00:00:04
Speaker 1: Very pleased today to be joined by Washington Post columnist author of The Plumb Line, Greg Sergeant, by my estimation, one of the best most astute columnist observers of this moment in American life over the last seven years. As you know, if you tune into this, something that I regard as an ongoing event that has taken another mighty turn over this weekend. Greg Sergeant, welcome, Thanks for having me on, Steve before going on, what's your initial reaction to the change in the world that's occurred since you left work on Friday and returned on Monday.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: It's different, Yeah, I mean obviously absolutely horrifying. The attacks on Israelis are just, you know, contemptible and disgusting, and there really aren't enough words to condemn them. I do hope that the two parties can come together at this time in order to address this crisis in a balanced way, without you know, too much politicization creeping into it.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: I want to step back out from the American domestic label and talk about what we're seeing globally play out. And I can't imagine another instance where there would be an attack like this and there would be marches of support all over the world celebrating the Hamas attack, including in New York City sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's versily horrible. I would point out that, you know, the vast majority of progressives who have been critical of Israel have been very forceful in condemning the attack as well. So that was I think heartening to see and shows that this really has made it very hard for anyone who considers him or herself mainstream in the United States to adopt anything like the positions you're talking about.
00:02:21
Speaker 1: And so when you think about those positions and you think about those protests, what is it that we're seeing Is that anti Semitism of our forefathers stripe that we're seeing manifest itself assert itself in city squares all over the world. The idea that the murder Jews would be blamed for their murders is an extraordinary sentiment, but one that can't be detached from the whole sweep of history and the specter of Jew hatred that has existed since the beginnings of time.
00:03:12
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I don't. I think it's indistinguishable from that sort of anti semitism, And I do want to continue to emphasize that many of the people who have criticized Israel over the years have found their way to the right position on this fairly rapidly and really unequivocally. And I think that that's a real sign, that's a heartening sign in many ways of of where the real center of opinion lies on these things.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: Globally too, What do you think happens next when you see a military operation that will see house to house combat in the most densely populated peace of land with humans living on it anywhere on Earth. We're at a moment right now where Hamas terrorists are still gunning down Israelies or will or were as of eight nine hours ago, as the IDF secures the secures the country. When you see globally the type of bloodshed, the type of civilian casualties that are an inescapable part of war. When you look in March of nineteen forty five the fire bombing of Tokyo, United States, and one night killed one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese in a military action, most of them most of them civilians, This will not be surgical. This can't be surgical. Hamas has intermingled its military command structure in civilian neighborhoods. What do you see playing out over the next couple of weeks and how does that impact here at home domestically, and how does it intersect with Ukraine.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Well, I'd love to ask you about a pretty key element here, which is that the Republican Party has adopted very rapidly as the party wide position that President Biden's weakness is somehow to blame for what's happening there, including a really trumped up and wildly false set of allegations involving funding, which you've probably seen widely debunked, and yet pushed by lots and lots of supposedly senior people, supposedly responsible people in the Republican Party. I think that's going to only escalate. The more chaos we see, the more blood should we see, the more we're going to hear from Republicans along those lines. And we've seen this before. In the aftermath of September eleventh, something very similar happened when Karl Rove essentially said pretty clearly to Republicans, you know you can take this to the country and win the argument. We're now seeing the chairperson of the Republican National Committee saying almost exactly the same thing. Well, you've been around the Republican Party for a while, what do you think of that?
00:06:29
Speaker 1: I've been away from it for a while. Also, what I would say about this moment in time is that you have reawakened in the United States a version of the American boot. The American First Movement is in fact the American First Movement. I think that one of the singular failures right of the media in the country by way of explanation to the American people regarding what's happening around them, is the inability to make these connections in to explain right. So, in nineteen forty, in an extraordinary congressional vote, Franklin Roosevelt was able to maintain the draft by one vote one vote in nineteen forty. Had the American Army seized its draft in nineteen forty by December seventh, nineteen forty one, or earlier, the results would have been catastrophic. It means that the American Army wouldn't have been ready for a cross channel invasion before at least nineteen forty six, if it was possible at all. So this is one of the most decisive votes that's ever taken place as a matter of voting in human history. And there is a broad amnesia in American history. If you say to your average American Charles Lindberg, and you find someone in the small, small percentage, as any recollection of who he is or knowledge of who he is, he'll be remembered as an aviator, not as a fascist, not as a Nazi, not as someone who was decorated by the Nazi government, who gave a speech on the eve of World War two attacking, attacking the Jews. And so we have seen that movement come back to life. It has an intellectual spine out of the Claremont Institute. It has a strategy, it has a plan, it has it has an agenda, It has a philosophy, it has a point of view. The second part about what you said is a fundamental one chaos. Chaos as a means to an end and in the moment, an end itself. Who benefits in the American election cycle from chaos? Is it Joe Biden? Is it the responsible governing party or is it the agent of chaos? The strong man candidate running on a platform of demagogue like Adolph Hitler, who in nineteen thirty two came to power on a promise to stop the chaos that he had incited and ignited, and he did stop the chaos. There was no more chaos in German society six months after he took political power. And so that's what we're seeing, that's what we're looking at right in this moment, is a chaos movement with the intent to offer as a choice to the American people a chance to end the chaos by picking the people who have started it to lead the country. And that has not typically turned out well. Wherever you see that scenario play out in history.