Rajiv Sethi – Self-Censorship on Campus

My guest this week is Rajiv Sethi, professor of economics at Barnard and Columbia. We’ve collaborated on papers and pedagogical projects, we’ve criticized each other’s work, and we’ve remained remained friends for decades now. In this conversation, we run the gamut, from Israel-Palestine to free speech to some fairly technical economics talk to, what else, my memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. The Gaza War has brought the issue of campus speech back to the fore. Some students and faculty fear that saying the wrong thing about the conflict will put them on the wrong end of censorious mob, and the public positions taken by many university administrations aren’t helping. But Rajiv goes back to my essay, “Self-Censorship in Public Discourse,” to explain why administrative neutrality is a necessary but insufficient condition to solve the self-censorship problem on campus. Rajiv wrote a very nice blurb for my forthcoming memoir, and we discuss how game theory informs the book’s content and structure. We then delve into Rajiv’s fascinating work on police use-of-force and the predictive value of markets. The pioneering economist Bob Solow recently died. He was my dissertation advisor back in the 1970s at MIT, and he mentored a staggering number of other influential economists. Rajiv spent some time tracing his influence over the profession. And finally, I ask Rajiv whether he takes pride in the accomplishments of his fellow Indian-Americans, and his answer is surprising! It’s always a pleasure to reconnect with Rajiv. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Join Discord Sign Up for City Journal’s Newsletter City Journal provides rigorous analysis that allows you to reach your own conclusions, rather than rehashing ideologically “safe” talking points. Explore it for yourselves and sign up for their free newsletter today. Sign Up Now Order from Amazon Order from Barnes & Noble Order from Bookshop.org 0:00 The conversations that aren’t happening on college campuses 4:16 Staying informed about Israel-Palestine 9:22 Glenn: Don’t subject me to a loyalty test 12:14 Rajiv: High-minded principles alone won’t solve the self-censorship problem 18:11 “The Naked Emperor Equilibrium” 21:52 The game theoretical aspect of Glenn’s memoir 25:35 An homage to Thomas Schelling 27:31 Rajiv’s work on police use-of-force, then and now 30:36 The predictive value of political betting markets 42:44 Robert Solow’s intellectual family tree 46:16 The lopsided distribution of elite economists 49:08 Rajiv: Big econ departments should take more chances on candidates 51:52 The mind-boggling geographical variation in police killings 56:09 Why Rajiv doesn’t take pride in other Indian-Americans’ success Recorded January 26, 2024 Links and Readings Noam Dworman’s TGS appearance Noam Dworman’s podcast, Live from the Table Norman Finkelstein and Eli Lake on Live from the Table Benny Morris’s book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Crisis Rashid Khalidi on Live from the Table Benny Morris on Live from the Table Tara Henley’s Lean Out Ilan Pappé’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Glenn’s essay, “Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of ‘Political Correctness’ and Related Phenomena Glenn’s conversation with Omer Bartov Glenn’s conversation with Norman Finkelstein Norman Finkelstein’s book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom Glenn’s conversation with John Mearsheimer John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee Report University of Chicago’s 2014 “Chicago Principles” on freedom of expression Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s book, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion—Our Second Skin Timur Kuran’s book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification Thomas Schelling’s book, The Strategy of Conflict Rajiv and Brendan O’Flaherty’s book, Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and Pursuit of Justice Rajiv and Brendan O’Flaherty’s article, “Stereotypes, Crime, and Policing” Gunnar Myrdal’s book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy Rajiv’s Substack, Imperfect Information Rajiv’s Substack post, “Economic Growth and the Growth of Economics: Reflections on Robert Solow” Ralph Ellison’s essay 1970 essay, “What America Would Be Like without Blacks” Glenn Loury. © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

What Is "Black Conservatism"? with John McWhorter GLENN LOURY FEB 2

I’ve called myself a “black conservative” many times. But what does that appellation mean? In this clip from our most recent conversation, John and I discuss whether calling out progressive race-mongering makes one a conservative by definition. © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

My guest this week is the historian David Kaiser

My guest this week is the historian David Kaiser. If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you’ll recognize David’s name from his appearances on the show and his written contributions to the newsletter. He’s an incredibly prolific author—he’s written books about European conflict and leadership, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, baseball stats, and the NFL’s 1965 season, among many other topics, and he blogs at History Unfolding. His new book, States of the Union: A History of the United States through Presidential Addresses, 1789-2023, analyzes some of the major speeches by US presidents from George Washington’s inaugural to the present. David has a history with Harvard. He received his BA and PhD there, and, like me, served on its faculty. He sees the Claudine Gay fiasco as a symptom of a deeper rot at the core of Harvard’s mission, and that of other elite American universities. We explore the decline of an elitism premised on excellence and the rise of an elitism premised on status and money. We then move on to presidencies past and future, and David explains why, if the Supreme Court hears the Fourteenth Amendment case against Trump, he may find no quarter with the originalist justices. We then get into David’s new book, and he explains how presidential addresses can help us track shifts in the political orientation of the nation over long swathes of time. I mildly dread the State of the Union address every year—sitting through the empty rhetoric and endless applause breaks can be a chore. But David has given me a new appreciation of its value, and I’ll be listening to this year’s edition with fresh ears. Join Discord Sign Up for City Journal’s Newsletter City Journal provides rigorous analysis that allows you to reach your own conclusions, rather than rehashing ideologically “safe” talking points. Explore it for yourselves and sign up for their free newsletter today. Sign Up Now This episode was released on Monday to paying subscribers. To receive weekly early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below. Upgrade to paid Share Order from Amazon Order from Barnes & Noble Order from Bookshop.org 0:00 The many, many books of David Kaiser 3:01 David: Claudine Gay is a symptom, not a cause, of what’s wrong at Harvard 6:09 Western Civilization and elitism at Harvard 10:03 Meritorious elitism and luxury elitism 12:35 Intellectuals in the wild 14:28 How James Bryant Conant built the modern Harvard … 17:33 … and how it was broken 18:52 Glenn’s previous conversation with Omer Bartov 24:12 Why David thinks the Gaza War falls short of genocide but maybe not ethnic cleansing 25:51 What Claudine Gay could (and maybe should) have said at her congressional hearing 27:51 Why David thinks originalists will have a problem rejecting attempts to remove Trump from electoral ballots 32:38 David: Mitch McConnell should have impeached Trump when he had the chance 36:07 David’s new book, States of the Union 41:03 Have state of the union addresses always been as boring as they are now? 44:55 Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and their legacies 57:37 Why Obama didn’t propose a New New Deal after the 2008 financial crisis 1:01:01 Biden’s silence Recorded January 10, 2024 Links and Readings David’s book, Economic Diplomacy and the Origin of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France, and Eastern Europe, 1930-1939 David’s book, Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler David’s book, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War David’s book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy David’s book, Baseball Greatness: Top Players and Teams According to Wins Above Average, 1901-2017 David’s book, NFL 1965: The Most Exciting Season David’s book, A Life in History David’s book, States of the Union: A History of the United States through Presidential Addresses, 1789-2023 Glenn’s previous conversation with David Fareed Zakaria on elite universities Glenn’s conversation with Omer Bartov David’s blog, History Unfolding David’s blog post about the Fourteenth Amendment Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States John F. Kennedy’s June 11, 1963 address on segregation © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

Harvard Betrayed Its Mission

with David Kaiser GLENN LOURY JAN 25 As my guest this week, historian David Kaiser, says, the Claudine Gay fiasco is a symptom, not a cause, of Harvard’s institutional rot, and that of many elite universities. Maintaining high academic standards was once one of the most important parts of a college president’s job. A candidate with Gay’s demonstrable, he implies, scholarly flaws should never have been put in charge of overseeing undergraduate education. The fact that she was tells us much more about the failings of the institution than it does about the failings of Claudine Gay. If you’re thinking about preordering my memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, there’s no better time than now. Barnes & Noble is offering 25% on all preorders. But the sale ends tomorrow, so order it from Barnes & Noble or wherever you get your books today. © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

The Historical Precedent for Trump's Disqualification with David Kaiser GLENN LOURY JAN 23

