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

Going Pantsless? An Economic Boom? World War III? Our Predictions for 2024 Niall Ferguson, Tyler Cowen, Peter Attia, John McWhorter, Leandra Medine, and others on what the year will bring. BARI WEISS AND OLIVER WISEMAN JAN 5

 Last year was certainly eventful. The year 2023 brought spy balloons, Donald Trump’s indictments, the coronation of a king, the fall of a crypto prince, and no shortage of chaos in Washington, from the ouster of Kevin McCarthy to the farcical George Santos scandal. Oh, and then there’s the small matter of two major wars, one in Gaza and one in Ukraine. Plus ongoing tension between the U.S. and China. On a cheerier note, 2023 was also the year of Barbenheimer, the year it felt like AI really arrived, and the year the nineties were finally cool again.  

But, as crazy as last year was, will the next twelve months prove that it was actually just the calm before the storm? 

For us at least, 2024 begins with a distinct feeling of dread. 

Just look around the world. The Middle East grows more unstable, the war in Ukraine is not going Kyiv’s way, and Xi Jinping’s rhetoric gets more bellicose by the day. Here at home, there’s the election from hell, in which American voters will likely face the rematch nobody wants: Donald Trump and Joe Biden. 

To find out if things will really be as terrible as we fear, we are starting the year with a special 2024 predictions episode of Honestly. Here’s how it will work: we’re going to call up some friends of the pod—people we trust in their fields—to get a better sense of what’s coming down the pike. 

The great Tyler Cowen looks into the economic crystal ball. Leandra Medine clues us in on fashion trends in 2024. Our very own Suzy Weiss talks through the cultural year ahead. Linguist John McWhorter looks at language. Doctor and longevity expert Peter Attia tells us how to start the year right. Eagle-eyed political observers Nate Silver and Frank Luntz try to forecast the election. And historian Niall Ferguson tells us whether we’re right to have nightmares about World War III. 

Some guests cheered us up, whereas others freaked us out. All of them were a pleasure to talk to. We hope you enjoy these conversations with some of our favorite people.  

Peter Attia’s health advice for the start of a new year:

You would be hard-pressed to find a long list of people whose lives wouldn’t be materially better if they found more ways to exercise. So rule number one would be: Could a person commit to being more active? 

A second thing that might seem a little bit out of my wheelhouse, but does tie in to health, especially as we go into this year, where everybody is going to be sucked into the vortex of world news and world affairs and politics, is being more disciplined about taking a vacation from media, social media, and electronics, and substituting all that with time outdoors. For me personally, and for my patients, no one is immune to the negative psychological forces of that awful vortex. 

A third thing is to think twice before you have the drink. Ask yourself the question: If I’m going to allow myself to have only three or four of these a week, is this one really worth it?  

Suzy Weiss on the cultural trends of 2024: 

Okay, everyone’s been saying “the nineties are back” for so long, so it’s easy to say, “oh, the eighties are next.” You know: pencil eyebrows and shoulder pads. But I think we should actually be looking to the 1920s, a period of huge political and social upheaval and yet a huge time of economic prosperity. So my big predictions: hedonism, consumerism, dance music, and at the very least, short haircuts for women. 

Leandra Medine on a risqué fashion trend for 2024: 

This is a really high-stakes, risky trend to go with. But we are seeing more and more people opt out of wearing pants. It’s like the hemline index has come so high that we have actually forgone the skirt or the shorts altogether. We are just wearing underwear and pantyhose. It’s like this vaguely incomplete look that somehow makes the most uncool yet cool shoes look better, and complements oversize winter coats in the most unconventional ways, and makes it easier to pick a sweater because you don’t have to wonder about how it tucks into what you’re wearing on the bottom. 

John McWhorter on “rizz” (defined as “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”) being the Oxford Dictionary 2023 word of the year:

You know, I thought it was just right because I only picked it up summer of ’22 from my daughter’s ten-year-old friends. They started using it. And I thought it was just some random syllable. I only learned that it was from charisma about four months ago when I asked. And how current it is is clear from the fact that about a month ago, I used it in quotation marks in front of one of my classes at Columbia. I said, “I’m going to give you a word that I’m not supposed to use: rizz.” That got the biggest laugh because it was so inappropriate that I’m using it. And so I thought, that one must be really hot. And so, yeah, rizz, because if you had said that to me in 2021, it would have sounded like something Hungarian. 

Tyler Cowen on the economic outlook for 2024:

This is not slated to be a terrible year. We have, in fact, actually licked inflation without a recession, which was a shock to many economists. The global order is possibly stabilizing somewhat compared to the last twelve months. The U.S. economy is highly innovative in artificial intelligence and the biomedical area, and there’s a fair amount to be happy about. But predictions are tough. Keep in mind that one out of every six years, the U.S. economy, you know, might be in recession. There’s always a chance of that. But so far, so good. 

Frank Luntz on whether Biden will step aside before the election: 

There has to be a chance because in the end, if he loses to Donald Trump, that will be his legacy for the rest of time. That he gave the presidency back to this individual. And I don’t believe, after passing all this significant legislation—you can argue whether it’s good or bad, but it is significant—I don’t believe that he will want to be known as that individual. The only person who could talk him out of it is his wife. And she has to decide what her legacy will be as well: an active, participatory, engaged first lady, one of our best in modern times, or the person who said to her husband, “You stay around; you fight this because you think you’re the only one who could beat Donald Trump.” 

Nobody is looking Joe Biden straight in the eye and saying to him, “You’re going to lose this thing.” It doesn’t happen in the White House. It doesn’t happen in politics. She’s the only one who could do this. And clearly she’s not doing it.

Nate Silver, when asked, “Gun to your head, who is going to win: Trump or Biden?” 

Shoot me.  

Niall Ferguson on the importance of contemplating defeat in Cold War II: 

I think that there’s a decent chance we’ll lose Cold War II. And that’s what people find really hard to visualize. The reason people don’t worry is that they kind of think, “We’re always going to win. It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” And I’m like, no, you have to contemplate the possibility of losing. The United States did not inevitably win Cold War I. It looked like it was losing for most of the 1970s. By 1979, it really looked like it was in trouble. And I think we just don’t get across to people what losing might be like and why it might be bad. 

Ukrainians understand what losing is like because they saw Bucha. They saw the bodies in the streets of Bucha. Israelis know what losing is like because they know that October 7 was a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust II. But we don’t really know what losing would mean. And young Americans absolutely have no concept. In fact, young Americans are so complacent about freedom that they’re basically against it now, which is a bizarre turn of events. 

We need a bit more of what we would actually be like if we lost. Let’s just imagine that there is a Taiwan crisis and they send two aircraft carrier groups, and the Chinese just sink both the carriers, and the U.S. finds it has to sue for peace, and Taiwan is taken over, and Xi Jinping does the ticker-tape parade through Taipei. What then? What does that mean? I think a lot of people haven’t really got anywhere close to thinking that through. 

They don’t realize that ceasing to be number one, losing the Pax Americana, has massive costs. These are the things people don’t spend enough time thinking about because they just complacently assume that somehow all of this stuff is going on over there in Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan, and somehow we’ll be fine. But the reality is we will definitely not be fine any more than we would have been fine if the Soviets had won the first Cold War. 

 The Free Press.

© 2024 Bari Weiss
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe