Today's podcast reflects on how the purpose of social media is increasingly as a forum for cruelty–and why that is so seductive to so many people. Also, the reinvention of Joe Biden as the second coming of FDR: will it stick? We warn about the possibility of violence surrounding the trial of Derek Chauvin, and wonder who hasn't been molested by Andrew Cuomo. Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily Progress today is Thursday March eleven, twenty twenty one, I'm jumper
it's the editor of Commentary Magazine
me, as always, the doubly vaccinated associate editor nor Rocksmond, high Noah Right John has that has
second shot Pfizer headache going it's it's their its present.
there I didn't I didn't expect to have any effect.
Because I didn't have any effect on the first one that everybody says there was through you're gonna get some. I need to get some, but it's worth it
ok, we're not gonna vaccine. Shame you because I believe everybody should get the vaccine whenever including might lie my children who are not eligible for it yet
and also someone who, as children, who are not eligible yet for the vaccine, Nora. She, because she is in place that won't let her get a shot. Senora, Christine Rosen and high Christine
it's true feelings. In D c in the wrong zip code, you you can just like, I guess,
long for your shot. Maybe this summer, who knows who knows
half vaccinated executive, every room Waldheim legit
can I bring something to the show now that the truth can be told
is it like. An x files episode equipping ass
got me second shot. Yesterday, emergency unawares, big pop up FEMA,
Guard Sites and Burlington County New Jersey, and who knows
What happened just there was a list put my name on it went down there did it. You know new questions asked which was amazing. New actually did something right for change, shocking,
get down there, and I saw a us-
step and repeat itself
These station theme selfie station, which
set up in a particularly the utopian area. This is a recently liquidated Warden Taylor.
they have been taken over by the National Guard too.
Administer vaccines to mitigate the ongoing global pandemic assets.
It's a commentary on society, that's hard to ignore
picture this. Put it up on Twitter was like this is pretty just helping out
and the universe came down on me, which is hysterical,
like. How dare you
How dare you even question the validity of this thing? It was joke. It was funny. I thought it was funny.
The Washington Post rode up a trend. Peace around my stupid tweet
saying that there is something in it that does it how this is gonna people are shining people forgetting these, as as, though there's this real by personal most of the people in their upwards of sixty.
There's not a big market for selfies in this demo, so
was going relatively unused and nearly
overestimates the extent to which people are willing to take selfie anyway, and an actual newspaper wrote a trend. Peace around this, don't joke, which is shocking,
I took up my wife made me. Take us healthy at the subway station yesterday, and I put it up on the internet
just to be like ok, internet you in there you go,
where's, my trophies. I want my train peace converted converted, so
please sceptic
the light. Now,
break out. Where are you
ok, I just want to make. I just want to make the point that the scale puts me in my
one idea which
the Selfie station with the foregoing, you hold up a sign which, as we know it there, it's like you know that got my second shot or whatever
our environments was? Have these stations now routinely at their work? And, of course there haven't really been. Many of these are at or any pretty much in the last year,
what if you had the barred by mitzvah at with the job,
Alan Johnson there
seem arab attestation, so the kids?
got to Johnson jobs vexing when it is approved, and then they can do the selfie with the iron vaccinated picture which they can
and show when they get up
claim
do whatever they can do in order to show that they have been there.
This is my new barn bar mitzvah entertainment idea. Allow
on what the motivators end and the dance dance revolution, and you know and the horror what what do you guys think I mean they might actually take advantage of it. Unlike the set, the generic and sore populating this stuff pop up vaccine distribution site
most of whom are really all that interested in selfies solely really is targeting. The younger demo
You see what I will say that we must really haunted by this. No, unlike some other there's a there's, ensures an element of trauma here.
Atmosphere is very fast over it. So it's a very it's like a fun place to be shockingly everybody's, very nice girl to be their understandably. So
so it goes with the atmosphere. It's not like it's. These do not feel like marshalled into this display of false in levity, it
it said that the atmosphere is nice so well, and I thank her for her life. Had several friends get vaccine
for states in the union, and they all said something similar to what no it just described, which is once you actually get into the facility and get in line preparing for your shot. The mood
Is the one that we should
feeling nation wide in general, but that has been deliberately tempts down for all
Reasons we ve been talking about in the pot gas and that in the
They also have with it that the same sort of anxiety that I think it was expressing well, which is that justice
source celebrate it yourself
bring down scorn because they're all kinds of judging you know
distinctions, are people want to make about who deserves faxing first? Why are you getting at what you know what race or you? Don't you know about the equity issues like they're all
a lot of politicize things around in vaccine when it should be, is literally a party like we talk about weeks ago, where you get this
And then you get a shot of your favorite liquor, and then you got me George you're right. I mean the failure to do this again in a gala. Tyrian way has essentially given everybody, have permission to
for your medical history, which use
became a taboo and kind of still should be well, I mean what's bullet.
so one of the things has been real by social media culture of the last you now ten fifteen years is that
everybody will be censorious about everything. There is nothing you can do. That will not will not be the recipient of some form of school
finger. Wagging can be a misunderstanding. It can be just sort of like MRS Grundy ISM in our puritanical,
disapproval, ranging tat politically dumping attack for being politically correct or being politically incorrect. Whatever it
more that we pay attention to it. It's more that it affects us that it happens, and it's just this
a revelation about human nature that
a world in which people can deliver aggressive.
Blows to other
people they don't know haven't met me
four encounter turns out to be just
two delicious and opportune.
De the seduction, the kind of demonic suggestion that is represented by you know what
there's a person there. Just did something you're gonna. Do I'm gonna kick him in the balls, but you know that
Aren't you going to balls you'll, never know he doesn't know who the bono. It's me because an end, the play
There is, of course,
the doing of it, because it's just
mode of less malignity, as colored said of Iago in in our Shakespeare's Iago, but here
the stranger part is that, as
becomes more clear.
That is what everyone wants to do. There is
other answer of counter drive that
as more and more people wanting to share what they're doing
an opening themselves up to these kicks in the balls
you know. What's yours, ass lies the impulse. I yet true yeah, no, I mean look it's it's like this sum. It's like this bizarre
pavlovian response,
for like an obscene age whenever a people on on Instagram right, which is that they do something perform, it ever revel Tory. They think it's funny or they want to talk about themselves. Something like that
And then, of course, I am not sure that absence something going wildly viral any response isn't gonna, be disappointing or sold crushing a little bit because.
You'll never be fully understood. A lot of people say your friends say love you so much for your so great or something of that, but somebody will say something Starkey. You won't get enough likes
you won't get enough, you know you won't get enough
for whatever it is almost
like a recipe for emotional disaster. Ever
time somebody
you know, sensitive or you know whatever like does something like this
and so we have this sum. Bizarre circumstance where people are are are like chasing
dopamine rush.
And then subject
putting themselves up for some form of emotional abuse for doing so at this is I'd like a terrible psychological cycle. It seems to be in. This is, of course, why I believe that no one should ever ever tweet that anymore, having
because the risk and reward
calculus. Is this why we oughta whack there's too much risk
for very limited reward,
at risk can be professional. It can be psychic our emotional, like, though the risk is real and the just the world of people who are you who do this for the purpose of looking for options and opportunities to make people feel bad, and I put myself in that category but time
on Twitter, it's one of the reasons that I think it's morally better than I'm off. That I'm on is, is it you know it's just: it's like the debt
it's like the cartoon devil on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, and it is very seductive. Can I just
There is also an evolution. That's going on in these platforms, its created a different creature, not that I think most people average
people who go online, that's often their experience, but there's also
people who have taken who have understand how that's, how it works and create for themselves in online persona that in some ways, invites the criticism and attention on the idea that all you know
the attention is good attention, whether its negative or positive, and
turn themselves into professional victims after having posted stuff that literally invited Critias ship, then saying,
Jerry, I mean this is actually a proper public figures and celebrities in particular. This is it
a thing I mean I looked, I like some for music, but lizard. Does this with body shape you actually posts? Half naked picture result on this agreement. If anyone's like an like that, look it's! How dare you body shameless? Oh, oh my god, I mean it's just if everything
will they write so so addicted to the negative feedback
Are you become a deliberate provocateur? And then you just near
saying things designed to annoy people and you get that rush otherwise, but I also don't know if it's necessarily valuable:
completely surrender these platforms to the scolds important.
as they do have an outsize impact on society that you haven't his outsize impact on. Our news is disseminated generated news producers. They take the queues from these
the things. So, if you were to just say, ok like this was when I posted this,
it was a joke. I thought it was funny,
You knew I knew what was going to generate some some negative feedback, because everything always dots.
but also to not do not tell the joke. I thought was
in application of my responsibility to my sense of humor,
but here that a larger, ok but here's here's the problem with what the risk reward calculation, which is,
There is no individual tweet that you can do
I mostly did jokes right. That was my there
who I was a standing committee on Twitter in some ways
There is no individual tweet that could be worse than the disease.
After that might befall you from one individual tweet that you
you: were you cross the line? You're not sure you knew you were crossing or you thought you were being funny but provocative and then
you just get you know just
slaughtered. I mean my my
example of this was in twenty fourteen during the Gaza war in Israel. When
um
I and others were intensely critical of then Secretary of State John Kerry, for you
His absurd preposterous fan,
c of doing shuttle diplomacy between Hamas in Israel and
his words or sell diplomacy, was too just attack Israel,
and you know, make and then at some point John Legend said something like
I am sick and tired of people attacking my Secretary of state for doing his job and you are trying to bring peace or something like that.
and then I tweeted at him or responded
shut up and saying which
This is a phrase that we on the right use in relation to celebrities who get out over their skis in relation to politics that they don't know anything about an additional five
thousand attacks later claims that I had? You know I was telling him to you, know: eat watermelon and you know tap dance stuff like that.
Deleted the tweet I apologize. My my point, I'm bringing up here is that you
I don't know what you don't know about this culture and it
is going in directions that one never thought that it would go and was,
wrong for me to tweet Ivan Saint John Legend: wasn't wrong: was it insanely imprudent, yeah,
it turned out. It was insanely imprudent, because all it did was caused me grief and pain and annoyance and nervousness. You know you know it's not fun dab MA. Am that wasn't physically afraid,
but I thought it was bad you now and then of course, there's that thing where people bethink themselves right and they delete a tweet where they delete a tweet because they
something there, sorry they wrote it they deleted and then there's aside, I screwed
shouted the tweet, the fact that you deleted it,
who's that its even more evil. The fact that you are
The responded by saying I wish I hadn't said they're, so I'm gonna get rid of it. That's don't you.
Double time. Then the image of the tweet that was deleted becomes a story
but again, like I mean we ve, I have this discussion offline with with no, I who I think has a good principle which is like, if you treat I'm dumb and you're, like every thought that I'm taking that down, you shouldn't
the person if they actually had a change of heart and they post you know at this was stupid, I'm deleting as where I was factually inaccurate. Unbelieving it
Fine- and I totally agree with that, but the again
a whole bunch of people near at hand and was the most recent example who go through their feet.
