziness. That makes this I think, doubly frightening to those of us who are seeing a nightmare unfold. So the given,
trumps dying popularity here, I would say that the them, but the radical,
was against the police and the move in Minneapolis to eradicate the police force entirely
is more like a fifty
as an dollar sort of down payment
on the on the Trump campaign, with the with the rest, with the rest to be delivered pending future progress, I think there still is a chance for Trump to turn this into turn this to his benefit, he's trying he's been on Twitter over the weekend, saying that sleepy Joe will, of course, support
campaign to define the police, he has no choice, because the Democrats are run by the radical left. This is what I meant what I said a few weeks back, that the conversation was going to turn from the d the protein.
Some cells into an issue about which there was sides would be drawn and Trump could turn that to his advantage. He still can. I think it's going to be very hard to come back from those kind of numbers, but I've got to be.
Despite the sea of people, we see supporting at least that the protests
If not some of that, some of the more radical ideas in that that that are now coming out of them. I've still got a belief that the majority of the american people would be scared to their wits of the idea of abolishing police forces in any city.
I think you're right. I do think, though, that there is clearly a shift in the national courts,
justness on certain types of issues or
They stay shift in what people think they are supposed to. Thank which is another way of looking at this, that
they are telling pollsters that they are too. I think twice ass likely to support these.
Over all concept behind the protests, then to oppose them and to accept the contention that quote white racism and quote is a major problem in american life, something like by a margin of three the to none of that is an endorsement of radical policies, but it provides some superstructure protein,
action, at least for the advancement of those policies and makes them seem not quite as insane as they might have seemed other
wise and provides democratic politicians again with a little more wiggle room. Then you might otherwise have have thought, but can I can? I think, that's right, but I also think that we have to
to be specific about what we're talking about here rights you have, let's not make, let's it's very good.
To anyone who looks at this issue that the people who will suffer the most if you get rid of the police department, are the people who
already suffering the most at the hands of criminals. That tends to be people in poor and marginalized neighborhoods. In many
in this country. Those are in fact, African Americans or other minorities, so saying you're, going to defend the police,
as a response to police. Procedurally police brutality is a strange concept to begin with. The other thing, I think
that we could find some agreement on and if front for those of us who know, cops and talk to them. This is some
They are on board with as well the idea that the police have taken.
For a number of functions in our society that are actually better served by social service organizations or by professional professionals. Who who deal with mental
on or homelessness mean the cops are often call to deal.
With a social problem that isn't criminal. But if you,
and a cop to deal with there are trained to deal with dangerous criminal problems. There are sometimes not as well trained to deal with them
more community based things, and we can certainly do a lot more and there has been a long standing decades long movement on community policing, but I do think the one the one part of the
he found the police argument,
could be made. That would read some support. Is that part to say what do we want police officers in this country to be doing on a daily basis?
yet you forget dealing with rights and looting and all the extremes we ve seen in the last week. What do we think cops should do and what is their job description?
What are the things that we are asking them to do now that they're not equipped to handle, and then re retroactively, punish the police for fruit for doing what they,
do so. I think that conversation I can get on board with, but the idea of defending or abolishing a police department. I agree with it.
Is not a popular argument in this country,
ok. So I'm going to push back on you a little bit, because I understand the argument that of course,
a social disorder problem in an individual apartment or individual encounter with the police
why it is that up that a police officer who would rather not get himself in the middle of something like that. That is really at domestic dispute,
Of course, domestic disputes can turn out a dime into something criminal, and that is a
Actually why in default it has gone this way with with a change in the national consciousness again
an or their or serve the social consciousness about what is private and what is public, for example, until that nineteen seven.
Or nineteen eightys. There was a real issue about whether or not spousal abuse was criminal.
I mean there were certainly an issue about whether or not there was a phenomenon known espousal, rape, that within the confines of marriage, the idea,
that someone was allowed to withhold consent to
marital relations and that the
insistence that those marital relations we observed could be viewed as a as an act of rape that was not codified in the law until the late seven, these early eighties right. So we now accept that of a father using corporal punishment on it on a on a child, you know, can be a very, very slow
pray slope into physical acts of abuse that are flown yes and who is gonna, make that determination
You know somebody with a ba from a community college. You know on record, you know who took
Quiz on how to recognize the five signs of of abuse.
Who's gonna be the one who is going to deal with a via a somebody. You know on on crack or something like that who was heaped up, who was beaten up his kid or is beaten up his wife and it's just spoiling for fight a guy's social worker comes to the door, knock on the door and says we here, there's trouble and this crackhead is like not gonna. Go often try to kill the social worker like that. There is a
isn't that this devolved in this way that isn't so readily changed into a social welfare approach,
Well, I agree about the criminality. In fact, there was a weird soared over the weekend where a man who was the Lafayette Square claiming
he's like you know, I'm against police brutality, because my brother was killed by the LAS Vegas Police and you know twitter did a thing and it turns out. Yes,
brother was killed by the LAS Vegas place after the brothers girlfriend had been
by this man, come to the cops begged for help. They went back to the apartment in the guy attack. The police officer put a minute chokehold me, and let me know, is it so. He attacked a police officer in his role as a response was killed so
I totally agree with that. I mean here in Dc. One of the things they try to do is have units that are both
involve cops and people who are experts in like mental health to deal with that
mental illness on the street, and you could see,
version of more hybrid version of policing that does bring in you know, people who were experts de escalation when dealing with someone who is mentally ill domestic violence thing. I'm with you. I mean that there is a reason that we there's also reason we have that they go and they arrest both people. They don't even dragged out these oil trespass peep boat people,
But this is so not the conversation that they're having anyway, it's just you know,
none of this is about sort of what's you know that the distinction between social work and policing
is this is more about the police as it as a concept have failed us because, because they are abusive and racist and the end end and therefore they they need to go. You know I mean, and so that's it's, that those are really the terms of the of the debate. Right was a Christie Lopez. A professor George to law school has a knock at Washington Post today. That is a very perfect encapsulation of where the defending the police, which is a little different from the abolishing the people
please standard, but not that different. Where it comes from cuz, she says be not afraid to finding the place is not as scary or even as radical as it sounds. During my twenty five years, dedicated to police reform is become clear to me that reform is not
making police follow. The rule of law is not enough. That's interesting is making sure the police, while the rule of law should be enough, goes that should be enough period
I even change in the law is not enough to fix the lesson. We must first recognise how
we ve come to overly law enforcement. That's what Christine is talking about in terms of the copse them
I was not really wanting to be in this
intermediate role, but for most proponents defiantly, does not mean during our budget for public safety and police abolition does not mean the police will disappear overnight or perhaps ever or perhaps ever it mean shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of US government does this keep our safety two entities that are better equipped to meet that need shifting most of what government does to keep us
Ok, and here is the key paragraph quote: police abolition means reducing with the vision of its of eventually eliminating our reliance on policing to secure our public safety. That means that, recognising that criminal,
I think addiction and poverty. Criminalizing poverty is her praises, though that is actually things
happens. Making ten million arrest per year and mass incarceration have not provided the public safety we want and never will. The abolition. Language is important because it reminds us,
policing, has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people. It is with us in slavery.
So I posted a link on Facebook to a chart detailing the rate of violent crime in the United States from nineteen
before twenty eighteen, which has an eighty percent drop across the United States, so for Christie Lopez to claim that we are not getting the public safety that we need
when violent crime has declined by eighty percent and has allowed for
they re population of depopulating cities across the country must dramatically
New York city, which went from a seven million population in nineteen, eighty, two, eight and a half million population, twenty, my team,
that is in sea. It may
be that we can make an argument that the crime drop had already happened and all the benefits had been a crude and that police tactics didn't change enough.
Since the decline and violent crime to take account of the fact that policeman
stand down a little bit and didn't have to be quite as aggressively.
Hostile world you know whatever toward toward populations of young men on street corners and
Things like that, like that's. A serious conversations have that that that that,
equally, actually in in in smaller cities and less and less crime ridden places where police forces are
More militarized than they need to be way more militarized, and maybe to be that that again, as a serious conversation that we can have, but to go from there to no police departments whatsoever, is not its madness, but it's it's worse than madness. It is
It is a kind of where it is literally a revolutionary argument, the idea being that the, but that the.
Understanding of public order in the country needs to be radically shifted so that we are to look at the authorities that maintain order as the bad guys.
Everybody else who may or may not follow the rules as good guys, yes,
It's a mistake to actually see this as an argument. In my view,
it's not an argument, an argument for reform, which generated quite a lot of traction among people who were otherwise predisposed to perhaps be resistant,
That notion was wildly successful of the course of these protests. I don't think anybody I haven't seen any responsible voices
neither the right or the left said. Protests are justified, necessarily and pull suggests that there's a lot of
port for police reform, but this is not an argument for police reform. This is an exercise in power, this
slogan is subject to interpretation and the only people who are obliged to interpret it are people who are predisposed to agree with it and, if
You are not predisposed to agree with that. Then you will lack the requisite wisdom to engage in this debate
it is a demonstration of efficacy and eighteen. The man
for a sort of supplication from people who would be otherwise
resistant to the notion that a radical reform is what is justified now, it's not it's not
I think that you can engage in is not a debate you can engage in because the terms are so malleable that and then they shift depending on who is speaking in whose not,
For one polite audience to fund the police did not mean to fund the policing, need somebody who's
capable of interpreting this in ways that that make it
much less literal big and the only people who are capable of doing that are the people who have worked with the programme,
but fur audiences who are otherwise generally in agreement, that the police is an abuse of structure, white, supremacist structure, the language gets very literal, very quick, and because
actually do mean what they say. They just don't want people who are who disagree with them and failed
louder. Their vanities doings
that argument, so this is not an exercise in a creating political consensus. It is an exercise in
crafting an argument around which your your entry into the debate can be defined as of the terms of you're in it that the terms of entry, as it were, the price of the ticket of admission into real, authoritative,
debate and that's a purely in exercising power has nothing to do with reforming the police, reforming the police as a secondary objective. It is all about getting your of your adversaries to be disqualified from the Pope
Where will this is actually a really important point, because I think it also applies broadly to what we saw sweep the world actually occurs. We ve seen protest like this and in other parts of the world and that's the deal
between black lives matter. The idea all lowercase, which I think most people support and the
only people who say, oh all, lives matter, response that are being disingenuous. No one who says backlogs matter is suggesting that that doesn't mean other people's lives to matters always hate hearing that argument, but capital b
the capital, L, a capital and black lives matters is in fact, at a platform. If you read, I went back and re read some of that over the past week, its radical it suggests we should use.
Abolish the nuclear family, it had you two for a long time. It was supported
media s and and other types of more radical notions. This is a radical group.
Right, and I think it is a method of, although in
let me guess from yes from other amazing tablet: expos AY
its formation leadership structure. Exactly said, there is a
Radical Movement. That is the same as ACE a slogan that I think has brought a lot of Americans of many different racial, nothing backgrounds together over the past,
we and the distinction matters, because I think what you what you're seeing with this debate about police is, is how radical, smaller groups of radicals,
co opt to larger sensibility that the public might have. That's it. That's a good one like let's reformed leaflets fix what what's broken, and I think that is something we need to continue to watch movies and people are making those distinctions except
they need to write. So when you went press, someone was on either CNN optimism. Besiegers just recently asked about this. Are you really talk about abolishing play,
does that mean if you call nine one one and the response was a kind of having in high like oh, yes, I understand that I mean that that's that's like from a position of privilege,
then just someone me that was that of the many I'm out of the city Council,
so she saying I know I wondered. Why recalled that? That's I view that is as privilege, which is fabric is who gets bratwurst in the United States. You think people go and burglarize upper middle class homes that have ring and
you know in them and simpler, safe and all of that they don't that's what it is the poor
or burglarized who, what it they have good. They have to protect them, who they have to throw the person in jail where they have to find the goods that we're
Poland from them and ass. The counter to your arguments on that your we will encounter is that you know that the notion that the United States is a safer place than it was twenty five years ago is true in the aggregate, but not for the young people of color who are subject to these
those excessive over policing and there's something to be said. For that, but the statistics are the statistics. They don't just reflect the condition
conditions in White America, it's everywhere. Tens of thousands of people are alive today who would have been
dead in minority neighborhoods people of color had the crime rate not dropped. Tens of thousands of people walk the streets today, had children have had grandchildren because they saw they were allowed to live because of the change in policing. There is not a thing that the radicals here can say that can addressed that very salient facts, and it wasn't just the reduction in
and ass, which is a huge fact in making cities more livable. It wasn't just the fact that people can go out at night unmolested even envy.
Then in bad neighborhoods. Without you, no fear of an encounter that would leave them, robbed or beaten, or something or other it is that the murder rate and the violent crime rate dropped
so precipitously that in New York City alone, there were twenty two hundred murders and ninety many one- and there were three hundred and fifty last year at now, sought take the murders that take a murder rate of twenty.
Two hundred over thirty years that is cut by eighty percent and then do the math
right in New York City alone, which is responsible for like something like forty percent of the national crime dropped by the way and New York City was not an aggregate that,
dangerous, a city. It was, I think, the eleventh or twelve most dangerous city in the United States, even at the height of, is that it was so big, so much bigger than other cities that the that the aggregate numbers were larger. You are too
about twenty five thousand people in New York City alone, who were alive, who would probably otherwise have been one of the most truly frightening and maddening aspects of what's happening right now,
Is that not only are we not hearing? Actual arguments is, as knows said, but
The idea is almost that to bring up statistics, however, convincing to talk about the numbers is condemned as kind of indecent right, you're, you're, you're you're, giving me facts and figures and numbers we're talking about.
Lives, we're talking about we're talking about families without people. We know we're talking about lived experience, its that's not entirely beside the point either, but there is there. The it is big
coming, so that there is literally no room for statistics in an argument about crime.
I am and policing and other is there's plenty of room for as long as it demonstrates the extent to which police forces have become abusive. Those statistics are welcome in the debate, because it is an exercise in power in right. Thank but the statistics don't tell
that story. That's what's interesting about nominated as they will die of it is that of most complaints are made against young african american mails, which is absolutely the case now, but here's here's. What at what I mean. What I mean is that what has driven this emotional,
movement to you know, take over the streets of the city and change opinion about it are anecdotes, are visual anecdotes, are videos and an you know, horrible's individual stories involving infinity,
small fraction of this almost seven hundred thousand peace officers in the United States right. So and yet I think everybody acknowledges that these are matters that have to be addressed and taken seriously in part because of the emotional effect that they have,
everybody and the fact that you can't bear to see stuff like this happening and the fact that you know people who are given the right to practise violence. The only people in it
Country who are sort of assigned the duty of
trolling their own, violent actions in this way, because we empower them to use violence judiciously to protect everybody else that that is intolerable and unacceptable.
Well. When it emerges to the surface that you can then either say what this happens every day. No one's ever seen it before, and only in the last five years has this come
or you can say it still, an infant in an infinitesimal number, but dealing with the infinitesimal number of cases is important because we don't want the public feeling as though the police are the bad guys or the police or the enemy or that or that you know where that safety is
bought at a cost of the humiliation and mistreatment of an entire population.
What frustrates me is that the right is some, if perceived to be by those who
gauging in this debate as hopelessly out of touch in part, because they don't entertain these theories of community policing and the abolition of police forces in the re, imagining them as being of iron,
oh option and therefore they need to invite people could do into the
discussion and at least take all these notions very seriously, and that is that's what I'm talking about. If you don't do that, you're disqualified from the public square and what's
It now as somebody to say that this is absolutely insane completely crazy.
Worthy of further discussion in a responsible setting. Everybody seems afraid to do that. There are consequences for doing that when it seems pretty plain on its face that we don't have any polling to this:
but we will soon and my understanding of society, the societies.
Eleven in something it's intuitive is that people are not going to react well
The notion literally understood that you should be fun and abolish police forces. That seems like something that everybody should get intuitively any.
Not to talk yourself into not getting it. You have to entertain these theories and chin, strokes and welling. Oh, maybe there's
There was. This other does a city that experimented with the sort of thing and it had x Y and that's him
beside the point, because this is not an exercise in written talking about reform reform would be ok. I read up. I need to pull back as I need to talk to you guys about our first sponsor today. Express V, p M, so expressly paean is a way of making sure that your web searches remain entirely
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to learn more now, Noah, the the one thing I
I want to differ with you on and then we can move into another topic me
dear to our hearts of over the last couple of days. Is that yet it if this is an effort to you now serve like express dominance or Vienna power, intellectual movement, procedural power, one of the reasons it works so efficiently. Is that the up
Liberals in the movement in the general american political divide, our
meekly ill defended by their own side against the arguments of the more passionately driven
people on the left and, as always the case being pulled to the left. But what what
we ve seen over the last week, and particularly at the New York Times, but also to fill it off. Inquirer and various other places is a is the Bolsheviks overtake
the Mensheviki or the liberals being overrun by the radicals or the radicals on campus in the nineteen sixties. Attacking not you know, William
Buckley Junior, but their own liberal professors who my most
I agree with them, but you know would work perfectly rather think that you know life as as as it's going on his
it's ok suffer all the bad
as on the other side. But but you know there are largely with you and they just maybe tactics need to be viewed so basically, James Bennet, the editorial page at the New York Times, is out. After committing the thought crime of core of having his people, commission and publish a piece by senator come hot and the markets. I went through this on an unfriendly, but what woman? What is fascinating is the nature he eat he quit nominally. He was fired almost certainly in actuality because
as the people. The radicals on his staff, who announced that the publication of this up at would endanger the lives of black people and a day
their lives and was evil and shouldn't be heard and which should allow, which Ban Psmith at the time said the sort of an ombudsman job over there now.
Identified through his reporting as originating with the guild that represents these, sir, the they staffers
where an objective and the language that they used was protected speech because it referred to workplace endangerment,
why they use the specific phrase that they used, that this operate in dangerous aligns blackened tanker borders, because it is something for which you can't be fire for Zheng, interesting okay. So what we have is James Bennett, desperately trying beginning on Thursday afternoon to keep his job first by invoking the great world in which liberals, you know, except the pub accept hearing the appeal,
names of people with whom they differ so terribly, but that's all part of the job and then say no, no. We shouldn't have published it at all because it was full of factual inaccuracies. Of course there were no factual inaccuracies, so that was a really craving thing to do was to blame cotton and his staff for having written something falls
and then they shouldn't published it, and then they apologize
again and then by yesterday afternoon Sunday afternoon, Bennet was out ah.
Others. Also, at the same time, are our old friend Bury Weiss had done a little tweet storm about the difference in approach between people who were so offend by the cop cod. Not bad that they, they couldn't see straight and people who had a different approach, even if they didn't like it, and for this she was pilloried within an
of her life for not for for not taking their pain seriously enough for something like that
That statement was by the way and reflects the anti intellectual nature of this movement is simply a restatement of the thesis in looking often heights book. The calling of the
might I almost verbatim a restatement of the New York Times best selling book, which a lot of people
apparently have not read, I really need to because they had inadvertently confirm
its thesis with the reactor right. Well, I mean you know yes, so she had she had done, but yet will right now with two. If John hate, you know, gave a speech and
run of if there were any students, and am I you- and he gave a speech that my you about that this stuff, you know him, he would be in a very come after him, with with pitchfork so just
because John hates, as is the liberal, any teaches them why you and everything should be fought. You know, I, God knows: what's gonna be like for him in September I can I can. I can. I offer a slightly cynical observation here, which is it.
