Welcome making sense podcast? This is SAM Harris. Ok, what today's episode we are presenting audio from a live event. We did on zoom a couple weeks back, which was free for upon, has subscribed and over nine thousand of you joined us, live in the middle of the day. and most of you stayed for the full two hours, which was really great enemy Upon re. Listening to this, the conversation was even better than I had realized happening at a chest and presented to.

a wider audience here, the event was inspired by a recent issue of the Atlantic magazine, which has several article, focusing on the ongoing threat to american democracy posed by the way Lee believed why that the twenty twenty election was stolen, something like sixty percent of Republican I believe this and am unable to say that has consequences for the workers. Through this grim situation, I am did, the help of four Atlantic writers, an apple bomb David from George Packer and Barton Gilman, an apple bomb has been on the past before she a journalist and prize winning historian staff rider the Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Essen F, a gourd Institute at Johns Hopkins where she colleagues project on twenty first,

read this information and co teaches course on democracy. Her books include Red Famine, Stalin war on Ukraine, iron curtain, the crew sheen of Eastern Europe. Nineteen forty four nineteen, fifty six and gulag, a history which won the two thousand and four Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. her most recent book is the New York Times best seller twilight of democracy, which has essay on democracy and authoritarianism. She was Washington Post COM, as for fifteen years and a man they editorial Board she's, also been the deputy editor of the spectator and a columnist for several british newspapers Her writing has appeared in the New York Review of books, the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal foreign affairs, foreign policy and many other publications day but from had also been in the past several times before, he is a senior

her at the Atlantic and the author of Crumb, polyps Storing american democracy, which is his tenth book, spent most of his career and conservative media and research institutions, including the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, he's a past chairman of policy exchange Leading centre right, think tank in the UK and a former Direct of the republican jewish coalition. He also famously served at a writer and special system. George W Bush David to be a and and history from Yale and a logical from Harvard Packers staff rider the Atlantic, where you right about american politics, culture and foreign affairs. He is the author, most recently of the book. Last best hope America increase sir and renewal. from reading now, and it's really a great book is all, the author of the unwinding, an inner

story of New America, which won the National Book Award and he also wrote a biography of Richard Holbrooke, which also one awards and his written seven other books. and finally Barton Gilman part is also at Right on the Atlantic and a senior fellow at the century, nation in New York he's the author, recently of dark Mirror, Edward Snowden and american surveillance state. He also wrote about ugh refund Dick Cheney and his one no fewer than three Pulitzer prizes, as well as in Emmy, for documentary film, making any as you'll hear a religion and you get out of the way and let my guests talk. the imputation of partisanship on their part, makes no sense when you consider their biographies. You don't know the politics of part and George

of hand not that it would really matter. But an and David had been quite esteemed in centre right circles. I think for all of their political lives. There are some disagreements between them, but generally there, on the same page, with respect to the sorted history of how we got here and the problems that really must be solved. I guess, the question could be asked: why didn't have someone on the panel who was a contrary and on important points and there someone who could help make a proper debate? the truth, is on this topic. I really What view that, as a waste of precious time, I have no interest in hearing from someone at this point, I think that the twenty twenty election was stolen or thought that the attack on the capital. On January Sixth, last year

a non event. I raise points of this sort so that my guess can try to perform an exorcism on all in his hand, in the Republican ECHO Chamber, but asked what happened here and the list What about it, it's really not much of substance, though we can be in doubt about any real scepticism about the giant a picture here is quite ludicrous at this point So I view this conversation. Much more is appear say, about an ongoing emergency, then, is a proper topic for debate But he's an analogy that often occurs to me Imagine your on an airplane, that's about land, and there's a commotion in the cockpit adore swings open, and you can plainly see The things are definitely not. Okay, you category

If someone lying on the floor and someone who's not dressed like a pilot. appears to be randomly flipping switches and some unprepared to be the pilot. Just came over the Pierre system and told you stay in your seats because the Jew have removed the plans landing gear right at that. Point. I don't want to hear from someone who thinks it This behaviour might yet proved be normal right or that perhaps some, Jus somewhere may have sabotaged a plane, and we should talk about that That seems worth looking into does know. What is absolutely clear. Is that what is happening right but were eyes, is not remotely okay and ass. This Situation will have been in for several years now

The republican party that has morphed into a personality cult in Thrall to a con man and crackpot who just happened to have been president And the plain that we really must land is to have a peaceful orderly and legitimate presidential election in twenty twenty four. And there is no reason currently two things That will be easy to do the cockpit or is wide open, and it's just chaos in there. this is another Pierre say this episode does not pay walls As always, we want to support what I'm doing here and generally listen to full length. Episodes of the park asked you can subscribe, SAM Harris DOT, Org after the last episode Homage Oregon. Controversy was also appear say, professor say a few words about that I heard from thousands of you in fact, and the most common. but I got was

really enormous gratitude for what I said there. Some of you hated it, of course, but there was a tremendous amount of thanks expressed for what, said about Rogan himself, but more importantly, for what I said about racism and the ethics of apology. and almost everyone who commented seem to think that I had really stuck my neck out in a way. This become all too rare among academics and journalists, and many of you explicitly thanked me for my bravery. Well I'll. Let you in on a little secret, there's not much bravery involved at this point Now I worked at a university or at any cost fusion, where I could be fired yes and that would have- Very brave and even reckless podcast drop.

If I had a worry about whether I be able to pay, my mortgage were afford college for my daughter's, because a twitter mob might successfully get me fired or dropped by my, sponsors or demonetized on Youtube, will then yes out probably hesitate before. telling you what I honestly think on certain topics. And that's why? When many of you ask me about engaging cultural or issues, I never offer I get recommendations. I certainly do. Say that everyone should take the risks that I take, because it Ruth is I'm not taking much of a risk now. I have deliberately built my platform so that Have to worry about these things, work You have to worry less than almost anyone in media and that's why the maidens has podcast is a subscription business. and I dont rely on ads. Let's Don't depend in any important way on platforms like Youtube, because my goal for years now

has been to remove any incentives. They could keep me from being, to tell you what I really think Only thing that makes it possible is, you add the fact that a sufficient number of you not just listen to the podcast but supported directly by subscribing. That is the secret to me, apparent bravery and those of you who actually purchase monthly or annual subscriptions have given a greater job, security and all anyone on earth now that may sound like an exaggeration, but it's not and is not a question of wealth. May I know billionaires and movie stars who have to be way more concerned about cancellation than I do. because they really are much more vulnerable than I am to having at camp A very small number of people decide to pull the plug,

their careers, I mean just think about it. I have no sponsors and no boss there's no board of directors who can tell me that can't do this podcast tomorrow, it might be better if I just avoided certain topics. So what really is not about. My personal courage is our having built a platform together. So once again, I want to thank all of you who support the podcast. When I say. I couldn't do this without you. I truly mean it. Ok, And I'll bring you in all to timely conversation about the future. american democracy. You hope you find it useful I guess I should say that if we crashing zoom. For some reason we will apologize to The audience and then just resign

and private Lakers. I don't know what term with the bandwidth limits are here. I mean to disparage zoom here, but anything is possible. this is my normal book event NOS six and a half seven thousand. So am I he's too. He asked zoom comfortable here now we're getting tonight. This. Where garden, I think here I'm gonna start because I value your time before and so they are just to be clear, the obvious that this is not real, primarily conservative, video event. I love that your old joining us to watches recorder podcast, but the final product here will be I guess so. There may be some moments where we re. take things just to get clean audio if we're talking over each other, and I will also introduce the four of you more fully in my intro to the past, but We should just go around we here, as I was saying offline. This conversation is born one of my having read two articles

the most recent issue of the Atlantic, the January February issue, which is focused on the fundamental, read to american democracy that is posed by tromp and the Republican Party at this point- and you know this as well Controversial claim that I want us to shore up anyway. We can over the next couple of hours, but that the two articles were Barton, Gammons article lad trumps. Next, was already begun and George Packard Article are we doomed? so to want to introduce cell star with Bart Bart. Thank you for joining us. Barton is a three time. Pulitzer prize winner I will read your bona a days elsewhere, Barton thanks for being her pleasure. And Ass George Packer, you of Britain, several wonderful books. I, as I was saying I was reading your latest. The last best help. You want a national Book Award I also realise

studied with your mom at college. I just discovered this in reading your bio, so I'm your mom Nancy, Packer Toddy, an amazing course on the short story which I remember a finely so I'm that have a connection. That's why I'll tell her she's. Ninety six, but it'll still manga, my God, be amazing. While that and tell her. I can't imagine she would remember this even if she warrant ninety six but I remember I go into her office and am I remember her concert asian upon learning that I was dropping out of school to go to India and and recapitulate the sixties. For myself, to tell her, because I was resigning added in the the literary magazine- and I was on her to figure out who my replacement was gonna- be an arm. Look on her face where I was clearly making a wrong turn into the wilderness of self absorption I know that I'm in reply to your other I've seen that Radio, my life, I'm bored,

also joined by an apple bomb whose than in the past before and really and you're one of the highest ignore and lowest noise people. I've ever come across, in particular on the topic of the threat of authoritarianism and the ubiquity propaganda. so I thank you for being here and, and I to talk to you again thanks lot. Things are having. Andy Last but not least, we have David from also. I shows that an is also won a Pulitzer, at least I'm sure many other things she's a historian David, you have a Pulitzer need to worry about our national puckered. No, this is getting a little awkward. Actually, I could well here Precisely in your like me, you don't have either of those debauched towards so that it is wonderful to be joining you her but yet you thank you. David were helping the organizers because you're you helped a quarter back. There and are you are a very frequent guess on a pike s so good to see you again. Thank you.

they set off line. I view David and an as helping me in extracting as much as I can possibly get on this topic from barred and George in addition to contributing everything they have to say on it. I just didn't one drop, the ball here and the two No as much as anyone about the topics were going to discuss David is further distinguished in perhaps bean the only person on earth who has a greater case of trumped arrangement syndrome than I do just by a touch? I we agree with, I think, on all points there so one less began, I want us to talk about the future and that where this is headed, this conversation is sound. Really summarised by? I am a quotation that that I haven't Bart summarizing his article iii. He wrote elsewhere, he said Durham January six was the initial milestone, not the last in the growth of the

first violent mass movement in american politics is the nineteen twenties and the Republicans made up their minds to steal the twenty twenty four presidential election and are well on their way to manufacturing the means there is a clear and present, danger that the loser of the next election will be certified President elect with all the chaos and bloodshed that pretends so that that's where we're headed. I wanted to see if we are still that turned her. This is, is Bentleys a month or so since part wrote that, but I want to to try to establish what had already happened, because my concern here is that out here in pot cast to stand. There is quite a bit of controversy over what has happened and the the lies and misinformation about the past have have taken hold to a degree that I find it a source of considerable concern and even despair at this point, so here is just to give you. The cartoons

version, which is not too far from what is in fact, believed think many many millions of people believe believe, and it s not just Republicans by any means that virtually everything that has been said about Trump by people like ourselves. Prove to be an exaggeration right. That there's he was really was a crass business man who shook things up but of the calumny about him, and it certainly is claim that he was a fundamental threat to democracy or to our institutions. Amounted to age. The blizzard of partisan lies The Russia Gate Hoax was just all hoax, the steel rca vitiate everything the Mulder report we found anything there action may in fact have been stolen, or at least there is reason to believe that there were significant irregularities and Trump was totally within his rights to challenge it. The significant Their January six has been too the exaggerated either those were just a vicious pester