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: I think it's you raised the really important point. Also another important point with that parallel, which is the notion that there's somehow a genuine streak of quote unquote isolationism behind the movement among Republicans against funding the Ukraine self defense against Russian invasion. The idea that that's isolationist really misses the point. It's I wouldn't say this about all Republicans who oppose funding for Ukraine, but there's certainly a cock within that group of Republicans who seems okay with a Putin victory in the Ukraine Russia conflict, and to call it isolationism, that's a mistake that many in the media may constantly. They've also made that same mistake about Trump. This is not isolationism. This is a situation where one country tried to devour another and is trying to literally erase the other country's nationhood. It's genocidal conquest. And so to oppose aiding Ukraine in some ways, there's no way to call that really an anti war position that I can see war is happening right. Russia's waging violent conquest against a sovereign state and trying to essentially obliterate it. And so I really wish that we could get beyond calling this kind of By the way, the same mistake was still applied back to the America First Movement during World War I to as you.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Know, well, this is a this is a movement of fellow travelers. They look at Vladimir Putin, they look at the Revengism, they look at the Christian orthodoxy from the Church, they look at the hostility to the concepts of modern small L liberalism, small P pluralism, and they fetishize Vladimir Putin. And there is a fundamental misunderstanding that endangers all of us, that endangers the peace of the world. And it's and it's very simply this. This war in Ukraine cannot expand for Russia beyond Ukraine's borders so long as Ukraine is winning that war. As soon as Ukraine is in a position where they stand on the edge of defeat, that war will spread beyond beyond those borders. And so in this moment, now in Israel, you see a conflict zone that stretches from Iran across the Levant now from southern Israel to the northern border with Lebanon, could be soon through Lebanon across all of Syria to the southern border of Turkey. You have armed conflict in the Black Sea, you have troops on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, and you have a massive humanitarian crisis playing out in the armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with the Russian sphere of influence being pushed being rolled back in all of those places. But it's in the Middle East where the Russian Iran access with regard to Israel can be forward leaning in this moment has the ability to incite the type of chaos that lights the world world on fire, and I think we're seeing that play out.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think you brought up you asked a little bit earlier about what's the connection between what we're seeing unfold in Israel and what's going to happen with the Ukraine War. You may have seen this, but some Ukrainian some Ukrainian officials were out there pretty quickly saying that they fear that if attention gets diverted to the Israeli, to the Israeli situation, that it could actually remove the world's attention from what's happening in Ukraine. Now, obviously the Israeli situation does command attention, but we do have to hope that it doesn't pull us away from what's happening in Ukraine. As you say, these things are connected, and I can see why these Ukrainian officials are so frightened.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: The other issue that's connected to this, of course, is Taiwan. As the world is watching and distracting in the capacity of the United States in the Middle East, arming Ukraine need to maintain vigilance in the Pacific as well. But the world has taken a mighty step towards the type of chaos that people our age tended to once believe was a function of their parents' lifetime. That in the world where the Berlin Wall came down, where Francis Fukuyama posited that history had come to its functional end, we've been reminded that that's not the case at all. Over this weekend, and you know, the world grows ever more dangerous.
00:15:40
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think there's no question this is going to really call on President Biden to maybe summon up some communications skills that are not always in evidence to put it. To put it gently, he's going to really have to explain to people that they can't fall into a type of despair about the chaos as you're talking about that leads them to think that the sirens song of authoritarian strong men is the way forward. He's got to reiterate the case for a rules based order and say that what we're seeing in both these places is connected in that sense. And I really hope that he does that. I think we haven't seen much of him in the past twenty four to forty eight hours, and I really I don't see how that can continue, do you?
00:16:30
Speaker 1: I do not at all? And it brings up two aspects, but I want to talk about the domestic politics aspect of this with you really quickly. And I want to say to our audience on the warning who often asks me what should I read? Where can I go? What opinions can I seek that will help explain and clarify, And let me be clear that this guy is one of one of those people I think one of the most astute observers, somebody that I read and when I get done reading, is one of the few people I'm like, right on, spot on, right all the time, which means you know, we're either right together or wrong together on a on a bunch of this stuff.
00:17:24
Speaker 2: Probably wrong.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: Hear your cake on something that I saw this weekend and I really watched it with my mouth hanging open on CNN, and it's an interview with a Republican congressman who represents one of the most Jewish districts in the country, who by the voting record, has a has a moderate Ish or as moderate as you can find in the Republican Party, Congressman Lawler from from New York and and so he's on television and he is emotional in a in this moment right of the terror attack, not as a congressman representing one of the most Jewish districts in the country, not as a Jew so far as I could tell, but because Kevin McCarthy was deposed, and he really loves Kevin McCarthy, and so really quickly the conversation spirals into, well, if we don't get Mike Kevin back into the speaker's role, somehow the right existence of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, right American democracy is threatned. And I'm watching this, it's extraordinary. And then he says it was a Republicans and all the Democrats who were responsible for deposing Kevin, And I say, well, okay, And my question is this, how is it possible politically for the Democratic Party to be unable to articulate and explain why they have no interest whatsoever in saving the political career of the most dishonest centical man who has ever held out office, who single handedly, single handedly resuscitate and resuscitated the career of the sedition as president, and who is impeaching the current president in a kangaroo core process, and who has been involved in line to the country thousands of times. It's a matter of politics explain how it is possible, in your estimation that you cannot communicate as an institution and an effective response to Lawler's victimization on CNN. I've never seen anything like it.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, it's a good question. I would say that some Democrats actually have managed to push back effectively against the arguments that you're talking about. AOC did some some pretty strong stuff, and sort did Jamie Raskin. You know, a lot of the House members who have really dealt looked into the belly, into the eyes of the beast of the Republican Party and under Trump in a way that maybe not all Democrats have, right Reskin having, you know, presided over impeachment in the January sixth Committee and so forth, these these guys, I do think there are a fair amount of Democrats out there who are arearticulating the case you're talking about, but not all of them. And I'll answer your question this way. I think far too many Democrats are susceptible to the argument that they're not in some sense institutionalists, right, that they're not standing up for the institutions that they are part of and value and so forth. And so when a news commentator whether it's CNN type or a New York Times columnist or whoever suggests that Democrats should step in and save McCarthy for the good of the country, their immediate instinct is to think, well, maybe there might be something to that. We can't be like them, right, But in this case, as you say, it's incredibly clear cut, the right thing to do on behalf of the country was to not save Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy has played a form of double dealing with Trump around the insurrection for years. He was literally threatened. His own life was threatened at one point during the attack on the Capitol, and Donald Trump reportedly was pretty happy about it, telling Kevin McCarthy, you know, well, maybe you should have stolen the election for me, Kevin, and you wouldn't be facing these guys, these angry the angry mob. Kevin McCarthy lied relentlessly about the January sixth Committee, trying to delegitimize what was a perfectly good faith effort to have a bipartisan response to the greatest outbreak of political violence in modern times. Right, Kevin McCarthy decided that the health of the Republican Party required mending fences with Trump and pretending January sixth never happened. And he did that, And as you say, Kevin McCarthy is now pursuing a bullshit impeachment process that's clearly designed to draw attention away from Trump's alleged crimes and corruption. The list is endless, and breaking his own word too, is part of the fiscal talks. Democrats can't save that guy. If they were to save Kevin McCarthy, what it would do is essentially whitewash away the Republican parties flirtations with Donald Trump, and they're enabled, active enabling of him all throughout nearly one of the worst assaults on our institutions we've seen. It's unthinkable. It's shocking that normally intelligent people would even suggest that.
00:23:36
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Israel for a second. Some Americans may not be aware that Israeli's society has been convulsed over the last eight months by domestic proposal by bb net and Yahoo that would it will sound familiar to Americans, that would the judiciary of its independence. That would have the effect of essentially ending bb netanyah who's vulnerability to a massive series of interlocking corruption allegations trials, so on and so forth, and so the cabinet that bb Netanyah who put together is generously speaking, is the kookiest and most extreme in Israeli history. The United States is now a important stakeholder, particularly with Americans killed and captured. So the continuation of netanya Who's extremist Nutti cabinet as opposed to a unity government that is prepared to make a moral argument of about a very difficult war ahead on the global stage is something that's well within the purview of the United States, well within the purview of the United States to care a lot about. But you've had eight months of chaos in Israel. You had a senior security official say, our national security in Israel has never been weaker. The government has never been more distracted. The cause of the distraction was the subordination of the national interest below, the ego below the personal ambition of a politician who has dominated the culture, the society through the scale of his ambition, His dishonesties, his ego all the way across the board. And so it comes to be on a Saturday morning on Shabbat, paragliders carrying hamas terrorists by sea, by land, they crashed through billions of dollars their defenses. They catch the world's most sophisticated intelligence agency, according to most intelligence agencies, completely flat footed, like gun violence in America, in the middle of a shocking event, A lot of politicians have a go to device, which is, well, now is not the time to talk about this. I'm a guy who's very much in the camp. Now is exactly the time to talk about this, and we have to talk about more than one thing at a time. Do you think there's a lesson for Americans here? This is an attack that, if it had happened in the United States would have killed thirty thousand of US, brought on at the tail end of a period of unbelievable domestic instability caused by politics, caused by a man of faction, caused by extremism, and then the allusion to shattered. The enemy waits, the enemy watches. They made a calculation, and they made an assessment, and these things are linked. You think there's a lesson for Americans here?
00:27:45
Speaker 2: I think, if I understand you right, what you're suggesting is that if of an extreme right wing minority faction in a country is trying to break the government and break our institutions in pretty much every which way it possibly can. That the people of the country need to really understand that that's going to blow up in their faces before long. That's what you're saying, right, exactly what I'm saying.
00:28:12
Speaker 1: This guy was distracted, this guy through his country and chaos because chaos was in his political interest, and it's just the result of the chaos clearly.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we've we've seen it happen here in a different type of way. I'm not drawing a parallel here, but just trying to address the underlying point you're making. When when Trump was hit with one of the biggest crises this country ever has ever seen with the COVID, with the with the COVID pandemic, we really saw the price of broken institutions and a movement that lives to essentially destroy the possibility of serious, sustained collective action by government and in the face of challenges. And I would hope that people don't take the lesson from this to go back to what you said earlier, that the answer is the person who is telling you your institutions are corrupt and only I can fix it. But the opposite is when autocrats like that try to destroy our institutions that were left less prepared to deal with the most serious challenges we face.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a direct question that you raised, and I have noticed it. I suspect the American people have noticed it in all of the coverage through last night at midnight, and I watched a lot of it. I haven't seen anybody from the American government, as we have a carrier strike group steaming towards the Israeli coast and the Eastern Mediterranean, talk about Hamas killed Americans, and apparently they have some live Americans, and I want to enunciate a position on this. I don't care if they were kidnapped and taken into the Gaza Strip wearing a MAGA hat, and I don't care if they were kidnapped and taken into the Gaza Strip wearing a aoc T shirt. What I care about is their American citizens. And I've not yet heard the President of the United States speak to this fact, communicate to the American people about what happened in long form, and effectively explain what's going to happen next.
00:30:59
Speaker 2: I agree, as I said earlier, President Biden needs to find communication skills that are not always in evidence with him. He's really got to speak to the American people about what's happening. And by the way, to return to something we discussed earlier, he should also say in one way or another. I'm not sure how directly that could be left to, you know, his brain trust or whatever, but he should also say that the Republican attacks on the administration that are seeking to profit off of all this at this time are unacceptable, and by the way, that's going to continue. If and when we find out more horrible things about what the terrorists are doing to Americans, it's going to get louder from the Republican Party. You know this as a former Republican, and I don't see any signs, at least as of yet, that the president and his brain trust are prepared for that. And that's a secondary concern to what you're talking about, which is communicating with the country, but it certainly has to be, it should be on their minds. I don't I don't hear anything, neither do you.
00:32:17
Speaker 1: Last question I have for you is this, I have a I remember distinctly, you know, kind of my my first philosophical question that I would ponder as a kid, right, you know that, you know I've been a class was that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, right, does it? Does it make a sound? Type of stuff? Mm hmm. Do you think the Biden administration has any grasp around the dimensions of the propaganda campaign against it that has been executed and carried out from Fox News across all of the derivative extreme as conservative broadcasting channel, streamers, podcasts. Do they have in your estimation through conversations, experience, proximity talking to people, do they have any idea what it is that they have been facing and are facing. I remember the George Clooney movie and I'm completely blanking on the name of it, the about the northeaster off of you know, Massachusetts in the late nineties in the fishing boat, and you know, the last scene is the one hundred foot wave coming at the boat which they which they won't survive. Do you think they have any appreciation for what they have sustained over this presidency with regard to that.
00:34:10
Speaker 2: I think the answer to that is complicated, And my senses that having talked to a lot of these people about these types of topics from time to time over the years that there's a bit of a split approach or a bit of a split in the understanding of the moment. When you look at how Biden steps forward to condemn attacks on democracy and condemn white supremacy in January sixth, you get a glimpse of somebody who clearly understands the nature of the threat, right, But then you turn around and you're here, Suddenly President Biden is saying something like, my friends on the other side of the aisle, I don't understand why they're doing this, as if that's going to communicate to anyone anything about what they're a doing. And it sounds when he talks like that that he's essentially alluding to some sort of idealized former time when comedy supposedly reigned and you know, you could talk shame Republicans into operating on behalf of the country and the public good and the bipartisan way and to stop essentially lying all the time and propagandizing all the time. Right, And so there's not enough in the Democratic Party as a whole of a real understanding that they are in an information war with the right. And I am a few of us. You know, Brian Buler, formerly of Crooked Media, has his own sub stack now comes to mind. Have been pushing them to engage these information wars with an understanding that they're up against a massive propaganda and disinformation network that really is immensely powerful and reaching millions and millions and millions of people, and is really sustained and nourished by the Republican Party on a mass scale. And I don't see that much of an indication, or really much at all of an indication that they see it that way.
00:36:24
Speaker 1: We'll leave it there. One of the most astute political and global columnists observing, explaining writing about the events of our time, Greg Sergeant, The plumb Line, Washington Post, Real pleasure.
00:36:38
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Steve
Speaker 1: Very pleased today to be joined by Washington Post columnist author of The Plumb Line, Greg Sergeant, by my estimation, one of the best most astute columnist observers of this moment in American life over the last seven years. As you know, if you tune into this, something that I regard as an ongoing event that has taken another mighty turn over this weekend. Greg Sergeant, welcome, Thanks for having me on, Steve before going on, what's your initial reaction to the change in the world that's occurred since you left work on Friday and returned on Monday.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: It's different, Yeah, I mean obviously absolutely horrifying. The attacks on Israelis are just, you know, contemptible and disgusting, and there really aren't enough words to condemn them. I do hope that the two parties can come together at this time in order to address this crisis in a balanced way, without you know, too much politicization creeping into it.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: I want to step back out from the American domestic label and talk about what we're seeing globally play out. And I can't imagine another instance where there would be an attack like this and there would be marches of support all over the world celebrating the Hamas attack, including in New York City sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America.
00:01:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's versily horrible. I would point out that, you know, the vast majority of progressives who have been critical of Israel have been very forceful in condemning the attack as well. So that was I think heartening to see and shows that this really has made it very hard for anyone who considers him or herself mainstream in the United States to adopt anything like the positions you're talking about.
00:02:21
Speaker 1: And so when you think about those positions and you think about those protests, what is it that we're seeing Is that anti Semitism of our forefathers stripe that we're seeing manifest itself assert itself in city squares all over the world. The idea that the murder Jews would be blamed for their murders is an extraordinary sentiment, but one that can't be detached from the whole sweep of history and the specter of Jew hatred that has existed since the beginnings of time.
00:03:12
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I don't. I think it's indistinguishable from that sort of anti semitism, And I do want to continue to emphasize that many of the people who have criticized Israel over the years have found their way to the right position on this fairly rapidly and really unequivocally. And I think that that's a real sign, that's a heartening sign in many ways of of where the real center of opinion lies on these things.
00:03:42
Speaker 1: Globally too, What do you think happens next when you see a military operation that will see house to house combat in the most densely populated peace of land with humans living on it anywhere on Earth. We're at a moment right now where Hamas terrorists are still gunning down Israelies or will or were as of eight nine hours ago, as the IDF secures the secures the country. When you see globally the type of bloodshed, the type of civilian casualties that are an inescapable part of war. When you look in March of nineteen forty five the fire bombing of Tokyo, United States, and one night killed one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese in a military action, most of them most of them civilians, This will not be surgical. This can't be surgical. Hamas has intermingled its military command structure in civilian neighborhoods. What do you see playing out over the next couple of weeks and how does that impact here at home domestically, and how does it intersect with Ukraine.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Well, I'd love to ask you about a pretty key element here, which is that the Republican Party has adopted very rapidly as the party wide position that President Biden's weakness is somehow to blame for what's happening there, including a really trumped up and wildly false set of allegations involving funding, which you've probably seen widely debunked, and yet pushed by lots and lots of supposedly senior people, supposedly responsible people in the Republican Party. I think that's going to only escalate. The more chaos we see, the more blood should we see, the more we're going to hear from Republicans along those lines. And we've seen this before. In the aftermath of September eleventh, something very similar happened when Karl Rove essentially said pretty clearly to Republicans, you know you can take this to the country and win the argument. We're now seeing the chairperson of the Republican National Committee saying almost exactly the same thing. Well, you've been around the Republican Party for a while, what do you think of that?
00:06:29
Speaker 1: I've been away from it for a while. Also, what I would say about this moment in time is that you have reawakened in the United States a version of the American boot. The American First Movement is in fact the American First Movement. I think that one of the singular failures right of the media in the country by way of explanation to the American people regarding what's happening around them, is the inability to make these connections in to explain right. So, in nineteen forty, in an extraordinary congressional vote, Franklin Roosevelt was able to maintain the draft by one vote one vote in nineteen forty. Had the American Army seized its draft in nineteen forty by December seventh, nineteen forty one, or earlier, the results would have been catastrophic. It means that the American Army wouldn't have been ready for a cross channel invasion before at least nineteen forty six, if it was possible at all. So this is one of the most decisive votes that's ever taken place as a matter of voting in human history. And there is a broad amnesia in American history. If you say to your average American Charles Lindberg, and you find someone in the small, small percentage, as any recollection of who he is or knowledge of who he is, he'll be remembered as an aviator, not as a fascist, not as a Nazi, not as someone who was decorated by the Nazi government, who gave a speech on the eve of World War two attacking, attacking the Jews. And so we have seen that movement come back to life. It has an intellectual spine out of the Claremont Institute. It has a strategy, it has a plan, it has it has an agenda, It has a philosophy, it has a point of view. The second part about what you said is a fundamental one chaos. Chaos as a means to an end and in the moment, an end itself. Who benefits in the American election cycle from chaos? Is it Joe Biden? Is it the responsible governing party or is it the agent of chaos? The strong man candidate running on a platform of demagogue like Adolph Hitler, who in nineteen thirty two came to power on a promise to stop the chaos that he had incited and ignited, and he did stop the chaos. There was no more chaos in German society six months after he took political power. And so that's what we're seeing, that's what we're looking at right in this moment, is a chaos movement with the intent to offer as a choice to the American people a chance to end the chaos by picking the people who have started it to lead the country. And that has not typically turned out well. Wherever you see that scenario play out in history.
00:10:27
Speaker 2: I think it's you raised the really important point. Also another important point with that parallel, which is the notion that there's somehow a genuine streak of quote unquote isolationism behind the movement among Republicans against funding the Ukraine self defense against Russian invasion. The idea that that's isolationist really misses the point. It's I wouldn't say this about all Republicans who oppose funding for Ukraine, but there's certainly a cock within that group of Republicans who seems okay with a Putin victory in the Ukraine Russia conflict, and to call it isolationism, that's a mistake that many in the media may constantly. They've also made that same mistake about Trump. This is not isolationism. This is a situation where one country tried to devour another and is trying to literally erase the other country's nationhood. It's genocidal conquest. And so to oppose aiding Ukraine in some ways, there's no way to call that really an anti war position that I can see war is happening right. Russia's waging violent conquest against a sovereign state and trying to essentially obliterate it. And so I really wish that we could get beyond calling this kind of By the way, the same mistake was still applied back to the America First Movement during World War I to as you.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Know, well, this is a this is a movement of fellow travelers. They look at Vladimir Putin, they look at the Revengism, they look at the Christian orthodoxy from the Church, they look at the hostility to the concepts of modern small L liberalism, small P pluralism, and they fetishize Vladimir Putin. And there is a fundamental misunderstanding that endangers all of us, that endangers the peace of the world. And it's and it's very simply this. This war in Ukraine cannot expand for Russia beyond Ukraine's borders so long as Ukraine is winning that war. As soon as Ukraine is in a position where they stand on the edge of defeat, that war will spread beyond beyond those borders. And so in this moment, now in Israel, you see a conflict zone that stretches from Iran across the Levant now from southern Israel to the northern border with Lebanon, could be soon through Lebanon across all of Syria to the southern border of Turkey. You have armed conflict in the Black Sea, you have troops on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, and you have a massive humanitarian crisis playing out in the armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with the Russian sphere of influence being pushed being rolled back in all of those places. But it's in the Middle East where the Russian Iran access with regard to Israel can be forward leaning in this moment has the ability to incite the type of chaos that lights the world world on fire, and I think we're seeing that play out.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think you brought up you asked a little bit earlier about what's the connection between what we're seeing unfold in Israel and what's going to happen with the Ukraine War. You may have seen this, but some Ukrainian some Ukrainian officials were out there pretty quickly saying that they fear that if attention gets diverted to the Israeli, to the Israeli situation, that it could actually remove the world's attention from what's happening in Ukraine. Now, obviously the Israeli situation does command attention, but we do have to hope that it doesn't pull us away from what's happening in Ukraine. As you say, these things are connected, and I can see why these Ukrainian officials are so frightened.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: The other issue that's connected to this, of course, is Taiwan. As the world is watching and distracting in the capacity of the United States in the Middle East, arming Ukraine need to maintain vigilance in the Pacific as well. But the world has taken a mighty step towards the type of chaos that people our age tended to once believe was a function of their parents' lifetime. That in the world where the Berlin Wall came down, where Francis Fukuyama posited that history had come to its functional end, we've been reminded that that's not the case at all. Over this weekend, and you know, the world grows ever more dangerous.
00:15:40
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think there's no question this is going to really call on President Biden to maybe summon up some communications skills that are not always in evidence to put it. To put it gently, he's going to really have to explain to people that they can't fall into a type of despair about the chaos as you're talking about that leads them to think that the sirens song of authoritarian strong men is the way forward. He's got to reiterate the case for a rules based order and say that what we're seeing in both these places is connected in that sense. And I really hope that he does that. I think we haven't seen much of him in the past twenty four to forty eight hours, and I really I don't see how that can continue, do you?
00:16:30
Speaker 1: I do not at all? And it brings up two aspects, but I want to talk about the domestic politics aspect of this with you really quickly. And I want to say to our audience on the warning who often asks me what should I read? Where can I go? What opinions can I seek that will help explain and clarify, And let me be clear that this guy is one of one of those people I think one of the most astute observers, somebody that I read and when I get done reading, is one of the few people I'm like, right on, spot on, right all the time, which means you know, we're either right together or wrong together on a on a bunch of this stuff.
00:17:24
Speaker 2: Probably wrong.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: Hear your cake on something that I saw this weekend and I really watched it with my mouth hanging open on CNN, and it's an interview with a Republican congressman who represents one of the most Jewish districts in the country, who by the voting record, has a has a moderate Ish or as moderate as you can find in the Republican Party, Congressman Lawler from from New York and and so he's on television and he is emotional in a in this moment right of the terror attack, not as a congressman representing one of the most Jewish districts in the country, not as a Jew so far as I could tell, but because Kevin McCarthy was deposed, and he really loves Kevin McCarthy, and so really quickly the conversation spirals into, well, if we don't get Mike Kevin back into the speaker's role, somehow the right existence of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, right American democracy is threatned. And I'm watching this, it's extraordinary. And then he says it was a Republicans and all the Democrats who were responsible for deposing Kevin, And I say, well, okay, And my question is this, how is it possible politically for the Democratic Party to be unable to articulate and explain why they have no interest whatsoever in saving the political career of the most dishonest centical man who has ever held out office, who single handedly, single handedly resuscitate and resuscitated the career of the sedition as president, and who is impeaching the current president in a kangaroo core process, and who has been involved in line to the country thousands of times. It's a matter of politics explain how it is possible, in your estimation that you cannot communicate as an institution and an effective response to Lawler's victimization on CNN. I've never seen anything like it.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, it's a good question. I would say that some Democrats actually have managed to push back effectively against the arguments that you're talking about. AOC did some some pretty strong stuff, and sort did Jamie Raskin. You know, a lot of the House members who have really dealt looked into the belly, into the eyes of the beast of the Republican Party and under Trump in a way that maybe not all Democrats have, right Reskin having, you know, presided over impeachment in the January sixth Committee and so forth, these these guys, I do think there are a fair amount of Democrats out there who are arearticulating the case you're talking about, but not all of them. And I'll answer your question this way. I think far too many Democrats are susceptible to the argument that they're not in some sense institutionalists, right, that they're not standing up for the institutions that they are part of and value and so forth. And so when a news commentator whether it's CNN type or a New York Times columnist or whoever suggests that Democrats should step in and save McCarthy for the good of the country, their immediate instinct is to think, well, maybe there might be something to that. We can't be like them, right, But in this case, as you say, it's incredibly clear cut, the right thing to do on behalf of the country was to not save Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy has played a form of double dealing with Trump around the insurrection for years. He was literally threatened. His own life was threatened at one point during the attack on the Capitol, and Donald Trump reportedly was pretty happy about it, telling Kevin McCarthy, you know, well, maybe you should have stolen the election for me, Kevin, and you wouldn't be facing these guys, these angry the angry mob. Kevin McCarthy lied relentlessly about the January sixth Committee, trying to delegitimize what was a perfectly good faith effort to have a bipartisan response to the greatest outbreak of political violence in modern times. Right, Kevin McCarthy decided that the health of the Republican Party required mending fences with Trump and pretending January sixth never happened. And he did that, And as you say, Kevin McCarthy is now pursuing a bullshit impeachment process that's clearly designed to draw attention away from Trump's alleged crimes and corruption. The list is endless, and breaking his own word too, is part of the fiscal talks. Democrats can't save that guy. If they were to save Kevin McCarthy, what it would do is essentially whitewash away the Republican parties flirtations with Donald Trump, and they're enabled, active enabling of him all throughout nearly one of the worst assaults on our institutions we've seen. It's unthinkable. It's shocking that normally intelligent people would even suggest that.
00:23:36
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Israel for a second. Some Americans may not be aware that Israeli's society has been convulsed over the last eight months by domestic proposal by bb net and Yahoo that would it will sound familiar to Americans, that would the judiciary of its independence. That would have the effect of essentially ending bb netanyah who's vulnerability to a massive series of interlocking corruption allegations trials, so on and so forth, and so the cabinet that bb Netanyah who put together is generously speaking, is the kookiest and most extreme in Israeli history. The United States is now a important stakeholder, particularly with Americans killed and captured. So the continuation of netanya Who's extremist Nutti cabinet as opposed to a unity government that is prepared to make a moral argument of about a very difficult war ahead on the global stage is something that's well within the purview of the United States, well within the purview of the United States to care a lot about. But you've had eight months of chaos in Israel. You had a senior security official say, our national security in Israel has never been weaker. The government has never been more distracted. The cause of the distraction was the subordination of the national interest below, the ego below the personal ambition of a politician who has dominated the culture, the society through the scale of his ambition, His dishonesties, his ego all the way across the board. And so it comes to be on a Saturday morning on Shabbat, paragliders carrying hamas terrorists by sea, by land, they crashed through billions of dollars their defenses. They catch the world's most sophisticated intelligence agency, according to most intelligence agencies, completely flat footed, like gun violence in America, in the middle of a shocking event, A lot of politicians have a go to device, which is, well, now is not the time to talk about this. I'm a guy who's very much in the camp. Now is exactly the time to talk about this, and we have to talk about more than one thing at a time. Do you think there's a lesson for Americans here? This is an attack that, if it had happened in the United States would have killed thirty thousand of US, brought on at the tail end of a period of unbelievable domestic instability caused by politics, caused by a man of faction, caused by extremism, and then the allusion to shattered. The enemy waits, the enemy watches. They made a calculation, and they made an assessment, and these things are linked. You think there's a lesson for Americans here?