The attempt to disqualify Donald Trump from the presidency may be extraordinary, but it is not quite unprecedented. We did have a civil war in this country, and in its aftermath, as the historian David Kaiser reminds me, some former Confederates were disqualified from public office under the new 14th Amendment. They had rebelled against the US government, and the Senate deemed them too radical to qualify for the post-war exemptions offered to most other rebels. Even if we could agree that the events of January 6, 2021 constituted an “insurrection” (and I don’t know that they did), comparing them to the Confederacy’s rebellion against the Union seems wildly overblown. In this clip from this week’s episode, David does not argue that the two things are comparable in a general sense, only that the same principle was violated in both. If you believe that Trump had a hand in fomenting the January 6 riot and directing the rioters to stop the election certification, if you believe his communications with state governments during the ballot counting rise to level of interference, then perhaps you’ll agree with David that he should have been disqualified from the presidency three years ago. But as I’ve already said, disqualifying Trump would, I believe, pose an even greater threat to democracy than allowing him to run despite the possible constitutional issue. We know that tens of millions of voters want to elect Trump. They have their own ways of reckoning with January 6. If we held the general election today, there’s a very good chance they would put him back into office. Now the Supreme Court—the least democratic branch of government—is being asked, essentially, to decide whether or not those voters will get to have their say. We find ourselves at a dismal crossroad, where an arguably legitimate legal case for disqualifying a popular candidate diverges from the will of a great many American voters. We can only choose one of those paths—in fact, “we” are not doing the choosing, the Court is. Despite my agreement with some of their recent rulings, I do not believe this choice should be theirs to make. I can only hope they have the wisdom to understand the consequences of their decision. This is a clip from the episode that went out to paying subscribers on Monday. To get access to the full episode, as well as an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below. GLENN LOURY: We should talk about the book, [States of the Union]. But I want to ask. You've just written a book focused around the US presidency and the remarks that people make from that lofty position. And we're in the midst of a campaign. We're in a campaign year. The Supreme Court is going to hear challenges to the Colorado disqualification of Trump from the primary ballot based on the fact that he supported insurrection, interpreting the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which I'm sure you're intimately familiar with. What do you make of that? I have taken the position, I'll just say for the record, that I don't know from the 14th Amendment. I'm not going to claim to be a historian or a constitutional lawyer. I can see that there'd be arguments. But what seems very clear to me is that if you disqualify Donald Trump from participation in the 2024 election based upon that, you're making a grave mistake in terms of the legitimacy of our institutions. It's not just that you're giving ammunition to Trump to trumpet that he's been made a victim. You're basically telling the electorate that the Democrats are going to continue to govern the country and that the strongest opponent to their program is not going to be allowed to stand. And that strikes me as a disaster for the country. Please tell me where I'm wrong. DAVID KAISER: All right. Let me say that some of what I say may be in the devil's advocate role, which you enjoy so much yourself. My blog where I try to post every week is called History Unfolding. I blogged about this, and I did so with the help of a short article about the history of that clause, which was very good and explained how that clause was applied after the Civil War as it was. And what the clause said was that anybody had first taken an oath to support the constitution and who had then participated in an insurrection was ineligible to hold any federal or state office. End of story. And they could only be relieved of that disability by a two-thirds vote in Congress. Which in fact is what happened in 1872, only a few years later, when almost all the former Confederates were pardoned, in fact, by two-thirds majority of Congress. It was a big step towards the end of Reconstruction. But meanwhile, they had all accepted that, and they identified 67 cases where people had tried to take some office who had been part of the rebellion, and they were disallowed from doing so by state courts or by federal courts or in one case by a state official. And they did not have to be convicted of insurrection, you see, because disqualification from office isn't a criminal punishment. So what I said in the blog is the originalists on the Supreme Court are going to have a problem with this case, because what the Colorado court did and what the official in Maine did is totally within the precedent of what was done after the Civil War. Now, here's the problem. The circumstances matter. There wasn't any doubt at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment that we had a huge insurrection, and there wasn't any doubt who would have been part of it. Anybody who served in the Confederate army, in the Confederate government, obviously. It was a prima facie case. Things aren't quite as clear now, obviously. Plus nobody could deny, even if you were sad the South lost or whatever, that there had been this war and that they had lost. So that was straightforward. Now today that's not so straightforward, because we don't have the same political consensus about what happened and who won and who turned out to be an insurrectionist because they lost instead of a freedom fighter if they had won. This is all part of the collapse of our institutions which I talked about in the latter stages of the book in connection with the election of Trump. Trump was a total outsider, and in 2016 neither political party could come up with somebody who could beat him. That showed that our political order was in a state of collapse. And in some ways that's continued. In some ways it's gotten worse. The great tragedy was that Mitch McConnell, in January of 2021, lost his nerve, was not willing to rally enough Republican senators, as I'm sure he could have, to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, which would have ruled him out as a candidate for all time. You think he should have been defeated? Of course. I think he should have been convicted. And yes, he was clearly guilty. He should have been convicted, and we would have been through with that. But they didn't do that. I'm sorry to interrupt. What was he guilty of that ought to have been ratified by the second impeachment? What was he guilty of? He was guilty of illegally trying to overturn the results of the election, including the incitement of the insurrection. And if that isn't a high crime or misdemeanor, I don't know what is. And remember, a majority of the Senate agreed with that. That's not a trivial fact, even though you need two thirds of the Senate to convict. Again, forgive my naiveté, and I maybe expose myself to certain kind of criticisms, but what were the high crimes and misdemeanors of which Trump was guilty in his resistance to ratification of the November 2020 election results? He attempted many ways to overturn the result of the election in about half a dozen states.and to get Mike Pence to take an unconstitutional step to refuse to certify the results of the election. And the incitement of the mob to go into the Capitol and try to intimidate the Congress or whatever into doing his bidding. “Peacefully and patriotically assembled.” That didn't look to me to be peaceful. But those were his words. He didn't say, go down there and make a ruckus of things. He used words like “fight.” I haven't prepared a full bill of particulars here. But I think what he wanted was clear enough. Also, his reaction to it when it happened made that clear, his long delay in making any statements. © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