Michael lived hard on CNN and the New York Times rape and calling it an insurrection or an attempted coup, but They were in truth, it was just a bunch of Guph balls taken selfies and there was nothing really fundamental was at stake, as, What we are reacting to in this conversation and end any progress. patient on. That basis is just a kind of grotesque media confection that is in amplify based on just because it gets clicks essentially, and others was good for this- the life blood of CNN and the New York Times at this point, so I want us to try to Woman exorcism on that set of claims perhaps what will start with you Bart, tell me we think we are with respect all of that and then I will come to go around and everyone else. We can fill in the gaps here. Well,

I mean all of that needs to be exercised the cause. None of it is right that Russia Gate was not a hoax. There were extensive efforts by the Russians to help trump when the election trumpet his people solicited those and welcome them, and it did not rise to the level of of conspiracy, but the Mulder report showed very clearly a roadmap to a successful prosecution for obstruction of justice. It named multiple occasions on which Trump could be said to have obstructed justice, and at least three of them. I met all the elements of the crime and you could go down the rest of the list JANET.

six was a was part of a broad and vigorously fought attempt to overthrow the election were learning more even in recent days since every my piece about the extent to which tromp was trying to get people who had theoretically the power to do things to do those things that would have ever turned the election. Most reason they were learning more about proposals that were discussed with Trump and that he solicited further information about that would have seized the voting machines. I mean an absolute classic dictated move in which he was going to have in various iterations either the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security or the National Guard go around. The country and

These voting machines in at least six states- and I quote a quote: re run the election under serve national security establishment procedures that have yet to be Let me name. This is at the same time that he is trying to get my pants to either simply declare him. The Victor Henry six or to throw away enough votes that the election would fail and would go to the House of Representatives for resolution. I mean January six was an attempt a violent mob to stop their congressional count of the electorate the final stage of the final. sort of irrevocable moment in deciding the election, and it was done at the Beck and call on institution of the President. I mean it. It couldn't be more serious George

I completely agree with Bart and I've learned a lot from parts reporting on this, just how carefully from red this situation. He found himself in after the election and proceeded down the the one path. It might have overthrown the results of the election, which is to say to decertify this results and the deal the electors who were going to be sent to be counted in Congress Trump understood that he needed to delay the count on you. And a sixth in order to find the enough corrupt state officials state legislatures secretaries of State County Election board members, two to three, the election his way, and that was the way that Bart outlined in it in an earlier peace, ah that Trump could could throw.

all into confusion, and then the confusion itself would become the grounds for him and key allies to declare that the that he was the winner and That's what he tried to do. He tried very hard. He didn't succeed partner. because of the what you might call the civic virtue of some of those state officials and secretaries of state. legislators and county officials and now what we see happening. barred again has written about this and, in his most recent peace is again a concerted attempt by prompt and his allies to target Those offices that most people have never even heard of and fear them with loyalists, who next time round, can be counted on to to do the corrupt thing that others were unwilling to do in Georgia anymore. She can, and in Arizona and in Pennsylvania last time, so

I don't know what more evidence anyone needs and the problem is. This is the exorcism doesn't work if the degree of what you might call tribal irrationality is so great. That is simply not subject to the kind of argument and evidence that that Bart brought in those pieces- and it will bring here today and that's where we are. My peace was about the future Of imagination, which has been trumps, friend, all along the simply that the inability of most Americans to imagine that we could have a president as Co. up and indifferent to laws and norms and is prepared to trash the concept caution and even the majority will as trump we couldn't a man in January, six. The intelligence agencies could not imagine January six us what general Mark Milly said: afterward We have to imagine this because if we can imagine it, we are a big step closer to it happening in next time. Successful

So what I tried to do in my peace was simply lay out that you're, not convincingly to me, but just start out to think what might look like what could happen? Is it be violent. Why what form of violence take? How will the violence begin or will we turn into a kind of sullen, cynical formerly democratic, populous rather like Russia, that doesn't believe anything that doesn't believe anyone that thinks that media lies. The politicians lie so the hell with it all and we withdraw, and I think that is at least as likely a scenario following the next presidential election as outright violence, but mass violence is not only possible it We saw a very vivid foreshadow other on January. Sixth, the earth several things here that are especially troubling. What one is the degree to which our institutions

still rely on the integrity of individuals right. You can take the monkey the the apparatus here and if just a few people had to cited. They were trumpets to the core things that have happened very differently, as you say, that's being the ground, for that is being prepared next time to some of this, sounds like a conspiracy theory right on that had happened behind closed doors and the Unifil. The evidence is there for those who want to see it at this point, but I'm amazed by I'm phenomenon that David? You have pointed out a lot of really every time you you have spoken about Trump, which is that some of the most egregious things he ever does. He doesn't in view of that there's either. There is no debate about the fact, for instance, that he would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power. I mean that that alone, that one detail which is attested to buy in endless, say

It me easy. He was given multiple chances do this on television and he declined That alone should have alerted us that we were in uncharted Tori and the that this was an explicit threat towards democracy. David. I bring you in here too to reflect on it. I mean by trying to answer the first question you pose shirt in a way that I may be will be make it more vivid what we're talking about when my late father my return home from Korea. It had some distinction there. He was invited to a party at the house the general officer. He was young and didn't rank in a route party for people who are older and did rank and he got bored. He wandered away from the party and wandered into the generals. Private study on his desk, the general had a bigger which he had brought back from the European Theatre, thought most interested weapons, picked it up and begun discharged. It was loaded. The bullet went through the generals.

He went through the wall, the room and embedded itself in the dining room and my father. What emerges just movies like the worst three seconds of worse than anything, you've been into wars. This is the worst moment of anything and he walked out and everybody was laughing hysterically because I would have missed they were all drunk. They thought it was funny. No big. you told that story for fifty or sixty years, because it was a big deal. The fact that the bullet doesn't can anybody doesn't mean begun, wasn't wasn't loaded, the gun wasn't fired, we got real lucky, we got lucky got luckier than we deserved, but the fact is the presence of the United States having lost election. Tried through, as bark describes a complicated scheme and then by violence and the two interlocked and waterways. We can talk about to overturn the election. That's incredible! That's just in credit.

and we now so used to as pass as with so many things with prompt in it, as you say, it was public there haven't president's and there have been certain officials in the United States. In bribes and when they had done so, if you need some effort to conceal the bright taken. made. Some effort covered up the idea that you say my eye We're taking bribes is I'm gonna go to acquire a bill and Pennsylvania after you and put my name on it and what a red carpet down the street and cars will come up and people come out we'll put money on the counter for me, the president, and I will tell everybody else literally everybody will tell them your time. I will tell NASH Review. so everybody that you don't get a meeting with me. I must have given me the money first at my building on Pennsylvania after rules it, why I, I guess he seems to have a clear conscience. It can't be so bad near here. It's amazing is its justice,

astonishing social phenomenon- that if, if you have no shame and your indiscretions, are big enough difference, physics tat. silver and you you are really can beyond one people, can't keep track of of how fully you're trespassing various norms, but it some island. I hadda PS, as I find oftentimes. The way you have to deal with this is through the building up of minute details, reddened the big theoretical statement hears it has one of these little story. So I'm not gonna forget what you're the trunk presidency this wise but might present pants made it a visit. I thought he was not stopping their own on the course of another mission and he had meetings at in in Dublin with the Dublin government. He's opted to stay at the Trump golf course. on the other side of the island, Dublin faces toward England. He stayed up toward the Atlantic and at in what it God was meetings he had to take military trance.

Rotation from the Atlantic Ocean to the art english side of Ireland. In order to have meeting at a cost, the taxpayer of something like a million dollars. All of this, in order that unites, it, could put a few thousand dollars into Donald trumps Personal park because there I'll tell us believe it or not, in Dublin and that there was one day I was one day and then there was the next and then there is the next, and so the accumulation of corruption had the effect, because these things are often technically illegal or certainly inappropriate, or certainly frowned upon. You have to every day the present had to tinker with the structure of law in order to cope with it. he was fundamentally about which was stealing from the doktor, was so I you were We have a very good view of all of this, but you, you have a perspective in, nationally. That might be interesting to bring if not here at some point, because the unravelling of our democracy and our com, it meant to democracy is of a piece with what's happening elsewhere.

I will just I will bring you in here how it, how do you see the current state of the missing for? asian or in our society. That is allowing fully half of Americans. Do not follow the plot her so Yes, I think the international perspective is important in one sense, because if you look around the world and you, Look at the way in which democracies fall in the modern era in a we all had this idea that they're gonna be tanks in the street and there's a lieutenant colonel. In the presidential palace and he shoots a gun in the air? And you know that's how the that's how the coup data happens when we think of coup data, we have this kind of nineteen sixty nineteen. Seventy is vision of it in full, most democracies fail- and I mean venezuela- I mean russia- I mean Hungary is happening and in other places now as well, because elected officials who are unscrupulous take advantage of the current plan.

Call system, they change the constitution, they ignore the rule of law, they ignore the sense of the law and they seek to remove. In power illegally or immorally, one where the other, and that's the that its very and it happens over and over and much of what Trump did and much of it He continues to do is familiar from other times and places Let me just focus on one piece of it. I think everybody has alluded to this one way or another. This was the you, the method by which Trump app the twenty twenty election, the method by which he started to attack the validity of the vote. If you remember it wasn't just One form of you know the vote is rigged. It was voter machines, not working in Arizona. It was people cheating in Georgia. It was, you know, dead, people voting somewhere else. There was a thief re about the Chinese having intervened in the machines. There was a theory about the Venezuelans having something to do with the machine.

The the voting machine. Companies themselves were attacked, some of them sued and the cumulative effect of all of these things. I mean, of course they were, as Bart said, they were a part of attacked it in order to try to get people to stop and consider whether the election was was legal and and to try to get people in particular states to change the rules by which the votes were counted, but it had a another effect, which I believe was also deliberate, which was to do what a ban in once. Described is flooding the zone with shit, and this is thing that authoritarian and dictators and other places also know that, if you tell one lie once in a while. You know, then people can argue about it. It can be proved or disproved if you tell hundreds of lives. If you tell over and over again different lies from different directions. Every day what you created, sinners SAM and nihilism, and confusion and belief that no truth can ever be known again.

an example of how this was done was, if you remember the malaysian plane that crashed in eastern Ukraine and twenty fourteen. If you remember that, was actually shot down by Russians. We know exactly how it was done. They thought it was ukrainian plain and so on. What did what was the reaction of the russian state after this happened? The russian state media put out literally dozens of explanations for why the plane was shut down, ranging from the totally improbable. You know there were dead people on the plane in Amsterdam and they took it down on purpose to discredit sought in a field of terms area or the plane was had flown to close to another playin, it was trying to shoot down Putin's plain whatever there are dozens and dozens of explanations, and the point of that was to make sure that Russians had developed. The editor, which I heard one of them say in a in an interview in Moscow a few days later, namely we don't know what happened, and we will never know what happened because its unknowable and Trump uses the same tactics

repeatedly lies. He he makes repeated different explanations how and why the election was rigged and he creates a sense of falsehood and a sense of Uno ability. And he does this Course in assist, ease assisted in doing this by huge range of right wing propagandists from Steve Ben into Tucker Karlsson. You know from the famous ones to the much less famous ones on on multiple channels and the effect is to create These cynicism in nihilism that you started out with you know we don't believe any of this. The mainstream media lying. It's all a agitated. None of this can be proven what you know, whereas in fact you know all of it is proven I mean there, there were no attempts to rid the election. There were no problems with the voting machines. Most votes in Georgia. The votes were counted multiple times by hand by machine. There was no proof, of any irregularity whatsoever, but by repeating-

the idea that there was regularity by coming up with different theories, chinese venezuelan italian explanations as to how it happened. They create the sense that something, oh there can't be smoke without fire people will be talking about all this unless there was something to it and that you know that's it. That's a deliberate tactic. You know, and that is so. thing that we can see being used by other people, we can see Putin Ewing at doing it. We can see you job has used to do it in Venezuela, the more noise you create and the more distraction you create the harder it is for people to believe anything, and then you create, the cynicism that you began with. Yeah, as you say, as a deliberate tactic, and it creates a powerful ace, symmetry because so what happens? In response to that, they need a blizzard of lies is increasingly friend take attempt to contain the damage, and ever a single misstep there get scored by a very different set of norms,

The rights of the New York Times gets a story wrong or the Atlantic the story wrong or wind up, relying on the steel RCA for anything to substantiate Rina russian influence. Here it seems for the people who care about it. Just the intact, the facts in and the coherence of an argument. The little missteps seem too loot the entire case against Trump. In this case, tromp and his enablers end the propagandists on that side. All have to do, is create a mess and in cleaning up people who care about the integrity of journalism have to be held to who norms of de end and coherence that harder and harder to enforce when there are found in fires to put out, rather than one and so journalists.

Send an israeli democrats. Universe have been sloppy in Hell, they ve done that from time to time and on certain points continuously Who does give the sands against? I certain about how much we should go back and try to clean up the mess of the previous few years so as to bring his number people, along with us for this ride. But we take something like this the dossier which, if I'm not mistaken, was first a piece of Republican about research and then was taken over by the court campaign and then I think most immediately was the used as the basis for a a wiretap of Carter age. If I'm not mistaken, that fact alone effect, it's still. Dossier has now been basically discredited. Correct me if I'm wrong there, that fact the laundress vitiate, everything right. So why do we do with them? It? I guess, is very hard to and pick that perform surgery on the facts in a way they can reclaim. the attention of people who have begun

is to come the way you just described and to this feeling of is just such a mess, I'm gonna withdraw my attention from an all said this. This is, who knows: what's happened to amateur from according to the Washington Post Trump told thirty. Five thousand lies during his presidency and you cannot clean up that mess it's in the zone, is so flooded with shit that Hercules himself could not wait into it and and began to eat too to clean it up, but the really pernicious effect of those thirty. Thousand lies and especially the lies since the elect from between the election and the insurrection is yeah it. It doesn't just make close to half the country. Believers in absolute absurdities, like

there. The russian lie about the malaysian aircraft, which became something that some Russians no doubt believed in. It also makes it harder for. The rest of the country to distinguish lies from truth you're you're, holding onto facts for dear life but event You begin to feel that it doesn't make any difference because every reckon every political fact, pants on fire has no effect whatsoever. And so the temptation is to save. We're playing on the Wrong Plainfield, where we're playing by the rules in and they are not, and so one effect is it more. More Democrats now say: they are unlikely to believe the next elections results. If, if trump winds or if a republican wins and so, and there may be reasons not to believe them, given how state legislatures are trying to rig the counting of votes,

rule these new laws, but it's a terrible situation where both partisans, eyes are now saying more more, that they're not gonna, believe that that's institutions or illegitimate and that's the effect of the shit that has been piling up over the last few years. Sam you. It is not a religious important about what happens if the mainstreaming in the in the traditional values of a truthful conversation and truthful journalism, which is what what happens when the New York Times has to run a correction or when we find out that the steel yea is largely unreliable and it used to be when there was a reasonably common consensus about the rules of of conversations about the rules of evidence that a correction, in the Atlantic Say, actually bolstered the credibility and the better it which you would demonstrate your

stability by owning up to and fixing your mistakes, but since from doesnt ever acknowledge a mistake There is an ever a sort of commonly adjudicated lie or miss statement on the Trump side there. The score is the New York Times has had ten errors and trappers had not. and the volume of lies that Georgia's talking about does not just produce it is in the end, was describing. It also produces a few among those were disposed to believe Tromp that, with all their evidence, all this evidence summit must be true that they can. It advances right off them. If one point or another point seems to be discredited, although they cannot even acknowledge that, but that he knows his were using

yeah, the Porsche metaphor, there's gotta be a pony in there somewhere and and it my latest peace. I spend a lot time by talking to you in writing about than the USA firefighter who was overwhelmed by the quantity of lies in Trump land and believed that some of them must be true that, with all the smoke there had to be fired yeah? The promise is often a good here, heuristic right, but it's not good. When people cynically leverage it right, We are quite consciously, as an has pointed out, and it sir is. It is an asymmetric war and a deck, and I've been at a loss for how to confine daylight under these conditions, will for it with people who are who are not seen the dynamics of it

the steel dossier, is an interesting case in point. So the steel dossier was in in almost entirely irrelevant to the Miller investigation it had not. It was not the reason why the FBI investigated Trump. In the first place, it was a sideshow. You know if you, read the Miller report? None of it is based on the steel dossier. It all comes from different places. If you look at the material that Buller produced about the you know, the Russian, the professional trolls from Saint Petersburg, who work inside the? U S and the twenty sixteen campaign. None of that is connected to the steel dossier. But this ass. You had one advantage, which is that it had a few little sensational anecdotes tucked into it. You know the grotesque things that trumpet meant. You have done in a hotel room in Moscow that kind of thing and it seemed to it it had an element of sensation, that the real material didn't have

this, I think, is another thing that Trump and the people around him have understood, which is that people will focus on the sensation at the expense of the reality I mean, did you know all the people who say? Well? If the steel report is not true that it's all rubbish, did they actually read the Miller report? I mean the Miller report actually lays out pretty clearly you know what happened and why and unanimous Bart said it makes certainly makes the case for Trump as as person of interest in terms of national security, and certainly somebody who should have been investigated for obstruction of justice, but but the the details that people remember the things it Dick in their head are the sensational ones Actually, why? Maybe David is right to draw inspiration, pick them out on the other side and that an that's it, that's a piece of human psychology that the Trump understood I think the

oceans understood it. Others have understood that you can focus on details from people's private lives sensational stories and that will take people away from. You know that the larger body of facts as well when I was a young man, I was friendly with them an expert who come from Canada, where I grew up from trucks, walk united, sixty eight and he is a well known writer, an injustice correctly, and I once had the test ask what he liked best about living in a democratic society like Canada compared Communist Yugoslavia, and he said what I like about. Democracy is not voting, because he was someone who is interested in jazz in literature is very complicated, personal life and he knew that. However, the election will come out. All of that would be fine you he would able to an end. So he D just detached himself entirely from politics, one of the

it is a democracy- was so powerful. An idea from the g I bill until name your date. Was it really deliver results for ordinary people? You didn't have to have a theory about communism versus free markets. You d never fear, but democratize held hearings. MRS democracy to see. We had blue jeans and bananas and fund music and they didn't. Obviously it was better here. We are doing something right. And so a lot of the power of democracy constitutes ability to deliver one of the things you do when you try to undermine democracy. Is you bore that different? You makings stop delivering, and so one of the where you start at the beginning. This conversation, which is why it was an way. Why should people care about what is going on here? It's trumpets non trump. Why do people care that we are seeing? Attempts increasingly acceptable attempts in the United States to do things in politics that never would have been,

done before, threatening default on the obligations of the United States in order to get your way in a budget fight using violence and contrary to try to overturn an election, those if they are lying about the Pact of vaccines in order to make the economy were so as to hurt the president of another party. Those are things that MR tax people just didn't use to do and one one of the reasons why we are all in so much trouble. and one wonders what we are going to reinvent lot of how we think about politics. Note this question of: what's in the Mulder report, what's in the still dossier, if you watch the cable news conversation, you think that the you would think that the important question is what crimes Donald Trump commit at a drama. I've been bangings. Twenty. Some tea is working to find with tromp most the terrible things he did.

Not criminal and most the criminal things he did. What so bad, I mean if somebody trips over some technical statute or fail to file there, their individual personal income taxes properly. That's that's obviously shouldn't do that, but that's not the end of the world but most of the american government stood on people not doing things just because you didn't do those things it turns out. It's not illegal for the President operate a business, that's elicits money from people wanting to United States gotta that latter that isn't illegal. Just precedents. Just didn't used to do that because it was wrong and you didn't law and if the president did do it turned out, the law was weak recourse, so we're into a world where twenty twenties, where a lot of things thinks we're not done things or understood things parties, the parties didn't do it do to each other, are now being done and we're taking against what was once a very intense game, but it wasn't played with working weapons or playing that same intense game, but now weapons and kill well before we take the turned toward them. Looking at that

The future here in our future concerns about especially the twenty twenty four election I'll, throw another one more shibboleth that you guys from my trumpet stand just to see if we can do some good here, Could I get so I visited problem. bigger than tromp writer trumps behaviour is explained by his character right in the eye I sort of view Hemison some sort of moral lunatic, and I really would it would not be surprised by any he does, but he has a personality cult. Around him which he used to be the Republican Party and the people who have risen to his defence, you would think have rapidly nations to defend me. Some of them were casualties of his and painting right how? How do you explain that someone like your TED crews, will defend tromp? I you know all along the way, as he commits these democracy strain indiscretions, I think many People who look at their snake well

This may be the sum of the zero regular, but what's happened to me This is a reaction with what trumpets dawn and certainly with what these Republicans, who who have read birds of a normal political behaviour have done. It is a response to some kind of hysterical override. By the Democrats and by the deep state right, so they could trump represented such a threat. to the way things were that we had a media into infrastructure sure Andy, a deep state that try the destroy him at any cost, and so what you saw on the Trump side and the republican side was just stay at a time to a third in play. This dirty in a working have to play a little dirty to maintain our administration. What too, Leave you say to that. George may better start I've. Just so you know, all talking over each other- and you have anything to say too that so one

The strange things for me about coming to Washington in the years of the trunk. Ministration was. I spent a lot of my career writing about the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and I've read lots of books about the agony of collaboration, and why people call aberration there there novels about it, written by poles and checks and others, and why The strange things was discovering that in wash in turn me. leave those same issues and the same conundrums arose that people were seeking to further their careers by telling stories to themselves about. You know I need to remain in politics, because my position is so important that can be influential from the inside. You heard some people saying this openly. you know, or you know, The knowledge that I can bring to the table continues to matter even it even inside this conduct, and you also heard a lot of people. You know who want to stay in power who wanted to stay. You know in

public life. You know coming up with excuses and explanations, I mean, if you look back on the history of view, she France, you will discover that nobody, nobody collaborated with the Nazis because they admired the Nazis. Everybody collaborate, the Nazis, because the threat from the left and the Jews and the socialists was so enormous and so strong that they had no choice but to stand up and defend the honor of France and be on the side of vitiate. I I'm exaggerating little bit there to make the point, but you you find them in almost any situation where you were, people are sort of in a captive In addition, they have to either collaborator drop out and when they choose to collaborate they tell that story. And so I would say that that was the story that a lot of publicans told themselves and told one another as a justification for continuing to support trump and for continued to mount the slogans.

That many of us heard and, as you know, we see even now the price that can be paid by people who refuse to do. That is now. can be exclusion from the party or certainly exclusion from its. You know, from its from its inner sanctum, and so people are continuing to do that. They are continuing to. You know took too Venture a you know as a separate but equal or or different, but equal left wing threat that justifies their poor behavior. But this is that this is to use as a kind of human reaction that we ve. Seen in you know you can look at Communist occupied Poland in the nineteen. Fifty is you can look at Vichy, you can look, many other states and you see in a very similar story, but is that enough to explain the fact that there are you can count on. really one hand? The number of prominent Republicans and who are willing to withstand these pressures. Me takes my list like Liz, why? Why is why? Are there two or three

people. You know in her lane and the asked of the Republican Party has Capitulated, even in the aftermath of January six right- and I think the answer goes way back before from and will be with us after Trump is gone and perhaps We should talk about these little broader things than just trump cause. Actually think Trump keeps us for in some ways from understanding the broader forces and the deeper forces I, give it is happening at two levels. One is the top of the Republican Party, and the other is the base of the Republican Party. The base of the Republican Party. has been increasingly populist, increasingly hostile to the mainstream institutions of the country, whether it the media or schools and universities or the CIA

the FBI, even the military, it it didn't hurt from to try Ah, the national security institutions and the National Security Heroes, Giorgio John Mccain mood is exactly because the base of the party had stopped revering those institutions and had begun to think of them, as it leanest, ah self, serving indifferent to the lives and they the problems of the mass of people. So the base the party in the tea party in period was a key moment in this, because that's when the kind of nihilistic attitudes of republican voters really set in- and it was not coincidentally upon the election of the first black president at the top of the party you

had a kind of corruption that set in not just financial but the corruption of power power at any cost power for its own sake, power without a real higher purpose, and conservatism which had a set of goals, political goals, ideological sort of faded out it lost its color, and power itself became the end of the party and Mitch Mcconnell became the perfect embodiment of that. He was the one who brought the filibuster to the floor. Of this, as the tool for preventing the other party from doing anything when they had power that, if you look at a graph of the use of the filibuster it just skyrockets once Mitch, Mcconnell is the Mai an leader and the Republican party strategy becomes simply to make sure that the Democrats fail and so those two things power at the top for its own sake. and a kind of irrational populism that rigour

urge all mainstream institutions with distrust, if not outright hatred. Those two have turned the Republican Party into an authority and party that no longer thinks it preserving those institutions and playing by those rules and norms and upholding those laws when it loses. Accepting that loss, snow longer, a winning approach for either the leaders of the party or the base, and if a leader tries to play by those rules there cast out and not just by their colleagues top, but by the base. The reason why there is that you can count them on one hand, is because the rest of the republican officeholders want to keep their seats and they understand that to keep their Yes, they have to go along with the lies, because otherwise they're gonna face a primary threat and they're gonna face A lot of money coming out them and they're gonna face trumps ridicule and an hostility, and that is gonna be there. Their careers. As a long line of Republicans, who tried in some sort of way,

Half assed waiter take on Trump over the last few years and they have either been collected by him, like TED crews, or there are in other lines for them the army. The thing that unites what Georgian and have said is that people respond to incentives, incentives, work and the Irish Republican office holder subjected the truth here would not say that the election was stolen and would be in fact, horrified by many of the things that trumps says and does there not true believers? The base is filled with true believers. The republican elected officials are not but there's a combination of opportunism and fear behind their behaviour because their responding to incentives, if they're they're, afraid of the base they're afraid of trumps ability to commandeer the loyalty of their own constituents and deployed against them and

and there are opportunities because they understand it, they play along if they are compete, each other to be more trumpets or, if it very minimum day they don't fight back they dont publicly to set, then their careers can assent. Simply has not why it might be useful to look in detail at how how to talk to us. We have to travel back a little bit and time it's twenty fifteen, The five point, fifty a m and everyone is assuming the jet bush- will be the novelty of the republican parties. Isa he's a mass money and endorsements on a scale never seen poorer were seldom seen a number of other Republicans. Don't like that now looking for a way to stop jet Bush, so Donald Trump materializes in the summer of twenty fifty, a lot of people who are the second year cannot say. Obviously this is going nowhere. This joke crop candidacy, but he might take a jet bush and clear. The field

for me, and so there was a game or tromp was simultaneously so useful to a number of people that they, stood out of his way, hoping that he would ratchet jet bush and job push inter and hope that here too toppled wreck knock aside, everybody Everybody is hoping to be left alone in the room, with Donald Trump, on the assumption that they wouldn't be it, and so there is never that moment where people said this is dangerous. This is that this is threatening us is destructive. What's all unite together against twenty fifty comes to an end. Donna front becomes the front runner for the Republican Party in July and stays that way off, except for one week or by a week or two Ben Carson's briefly in the lead at the end of it Fifty crop is the front. Runner now become twenty, sixteen, the primary about to happen and the

central brain of the Republican Party, more less aside funds fund. That was fun. This has to stop now, and so you will remember that I think is the first or second of the candidates. Debates took place in New Hampshire and make an Kelly was then the hope and star and future. The Fox news network was set out on the stage to give the career finishing killer question Donald Trump, this abuse of women and Trump far smasher back and then refused to take part in further debates hosted by Fox, unless Fox got rid of making Kelly at this point bottom in Rupert Murdoch by all reports was hoping to make Chris Christie Denominate Fund was one in twenty fifteen now it's time to get serious. Let's have Chris Christie. His head, the governor of the state, were fox this business and top crushed that it wasn't that they, that they got out of his way, because some theory about what he would do, they discover that he would actually do it. Many people, Fatah Forum, quite heart, crews, bottom heart, Marco Rubio, Hottam heart, and then they they lost an utter that

prudence of lost they gained at a different view about the future. The party ass for the party base. There isn't a stable thing called a republic people go. You know it isn't you gotta card it, isn't it you pay for you in an hour, so in you saw in the elections of twenty eighteen, millions of people who had voted republican all their lives voted for democratic candidates for Congress and districts, the district that had been George each tab. It pushes district the district that had been Gingrich's district, the district that had been Eric, Kantos desperate at one after another, the most core districts of the Republican Party, democratic, and you saw this joint reorientate vision of what it meant to be republican and what it meant to be a Democrat, and that is the thing. That's a truck sort of road and benefited from without always understanding. One last point, I think, maybe we're saying I'm your reflecting what some people say. We will you quote this line about what trouble such a threat from shock threatened to shake up the american political system,

in one sense. It's true. I mean blowing up NATO, getting rid of free trade. Aid institutionalizing bribed taking those are those are big shake up, but you mean? Is there something that wasn't on ethical or criminal, the Donald Trump one or two do actually month by month, probably the least productive precedent of the host Franklin Delano, Roosevelt era me he didn't do much. There was nothing much other than steel. There wasn't much the heap he wanted to do so. The idea of him, as some big threat to The way Washington does its proper policy business that he became. A very, very conventional republican present where he was unconventional is what is he did things? Nobody, not republicans, not Democrats, nobody one president was away all that is its psychological. understandable to maybe will you're describing, is, for the most part, the work of an additives and a fundamental mistake, elation. The lie at every step along the way you have this trumps can,

hey is going nowhere? We can just support him for this instrumental reason, but on the whole they know that proves to be untrue, but what I find Mystifying may perhaps incentives somehow capture this, but I dont know with incentives really are. Is that in the aftermath of the election right when he lost in a way when it when the case could be credibly me aid that he lost, and he was right We should no longer have the power. He would only have the power that you would insist upon containing for him at that point right he's a loser that the one thing you trump can't stand to be and derives everyone else on earth. For He now is why do you have the House freedom carcass? and Mark meadows and Rudy Giuliani, and I admit I, what explains why are you sick, ology awaits it's it's Einstein. to explain the character, logical, learned of thirty July, but what

blames the behavior, so many people who are willing to subvert democracy on our account in order to maintain the power of someone HU we now, where were now alleging, they secretly hate dark merely suffering the company of for their own perverse incentives, why do they not leave the sinking ship at that point about because, as David said, trumps power was not primarily expressed through the instruments of office because he didn't have up a policy programme on his power was ass, a demagogue and a politician, and as someone you had this tremendous control of the said. Of a large base. Republicans might have thought had hoped he would go away and might have thought and hoped he would stop talking about the election and we ve seen-

from the work of the January six committee fascinating little artifacts of that have come out at which we in which people around Trump in on the government side, an ant among his outside advisers like shot Hannity, are trying to persuade him to stop talking about the election. Let's That's fade away, quietly and and build your posterity based on the fabulous record that you created as president, but they will understand that it is a core thing to him that he is not going to stop talking about and he still has command of the base, he stores command of tens. Tens of millions of Republicans who believe he bought it didn't lose. He hasn't lost his power at last his power over them- and I would add part that by November twenty two we need. A lot of those Republicans really had stopped believing in the importance of things like fair elections and mature. Any rule and

damn the norms of the transfer of power they just those things no longer held any strong value for them, so It was not all that difficult to kick them aside when it became convenient to do so it it's a bit like an was taught about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in darkness at noon, Arthur Kessler, great novel, the old, Bolshevik rubbish of finally confessed. Is to crimes that he didn't commit and the quest it is. Why would he confessed to crowded didn't commit in his answer is because there's, no reason not to. He cannot find any reason in himself too to go against what the power he is finally asking him to do as his last act, and I think these republic, have nothing inside themselves to resist they hit that has worn away. It's not as though attachment to democratic values is part of our dna. we can't lose, we can easily lose it and we can see its loss when people who

at one moment might seem somewhat. Honourable the next moment, stop talking or give a speech that is wishy washy or even give a speech that suggested They think the election was stolen. There was a lot of about facing after January twenty twenty one. When Republic since you were shocked by the violence, denounced it and then almost immediately began to back away and I don't think it's just fear of Trump in the base. I think that's part. Report also think it's a lack of any strong attachment. to whatever the values that might have allowed them to be in the same campus list, chaining it wasn't a I add. Can I add to that? I think some people also come to understand? The usefulness of reminding the rules? You know if you, under The rules, if you reduce faith in the system, if you you know convince people that elections are rigged, the

can be if you're, somebody who hope to take advantage of that lack of trust and to use that just trust it your own political career. Then you can see the usefulness of it, and I think quite a lot of Republicans have they under down that there One of the ways to win is through extreme of gerrymandering with you know, playing games with who gets to count the votes. All of this, is, is a potential path to power and once as used as George, says once it once you're that cynical, then you come I understand that any attempt to undermine faith in the system undermine faith in the evening. No not just in the rules, but also the people who keep account of the rules, whether the media or inspectors, general or congressional committees, the January six committee theirs. can it be an attempt to undermine all of those organisations that produce knowledge, produce facts and and confirm what happened because it

be useful for them down the road to have those those institutions undermined. Maybe the secret answered, SAM's question is is in something Trump said it during. That period was hard to overturn the election. That key phrase, I'm looking only for eleven thousand votes. I think it's probably true, that if trumps plan had been to get the chairman of the joint Chiefs of staff on the on the phone and put hundreds of thousands of troops into american cities and round up people put them in kind training camps I mean, obviously you know not even Tucker Crossing- would support that, but probably right now, but he didn't ask for that. You just asked for eleven thousand and I think that maybe this- and this is may be the key to understanding the. Maybe that's the whole question. The whole thing when spend this happened. You talking to is it. Democracy is not like a light. Switch switches is if it's a dimmer switch, it is constantly being adjusted and

the history of american democracy, is, as the democracy has got it wasn't, that unites, was ever an authoritarian country. the country where the circle of participation was narrowed in very often very brutal way back by violence. I think an inn at enough now for these and the state of cap caliber certain state of South Carolina only about fifty thousand people voted sucker you didn't get a secret bout until the mighty fifties, but in other places it was done. Same idea, but let s roughly, but since through the twentyth century, and especially since the Second World WAR, the circle participations broadened and broaden and broaden. We now democracy means that every adult gets to participate and went to the extent that they want to well. Trop wasn't talking, but overturning all of that system, just dialing back by eleven thousand votes and in a fairly close, balanced system. If you can set look there, just certain people who shouldn't be participating. This is not every most people. Yes, certainly out. Anyone. Anyone owns a house in any

news over forty, you know anyone who wants a gun. Those people obviously should participate in many of the people. Don't meet those criteria, just not all just not enough and was the that was the exciting proposition and emerging twenty twenty? Maybe if you just compress it enough without over many democracy altogether. You can be sure that we will be much more often than we otherwise what I think, that's really the question for the future that something that people glimpsed was the possibility of limiting participation to enable republican Party not to compete in a way that other parties do by saying what people aren't liking. Our message: that's what we propose: some things that people like my office with open men, I propose that we can get power that way then and then get the benefits of power. To note. We can continue with a message that is basically pretty unpopular, but my shrinking the circle of participation, somewhat eleven thousand votes we can win, even though people don't want Rapid and, if I can just add just one sentence: that's exactly how democracy

been undermined in other countries at other times and under places, not because there's a data on millions of arrests, but because you know, there's been a little change to the constitution because they're been, some of the media are no longer able to operate, and it's a very slow and gradual process means something like eight years after Hugo Chavez took over Venezuela, most Venezuela, Still believed they were living in a democracy, although by that mom And it was no longer possible to change the leadership of the country through a democratic ballot and people just because it it had been a series of small cuts over time. They didn't know, they didn't feel it yet, and I think that's what prompt understood. I worry sometimes that I'm really cynical, and maybe that all of us in this conversation happen overly cynical about

the cynicism of republican elected officials or elected officials. More generally, that that so few of them have core convictions for which they are prepared to pay a price politically. But less Chinese come up several times in this conversation, and I wrote a book about Dick Cheney, and this is very much a politician in his image- almost an anti politician and, whatever you think of her conviction, said many of them. I disagree with profoundly. They include respect for constitutional democracy, for the core tenets of Apple the consistent and, in that way, like a father, she's a sell it and, in this case facility, is redounded to the public good, because she's willing to pay possibly the ultimate political price, she may lose her seat. She certainly lost her leadership position by standing up for the truth about the results of the last in a practical action

we're just not seeing very many people who are prepared to do that. Yeah. It is one thing I would add and I want to go down. This rabbit whole butter and I've gone down at many times in the past, but it it's it's not exculpatory with respect to the anti democratic tendencies of Republicans at the moment. But it. Exports psychologically explain something. What, when you look at how, when you look at it at the degree of ideological capture on the left in identity, the tax and woke Isn t I'll give you all the bus raises cancel culture and in a way that has been disparate. fortunately represented in our mainstream institutions, including journalistic ones. When you, move right of centre for your meeting people who have no alternative politically to there, Applicant party, in whatever it's up to now and their faced by people who are under very different

topics in very different ways are also manufacturing and ass, a man of dishonesty and misinformation. and do you know you have Europe City burning and literally in a light, Billy. burning in the shot and CNN is that is covering a mostly mostly peaceful protest right. that just one image like that, you know the endlessly amplified on Fox afterwards does enough to just and the argument for balls I, whenever Trump is he's not as bad as that is not as bad as defined the police right feel free to do so and it happened. I just think that's that's been working, background for many many millions of people this whole time. I think not SAM as a kind of catalyst to accelerate the, the liberalism of the right but a sign that liberalism, really know a political party or a partisan orientation and it it has a communicable effect. It can easily see

and I think that is what's happening in our culture though, the liberalism of the left is mostly in culture right now. It's mostly in institutions like schools in uniform. Cities and the media and philanthropy and the arts, the liberalism of the right is mostly in politics: it's mostly concentrated in a political party, and so it is a much more direct threat to democracy, but to shift from Trump a bit. I worry most about simply the if a mental habits of people who find themselves caught in a kind of of the vortex or of a vicious circle of responding to liberalism with moral liberalism, and it's very hard to get out of that once you get in it and that's why sight of these Does that showed the Democrats are now more willing? to say than they have been that they might reject the results of the next election if they show a republican winner,

This also more willingness to use political violence across partisan lines. Then there had been in recent years, so those are tenants, these that are in the minds of people and that have a way of intensify and ample and answered drive each other to extremes, and that's something that worries me a lot, because its x is just very hard to slow it down once the acceleration toward the extremes and towards a liberalism of all kinds starts arduous make would turn toward. The present and future. Here. What Most worried about this is to look at the public facing man the nations of the Democratic Party. It would seem the democratic most worried about voting rights, You know again serve seen through the lens of identity politics right through the Republicans one,

the disenfranchise black and brown people by asking for a voter. I d is essentially. Is the concern, whereas I think the real concern is that it conversation it can be had. But I think the real concern is. where we have a system where it might not matter how people vote. If the right people are in place, to overturn an election This is a machinery that I still can't even count myself as someone who, and dimly understands at this point. But We were all alerted to its existence in the twenty twenty alike. And it is fairly dumbfounded that this is our system and its was hanging. Thread was hanging by the conscience of MIKE hence, and a dozen other people who didn't cave and to the demands that they just another by the votes that we're coming from them, the disputed states

What are we worry too? I maybe I'll put it it pardon George first what are we worried about with respect to the next few years and twenty four x two years while it it's the difference tween changing the rules of a football game so that it's a little bit harder for one side to score On the one hand, which is like the voting rights you're talking about and then simply buying off the referee, on the other hand, so that you can directly control outcome of the game and what you see is properly called election subversion. So, as David has pointed out that Trump tried to get the Secretary of State of Georgia, who oversaw the election and certified the vote today.

seven eleven thousand seven hundred eighty votes, which would a flip. The result, after three separate counts, showed that Biden at one and you had in this case the integrity of one man Brad Reference Burger, who refused to

overturned. The election, who refused to throw away the people's votes and recorded the conversation with Trump and arrange for it to be made public and doubt what concerns me most is: how does the republican Party? How does the Trump supporting Republican Party respond to what Brad Rapid spoke at it? But what Trump and his people have done is to around the country and find those obstacles find those people and places which got in the way of trumps attempt to overthrow the election and it's gone around systematically uprooting them. So what's happened to paragraph inspector Trump has endorsed another candidate to replace him in this year's election. First of all that candidate

has pledged that Hugh. He would not have certified by this victory that Canada is ready explicitly on the platform that he would not properly honestly carry out his duty to count the votes of the people. Key says Trump, really one on these fictitious grounds of fictitious fraud and that he would not have said the election. Thereby the way doing the same thing with governor, because Cumnor CAP signed the state affirmation of results and has made him an enemy as well and therefore recruited some want to run against him and endorse former Senator Purdue take on cap, but meanwhile, that not being satisfied with that, the Republicans in the state legislature have passed a new law just in case rations burger winds. Again. They have removed him from his putting seat on the State Board of election. So if the elections were held,

again today, a national election. He would not be the one to certify it, they have simply defend him, and while they were doing that, they gave themselves the power to fire all county election officials to certify the in their own counties, and they ve done that, specifically with reference to Fulton County, which is Atlanta and the democratic stronghold in this and so systematically they ve gone about undermining and trying to replace the person who stood in from Sweden. Simon you're, seeing that happening around the country. There was an official in Michigan who was on the Board of State Canvas risk just to Democrats and Republicans and Tromp was trying to get them to deadlock, so that Michigan vote, which I'd and also one would not be certified at one of those. Two Republicans resisted his blandishments and insisted that the vote was the vote and he was gonna certified and he's been hounded out of office. Can you see the same thing going on around the country

and all that little is known and was breaking the law, even though their breaking norms that we didn't know. We were relying on it's a big legal problem because you can't say that you can't run the secretary of State on a lying platform that claims that from one the last election you can't prevent in advance the subversion of the next election count. You can reasonably foresee it happening if this candidate winds and it would probably become a matter for the courts. If, if someone actually did try to subvert the election and set a black and white in that trunk. Defeated Biden. Maybe wishes linger on that point for a second there, just going back to the path for a second Do we know what would have happened if pence head followed orders and not certified dealer and were, any will any one of the other people were talking about it. That's

stage you in Georgia or any of the other contested states had put forward, their electors or anywhere else. Was there in fact me. We would have had some kind of constitutional crisis, but What do we imagine would have resolved that crisis? While of this, this would have been a crisis precisely because we don't know how it could have been resolved and There was a sitting president who would have been better fishery of this gigantic electoral theft who theoretically had the power to control of the federal law, enforcement and military resources? And if, as one would expect this led to serious civic unrest could have invoked the insurrection act and given to it in order to the Military- and we don't know what orders would have been followed, but just because of their

Edith, came astonishing ambition of the of the effort to get pets to claim authority over the congressional Your count, we don't know how would come out there, many opportunities for deadlock that, for example, if he had thrown away the votes of at least three, possibly for states and therefore reduced by this electoral count to below two hundred seventy. He could claim that, under the twelve amendment, that Biden had failed to obtain a majority of the whole the electoral college and therefore stated that The election would go to the house. Although Democrats controlled the house, the vote in the house under the twelve amendment is done by state delegation, and each state gets one vote and republican control. Twenty six of the fifty state delegations, but Antsy Pelosi, a speaker of the house, could have refused to ring

the call the house to order to have that foot. Then you would have completely failed presidential election, for which the constitution does an offer a remedy under one reading Nancy policy which, from the acting president- but you could see the endless afternoon for mischief and an office now would have in a glorious, be careful what you wish hormone Four Republicans: son, the universe, That happened, so what, if anything, are we doing to rectify that? on the ways that we know we came perilously close to. line off the road and into the abyss, because there was no guard rail right where we would have wanted it Building the guard, rail and wooden. What problem it is taken

constitutional amendment were, but what would process too? We need to make sure that if this happens again, it doesnt pose the same kind of risk. Will what one part of the answer is to fix the Electoral Count ACT, which is of what interprets and gives direction to the invocation of the twelve amendment. Four, how how the electoral count his pulse ago, this was passed in eighteen seventies and is one of the most confusing and Corbould laws ever passed by Congress defy anyone to read these three hundred words sentences and make any sense out of them. There's some possibility of consensus between Republicans Democrats on fixing the letter Account act because republicans are sitting around thinking. They don't really want vice President Harris to have the powers that Trump thought Prince had to decide the next election.

there there may be a common willingness to set rule the road on how the procedure happens when the electoral college votes are delivered to Congress, they meet in joint session as they did on January. Six. The vice president, as President the Senate presides over this count and reformers would include making explicitly clear that the vice president doesn't get to do the counting, seems like that should be a major focus, far bigger than many of the other things that the B administration appears to be focused on at the moment. Why that isn't? Did they deleted the phrase electoral count at isn't ringing in everyone's ears. It might have seemed to us small to them they had a couple of bills that were really ambitious. That included not just dumb. expanding are securing voting rights through early voting.

Male in voting dropbox, is all those things but also campaign finance reform making election day, a national holiday, all of which, I think, are Good things, and I would have voted for them absolutely any time, but they took the focus off what we're talking about, because there is very little data that shows that, if you restrict the number of days of early voting or, if you make it harder to do mail in voting, it's going to benefit one party or the other. It's really hard to fine tune elections. To that extent, it was powerful politics because it connected to old and deep and terrible parts of our history in which black Americans and others were kept from voting.

pull taxes and literacy tests, etc. But I haven't seen data that says the these new state laws are likely to have a significant effect on turn out, because in the past that laws like that have not had a significant effect in turn out, so they became extremely passionate arguments for laws that were only important in the context of what we're talking about. They were part of a republican strategy to thwart the will of the majority, but I dont think they were where the will of the majority was light would most likely to be thwarted, its most likely to be thwarted after an election with what barges cod election subversion- and I wish both parties, but especially the Democratic Party, were focusing on that and really holding the Republicans feet to the fire and say: oh, do you not see a problem with laws, state laws, state politicians and confer whose national law, the electoral Kanak, that makes it likely that the

the majority is gonna be overthrown, because that's a harder thing for a Republican too to defend and them there. Perhaps there could be some bi partisanship, I'm always sceptical, because every time we think there might be- just about it doesn't happen, especially on election issues, but I think that's where the focus should be- and perhaps I'm not a legal expert on this by any means, but perhaps there should be some smart staffers in Congress drafting laws right now that make it almost impossible for even the most corrupt, ah state, official or local official too, to rig the Elect tote to throw the election after after the boat. That's

it's actually not an easy thing to get that last one sounds like a great idea. I would love it if it were possible, but states have the majority of the authority over the conduct of a state election even witnessed a national, actually went into a presidential election, and there is an open constitutional doctrine about an open question about the constitutional basis for that authority. That one of the things that trump Republicans are doing is promoting a theory called independent state legislature, and it comes from the fact that article two of the constitution says that each state shall choose electors for President

according to the preferences of its state legislature that the state legislatures, the ultimate authority about how you choose electors, and so what we saw in the last election was an attempt by Trump and his people to persuade republican state legislators in, states that Biden one, but that were controlled by Republicans in the state House, in the state Senate to persuade those legislators to discard the votes of the people of that state and to substitute electors for trouble on their own authority. Because article two of the cost The commission says in this extremely muscular and impossible reading of the constitution. Article two says that the legislator decides on the electors, no matter what

it's almost, certainly not true that you could get the legislature to decide after an election is held, that the election is not to be the method of choosing electors. But it can write the rules for how the kids are chosen in that state for the next election. And I don't think that voting law experts are very optimistic about the Possum Congress can write rules that would prevent subversion at state level. But I would like to send a little bit from the idea that this is a technical, legal problem which has a technical legal solution. electrical count. Act was a mess in nineteen sixty when there is a republican president and Richard Nixon device for applicants, President lost John F Kennedy: Insecticide, it was a mess in nineteen. Seventy six, when Gerald Ford accepted his very very close to feed at the hands of Jimmy Carter, was a mess in nineteen. Ninety two: when George H, DOT W Bush side and was a mess in the year. Two thousand and very bitter Democrats accepted the bush. We Gore outcome it's not

because of the loss than Americans except watches, and it's not because the laws that president crop and many of his supporters refuse to accept this election is. Is that something deeper? So if you're thinking about the future as it which we should be studying period in history, where people have gone through periods, are political systems have restated after a period of extremism and one that catches my mind. A lot is the period after the Second World WAR when they were communists, in fact, Parties all over all over Western Europe and the United States came up the uniting forty six is a profitable. You have the were strike. Action in American is for an end, then, over the next generation these systems were were stabilized. So how did we do that? That's You can point to things and I dont know them like a one but material prosperity. That's your helps. Broadening participation out some one of the things that are the United States and its friends did to defeat the Communist and what Europe was restored. There was,

women suffrage and in France and ITALY, where the two places work, the communists were strongest. The communists appeal strongly demand didn't appeal to women. Women got about I'm suddenly became a very small party compared what they had been when women didn't have about. What really really helps is elite agreement, but there are things that leads one to one another, and that was the difference in the politics of nineteen fifty and the parties mighty thirties traumatized by the war, frightened by the Soviet Union, people would powerfully different views came to an understanding. It just thinks we can't do those things. We can do all of those things are great David. But we have two years: we're not gonna get material prosperity across abroad middle class and elite agreement and the rest of it into your. So what do we do between now and what could be the really cataclysmic twenty twenty four election

as between now and twenty twenty four winds choice, for that reminds me of a different period of history, which is the period after the civil war. When you had one party that accepted the outcome of the civil war and another party that chafed at it and then The success or failure of United States depended on the party that after the civil war winning power most of the time and the pirate party that didn't, except the civil war, losing power, most the timescale in twenty one Twenty four Biden has to win and who and protect himself against the risk of being. Peace by Republican House and that's gonna, take all the things a doctor TAT S an take success in the perception of success, and that can take for seeing the country on other kinds of challenges, of which there are few and one of them it is haunting all of us is that we may be about to confront in the very new you're. A major warned. The european continent in which present from the former political charm, Vladimir Putin, is invading other european countries we face,

and its chronic that's hard to get people excited about it. But we face is the climate challenge. We face camper competition from China. It is, I think, not fanciful, to think that you could get Republican, a democratic political actors to believe you know what that the game it just from the time that the Tea Party Congress began threatening default to get its way through twenty twenty, the game play too rough with white was being played in the immediate aftermath of civil war. Chura we need to. We need to make this game more predictable. Everybody would benefit from a more predictable and I would add one other thing which is a you know: it's alright, one of those bushy political things, which is that the Democrats and those members of the regime? working party who want America to remain a democracy need to find better ways to talk about it, even the idle of this event, you know the future of democracy. Once you talk about, democracy is an abstract thing. You know, I mean climate.

Change just debate by weight as the same problem. Then I knew I was problem has not yet your fault. Nobody, but once you talk about it is as an abstraction. You know our democracies in danger for a lot of people. That's too distant. Problem or it doesn't seem to affect them personally. Orne and I've had several conversation with politicians, in the? U S and elsewhere recently about how you know what it is there a better way, and what The ways is, if politicians talk about what it is that we could lose as a nation. You know you you couldn't you could lose your right to choose for your governing. Is you know, but also could lose something fundamental about american identity. You know we are Americans. What brings us together? It's the fact that we know that we are able to come together to make these decisions You have to choose our leaders to follow a process to follow the rule of law and you are in danger of losing that you know something- funding,

The law is being challenged in your you're, going to lose it. You can appeal to people's sense of justice and injustice in the idea of people cheating or being junior cheating. You is something that's that's very powerful and finding a- and I dont think that bite and registration has found this language. Yet- and I know some of them are aware of this you know. The voting. The failure of this voting rights bills is interesting because in a way they were seeking to address problems the problem of lots of republican state legislatures passing laws to do with voting. That was a war. Sign, because those all of those laws were being promulgated in passed on a kind of assumed basis that they needed to be passed because the election had been rigged. their reflection of the big lie? You know we're going. We're not going to say that the election was rigged, but we're gonna have better voting systems. You know and twenty twenty two twenty Twenty four, because we need to fix our voting system, actually the voting.

Didn't need to be fixed. I or maybe they need to be fixed in some places. civic ways, but there wasn't day huge need for these laws, and so the binary actually administration reactivating we didn't need these laws. These laws are our design. To limit voting and so on, and I think they hoped through the use of this act is George says it was very ambitious to raise the conversation about about democracy, but it hasn't worked yet you know that's not for lack of trying and also it's not an easy problem in the way that again, you know when you talk about climate change, abstractly lots of people- don't here when you talk about polar bears dying or when you talk about wild fires in your staying, then they might feel differently about it, and I think the people who care about american democracy need to find that wave speaking about it, while of boards point that this sensitive runs on both sides of the tracks here and he had the press, of calmly Harris subverting a republican victory is

it's gotta be galling. So you think that we could get some bi partisanship on that point. they were talking about here, at least out of concern for twenty four seems to precept The trump we'll run. I guess there's a trump best alternate. Canada perhaps in it waiting in the wings who we would also be concerned about subverting an election, It also presupposes that the Democrats have a candidate, that's electable writer, and I think there is reason to worry that two years from now Joe Biden may not be up to it and that in order approval rating made video. like and there's. There certainly reason to worry that calmly. Harris is not electable. Give and her approval rating and basic invisibility this point. I happy to cycle back on any loose ends we haven't covered here, but which want to get a sense of what you think the damage

That can and should do with respect to a candidate. what would you think is likely to happen? Does anyone have a political intuition? Her Dave start with you you're into politics yeah. I do They have a mechanism. The Democrats have a mechanism to change their candidates. At this point, it would require here's to volunteer to step aside, that the project would make the step aside or she didn't want. You would be such a bloodbath. It wouldn't be worth it I don't see this by the way as any kind of personal reflection on her. It is very difficult to go in american politics from the job of number two to number one and the politicians who have usually done it. Does you shouldn't some catastrophic event that has propelled number two the number one roll and gotten people used to the idea of the former number two is the number one actually stepping through an election processes as quite difficult, and it may be more difficult even for her than for some others, but it it's it's a real issue and and Democrats took it up,

risk with nominating the oldest candle for present ever and then backing that person up with someone who wasn't a tried and tested winner as that's going to be a real issue, and so the only thing one can hope for is a lot of economic success between now and and twenty twenty four and one of the immediate challenges. The Democrats, there is a there's report on the day that we speak the Democrats The content, considering limiting attendance at the state of the union address to twenty five members of Congress and that the idea that they would continue to accept the idea of course, it is not something as something that is an ongoing, chronic problem american society must be almost perpetually dislocated by on their work, late. They need to find some way to declare that they have won a success over covered. Focus. The economy because on the economy and, let's, let's hope Russia is deterred from invading you and then claim that a success it back if they can make that happen

anyone else. Have anything on that point before I we turned toward questions are right, so I'm Stacy. Let's get some questions here. She would have a few here and you can just us me when new all here, one that you would like to address the there's one here, it seems to me that democracy can only exist when the populists educated are met, can and other democracies youth, getting taught the civics necessary to sustain the future what was later on ever seconds. Anyone have someone pointed out, I think, just two. A few minutes ago, we only have two years, As for the of the immediate wolf at the door, to be pushed back. Oh educating the population is, is a heavy lift, but damn,

Does anyone have any ideas about education? I I've been thinking about it quite a bit because eight despair of most of the other possible pathways out of polarisation too. To use a word we haven't really talked about. It may not it may be a coincidence, but civic education has all but disappeared from a lot of american children's schooling in the decades in which we have moved into these incredibly polarized camps that don't seem to live in the same universe any longer and that's partly because it became controversial one side or the other denounced teachers and schools when their children being thought something in civics class that offended there their view and there a lot of very well, meaning and good ideas for how to bring civics back to american classrooms,

You know when I say that I almost immediately heerd derision and contempt, like you think, you're gonna solve this problem by teaching children about all the amendments to the constitution, but I guess we should think about education and civic education in a much broader way as simply giving children that chance to learn how to think how to reason, how to argue how to persuade. How did he your views that they don't like how to find in some common ground, if possible, with people who hold those use and, if not, to still agree to to live together. In this country. For me, those are it's very hard to imagine exactly how we can teach those things because school is under so much pressure and stress and in fact public education seems to be facing a kind of existential crisis right now coming out of move it. But for me that

There has to be something like that, and it may involve doing something to change the way We talk to each other on the internet. And the way the internet and algorithms encourage us to think and to react to one another. These are all big airy concepts, but when I think of how we can turn it from the disaster were headed toward, I think about education, Anna how were doing it wrong and how we might be able to do it better and I challenge a little bit the premise of the question Georgia's written by the way for the Atlantic very powerfully, but civic education. What has gone wrong with my recommend recommended to people it really needs to be stressed. The american electorate of twenty twenty two is far and away the best educated american electorate ever much more you came to an american electorate of stable times like night in seventy two in eighteen, sixty two. If more, education where the path to stability.

Should we should have the stability of a buckle lounger right now. I worry about the EU ops. What would we used to happen was? Politics was about material things. Societies were poor and politicians offered people. things that they desperately wanted in Tammany holidays. It was literally a sack of cholera Turkey, later as a bridge road today, more, and more of us are in politics to relay a vision of ourselves, and this is the thing the political scientist always hope for the day would come when we ve transcend the physicality upon Dixon. We would we debate ideas and mode, being and after and guess what that turns out to be the heart, thing of all to compromise. So we may need to think about a different way for people to live each other. We have these new communications technologies, which means we all have. This experience Everyday. U turn on twitter and some body you ve, never heard of before in some place never knew. No, nothing about had said something you think up its offensive. Did that in twenty years ago. It did. Did you know about it? It did not

you did not get it spoil your day that now you didn't have to now. You're upset all day because of this thing, but the person you ve never heard of it by one of my rules for sanity on the internet is, if you hadn't heard of the person before they said this thing, don't let it bother you they did say this night so, but we have. We have a party Now, that is about self realization and that's in a country that is so diverse and getting more diverse, all the time, and not just in the census categories, but as people. come, which more prosperous they become more different one from another, as they realize who they are. I would just add one thing, which is that in a day into the way civics has taught in school which, by the way, I think the first time I wrote about this subject was at least twenty years ago I was on the editorial boarded the Washington Post, and you know people said it's terrible how civic education is declining and I wrote some in their work. even at that time all kinds of worthy organizations that promote civic education and people writing civics textbooks that have thought a lot about left right. You know differences and alive

this exists. It's out there I mean, if teacher, wanted to use it it's available, and so I have some cynicism, about the possibility of incorporating that, because it's not as if it's you know, it would be very hard for people to to do more than if they want to do. I wonder why people don't think broadly about education? But you know whether there are not online campaigns or whether there are not civic education for adults. You know ways reaching people whether there are ways of reaching people through the media or through entertainment. You know I'm a little too pointed in the american entertainment industry that it hasn't thought harder, for example, about doing a Netflix series about the effective propaganda on ordinary Americans and how they stop speaking to one another, you know: are there? No, you know is there There's no Hollywood drama that expresses the anxiety. If the last four years and the way in which its effect personal relationships

I think there's a lot of education that could be done or anyway, a lot of it. Education might even be the wrong word, but discussion and resolution of problems. If we more you and more people were thinking about this as a problem that can be resolved through reflecting different peoples, priest active but an event I have- I have talked to people about it, but it's if it won't work in classrooms. Why will it work on Netflix and that's an alarm, nothing. It won't work in classrooms. I'm saying that it's the material do it is available, you know that there are lots of good courses in simmer education. People have invested their foundations that will give stuff your school. If you want it I am not saying that its it couldn't were I'm saying it's, it doesn't happen and and the reasons why I seemed to be to do with local school decisions and teachers not having time and needed,

have more time for stem now and they're. All these mean a region's tests that you have to pass in each state, thanks to the new child left behind laws, mean they're, they're, all kinds of Nolan, political, bureaucratic reasons why it seems to be hard to fit civics into the days not downplaying it. I'm just saying it's been. It's been a subject of conversation for two decades. I'm just saying that there might be other ways of discussing the problem. If Peter, were more creative about thinking about it? Ok, Stacey S, question next and sort of in that vein, how do we as reasonable thinking humans take the level of their anger and tribalism and our communities doubtful level where people can reset and open their minds, use their brains and critical thinking to make real decision tens and have real mindful conversations He really is impossible western. If we could answer that, our problems would be solved.

Not only are problem here on your blog problem, all problems, all problems, Admitting of human solution would be solved by the answer. To that question I guess so set booze. Someone mention sulphur media in passing. The minister only part of the problem here and there, with a way, were engaged in one another and perpetually permeable to inform? John and misinformation that would otherwise be available. I won't get lost may seem like a lateral move here, but its relevant good, it's so energizing in trumpet Stan the role, played or or not played by big tack in deciding who platform who to censor whose rights to violate think of you sample from the conversation? Among Republicans, at this point you, Will tend to find people who think that twitter is the public square? You know you to deepen,

form. Anyone for any reason, is to violate their rights and believe that, leaving aside that, that doesn't make sense constitutionally and twitter private company that can do whatever you want there is this post. Option that the fixes and from the elite yet again had been big tack and so taken off, Alex Jones and certainly taken off Trump As I am honesty in active hypocrisy by people who claim to care about free speech and the free exchange of ideas. And if the answer to bad speeches just more speech, you know how could you D platform, the president of the United, states, I don't have what you guys think about that. I'm I'm on record many times, calling for him to be deplatformed and celebrating when he was things I view him is the most dangerous caught later on earth at this point, but What what do you think we should do with respect to the role that these platforms play in

are organizing, are a and and follow up this case find it impossible to coherently organise. Let me stress, an analogy with. Supposing summit some twisted away. Railroads runs, worked back in the night, century Cornelius Vanderbilt and found himself the owner of every church in the United States, and had make a decision in your central railway had to make a decision about what was preached in every in every church, the United States, Guess they wouldn't have done a very good or satisfactory job, and so will you have? Are these giant companies in the business of selling advertising for speeches, actually they give speeches about it, but it's not what they care about the everyday they were. They want to sell boats and gloves and perfume and They have suddenly found themselves in the art as arbiters of all these questions there, incompetent to do what they're, not by the way, disinterested actors there there their businesses, which, with profit seeking. So I think this a core of tat,

in the right of centre complaint, which is who pointed out. How did it happen, then, that these People are making these decisions that are so crucial, are gonna handle, can't be ok tee. What we you get to say anything about it met mean that we do have laws regulating what you can say about medicines in the United States and have had it now for more than a hundred years. It is not a violation of your freedom of speech, not to be able to say the cocaine will cure headaches so at that particular for a long time. So I just don't think there's any good guinea alternative, but for government to step in and say you know what that that these things do, function as equivalent to public squares and set. Some competent authorities will have to write meaningful rules with democratic by it. We don't want, have mark Zuckerberg, making these decisions for everybody, but with it, but it ain't. So these two extremes, her there's the public.

We're case which we're in Twitter or any other platform should function by the light of the constitution. Right that it really is freedom of speech and- and you are, you are in fact free to stay in the public square, that cocaine cures headaches, but you're, not You're not you're, not at that you're, not as a like, I guess, you're, not as a corporation on television W can. I can say it on my podcast and I can see it it's like this, but you know you can write a book with your crazy ideas about cocaine and if someone pub said about it What law prevents that it is. And then again, you have the slippery slope problem that once you start prevent, now, then why were you stop, but on the other extreme there's treating these platforms? I publishers, where they Have you no day whether they want to assume it or not? They do have an editorial responsibility and they want their liable for the deaf. nation of others or the consequences of their publishing irresponsible things.

Which is a view. Most importantly, they can be sued effectively. You know so that you are to Twitter could be sued, for what Alex Jones was able to do to the sandy hook. Parents on that platform right, if, if twitters a publisher and not just a platform, but if twitters like the phone company, you know that then? What are you gonna start looking for what people say: the phone conversations and finding the forthcoming visit. Do you have to pick your you're metaphor that that attractive here, so I like yoga, for if I get it if I can intervene the problem with twitter and the problem with Facebook, is it it's actually neither a publisher nor phone company and the reason is that you know you're you're, absolutely right. Everybody has the right to say whatever they want and free speech and on Twitter, does more than that, it doesn't just give you the right to speech it. Publicize is your speech and then the same is true of Facebook.

And it published eyes it according to a set of rules that are semi secret, but that we ve had some insight into we. So what spreads on Facebook? What spreads the most quickly its facebook has defined this as things that keep people on Facebook it's actually facebooks goal is to keep you on the platform as long as possible and that that is the that is the Zulu. It's a little more. So to do that. But that is essentially the metric that decides what spreads in what doesn't. Then it turns out that what spread ads, are things that are very emotional things that are divisive, sometimes things it. Surprising and shocking. things that are surprising and shocking- are often full stories. I do know the Pope has endorsed. Donald Trump was one of the most spread stories Facebook and twenty sixteen, even though no hope whatever endorse anybody, and so it seems units. It was an absurd thing, but it was

one of the most red Facebook post, you know of that of that election cycle, and so the problem isn't that Facebook and twitter allow people to say things the poor one, is that they have created a mechanism by which shocking emotional, an egg, we things are reach more people than other things, others, so so the thing that, in my view, needs to be regulated. I have I have written about this and I think I've heard people discuss the sun. Some of your shows. I'm thing that needs to be regulated is the algorithm and so- you can imagine. It is scientifically conceivable that you could have algorithms that favour constructive conversation, rather than emotion, and, and disagreement is civil bull, that you could have forms of social media that reflected the values of the public square that sought to

bring people together or our or create compromise mean for the these do exist. They ve been experimented with another place Is Taiwan uses them a lot? It's a country that cares a lot about democracy and his thought alone but how to have better conversations in a country where people, division, especially exploited by China, could be kiss of death. So they may really understand it, so that the thing is to get politicians. and everybody really focus not on what's taken down and what's aloud what they allow. Don't allow not on censorship, but on what are the rules by which thing spread most quickly? How is it that people come to see things? What is the. you know, what what you know, what what? What is the algorithm looking for, and I think that you would find that if you could regulate that- and it is technically possible- is just not legally pause. If we could have we, if we can have insight into this sort of black box of the algorithms we could, I believe it would be possible to find

to create a better public conversation, but it's a universal long way away from what other reasons, some One of the reasons we're having a hard time. Thinking about this is because a long time. Article of faith in first amendment, doctored or free expression philosophy is, It is under challenge here you made reference to it earlier. Samuel Louis Brandeis is the one who wrote the famous counter speech. Doctrine died in Anti twenty seven saying that the cure for evil speech or wrong speech is more speech, that the free market of ideas and as a surly will bond and correct self and, as we discussed earlier touches just hasn't been true in this truck in it. When you have is, as George said, he have a president who, who, like thirty five thousand times and floods, disown in and at who overwhelms the truth with

The candor then one of the foundation of reasons we have formed, not censorship for not censoring speech. The idea that you can cure bad speech with good speech that just has actually prove not to be correct, and that leads us to potentially very bad place, in which we don't respect free speech rights as much? If we are worried about outcomes- and we don't want to be in that place conceptually near Here- ok, Stacy, ok, question here: would it be achievable, feasible for the american voting system to switch to the australian voting system? First past the post, preferential voting and proportional representation? Could the australian voting system the gate? Many of the flaws- within the current american voting system here this is a point that term Andrey ANG, his sir devoted to affirm and war.

two: does anyone have a sense that we could cure much of what ails us in democracy by obviating the the threat of being primarily in the way that currently exist. It is I swear the shot you like to see. Some of the states experiment with, as you see when they get better results, certainly true, historically and internationally, that countries that have proportional representation representation have a university the. Why a variety of parties and there's also greater pressure to achieve compromises, and if you, if you look I've, seen political science studies that show the show and depending on the system, because their different systems that show better outcomes for pr countries that have it and you certainly don't get. This very bitter to party divides that we have, in some other countries, have an interesting when, when we were all growing up, our two party system was supposed to be the source of our great stability compared all those crazy european countries with seventeen minorities. But now it seems

be the source of our division in you, and you could also throw in the sum of these state referenda that have instituted independent commissions to draw congressional districts. Which seems to have worked pretty well in Michigan and in Ohio Court throughout the state legislatures redistricting, because it it related to the state referendum that was passed by the people of Ohio that wanted it to be. taken out a partisan hands and and maybe there are all these sort of smaller fixes. That could add up to a larger, not cure, but moving us away from the death match that were in from the the war of attrition that were in a minor north. The sum of the moon is enough to do it. I am unwilling to try to spread anything.

within the rules? Ok with pass the to our mark here, so maybe just a few more questions stating our Stacey Can you away in on why previous american presidents have not been more openly and regularly vocal on the topic of the undermining of democracy? in its unravelling before our very eyes and how their unifying message might engender more affinity towards protecting our democracy. This is a question about the former since he has ever, it is actually the something that is called me some degree how invisible Obama has been through, whole period, Amelia boy again, both with the indiscretions of coming from Trump, but also with respect to what happened on the far left. Is our role for former present is here to get us on

Rack, or is that just as is the norm, that President's don't open their big MAO's after their out of office, and they just get lucrative Netflix deals? Is that too, to holy or no one or no one cares what they have to say and George Bush didn't. He just give a whole bunch of money. Was it to list Janey ITALY's mortality analyse Jamie both, I think, and a Brok Obama did have something to say about cancel culture a couple years ago he got practically around old himself, a cover sentences in yeah yeah, but I think they experience was probably so unsettling as he himself got ratio on twitter. That he hasn't done it since. So I another they carry, you know how much, how much authority they carry anymore Slightly different point of an ex presidents- and I did maybe contributors to the problems of the system in a different way. The first present United States, if I'm was ever to give a speech from money was Gerald Ford

for then who it was shocking, you're sure It was so shocking that his successor Jimmy Carter sort of made a point of not doing it. I want to building houses for the border because he was so horrified edge, Jerry for did dad. I mean he was mad about where he lost office and using financial trouble. He did as for like those Mintz and sold decker. Plates and all kinds of things I was considered was considered really indecorous, but the idea that you, riches and ex president. That's that's a new idea, and Ford was the first, but because of age rate. Reagan must be able to do a bill. Clinton really introduce this into american right. Now it's become a single standard practice. My thing, one of the things that contributes to the feeling of Americans. That call are not on the level that your politicians are representing you that in it for themselves, has been somewhat someday, what happens to people after they leave the presidency and maybe again, there's no fixed this, except maybe a more puritanical culture, but it would be interesting if president stop doing

that whether that would have an impact on how we feel that public life and the problem with the fix, though, is once these norms are, as we ve been saying, is carbon offer word, but I don't know what other word used once these norms are trash, these taboos or knock down, it's really hard to restock, push them things just seem to keep moving in, that direction president's are gonna, keep making more money. How do you get people to get off twitter? That's my answer to Twitter get off it but is very hard to get off it because you're on it, you're in the thick of it, and you want to keep experiencing it end. So self restraint is as a kind of a cultural norm, is an answer to all of this, including the legal corruption of ex presidents, making a ton of money off their former office. But I don't know how you do it as I was saying earlier, by trying to raise new generation with new ideas. But I don't know maybe education is: is the wrong road to be thinking? Waited at your drive a question: do you have a secret twitter?

oh yeah, you you're not on. I read it, so I must have some secret account, but I never right on it. So you can. You won't find me, yeah. I looked, I remind all of you. I read all of you and I know exactly what you're thinking and say I just imagine it lift my head up long enough to get it shot off interesting, her eye, Stacey S, question: what are the panel lists used on the teller buster? Anyone have strong views here. I read historically, it's been, it was invented foreign and been used primarily in the service of squashing civil rights legislation and it started in the constitution. Hit is a Senate rule like other rules, and it has got the way of a lot of import legislation. I can imagine why anyone would privilege that rule

Over some things have been used to squash next question next question: what is the likelihood of someone coming in trying to fundamentally change the system in helping to create a more diverse nuance, selection of candidates and action? the end up, making it further down the line and maybe having a real shouted. The present presidency sort of what Andrew Yang is trying to do. Is it realistic to think that there can or will be a candidate who ends up in that position and ultimately wins. The presidency. Will you in that we had president trumpet anything, is possible elsewhere. The next question Why do Americans insist on classifying between the left and the right? Shirley? Most people are in the centre with fringes adding left or right, why not create a new centre party drawing on both current parties? and also its confusing, that let left and right that map doesn't really fully capture

what's going on in our society of lay them is, as we have observed here already there's this minute The of ill liberalism on the left have. How shall we think about left and right and people of reference, this concept? horseshoes theory. Where do you go far enough to the laugh in far off to the right? You begin to resemble one another. Andy of any thoughts about how we should think about this. We have a different map of our politics or, Even the phrasing left and right actually comes from the french revolution. Amidst a very you know, it's a very old that of ideas. D is Andy. Our modern understanding of it really dates to them. Cold war era. You know when the meaner there that the left was being was about the large, Stayed in the right was about a smaller state and although that was little bit differently for countries to, but it is essentially at the whole was around communism, anti communism. How you felt about it, and so on I mean I actually did? The words are now almost totally meaningless and one of the

vantages of a multi party system which I hesitate, which I been, of course we're we're still pretty far away. Let me know, but when you see them in other countries, is that they do make it easier for parties tumor I urge that are neither or that have different a new self definitions are easily emergence of the Green Party in Germany is famous one, and the green in Germany aren't just environmental party there attached a whole set of others. Use the Foreign Minister of Germany is now member the Green Party and that's a party. That's relatively, new that has managed to emerge and and focus on a different set of issues. There are a lot of examples. The president of Slovakia is, now is comes from an environmental lawyer who comes from a kind of the June movement as well, but who was also neither left or right and their number of european politicians have also sought to create parties like this, our system does make it really difficult, almost impossibly difficult to create a third part.

which is why you know our best bet is to try to create. I don't know whether the word a centrist that you really want, because it's not it is not a center, but to train create pro democracy, wings or movements inside the existing parties and and to think about it like that meets the idea of creating people tried so many times in recent years to create. New parties and failed, but you're, certainly right that the division between left and right has become pretty meaningless. You know that and what people are really What moves people is David was saying what politics are really organised around now are people sense of identities? You know I belong to this kind of group, that kind of group and that identity can adopt a number of different policies and, of course, once politics, or about identity and culture, rather than concrete policies and plans that we can argue about her agree to disagree about politics becomes more difficult and we might. My solution is actually a little bit different, which is too

as I said, create a pro democracy wing inside both parties and also to get people to refocus on. The reality of politics? What politicians can actually do, which is build bridges, fonder, not fund health care? Make foreign policy decisions in a more focused on that and not I'm this kind of person, as opposed to that kind of person than politics becomes more saying, I think the problem, one problem with identity politics is that it interacts with the variable of partisanship on health the library, because it either it is a tribal sort of politics, and if his, if you're gonna be tribal, then the extreme voices. When and you're, certainly not rewarded foreseen. The other tribes point wireless ever rights, if you're in the military and if you're, going to make the centre stronger, you can't be tribal because being in the center amount to much of the time ignore

Jane what your side got wrong. Or what do you know what just to the left of views and to use the old man got wrong and you're, just a may I just to take they were an end of one here. A magic know what it's like to be some one who sees all the problems with weakness and all the problems with Trump and the net result of that is to always have someone. I rate with your views. Rightly you're, not you you're not having you're not safely in it go chamber where you're, the good guys and everyone else's is bad. So it seems I come travel politics is. It has to be selected for piper partisanship programmes. Do one still one more question, and then I will close out last question last question: is it possible that the world has outgrown democracy as a political system? Much the way it out group previous die when a political systems and that we need a new system to cope with the challenges eroding it, and if so, what would that potentially look like this?

Harris everything down to the study but but must reflect on Africa. Is there any Sir, here that demand The is not up to the challenge of my first century life in the end We need to find some other mechanism. They cannot. Keeping and against was isn't it church. Those admonishment in mind, that is the best and the worst systems. What tat, Does anyone have an opinion on that were in the days when we use it? Do steady textbooks on the history of democracy that the place they usually started? With with the debate that took place in in England in the sixty four days in which one of the most famous quoted sentences was smallest. He that live in England live in England has a life to live as well as the greatest you. So if, if that's, if that's what you mean by democracy that I just never going to go to style the equal dignity of human beings that every right insinuation what may be going out of stars? I suggest before something else I was saying, is that the idea

the style of democracy, which is the legislative horse trading material benefits. What that could that that? What you thought you saw when you took that school tripped washing in twenty or thirty years ago, that may be going out of style, partly because Maybe economies are growing as fast as they used to be so we can exchange gifts as benefits is as as easily without feeling is coming out of my pocket, and it may be that its part becomes more identity based on more but self realisation that that none of that is interesting to people, an end. It is striking how little of that Donald Trump did. Infrastructure became a joke. He was never serious about it and when Biden did do interesting, She had turned out how little anybody really ever cared about it. In the first place, so We may need a new, the rules of the road you said mechanics, but the aid yeah of politics based on

the dignity of everybody, that's never going to stop we're, not just the dignity them the consent. I think that if you do tell everything down to the states, the thing that you can't dispense with is the sovereignty of the people. That is, as source of ultimate power of government, as somebody who spends a lot of times studying in writing about autocracy is, I promise you that. There is no alternative system out there. That is better you, find the odd benevolent dictator who works for some short period of time. But you know it's not it's not long term system in there's always a succession problem in a way the m. The Olympic games that are about to start in Beijing are a real vision of the future, because the chinese government has fulfilled all its promises to the International Olympic Committee. It is created ski slopes where there was no snow. It has made it possible to get out to the mountains where the slopes were created on

trains that didn't exist a few years ago in no time at all, so in some ways it delivered its done. The delivering David was talking about on material things, at least for part of its population, but you're living in the most Sir Sir veiled society in human history, with less freedom than any society in human history, and that's that nightmare vision that, and we we really should never lose sight of, because you don't get there all at once. He just get there a little bit at a time by deciding this isn't worth it in. This doesn't work any longer and it's too hard to run for office, and the people are in cordial Well, uh paneless is there any topic we didn't touch, has earned a question we didn't address. You think we might want to touched it close out her. I have. I have what one thought on this than many is. There is mention it. I think. There's a cadet, inevitably, look back on this and inevitable component

anxiety. Allergy doubt the creeps into these conversations and the future democracy with a quest mark behind it raises the possibility that maybe it doesn't have a future. I think we're a danger underestimated just what it from ITALY achievement. It is why the people hate it also fear it because they know how powerful it is. And and what an amazing run of increasing success it has had? I just feel that one of the things we need to do some cart yourselves, not just to think about this and speculating observer took to believe in it an end to live and end up in a semi. Because of the attitude you had, talked about this through the teacher computers is now who's. Gonna win, I don't know, but they can have retire marks over me before I leave. Let those guys do it and people who are listening. I hope that they will come away from conversation, some feeling of their own personal life examine brought here because we believe they count their voices count. Around there listening, because they believe it voices gap and what people can do.

this future is in your hands. It's not something! That's going to happen to you not anyway, if you dont, possibly accept that is going to happen yeah yeah. I know I would echo that by reminding everybody that nothing is inevitable, the decline of democracy is not inevitable and the successive democracy is not inevitable. There is no law, an industry. That means we will win or we will lose it. That's not. History works everything, that happens tomorrow, depends on decisions that we make today that the future is always open its own has been open. The possibility that american democracy would collapse was always there and then possibility that it will never collapse is also always there and peace should remember that, in one of the reasons why democracy will succeed or fail is to do with how engage citizens are in it?

seems like a great spot and on the other, the lesson I take away from this in the last few years. Is that really there's no way to shirk the the power and responsibility of ideas, D. Raymond ideas are, though, the levers that move everything in our lives, a how you apportion your belief and what just what you talk about what you pay attention to. What seems credible to you. importance of all that I the end it will level and the collective levels never gonna go away and far as organizing my own ideas about what's going on in the world and in my own country. I am very grateful to the fore view for helping me do that, and this is has been an experiment here the pot gasping with never whenever accord by video his way, and we also never have this

many people on, and I thank you for before your time. I am admire each of you immensely as a reader and ass great speak with each of you here so and David Bart George is really has been a pleasure. I give