00:27:45
Speaker 2: I think, if I understand you right, what you're suggesting is that if of an extreme right wing minority faction in a country is trying to break the government and break our institutions in pretty much every which way it possibly can. That the people of the country need to really understand that that's going to blow up in their faces before long. That's what you're saying, right, exactly what I'm saying.
00:28:12
Speaker 1: This guy was distracted, this guy through his country and chaos because chaos was in his political interest, and it's just the result of the chaos clearly.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we've we've seen it happen here in a different type of way. I'm not drawing a parallel here, but just trying to address the underlying point you're making. When when Trump was hit with one of the biggest crises this country ever has ever seen with the COVID, with the with the COVID pandemic, we really saw the price of broken institutions and a movement that lives to essentially destroy the possibility of serious, sustained collective action by government and in the face of challenges. And I would hope that people don't take the lesson from this to go back to what you said earlier, that the answer is the person who is telling you your institutions are corrupt and only I can fix it. But the opposite is when autocrats like that try to destroy our institutions that were left less prepared to deal with the most serious challenges we face.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a direct question that you raised, and I have noticed it. I suspect the American people have noticed it in all of the coverage through last night at midnight, and I watched a lot of it. I haven't seen anybody from the American government, as we have a carrier strike group steaming towards the Israeli coast and the Eastern Mediterranean, talk about Hamas killed Americans, and apparently they have some live Americans, and I want to enunciate a position on this. I don't care if they were kidnapped and taken into the Gaza Strip wearing a MAGA hat, and I don't care if they were kidnapped and taken into the Gaza Strip wearing a aoc T shirt. What I care about is their American citizens. And I've not yet heard the President of the United States speak to this fact, communicate to the American people about what happened in long form, and effectively explain what's going to happen next.
00:30:59
Speaker 2: I agree, as I said earlier, President Biden needs to find communication skills that are not always in evidence with him. He's really got to speak to the American people about what's happening. And by the way, to return to something we discussed earlier, he should also say in one way or another. I'm not sure how directly that could be left to, you know, his brain trust or whatever, but he should also say that the Republican attacks on the administration that are seeking to profit off of all this at this time are unacceptable, and by the way, that's going to continue. If and when we find out more horrible things about what the terrorists are doing to Americans, it's going to get louder from the Republican Party. You know this as a former Republican, and I don't see any signs, at least as of yet, that the president and his brain trust are prepared for that. And that's a secondary concern to what you're talking about, which is communicating with the country, but it certainly has to be, it should be on their minds. I don't I don't hear anything, neither do you.
00:32:17
Speaker 1: Last question I have for you is this, I have a I remember distinctly, you know, kind of my my first philosophical question that I would ponder as a kid, right, you know that, you know I've been a class was that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, right, does it? Does it make a sound? Type of stuff? Mm hmm. Do you think the Biden administration has any grasp around the dimensions of the propaganda campaign against it that has been executed and carried out from Fox News across all of the derivative extreme as conservative broadcasting channel, streamers, podcasts. Do they have in your estimation through conversations, experience, proximity talking to people, do they have any idea what it is that they have been facing and are facing. I remember the George Clooney movie and I'm completely blanking on the name of it, the about the northeaster off of you know, Massachusetts in the late nineties in the fishing boat, and you know, the last scene is the one hundred foot wave coming at the boat which they which they won't survive. Do you think they have any appreciation for what they have sustained over this presidency with regard to that.
00:34:10
Speaker 2: I think the answer to that is complicated, And my senses that having talked to a lot of these people about these types of topics from time to time over the years that there's a bit of a split approach or a bit of a split in the understanding of the moment. When you look at how Biden steps forward to condemn attacks on democracy and condemn white supremacy in January sixth, you get a glimpse of somebody who clearly understands the nature of the threat, right, But then you turn around and you're here, Suddenly President Biden is saying something like, my friends on the other side of the aisle, I don't understand why they're doing this, as if that's going to communicate to anyone anything about what they're a doing. And it sounds when he talks like that that he's essentially alluding to some sort of idealized former time when comedy supposedly reigned and you know, you could talk shame Republicans into operating on behalf of the country and the public good and the bipartisan way and to stop essentially lying all the time and propagandizing all the time. Right, And so there's not enough in the Democratic Party as a whole of a real understanding that they are in an information war with the right. And I am a few of us. You know, Brian Buler, formerly of Crooked Media, has his own sub stack now comes to mind. Have been pushing them to engage these information wars with an understanding that they're up against a massive propaganda and disinformation network that really is immensely powerful and reaching millions and millions and millions of people, and is really sustained and nourished by the Republican Party on a mass scale. And I don't see that much of an indication, or really much at all of an indication that they see it that way.
00:36:24
Speaker 1: We'll leave it there. One of the most astute political and global columnists observing, explaining writing about the events of our time, Greg Sergeant, The plumb Line, Washington Post, Real pleasure.
00:36:38
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Steve