The Real Threat to Democracy with John McWhorter GLENN LOURY JAN 21

Last week’s Iowa caucuses delivered the result that everyone predicted: Donald Trump crushed his competition. His lead in the polls is so overwhelming that you can hardly call this a “race” for the Republican nomination. Barring an act of God, Trump will cruise his way to the convention, while Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis vie for a very distant second-place finish. His likely nomination reflects the will of the vast majority of Republicans, whether they’re die-hard MAGA supporters, ambivalent voters who see Trump as the least-bad option, or something in between. Scores of millions of people are ready to pull the lever for him come November. I can think of few more level-headed people than my friend John McWhorter. He’s nobody’s idea of an extremist. And yet, as you’ll see in this clip from our most recent Substack subscriber-only Q&A session, he’s willing to negate the will of all those millions of people in order to keep Trump off the general election ballot, as the state of Colorado is attempting to do. John is not alone. Plenty of otherwise reasonable people see preventing Trump from running in the general election as a step necessary to preserve the democracy they are sure that Trump threatens. And a comparable number see disqualifying him from the ballot as an illegitimate effort to influence the election’s outcome. It’s all too easy to imagine a nightmare scenario where a small minority of armed Trumpers interfere with election day proceedings they feel to be illegitimate. John says, “Let the civil war happen.” I don’t think he and those who shrug at the possibility of violent civil unrest have really thought through what it could mean. The very foundations of our democracy would be thrown into question, and our country could descend to a state in which political violence was a regular feature of the evening news. That would be horrifying. Even more horrifying: Though the methods of these hypothetical armed resisters would be literally deplorable, it would be all too easy to understand their logic. An election in which legal maneuvering keeps a candidate preferred by half (and maybe more than half) of the electorate off the ballot would not, in my view, be legitimate. It would not really be an election at all, and we are not ready for the consequences that would follow. It may be that Trump violated the Fourteenth Amendment. I don’t know. We should not have a president in office who was found to violate the Constitution. But we cannot have a president in office whose victory was secured not because he won an election but because there never really was one. For the country to be free of the threat Trump allegedly poses, he must be defeated in a free and fair election. GLENN LOURY: This is from Joe. Long time listener and big fan. Thank you for what you do. I don't mean to be unduly divisive, but his question relates to a topic that's been tangentially discussed several times, the 2020 election. Professor McWhorter likes to assert that the 2020 election wasn't quote stolen. While I agree that Biden won and the 2020 election wasn't stolen in the ways many of the more lunatic people claim—that is hacked servers, etc.—I can't help think that there was material and pervasive unfairness in the 2020 election. The unprecedented censorship alone certainly made it unfair and raises questions concerning what actually happened that we are prevented from being told. My question is, even if we don't necessarily love the word “stolen,” can we all admit that the 2020 election contained deeply troubling manipulation, unfairness, and a lack of transparency perpetrated by big tech, the media, and several states. JOHN MCWHORTER: How about this. I think Joe understands that even the sorts of things that he's talking about are not what motivate this lunatic fringe that we're talking about. And it's more than a fringe. And so if we're talking about trying to take over the Capitol, trying to arrest the election, thinking that something tragically dissimulatory has been foisted upon the Republic and that we're in a crisis, etc. I think that sort of person has no leg to stand on. And I've been, frankly, bemused how annoyed many people get when I say that. I will not yield on this. The idea of— I'm sorry, let me just ask. What is it that they have no leg to stand on? What is, in your view, obviously wrong? The election was not stolen in some bald, absurd, nasty, incontestable way that justifies people taking up guns, justifies people thinking that we need to have a vast upending in procedure. No, all of that, I insist, is a kind of agitprop. It is a kind of— But Joe didn't say that. Joe just asked, could we not acknowledge that there was an unusual environment? And don't you see the suppression of that as being problematic? My answer to Joe is, haven't there been people saying that about pretty much every election over the past 200-plus years? It's just that we can talk more vividly about it now because of the nature of our communications technology. But was it worse last time than it was the time before or the time before? So yes, our whole election process is a mess. There are always these questions as to how representative of the national will the outcome was. But the idea of there being an insurrection about it? I say no. And so do you. But you're saying, aren't there things that we could have been talking about more? Yeah, but I'm not sure if there weren't people who would have said that in 2000. I'm not sure if there weren't people saying that in 2004, etc. It's just for me, it's an issue of degree. Glenn, what do you think? I think I agree with you. And Joe concedes the point that there weren't hacked voting machines or ballots that were stolen or people invented and their names were passed through with a voting register or whatever. We have no evidence of that. And there's no reason to believe that in the absence of evidence. And there's plenty of reason to not want to take that stance for the integrity of the system. I agree with that. I think, though, there are elections and then there's after the election. And after the election, there's a question of the legitimacy and the extent to which it is broadly accepted and ratified by the populace. I think you're right to say that there are always questions, because the election and the ratification are two distinct events. And usually, under normal circumstances, there'll be insufficient suspicion, so that the one and the other will be the same. Because you could raise questions. How are we going to conduct elections? What is going to be the role of mail-in balloting? What is going to be the role of early voting? You could really raise questions. You could be on one or the other side of that. And I think it's pretty clear that COVID-abetted irregularity or a modification of voting procedures disfavored Trump. I think his base is coming out. I want to say ballot harvesting, but I don't want to seem accusatory. Changing the technology of mobilizing people and getting them to the polling place and getting them to cast their ballot probably is a move that expands the electorate in the direction that would disfavor Trump. So you could see why he would not want that to happen. Yeah, but nothing radical happened . What do you say about this Hunter Biden thing? They did suppress that story. They organized a letter from national security people that debunked it “as likely Russian propaganda,” and the tech people shut that story down. The New York Post's reporting, which was correct, about a consequential matter was suppressed. Now, if I'm sitting in Joe's seat, the feeling of unfairness is going to be hard to dispel. The history of our republic is such—and Glenn, you know this much better than me—that we could have the same conversation about various things that the media did and didn't do in any election. Let me ask you, do you think there are organized forces amongst elites and various important junctures of American public life, rabidly anti-Trump, who worked assiduously to affect the outcome of the election? Because we're talking about the legitimacy of the result. And we have a problem here in America, because a lot of people like Joe don't think the 2020 outcome passes the test of legitimacy, even though they may acknowledge that, as a legal jurisprudential matter, Joe Biden is the president of the United States. So is that anything that we should be concerned about going forward? Oh, sure. We should be concerned about it, but not in the sense that [it’s] a crisis junction. Because there were people who felt the same way about the election of 1960. The world kept spinning. This is the way these things go. And the election of 2000. Yeah. And here we are. I'm not saying that these things don't matter, but I'm just saying that anybody who is ready to turn the country upside down because of it—this is not Joe—but if you're ready to turn the country upside down, there's something wrong with you, I think. Here's where we are, John. Donald Trump is running for president again, and he's under a criminal indictment in multiple jurisdictions. And his ballot legitimacy is being questioned at the level of several states. I'm not sure exactly what my question is for you. I merely want to call attention to the fact that the legitimacy mechanism is in grave jeopardy. Suppose you actually were able to disqualify Trump from some ballots, and Biden were to win the election in a narrow electoral college and popular vote. That's a disaster for our country. I worry about that very deeply, because Joe is probably being nice and polite in the way he states his question. This is a problem. It's a problem of the legitimacy of our electoral processes. The question as to how legitimate it is to disqualify Trump is one that has to be thought over. My feeling about it is, that is a legitimate decision. Roughly, there'd be no reason that the founders would have disincluded the president from what they were saying. It's not ideally worded. It would make no sense if they thought the president was the exception. The question is whether January 6th was an insurrection of the character that the Fourteenth Amendment was motivated by. That's the question. The question is whether Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the government of the United States of such a nature that he should be disqualified from serving in office. That's the question. And I'm just going to go out on a limb and say we must not answer that question “yes.” We must not do that. That's a threat to democracy. They were trying to hold up