He then delete anything controversial, not because
they don't believe it anymore, but because they don't want to have an impact on their current professional lives, and I think there are a lot,
Reporters who do this. There are lot there, certainly a lot of people in political life. We do this and they don't do it because they
changed their minds. In fact, they don't even mention that they do at their literally like memory, holing stuff that might make them look bad now. So I think the distinction is important projected with people in political life, because
they know exactly what they're doing in there trying to actually hide their real thought so that they can get a promotion and that certain people
yeah would say my rule doesn't apply as an evidentiary standard affront if
its admitted, as ever. Its original here in Europe were room. Yes, given dig up the old tweet right
I mean you know the ten
twelve years ago, whatever like two or three years into the facebook era. Before I got involved in twitter and before I think before, Instagram was a thing or stuff like that. I,
It was a defender of Facebook on the grounds that I thought that it was a lovely way for people to keep in touch with people that they have fallen out of touch with. It was like
kind of holiday letter. You know those Christmas letters of people used to send out so was a kind of like ongoing, daily way to check in with people whom you couldn't see to find out who their kids words they have grandkids where they
living what's lifelike was sold.
to see you, you know ascended the nice message day. You know, I'm so glad
to see that your thriving whatever, and there were then and building new different kinds of communities for people who are interrelated shy or have social anxiety and
all of that- and I think that was really largely true of social media for the first three or four years of its expansion.
Then this demonic quality began to start suffusing it and
well. I mean I wondered about this. I mean I, I
understand what you mean by the lovely aspect of it, but I'm not sure that even that quality itself is not there,
There is not the seeds of something bad there, because
it changes the sort of the course of a life in the, in the sense that it,
is to be that you grew up. You did things you moved away or you can you
You found in failure and
You left certain things and people behind and certain things and people left you behind, and you moved into a new place,
There was a sort of linear aspect too.
course of a life with Facebook and social media.
Facebook, especially
You never lose anyone. It's just
There is now a life is just as this. You everything just aggregates you just you meet someone another there it there on your page there in your life sort of forever. You you, you can't lose touch with someone, and I think you post to lose touch with.
people in certain ways: gin, digital media GINO.
Right and who I mean right, but I do think that there is a certain type of person that for whom
conventional social relations are very difficult, but for whom this kind of distance relationships are now almost, even though their fellows and stuffs of nineteenth century a pistol.
Relationship creates the possibility of Serbia intimate car conversation and
an commonalities on matters of interest,
including matters of interest that I have no interested in anybody else. You know if you're, like a ham radio for somebody who likes to build, you know ham, radios or something like that. You can find people all over the place who like what you like and are obsessed with the same kind of things that no one else in your life can't even bear to think here about cuz. It's a boy
bring, but not that these people that that's really nice about the stretch subtle further, and you can also find the people who also believed that Hillary Clinton is sucking. The adrenal chrome out of children's bought
is and that you know you know it
a way to organise. You know a wild main, Anti, semitism and stuff like that.
at that, but that actually is- and I mean you know my feelings- about social media, but this this is. This is the point right, because the platform itself rewards both things
fully and it does that, because what it is removed? This is a bit one of of what EVA saying, which I agree with, which is that the on with the choice
still less certain behind you. Also,
behind certain obligations? What faced
does is there's no obligation? Haven't people stop writing people's birthdays in their calendar is to remind turned to wish difference happy birth because Facebook not does it for you. It is actually taken over some of the intimate obligations we had with the people we chose to be with. Given us more
our people but fewer obligations that I think that kind of selfishness socially is, is not
concerning whether it's for people who
The same Hobbes is your people at the same conspiracy theories as you yourself flat.
all relations in that sense right,
because your wishing everyone a happy birthday now, as opposed to the special people, that's an interesting. That is an interesting point,
you know how we live, how we live in a society, how we relate to each other, how we, how we build
community and have a community that is enduring not only over the course of our lifetimes, but over the course of millennia am civilizations, is in part, the story that you will learn from Mars,
persons book the telling how Judaism's essential book reveals the meaning of life? Is his study of the hunger die, the manual guidebook prayer Book of the pass over safer with pass over approaching at the end of march. This is the perfect timing to to dig deep into this book, which is about how this volume and the and the two sectors, one in one in Israel, but to outside of Israel.
These. These two sailors every year are crucially and crucial and vital elements in the maintenance and furtherance and preservation of the jewish faith and the jewish people. In the effort to remind every year, everyone at the table that they could have been slaves in Egypt, that God save them with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm and signs and wonders, and that
at the jewish people have a purpose and a destiny that was laid out for that? For us? Three millennia go or longer and that that is a both an incredible birthright
and an incredible responsibility to to up to keep maintained as women.
forward so that the telling how Judaism's essential book reveals the meaning of life by Mark person
elbow now at Amazon. Barnes ennoble at your local bookseller, wherever you might want to
find it so tonight
Joe Biden, will give a speech taking a victory lap on his corona virus
leave package, while commemorating were
memorialize ing or morning be just absolutely horrific a death toll as we approach pretty much this
week? I think tomorrow actually marks the day
the Broadway Theatre and the NBA shut shut their doors in March of twenty twenty. So we are now basically
here into the massive social cost of the pandemic. Becoming you know you absolutely unquestionable, so he will do that. While talking about is grown a virus,
leave bill, and then he will sign it with great fanfare on tomorrow. On Friday,
a b or noting an interesting, less say: transition between now and
between how the bill is now being characterize now and it's been signed or are increasingly over the course of the past week, this bill, which was.
they are designed to save us from terrible depredations and the people of Amerika from the horrible COS the pandemic into something else.
You're sure, there's Pisa under in the New York Times that says you know with with this bill,
we see the evolution of Joe Biden
being a party
is primarily concerned with
foreign policy in the middle class to being a crusader for the poor.
This is a thirty something here, evolution and-
We want to be celebrated end and therefore that the bill now is yapping
a celebrated and championed
less as a sort of targeted research.
as to the pandemic, but as a a
usually forward, for you know that
Is this type of activism afford for or
poverty, relief and and and all the rest of the day, the kindest Red one quote from the Washington Post reporting on this cause. This is actually it's a really important transition as in no it is not a he's hurt here that Brazil Roquat are just about to set exaggerating throat cut off from California. Could he called the bill quote
An ideological revolution on behalf of justice, another represented Richard Neil House waiting,
its committee chair, says we're we're.
Creating a narrative talking about changing lives were going to do it with this legislation. I mean this is extremely. This is this. This is still a big swing, they're, taking here turning a relief bill into a nobler this
Our new new deal kind of talk.
the cost in and it's a big shifting. It's happening quickly and I think that the binding you know making fetch happen as binding as poverty warriors part of it.
That's some does it. It just apparent asthmatic divide here over talking,
at this bill that I don't know how you even Brigitte, because these are two different versions of reality- the
washing imposed these
explored in great detail. How just me
get it from a headline: how binding stimulus showers money on American sharply cutting poverty.
Is it favours individuals over businesses? Now, if you think, as people like as reclined you
that giving people money is
equivalent of an anti poverty programme. Then
This is this is great for you, a one shot deal were indeed
you will get a thirty six hundred dollars. You got two kids right over the course of the year.
the notion that that cuts poverty.
Unless you do it in perpetuity, even then is
is some highly debatable premise. But it's it's betrayed by the
Did they think giving businesses stimulus or tax cuts or anything to invest in capital and create opportunities for employment and therefore create products?
seventy which, which contributes to the overall economy and then generates the self perpetuating cycle of economic activity that that doesnt create wealth. That's our wealth creation and does not give people money. This is
This is a flawed idea of how economics work at it
a base level
one or one level we can actually have.
conversation about anti poverty programmes, because the two sides just don't understand what poverty is right. Well, I've been there
Two things to be said about that. One is that it's not that you can have
conversation. It is that it is that that
harms the goals are different at the end. Right is the idea would that what you want to do is lift people. Do it, you can create the conditions under which more people can be lifted out of poverty into the middle class?
and stay there right or is the other that you wish to,
create a society in which a suffering people are supported by everybody else?
and that this is the mark of a humane society. These are two different kinds of goals:
Though the end result, part of what the what the conservative thinking on on macro economics says, is that
by not pursuing the second goal.
you can more readily uneasily achieve the first I mean you can achieve the greater.
The that the realisation of people improving their positions in hand,
seeing their family options
making more money having more opportunity being able to create their own businesses. All of that, if you pursue
larger strategy of making the
economy, more rational
eliminating unnecessary rules and structures that hamper that kind of thing. But if
it's, not really your aim
Your aim is a fair,
society- or you know as large as as understood in some social justice context. Then the first it is never the
you know a achieving great results as we did.
The economy of the ninety navies of some sort of the ninety nineties?
is seen not as a great result, because some of the results don't don't drive with that, like increasing in income inequality, which
then in arguable fact it's a real thing. The queen,
It is not whether there are way more billionaires or or were you know, a billion arab or whatever. But what is it like for the mass of people in the United States, where the
world. How are they how? How did they do well,
and saying, let me just versus without saying that people in the lowest quintal that the life
people in the lowest quintal has not improved right that the income levels of people in the lowest quintal have not improved over the last forty years.
Which is what people say to show that our society is is terrible and unfair is a
ridiculous way of looking at it, because
the people were in the lowest Kintyre worthy in nineteen. Eighty two are not in the lowest quintal and twenty twenty two people
I was quintal in nineteen? Twenty twenty two will tend to be young, uneducated
ill trained, and all of that is the question- is why
Where are they going to be in twenty sixty two, not where they?
gonna be in twenty twenty three, but that is
not the way people on the left think about it, and so it's not that we can have a come. It's that we have,
We we sort of want the same things in a wildly, disparate understandings of the world and how you get there
is the existence of a lower quintal, which I will now is
by definition, there will have to be a lawyer. Gwynplaine Jonah Gilbert made this point in his chief, Ireland, Sweden, which is
if you will lemonade the top one percent, then
one per cent, becomes the top one Perceval and theirs, but there's also baked into this particular bit of narrative creation on the part of Democrats with the covert relief bill a week.
the contradiction right, because if this is this supposed to be this far reaching anti poverty measure, that's gonna transform the country. Why
these are all short term fix. It is. These are not permanent that
suggest either. This is like the Trojan horse that will bring in the next round of legislation to make a lot of these in a big splendid, big spending items in a permanent, which I dont think is
fly with the american people or
There lie, I mean there's a contradictory messages areas either transformed it because they're making this policy going forward. Do you know ad infinitum or we're doing this temporarily? People going to get checks are gonna, be happy with us and then were really gonna bring it on, and we know that there are plans for this. The infrastructure,
rebuild its next big thing. The Democrats want to do had. Initially, I think Biden would would, when he was campaigning, would say two trillion we're gonna, where it's gonna be a big thing. Green new deal, several being there will packet full of all these progressive ideas.
Now, if you talk to some Democrats on the hill, delightful two trillion just start mean we really, fortunately does what we're thinking about amid these numbers are insane, so I wanna know: are these temporary measures meant to alleviate the effects of this this month in a generation horrifying pandemic? Or is this just
the start of a larger plan, to spend even more money that we don't have well
so there's another had to go back to the New York Times in opinion peace? Today,
by racial call, he's called
the corona virus made the radical possible and list
in a whole bunch of things from landlords not collecting register to please
funding to whatever else
all these things have happened during the pandemic.
She goes and, of course she sees these all as for being for the good, and then there is there is this question about were how how can we,
continue these policies that were that we're only in place during the pandemic. She says she clauses
we're still months from the end of this calamity, which
killed more than half a million Americans and severely dust.
The lives of countless more but the time to push for.
permanent change is now. This is the moment to ensure that less
from the pandemic become part of the policy conversation moving forward.
To remember, we can do more than conventional wisdom would have us believe.
That's the new conversation. I mean the things that were actually talking about here that the no
he's up about about why these these kinds policies betray a
a complete lack of understanding of basic economics,
Those conversations don't even happened anymore.
Let me know, encounters
the only only sort of conversations about
radical economic policy propositions now our looking. Oh, are you a racist who's, not gonna get behind this war.
Are you an anti racist who's gonna give us your full support.
There's there's been a sort of the science is settled kind of aspect too, to this discussion.
Right well governed usin, said this yesterday in a state of the state, address quote,
in this pandemic gains and a villain soon we're not going
back to normal. Normal was never good enough. Normal accepts inequity right well, it's
back better right as yet you actual we sat around for a year going. What the hell is he talking about will now. We know well enough,
Spend better Williams, never miss an opportunity to that. Never let a crisis go to waste. We are going to use this crisis to reinstate
but the great society that we actually had to spend decades dismantling, because its cause
the quences were so incredibly deleterious. Well,
this is why the illusion of that equality and equity is really important and why conservative should continue to keep their eye on that any time you hear the word equity, that's what it means. It means this
go back better. We wanted year zero thinking, you know we're going to rebuild and remake society and are the image
The progressive Democrats think it should be. It should look like
downward social levelling, because that's the only thing that this government is capable of actually doing there
find out that this is an anti poverty programme. It will eliminate poverty, but you can,
and take stuff away from that one per cent
therefore level the playing field downward
but you know what they haven't: take him anything away from the top one percent. That's the interesting thing! That's going on here that I think Christine's point about the temporary nature of this bill. Really brow.
his into focus, which is that ok, so they're gonna spend two trillion dollars on top of the four trillion dollars. We have already spent to alleviate the consequences of the pandemic
six trillion dollars and spending in the last year in an emergency,
and most of us, do not gain, say the larger. You know that the lion's share of that right
because something had to be done in order to keep the world from where you now turning into the mighty authorities again then- and there was very little push back against that- but next year
The bill comes, do again for all of the programmes have been put in place for
a year ago,
done this without raising taxes they ve done.
Without in oceans,
changing the way the tax code deals with most people that can
be the case come twenty twenty two is there going to be
the stomach in the United States, where a significant overhaul of the tax code that will
valve of necessity, not just taken
money away from the top one percent but adjust.
Tax rates that will hit the middle class
if you need a huge pool of money,
to fund this kind of acts. Action there. Actually, in fact, are not enough rich people in the United States to pay for it
the mass of a hundred and seventy five million people who are in the middle
who pay more into the federal. You know, treasury to pay for it
his bill, that's where the rubber meets the road, and we have no idea
we're talking about a Senate. That is what fifty fifty m a Congress in which Democrats have a five seat majority.
until the four until the next election,
Are they going to overhaul the tax code? Are they gonna pass another two billion two trillion dollar bill to pay, for you know
Essentially: aid for families with dependent children
give up in an end and more give back two to one
two unions and things like that- I don't know- I just don't think that we can now until
the politic. Now we have the politics of, he won the
action. He has this tiny majority. He's gonna get his first bill done, and here comes the first bill right, that's, and here too,
and they shoved everything and that they could possibly shovin it, but I don't think he's
much else right
not gonna get the voting rights Bill HR. What he's not gonna get the criminal justice bill.
and he's not gonna get the climate change bill cause is not getting sixty votes.
Now we're going back to the infrastructure, Panada
which even the mob
It's in the Senate Democratic order the Senate want, but
another talking at four trillion dollars and
talking about tax increases to pay for it, and the notion here that you can offset that. I mean people again
king and your mansion, they're saying it and why we need this, but we gotta pee
for it somehow so you gotta, have tax increases but, like you said
progressive, structured here, wouldn't get it
I've done.
So then you have people on the outside of the policy conversation now who are talking about things like a national sales tax of that
Where are the sort of which is incredibly regressive, but it's the
precisely the sort of thing that would actually filled the coffers would help make the Treasury Hall and
people are gonna, start warming to this idea, because
risk taxes are the only way to actually get what they want on. That's right, ok, guys, listen on October, second, twenty!
in Washington, Post journalists, Jamal Shaggy entered the salad consulate in Istanbul Turkey and was never seen alive again at a time when America's focused on its domestic problem,
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oh? Ah, we are moving into this grand new great society. This has always been done. Biden will take a victory lap and then we
I turn to the next great american crisis. I'm not talking about the border, which apparently is the next great american crisis, but
not one- that the media are gonna wanna talk about. I am talking about the trial of Derek Chauvelin in Minneapolis in the murder of the alleged murder of of George Floyd. I don't think we have quite taken in the fact that our lives are about to be taken over by this trial. It will become the major news event of March and April every. I think, every twist of the tail every moment that happens at the court room, every piece of testimony, anything that anybody says and does in the very fact that
when will stage, as is his right and need an aggressive defence claiming that Floyd was, I had that drugs in a system that he did not die from us from from having been knelt on, but from some form of overdose and various other things that these clear. The fact that he will
dare to claim this in a court room will itself be seen as an act of you know, of evil and
So in the middle of the trial, I think we might be likely to see protests riots things like that, just from
news reports of what's going on in the courtroom before there is a decision made. Is that
I know, I'm sounding apocalyptic in an oblique, but
no? No? I mean things are already, but things are already turning apocalyptic,
In Minneapolis, there is now a new one
these autonomous zones, which is this true
paramilitary style, anarchist things. That pop
like over the summer in Seattle and in Portland,
of protesters and
apparently summit was shot their within these zone over the weekend and the police were not. I couldn't get. It were blocked from guinea in, and the persons
He was brought out of the autonomous own. You know ever dead after presented.
Because there's no unknown allowed in including us, including other protestors
I think the scenario Outline John is more likely than not because it
different world than it was
seven years ago,
but seven years ago, is the count, for example, which was the trial of towards Zimmermann for the killer
of travel. Martin,
news media followed every moment of their trial cameras we're on a witness,
This became national celebrities. Four brief moment the attorneys became national celebrities for every moment and Lee
course of a trial. Has the affair
of money in the water, because there
There is desperate evidence presented and much
it is
actually credible.
and to the point where you can actually deny it.
And it becomes a long drawn out process. That is not this emotional shock, the shock of it, his son
isn't mitigated by the proceedings and
It was my assumption, based on having watched and uncovered every moment of their trial, for my employer at the time media that there would not be violence, everybody
It didn't anticipated violence. As a result,
and it did not materialise.
now again. This is a very different world, very different political culture that were in than we weren't twenty thirteen. So I think it's
likely, not that your scenario manifests, but it's not impossible. That call.
their heads prevail, based on a real, rational internalization of the evidence has presented there
no there is no body camphor age or whatever. It is of George Floyd dying with there.
children's need not grant. You know like like going into his death spiral with dark children's Deanna. There was no. Such thing was trail on, Martin and and and Zimmermann there was no such thing with Michael Brown in Ferguson. That footage itself changes the context here entirely because tens of millions,
people watched that and no no, what happened and so the
the mitigating evidence that that the children and his lawyers will bring up,
simply have to stand in contrast to what peoples
ah with their own eyes,.
This aims, I knew I agree, and I think that the other thing that different is the power and, quite frankly, the huge amount of money has been thrown it. What was before
You know what kind of more rapid
A black lives matter movement they
Ben mainstreamed in people's minds, but their mission has been mainstreamed at all. In fact, it's just that it's pretty
The same thing it always was, but with a heck of a lot more money behind it, a lot more social approval, although that is dropping like that, that the distance
thing to me is just how much I think it's less than fifty percent now approve of black eyes matter compared to last summer. But you know that the Minneapolis chapter black eyes better, has been going on unit
local news media had out ahead of the trial and saying things like this is terrible. You they hit the pudding barbed wire fencing up. Instead of giving us money fer, you know our troubled youth. Of course they are because this place descended into rioting and mayhem.
many of you know at the cost of millions of dollars and lives lost and businesses destroyed, and they are.
Preparing this time for that to happen in a lot of the kind of
hence in wings and not from from progressive activism. Logically from the Bible Matter, activists has
been saying exactly that, like you better make the right decision here, or else you know what's coming- and that is why they prepared they ve had to beg for further law enforcement support. National guard troops are stating by me this isn't a joke. This
the people in Minneapolis are preparing for a kind of siege and they are likely to get it. Regardless of the outcome, I think there's gonna be alive.
Have trouble with you in here in DC, right up at least
to the election. We had. A lot of businesses boarded up a lot of people kind of preparing. They were not
caring for angry trumps supporters, as it happens, even though later in January, we got those to their parents,
people who would be angry that Trump One, if you, if you won reelection so
the ATLAS is going through. This is well, it's really its interest,
to me that that's not something anyone wants to discuss is that there is a kind of weird overly
male going on in terms of how officials
are are made to respond to these sorts of moments. Put that blackmail is, is
is itself. I mean what why what's fastening here is. Of course you know that that mayor of where what is his name Jacob fry, you know the one who was a forest of walks through the crowd looking like he was up shamed fourteen year old boy in his t shirt when he went to try to talk to the to the
but to the George Void crowd over the summer, so there he is
what's his city and they have
to prepare to make sure the city is not destroyed by there was a, but of course he can't say what you know:
politicians fifty sixty years ago, what a sandwiches you know you! You know you
you make trouble and there's gonna be trouble for you, you, you know if you riot, if you do this, if you do that, we are cut, we are coming down with the full,
so the law on you and he can't say that because
course. The whole idea is that if anybody is angry, that's righteous and if they, if they're still
heard to some kind of violence, that's kind of understandable, given the given
and when you, when you can't use that kind of deterrent threat, you of course make it much more likely that there will be the risk,
once that you fear so they're doing all this, but their due
its silently they're, doing it without any any effort to as we.
A publicly message that criminal
Behaviour during the direction-
trial, will not be tolerated.
and so one really wonders what you know, how that that's gonna be tested on say by the way, is that I think what to do,
his trials are intended to bring down the temperature, and
the result may be. You know something awful, but as the
process goes along, it is supposed to make it were either. This is now gone into a place where it is going to be resolved.
and I'm seeing what's different here is that there will be performative public response to
The testimony at that
think as new I mean, maybe I can't really maybe I'm miss remembering and stuff like this happened before, but I think that will be new
there is like alluding kind of sums are looting. Friends
there's something like that in the middle, because
somebody says: George Floyd had federal and a systematic dive, an overdose of fennel. That's that's not the
purpose of trials is too is to create the conditions under which posses don't come, and you know Lynch people right. That's that's part of what
therefore, there are also two charges now, there's the second degree murder charge and reinstated third degree murder charge. Then them
evidentiary standards to convict on a third degree, murder charger
probably pretty mutable by progressive era prosecutors in this county. So
what happens if he is acquitted on second degree and convicted on third degree, probably
exactly the same thing: you're, anticipating John, because he's very little deliberative process going on here, but nevertheless it
just the nature of the fact that, though,
the level of justice that has been done. If that's how come you have been
gift. Remember that, in terms of regional sure, of what would provoke what kind of response,
that when there, when the tape first
pleased and and George Flood was killed or died. There was virtually
no one on any anywhere in the political spectrum who wasn't horrified, absolutely disgusted and shocked and horrified by what they saw and yet
They were. There was the response. Sir vacuous response was
as if.
people were had approved of this
our or were complacent about it. You know
they were sort of pushing
open door.
so I dont aboard tearing down an open door so utter
I don't know what kind of sentence
would but ameliorate anyone's outrage. Here,
may I mean there's two things: I'm notices from the kind of led up the opinion of the events and protest everything already unlike silent marches, and
You know a lot of the banners. Interestingly, have a weird have a message that say things like the world is watching justice for George Ploys, there's like clearly and awareness of like this matter
there's not just to our particular justice system and the people who live in this country, but this is gonna, be symbolic in the same way that you know George footsteps,
came symbolic, so that there's that point there is also the fact that
in the early jury selection, they are asking defence attorneys are asking potential jurors their thoughts about black lives matter, and we know this because you know there's but reporting about your posts in other places
You know some of the jury say you know I. Obviously this statement is true. I don't like the organization than there asked follow. Ups about a good about blue lies. Mouselike s same thing like everybody should be treated humanely.
Like this, it's not like, I did they don't like the ideological message. I suspect that even that is abroad
call statement that some would argue would mean that a jerk couldn't you know possibly be the object,
About assessing the evidence, because, again of the soul
The acceptance of the idea that you know, if you do,
the poor black lives matter, your racist, I mean I've heard that out of the mouths of white you're, who used to be
I thought classically liberal people like you, support this organization, or your raises: that's good! That's
that's a migration from how we used to approach these these matters, and I don't think it's necessarily good women in terms of the trial situation now scrawled this good. All this good I'll drive you crazy, totally drug.
Crazy and, of course,
in twenty twenty one, mental health is finally a thing. So many
struggling right now. Not feeling like a normal cells and therapy helps
we have to be sitting right. Just talking about your feelings, though, but what is thereby
whatever you wanted to be. You can privately talk to someone if you feel like you're, not really well with stress here having relationship issues whatever you need time stopping
came to normal human struggles and start feeling better, because you deserve to be happy and I don't have to worry about finding in person therapist nearer to help better help
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it's. Your therapist number forty eight hours joined Emily,
the people were seeing with Arafat is really about see. What's for you, because you are your greatest asset, this pod cast a sponsored by better help and commentary. Listers get ten percent off their first month at better help. Dotcom slash commentary, that's better. Eighty lp dotcom slash
commentary. So I've
breaking news. Just guy coming across my desk here, a woman
was found in one Bator, Mongolia who was
ought molested by Governor Andrew Cuomo,
it's very exciting,
find a woman on the planet. Earth who apparently was not molested.
Andrew Cuomo. We have we
the sixth accusation coming across our our desks.
This one, a fairly graphic one,
and fairly recent. Just a few months ago,
some of the woman to his office.
It is under a short grubs, her ok. What now.
All this is probably why folks live
Kepler powder dry when they determine that
the allegation that Africa had kissed. Him
hand and ass personal questions was roughly
equivalent to every other allegation,
they're. Not these are matters of degree. This one is
extraordinarily serious, probably the most serious.
Of any of the allegations that we have heard
and there is a cumulative effects, there is a quantitative effect, but
it really shouldn't be because
If we're talking about justice and the meeting out of justice as me-
define it classically. Then we should
apply some discretion here, and this is one that I can imagine that anybody who is
still hold out will say: well, this is not criminals. Actual I felt like I was arranging anything new, it's very clear what this, but ever
most everybody's on recording need allowing who is a former commercial, lower, laundered money laundering meet alone,
Farmers from from New York State Nothing Manhattan. Westchester Westchester luck in your area. She called on
Gunnar former to resign
it did so with new the letter head of the State Democratic Party which and Roma technically controls,
so I mean the bottom, really is falling out. The problem is
he has full control over his fate. He did
does not listen, unlike the nursing home issues which they could
in actual, oh,
once by the assembly in the state Senate,
this one is is really just left to him and criminal prosecutor at just gonna say she files. I mean that he should be charged and then that sets in motion a well remains she does. She does have to do so.
She happened to have some form of contemporaneous evident
or something- and you know we are- we don't know she is within our name. As we don't know, you know what else
crazy. I'm not saying I believe I was whenever he bought in motion. The process by which it is in a political process is a criminal justice process rushing if charges are filed right so, but what?
What is what what remains of what remains of in a deep interest here is, of course,
once again, as no alludes to
Andrew Cuomo was crying.
Over the last year, where was the nursing homes scandal
If he is in fact a you know, a cereal
a molester and sexual harasser
that that in some ways it so entirely separate from this other questions, not that not that he can't be guilty of both
this kind of thing? Why not both with the right, that's right would suggest that's just the beginning of our revelation yeah, I mean
I will say this, which is that, which is I've, heard many many terrible things by Andrew come over the years for many
people,
nobody likes him. You know what is his is full of careers, as it is an amazing quality for somebody who has a system at.
Alienated everybody. The only person that I can think of who serve has this quality
Obviously, a much more interesting and much more supple politician is
in that Yahoo, whoever whom everybody dislikes also, but is really some kind of up. You know towering genius as a as a political actor.
but I'd nobody likes him, but you know it's like I feel
I would have heard
that he was a handy creep
before this. If he, you know it's, it's interesting that this algae,
about his map. Malfeasance and miss behaviour is
relatively fresh, whereas every other thing and Andrew was career. Leads you lead
anybody who was following it to understand the nursing homes. Ghana was well within his remit. It I was was entirely the sort of thing that he that he would could do. Doesn't
that does I'm not saying it didn't happen- is to serve interesting, although
course there was this kind of the moratorium firm after Clinton for for Democrats,
Indeed, for most public officials, where you just did not have, except for
same sex harassment, stuff right republican congressmen. You know with the page,
candle in two thousand sex and stuff, like that and you
and women who, after the first accusation, came out with,
who could potentially make further accusation
it gets caller have been contacted by his office. I forget who exactly
you're, just sort of checking on written Wretch rich as a party, his his in his
his own theory rich rich as a party who is now who is like looking to get dirt on people before they might order
yeah or have already give that kind of warning right
really charming guy rich, as were the one who went out and said that the Janis deem should just talk about the weather, even though her her her inlaws died in nursing homes really
a lovely guy you're, my mother, prodigies of eight, they have worked due to keep things yap now tempted
There is also a little another in addition to the nursing home. That's and there's been some further reporting that the similar policy was was pursued by the common administration with regard to people with disabilities who are in care homes. For them and that many of those people also died and they die alone because they couldn't be with their families, were not allowed to
set them in, and that is you know on and along with the nursing home. That's just another. I mean it's that very tragic data point, but it's another thing that should be raised with regard to investigations into how his policies led out with her
it's very hard to hear about all this stuff it did did raises you're adrenaline levels. It raises your stress levels at all. It's all you know the crushing morality of our times is.
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feel offered right now, head to head space, dot com, slash commentary today. Ok, I have one final thing to say, because we need to talk for a few months ago we go
out of totally out of left field, the
the gay I sat down with it
on cable. All of a sudden, I was hoping around and broadcast news made nineteen eighty seven
I'm on a movie that I adored when it came out with a highly hunter. William hurt M Albert Brooks about you, know
rise of the rise of the new media in in and television journalism.
And I still feel very warmly and hospitably towards this movie, and then it is what I wanted to tell you, so I had forgotten that it opens with a very peculiar
The quince, where you see the three leads as children. The three lean characters as children
one not a school bus, one screaming and a friend, something or other
this opening sequence was so terrible. It was
so bad that, I can't believe that I didn't know at the time that it was this bad
and how like cringing do suddenly awful. It was not funny not interesting a babel
active, badly, conceived and dumb,
I was just thinking like, is this? What is this? What happens to us either as we age or like what the letter that you can just overlooked,
because I feel like today, if
If this movie release that IRAN Amazon and you had to only watch on Amazon, you turned it I'm the guy was watching the first led out. Forty five second they'll be like what the hell is this and I will turn off and I wouldn't say the rest.
ABC big movie maker, have you had this experience of like just crushing disappointment with something that you remember father
as a movie viewer, not a movie maker yeah I'd, say I met him without exciting. I'm sorry, I had
experience now- because I I guess,
I like bad movies and good movies and then
movies that are in between- because I d
something interesting about the waiting
fail. So if it
that something is bad. I it's interesting to me why it's bad, so I don't get it
crash, but I have certainly noted morsel books really there.
I read something at twenty and then read it again. It forty or forty five
In my opinion, it is entirely different.
and I m sure I cringe or for the author and myself
I oddly serve had this experience, rereading crime and punishment value mention at which was a book that you know like slaughtered me when I was like nineteen
like I mean it was the most the most
devastating ridding experience. I think I have ever had and the intensity of the blue
millions of at the horror that all of this, just like grip me from one end and then as a reading it older, I d
covered by really understand, which is it's kind of a portrait of that more than it is an exemplar of that, because it's a book about somebody who is in the himself in the midst
of a sick fever when he commits this absolutely horrendous act and is on the verge of
perhaps one that I don't know whether I then founded as in my mid fifties as a portrait of
hysteria that it's a book about hysteria that, when you're nineteen, you kind of become part and parcel of this
area or whether dusty ass. He was actually, moreover, heeded them. I than I thought he was an and more
the dramatic and less elemental, the right that I thought it was. I don't know you guys have any
experiences that that the chair with us, or should we just stir, I have to
I re read the odyssey which I have been assigned in college and kind of like in a scheme through, and I
struck by actually liked it more on the second reading, although those kind of horrified by a lot of the the the troops with
which you know today's woke as students heads would explode having to read a needle cancer warnings that I did
remember it being that graphic in some purpose, but it was great
Robert Figel translations wonder violet enjoyed it. I also recently we watched John Wick, the first movie and I loved it. Even more because he barely says a word, he just goes about its business, he's kind of the person
two euro of our times that we need, but he doesn't over a mode. He doesn't it doesnt show off he just you know. He gets mad cows, some until this dog and stolen car, and you just deals with it and I kind of loved it
over again so low
but very enjoyable,
I read somewhere that in the Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger's character,
nineteen lines throughout the course of the entire movie has only has ended up. Some of them are forwards law right, they're, not
nineteen lines of dialogue, and I would be surprised if canneries had ninety minds of dialogue in in in in John Work tonight.
the best thing is when the energies he's talking to the russian mobster, who knows that he's gonna come in, you know, wreak vengeance
and the russian monster sort of tripe flailing trying to trying to get him engaged in conversation, John, which says nothing, hangs up the phone so what s the russian monster like? What did he say? The rush motors is enough. It's perfect John Wicked
right. If you haven't seen John Work, don't don't see the sequels their garbage, but the first one which came out of nowhere. Also has it out
revolutionized action filmmaking in the twenty twenty two and in this century, by returning it too,
place, where you actually understand where what people are doing and where they are situated in a place and showing long sequences of people fight
rather than cutting them up into twenty different tax cuts us a minute where you have no idea. What's going on, it's really quite dazzling anyway. With that we will. We
I'll bet you at your having having ass. Having said
and which are our art to too many adds we're gonna, be reducing the number of ads in the coming weeks to many adds with that with with sufficient content. So I thank you for firm, saying with us. Through this Sab ridiculously drug dragged out session, we will be back to Morrow or Christine EVA Allen, Jump onwards, keep the candle burden
Transcript generated on 2021-07-27.