For those of us who have been following perfectly institutions like the New York Times for years. It's just him
It's it's dramatic because of the fact that someone
you powerless their job over it, but it's based
they just saying out loud what alike
of the journalists who work there have been doing kind of under cover of our rights. Had it spent peace had an interesting quote from from
a journalist who said you know now we can have moral clarity. That site now now work we ve kind
come out, as, as you know, self identifying, not as journalists who pursue objective facts and try to convey to the public. What's going on in the world, we are going to be beacons of moral
clarity that the different job- that's usually how you would describe say a job if you wanna be a preacher, for example, not a journalist, but now this has become organ, or
are or are not bad call short short, but not adjourning have a different opinion. Journalism is not the same thing as, as you know, reporters job whose
you know, following Canada, Rodya Mister Bennet replacement. Only the new editor of the editorial page, with in your timesthey staff, are often paid rather told staff quote anyone who sees any piece of opinion journalism, headlines, social posts, photos, you name it that gives you the slightest pots. Please call or text me
immediately that ceilings very inflict. She's gonna have a very terrible I'm running
you see something can feel something say something right left you see something say something this is. This is like. If you see a suspicious hissing suspicious,
all one one- you know if you see a suspicious sentence on twitter,
and that is precisely the sun precisely what very wise had said in that. So offensive tweet storm that this is a real.
Action to what hey look enough call safety at some, which is a perception that your discomfort is something that you should be
be able to address by through complaints to authorities, structure, ok, but but ape let let's be real here, hate looking on off, we're being emotionally generous barriers being emotionally generous. None of this is about really addressing p.
All spheres of discarding. I fear it up fears of triggering or whatever. This is just raw. This is the use of safety ISM as eight as a revolutionary lever to destroy people. You don't like to get them removed entities,
over from them. Now, yes and it's, why have always hated the term snowflake, because the snowflake implies that, like you know, some
some liberal, whose will be offended by scary
he will serve melt it in fear of them, which is not at all the case everywhere. All these campus snowflakes throughout the day,
get what they are really about is getting people fired at the great observation that that that term implies fragility. Yes right now
exist. Exert not fragile at all is very extroverted and very aggressive.
When someone screams at someone else, as has happened to me a couple of times during the walk down, for example, when you know, if you
walking fifteen feet away from somebody? No one!
who's around you, you're walking were wearing a mask anywhere fifteen or twenty feet away from someone someone with scream at you from park bench.
Put on your mask on terrified right. Your words with someone shouts at you and said
you're scaring me are they scared? You scare you yell unscared at someone who's writing you know, because if you are actually frightened, the last thing you wanted, it was called
your house. This is saying I am beating you up in the guise of pretending that I'm not beating you up, and so yes, I'm campuses there being fight. Now, here's the best part about this in terms of schadenfreude, which is this is the crisis of liberalism, which is that it is toothless that it is that it is self loving and self righteous and full of fear.
Wagner at the bad conduct and bad behaviour of others, but when that, and so as a result, when the cannon ray is turned on the liberals, all they can do is sue for peace because they they they act as though the world of argumentation
where the world of power is something that they really are beyond.
Beyond all of this and its only you crude, you know neanderthals who, who who think that, in a sweet reason, camp rule everything
you know it's only you it's only you morons idiots in who don't like science and dont like this, and don't like that.
We're all we can all have a. Conversely,
she has also accept certain priors like Trump is evil, then we can all have have a nice conversation. You know what, when the, when the when revolution comes, they get eaten. First, we don't get eaten first and there, like. What are you doing? I'm with you know it's like tat, video of the guy in the router that guy in there, in his apartment, who gets
brought. You saw this last week during the protests and the rock is thrown to the window was apartment these like yelling at the window, hey we're with you were supporters of you. We support you, so you that's, post inoculate, you you're, like olives. Really your concerns about policing and ride was
systemic racism. I mean that's really so meaningful to me and I really liked you know. Thank you very much, and here I'm going to publish twenty seven op ed, saying everything
one here and I'm publishing one up at over here by somebody else, but you get twenty eight. Ninety seven percent of the coverage.
The way you want it, I got one piece over: you, don't worry
it's like? Oh yeah, you think you got one piece. You are fired, man you're dead, and anybody who follows you is dead end if you publish them up at that says buildings matter by your architecture. Critic, you're gonna lose your twenty, your job at the as, as as the editor of the Philadelphia inquired
everybody else, in journalism, you're on notice, you're on notice, we're getting you we're going to have people call you and you're a dead man. Another thing that's been frustrating me is and in the policing of discourse in the exercise of power,
But the guise of having a debate is on. There is a notion abroad now that, if you are at all concerned about the conduct of the New York Times editorial page at this late date, you know having having gone through this for the better part of a week. With this thing thinking exploding over the weekend, if you're still talking about this, you are truly elitist. Truly out of touch have have no understanding of the concerns of normal people, who Rina reads in your tens. Editorial page say the people who write for than your fancy tutorial bitch it's it's again. It's an exercise in power and something that night.
The left's look pretty bad to neutral observers, soon, dispassionate, sort about side. The spectrum observers, certainly something that we get talk about because we write opinion for a living and that's just what we do and were very interested in it and should be interested in it and go screw yourself. If you think we shouldn't be interested in
However, this is something obviously the way you framed John everybody should be interested in and it is not about the New York Times in a pages about society. Look. This is when people started talking
six or seven years ago by twitter, mobs right about social media mops, and it's so terrible, because it's making teenage girls feel terrible and twitter mobs go up, but you know, and then you know that they chase people have no recourse Justine Sacco this one in that was just awful. But what happens and it's terrible
Nobody should stop right. There was this from general understanding of conventional opinion. That's not the lesson that the less
the twitter mob or the lesson of the twenty tens? The lesson is due at twice as hard keep doing it. If your chop, a trap house, you're gettin, two million dollars a year and in the end goal fund me money if you're off here the dirt bag left. This is your moment if you're, if you're an anarchist.
Like anti fa, go into the streets, no one's gonna arrest, you any more or though a restaurant. Let's arable lessons that everybody has to internalize now- and I, like I tremble at this reading,
nation, but it's one that has become an inescapable just as the lockdown orders are enforceable.
Only as long as your crowd is small enough to disperse conservatives and people with heterodox opinions in these institutions.
To realize that the only with things can keep you safe as the pall doctrine here,
the slightest sign of insurrection needs to be met with overwhelm
an absolute force, every institution, every voice you could possibly muster in order to demonstrate a show of force. Efficacy in numbers, it's a numbers game,
Now, it's all about raw power, not instead,
national rules? It is not normal to hang James Bennet, so he hired Red Stevens and bury Weiss. Conservatives were anti tramp. He has rushed out and on the staff who was there
or he he joined, who is a conservative who is anti Trump and his argument, good liberal argument would be
look I'm trying to help America by giving space to this argument so that you know when the fever breaks in everything that you know, they're gonna help the fever break, they're gonna help take trumped down, and then we can go on to something new right because their conservatives, but they dont like tromp. Well, guess what the people that he is attempting.
To sway. With this idea, they don't care whether they like Trump or they dont like tromp, that doesn't matter a wit to them. What they want is James, Bennets job. They want brats job. They want berries job, they don't want. You know, oh, this is really good your building a coalition and intellectual anti tramper that Post Trump coalition.
They want it all for themselves, and the argument is that you know the very fact that you entertain ideas about other things. Aside from whether Trump is or is not unfit for office.
Those ideas are just as bad as Trump everything you think is as bad as Trump anything that isn't what we say
at any given moment is Eve and roll right, so so that not only do they not care. If these conservatives are are anteater
to the extent that there is any ideological thinking that goes into this? There is no such thing as a decent conservatism to them and more right.
It's it's akin to it. That would be like saying. While there are good fascists, I mean that that
where they are at
That is why an outrage or so instant and overwhelming every time, and that's why I made the Menshevik Bolshevik comparison is, of course, what did the Mensheviki have to do the minute
They got into power, but the Bolsheviks have to do. They had to kill off the door, drive the Mensheviki away, because there's no common cause him. Even if the Mensheviki swear fealty
their disease, they have a regional sin. They work with you from the outset than an end and what our
However, they kowtow, you still can trust them if you, by the way, if you don't kill them in nineteen nineteen,
you kill the remnant in nineteen thirty, two thirty three, while you're purging everybody who was with you because that's the other thing that's going to happen. So let me let me pull back again cuz. I want to talk to you about our second sponsor Tommy, John, not the surgery, the underwear cuz fall.
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one of the other dangers that that is ahead of us with regard to another year Bolshevik Menshevik comparison here is is the use of history.
So I mean we saw a little glimpse of this over the weekend when Mitt Romney put, I posted a picture himself in D C. The earth in did marching into pipelines matter
This has prompted a whole discussion on you know a lot of people on the left, sort of praise him and also denied that you know how he had been pretty unfairly attacked
when he was a candidate, but we also see this in you know what we've talked about six thousand and nineteen project. We see a need in order to consolidate power in the way that is being consolidated in some of these institutions. You have to be
explain away facts that don't fit the narrative that help to consolidate power, so we
the allotted this mean in in in a small relief. We see this with the way that
The writing and looting has been explained by people on the left. You'd, rather just not would rather pretend it didn't happen or justify it.
We see this in small ways. You know with how history,
is used in a very instrumental way to justify and sweeping purple
so now and I think going forward work on it.
We're going to see a lot more of this and that I think, is consider coming from the conservative side of this. We need
to stay very focused on the participation of history. Happens by all sides sets, and I'm not pretending that conservatives are innocent in that regard, but I do find that the way in which institutions
The New York Times in particular have done this so successfully. Is worrisome going forward because even after Trump is out there
he's gonna remain a problem even after they don't have trump to focus their anger on. They will find
other ways to manipulate the past too soon,
narrative now that that helps a political agenda, not
standing, or we saw some of this in over the weekend in London, where you had protesters, do face and seemed like Winston
Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. Now you can make a case that Winston Churchill was a noxious colonial stemming that's a very popular case on those on the left, but nevertheless it sort of strikes at the heart of your anti fascist notion, but what the heck their neighbour,
Lincoln. Do I mean? Are they earn our londoners really mad at the suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war? This is not an end in a movement that has some sort of intellectual buttressing. It's just it in
russian of rigour, and if you want a more peaceful police force, they often hold up the
UK police, you don't always carry as I'd arm.
During the riots. They were not integrate position. They weren't there are some really awful footing.
Then being having such thrown at them in chased away from more traced away. I greatly, though, which has.
If you dont want to disarm the publication and thinking of the van themselves against an agreement, but also
again. You know these these worldwide demonstrations against one episode of american police brutality. I doubt it, I really doubt it I mean it's part of it and its part, its domestic as well, especially in the case of France, where they had this for your case. That was the result of them. They suppression of anger over this for Europe case yes, shore, but really it's just all about the locked out. Well, it's also about hating America
I mean this is a new version of the. U know, nevertheless, nuclear freeze- and this is where exactly
Let me that you can't you can't just email discount that which is that the left in these,
trees, hates America. They hated America before Trump they'll, hate America. After trot, they don't care about. They have,
they don't care at all a whit about George Floyd or what goes on in Minneapolis, its is of no interest or concern to them whatsoever. So now let some! Let's take three minutes to talk,
politics here, because you know in an ordinary moment in time
you were, you know, hang around.
Stairs around the down to Joe Biden basement as part of the Biden, Brain trust
Ordinarily, you would be terrified by what's going on here. Then you have literally at a democratic city in the United States. It is on the verge of
At least theoretically abolishing its police department in a state that Hillary Clinton only one by point behalf that if it went in a republican
I think it's ten electoral votes, you know you're you're you're. Your task becomes that much harder, and yet I dont know looking at this polling and stuff like that. I just don't
I am sure they are. I am sure that you know old hands. Look at this and say this really can't be very good for us, but the polling is not suggesting that Trump has been making any ground has been making up any ground on his decline over the ten days of riots, which I think any of us would have anticipated. I think we would have thought that there would have been a kind of
I anticipated at safeguarding. Ok, I didn't, I didn't think you would benefit from this. He is perceived to be by more voters and not an agent of chaos at a time of maximum chaos. He has made
cases for himself that he cannot meet. He has suggested that he will be
This force for order, and he can deploy forces tuned to IMF in courage and recreate order when he cannot do that, is legally not obliged to do that which is alien aiding some of his course support.
Because they expect more from him. Then he can deliver based on what he is saying that I'm so am. I didn't expect him to benefit from this. Republicans still have the capacity to benefit from this if they were to find a stay levels, Sir Governor Apolitical,
state level around which they can rally and make the case for law and order, because they governors actually do have the capacity to impose this kind of foe policing from the top and the present cannot
Then they might be able to make it a successful case for themselves of Democrats really go off the dependent really start indulging with the radical
fringe in their honour on their side, wants to do
but you also haven't seen all Democrats do that you seen many many see very prominent and influential voices and they might be the way with a future that they are. But what does the House Democrats introduced today in terms of legislation? Is nowhere near that radical and not something that? I don't think you you can. You can say it.
Is an application of their responsibility to be forces first civilization as well as reform. So I
We just haven't gotten to that place yet, but I dont anticipate Donald Trump will benefit from this perception to have him long ago baked into the cake
Well again, so what does it mean? If he's it? If the CNN Paul is, you know,
the reflection of reality and he's at forty one and Biden as at fifty five. So forty one is about where he is in Poland right forty one, forty two, forty three, something like that.
That means that there is a very much slippage. What it does mean is that everybody else in the country has decided they don't like him anymore, while in
I mean that's the only way to look at it that that's nice, that Paul comes to ninety six eddies actively harming his own brand. If you want to look at it in that, you know instrumental away, because he is, I mean that one
this be speak softly and carry a big stick. That's the kind of unit that there's a kind of american swagger of leadership. That's like that. He speaks loudly and
and actually have the power to wield the stick. So he just looks he looks at worst impotent and at best sort of desperate happiness. Just it's not
It's not a great look. I think. That's where you see conservatives and all
the use of federal power and they d his his
getting the military involved and how he's talking about this hasn't help. I think he thought that would was it,
signalling to is to his people
we do not like law and order. They, like the military, he's, he's thinking and abstractions in a way. That's really unhelpful. At a time of a specific unrest were so there's talk that he's going to me
a speech on race. You gotta, be kidding me know
beat beat beat. The administration is seriously considering
Israel will guard cushion erratic, then it'll go really well.
You know what I think about security and bringing the country together on race. I think about generic jarred Kirshner, who you know. It's really something he's it's a vineyard that he's labour them. But this is this: what's gonna get really nerve, racking does thou shalt needs to change the game and it needs to change it in a dramatic way and very sad and they're all thinking along those lines and if that's what they're going for and they think that they have to, they have to do that. What else will convince themselves they have to do? I don't think it's a terrible idea if he were to give a speech on race,
that reflected, but we talk about it. I think, if you hit the sweet spot of saying, there's something very serious it's gone on here. Sometimes it appear. You know we ve all got to serve education in what you know
The excessive use of police force can lead to, and we can all
oh move on from here together if we can find a consensus, but a world in which we are talking about abolishing police is it is. It is a world.
Which the country is descending into the madness that gripped it in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, and we cannot go back there again. I don't do that. We will need this mistake for three eyes anchoring, not what the president of this not in the presents heart, I dont, know Nora. I know said the squire either I'm saying: could he do it? Yes, he could well, you know, desperation makes can can can make change, but the other reason. I think that there is a unique kind of danger to him right now
is these Paul numbers if they reflect anything that their seeing, also and basically puts Biden up over fifty percent in the we're clear politics. Average means that he's up about eight, some like that.
Is that it gives Biden were running room also, like this sense,
by needs to be really delicate and like not shatter his coalition by saying things like I,
do not want to defend the police. If he's up twelve thirteen fourteen points of what he really needs to do, a solidify those people who are moving toward him work precisely the suburban mothers who work at the stake in the heart of Trump.
He is being given leeway to move to the centre.
On this issue I would have to abandon his own white paper at this point. Is his campaign has called for increased funding of low greatly?
right. So what I'm sick wrecked? So there you go. So I'm saying that in an odd way, it's not that he would use this as a sister soldier moment in the sense that
couldn't wouldn't have to go out and say you know. They're here is a terrible rapper who is calling for the murder of white people and that's just awful all. He has to say, as I do not have to say what Jacob Frey the pathetic mayor of Minneapolis said when they started. You know when they started shaming him making him do the walk of shame is I do not
even abolishing the police can say you know the over at, as as Obama said, the overwhelming majority of police officers are good people who do good things for the country and yes, and for all you know, then, under those circumstances, the dirt bag left in these lunatics, like Chrissy Lopez of the Georgetown law school. In all of these disgusting people, who spent on the people who have who helped save this country from the crime spiral that had made it descend into into this.
Toby in nightmare that I grew up in what are those people do they're gonna trash Biden? Fine, let em trash Biden like how many divisions today have trouble privileges have com. You can give the speech on race in a sort of. I wonder if colleagues would do that
No I'm a debt biting can do with three hours speech about everything, that's evil, a powerful and race relations and all he has to do with speak. This one sense does, of course I dont think to win you shouldn't fonder, abolished police police have
too many good things. That's all asked say, that's the only sensible matter and
Then you know if he loses two or three percent of his support among where they gonna go
That's always there are they going to go to the libertarians, because libertarians are that would be interesting, eggs or radical african american Ghetto Socialist move to the libertarian party they're going to go green after what happened with Jill Stein they're, going to try to help get Trump RE elected with Jill Stein, so who had? We were going to be talking about the New York Times?
a janitor residing in there in their coated bingo. I did not have that when amending a guide about their rioting.
How about your router to
by the way, I will I just just open harping on this point for a week, but I still get angry when people downplay the long term consequences of of the looting impart because
I'm still looking at you. I still take walks in my neighborhood everyday and lets people in New York had this experience to and its true that every
was common. We had a massive demonstration here on Saturday that was largely peaceful and you know people behaved it at all, really slowly, which was very nice.
But every single storefront still boarded up, and that is gonna take a man,
total and emotional toll on people. At a time when we are once again being reminded to stay at home again gossips, you know as if the last week didn't happen in terms of protest,
So I think again like in terms of how people are feeling about the direction this country is going. There's gonna, be you there's a lot of anger at last week and others can be a lot of confusion. Ceta him captain have, especially in New York, good customer. Yours are still boarded up your two and today's first day of our phase, one reopening now that I'm in the sage is set for a real, significant backlash among people who don't destroy property and don't gather in large numbers and are employed in the day in camp protest. I mean that's that's there, but I dont think it manifests in this cycle manifest in the next two or three wheel.
I mean think about the craziness of this year. I mean you know we are. We are really not, since one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight has there been a year, this crazy cuz we had them. President was impeached. Maybe remember
Here he was was impeached and then there was this virus, and then there was this economic meltdown and and and forty minutes
people lost their jobs, and then
there was this rioting, and then there was this looting and its Junius hurricanes. Isn't just
Gonna grow gathered room somewhere on our masters. We haven't had a big one, yet you know, though there
returned to normal brightened up
we will bid you adieu until tomorrow, for Christine Resonate, revealed and or I've jump on boards keep the candle burning.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-03.