the procedure. The idea was to hold up what was going on inside of that building. But you're not following me. Excuse me, I apologize, but I don't think I'm making myself clear. I am not asking that question. I'm asking a question about the legitimacy machine. And regardless of the factual truth or falsity of the question of did he incite an insurrection, he must not, I assert and invite your rebuttal, be disqualified from the ballot on that ground. That will destroy this country. And if that's the way it has to go, as far as I'm concerned, let it. Maybe we need that. So you don't dispute what I'm saying, you're just willing to live with that outcome? Am I wrong to say that is a destruction of the legitimacy machine? No matter what the outcome of the election, it will not be legitimate if you do that, and that's a disaster for the country. That's the position. I know that there are many people who will think that it wasn't legitimate, and they might come out, finally, with their guns. You can't face this decision on being afraid of them, right? Or am I misunderstanding you? No, you're not. You can base this decision on being afraid of them. That is exactly what I'm saying. Don't go there. I'm saying, don't die on that hill. That's a mistake. To deal with this guy, you have to beat him in an election. You can't peremptorily disqualify him, because there are scores of millions of people who support him. You have to actually win the election. That's what I'm saying. Otherwise you do grave damage to the institutions. Uh-uh. I'm going to be crazy here and say, let the civil war happen. We cannot make this decision based on those... So let's agree to disagree. You want to move on it? 'Cause if you want to say more, go ahead and say more, but I've said my piece. Are you really interested in kowtowing to those morons? Oh God, John. Those melodramatic ... you okay? My crown came off. I just pressed it back on. I'm gonna have to get some adhesive in a moment, but fortunately it slotted right back in. So I'm good. I'm sorry. No, man. You call them morons? That is such a mistake. I don't want to get personal about it, but... All right. You're right. “Morons” was wrong. And I didn't mean it. I don't think they're morons. I sometimes like to use dramatic language. But I do think this. They are caught up in a melodramatic, self-affirming kind of group membership, which does not correspond with reality and it cannot be allowed. We can't base our decisions on that. No, they simply support Donald Trump for president of the United States. That's not a cult. That's a small businessman in a mid-sized town in Ohio. That's an evangelical Christian in Louisiana. That's a working-class, union-dues-paying resident of Detroit, Michigan. But the subset of those who believe in Giuliani's claims and really think the wool has been pulled over our eyes in that sense? I'm sorry, no. Most Trump supporters don't think that way, I know. You are pathologizing your political opponent. Some of them. You are pathologizing them. You're not asking about the border. You're not asking about the war in Ukraine. You're not asking about the economic agenda. Man ... It's the fantasists. The following here is not simply based on the personality of the individual. There are deep forces in American political life that are at play. I agree. You can't let the Democratic Party continue to set the agenda for the country without having an election. And if you preemptively disqualify this guy, that's exactly what you would be doing. But it would be based on legal doctrine that was not crafted even with him in mind. Maybe he shouldn't be running. He tried to break the country in two. That's not an unreasonable argument. Okay, he brought us to this point, and January 6th happened. We know how people feel about that. They impeached him twice. And his ego and his inflammatory rhetoric and his transphobia and his damage to the institutions. He's a bad guy. Trump bad. I'm not buying that. I think he is a phenomenon to be understood in the context of the forces that produced him. Now, look at what's happening in the country. The Supreme Court. There's a reaction against the leftward drift that is simmering. Look at this debate about the Middle East, about Ukraine. All of that should be represented by some Republican other than that—and this time I am going to say it—malevolent moron. He should not be the one who channels these very legitimate grievances. The ones that you're talking about are important. But not that man. And the way that man is is not what's motivating my saying he should be disqualified. I didn't have the legal expertise to anticipate this whole discussion until it came about. But it's not that I don't like him. He could be a kind of a likable, legalistic, intelligent person, and still, if there were a case that he had tried to break the country in two, I would be behind it. Glenn, how come it has to be him? Wouldn't you rather Nikki Haley or Chris Christie? It is him. No, I'm not going to get into that. I'm not a Republican, man. I'm not going to get into parsing these candidates. It is him. That's my point. It is him. Like I said, there's him and there are the historical forces that produced him. Those forces are what they are. © 2024 Glenn Loury 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe