← Next Comes What
Next Comes What
You don't have to swallow frogs
00:25:08
If you aren't sure what you stand for, you're going to get played. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: Read the post that inspired this episode: Watch this episode: ...
Loading summary
Transcript77 lines
- [00:05]
Andrea Pitzer
In the last few days, an interview circulated in which New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein talked to Talnassi Coates.
- [00:12]
Ezra Klein
Welcome back to the show.
- [00:13]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Thanks. I don't know what number time this is. Author of between the World and Me and one of the constant, constant reactions to that was that it was overly pessimistic about this country. It was overly pessimistic about the future. Why are you so dark, Ta Nehisi? Why can't you give us any sense of hope?
- [00:30]
Andrea Pitzer
Along with other essays and books and their conversation is the perfect lens through which to give some serious thought to a lot of the ways that information and relationships and politics are all interacting right now. I'm hoping to make some observations that will help you figure out useful ways to think about what you might focus on in this moment in the world and how to work toward change more effectively.
- [00:58]
Ezra Klein
Then let me flip that question, actually, a bit.
- [01:00]
Andrea Pitzer
First, I'm going to talk a little bit about the things they said. Then I will pull back to a larger framework to Ezra Klein's focus on.
- [01:09]
Ezra Klein
Why are we losing.
- [01:11]
Andrea Pitzer
I'm going to suggest that the arguments he's making for what to do about it show why his approach is guaranteed to damage the very principles that he says and likely does support. I'll also make an argument that Coates is clearer on what he needs to do because he has not fallen into some of the traps that have caught Klein. What's more, he's defined a framework of contexts that make sense of the world and offer a clearer sense of his own values. These ideas lead him to particular kinds of actions.
- [01:44]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I am part of something larger, and I've always felt myself as part of something larger.
- [01:49]
Andrea Pitzer
I think the conversation hit hard for a lot of people because it is two people of goodwill who are on good terms, being, at least to my view, as honest as they know how to be with one another in the moment about the current political crisis in the United States and what needs to be done to solve it.
- [02:07]
Ezra Klein
You feel like I was whitewashing the guy and I felt like I was sort of.
- [02:10]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I do.
- [02:10]
Ezra Klein
Yeah, I know you do. I know you do.
- [02:12]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's very upsetting.
- [02:13]
Ezra Klein
I know you do.
- [02:14]
Andrea Pitzer
They don't flinch about bringing up their fears, their frustrations and. And their disappointments with one another, and they listen to what the other person is actually saying. I am arguing that Ezra Klein is lost in the moment, but he says the same himself. And I do believe he is looking for an answer.
- [02:33]
Ezra Klein
Why have we. Why are people preferring this to us.
- [02:38]
Andrea Pitzer
I'm just not sure he could see that Coats was giving that answer to him right there on the spot. Not the exact answer Klein needs for himself, but a route to finding it. I want to make use of that model to suggest you can use it to find your own answer if you haven't yet. Their discussion was very long.
- [03:03]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
If you will take this very gentle pushback, please, I think you're here for it.
- [03:09]
Andrea Pitzer
In case you don't want to read or watch it yourself, I'll summarize it a little here and pull out a few key moments. But it's worth taking the time, even piecemeal, to go through it all. Eventually, Klein laid out his thinking that he and Coats both very much want to see liberalism in some form defeat the damage that Trumpism is inflicting. He believes that in order to draw more voters in, the left will have to give some things up. He notes the horrifying beliefs that many Americans have about Trump trans people, for instance, at present, and wonders what to do.
- [03:46]
Ezra Klein
I think that in losing as badly as we have, we have imperiled trans people terribly.
- [03:54]
Andrea Pitzer
He talked again, as he had in a previous essay about running pro life candidates.
- [03:59]
Ezra Klein
People got real upset about that, and I get why.
- [04:02]
Andrea Pitzer
He explains that his opinion piece on Charlie Kirk's death Charlie Kirk was doing politics the right way. Was an attempt to acknowledge the grief in the wake of Kirk's assassination a way to sit with those harmed by that death. He seemed to realize that a lot of his readers felt he had done harm with that essay, and he was still working to figure out how. Klein worries that Coates long history of pessimism about the prospects for true democracy in America might lead to a kind of fatalism about being able to build a better country.
- [04:38]
Ezra Klein
Sometimes I think that having a historical scope that wide can make the present too deterministic.
- [04:47]
Andrea Pitzer
For his part, Coats clarified that he doesn't intend his pessimism about democracy's immediate prospects in the US to be read as fatalism.
- [04:55]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
When you say fatalism like I take that to mean that what's the point of fighting?
- [05:00]
Andrea Pitzer
He sees himself as part of a tradition of people who fought and died to end the institution of slavery or to guarantee rights to those facing exclusion and discrimination.
- [05:10]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
But I think that misapprehends the philosophy here.
- [05:17]
Andrea Pitzer
Many of those people, he notes, died without ever achieving those goals. But they're all part of what he sees as his heritage. He criticized Klein's statements about Kirk, saying that he's opposed to political violence too, and that grief is a fine response. But to see Klein deny in his piece that Kirk was a hate monger was deeply distressing.
- [05:39]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
If you ask me what the truth of his life was, you know, and the truth of his public life, I would have to tell you it's hate.
- [05:48]
Andrea Pitzer
Coates acknowledge that politicians have a different task than he does himself, and that they might need to say things that he would never say or to court voters in ways that he wouldn't.
- [05:59]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I just want to be clear about something. I shouldn't be running for President of the United States.
- [06:04]
Andrea Pitzer
The most important section of the whole interview, I would argue, is where Coates explains how it is he decides what to do. And he says, all I can go.
- [06:13]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
To is my role as a writer. And my role as a writer is to state things as clearly as I possibly can, to make them in such a way that they aren't, to state truths and to reinforce the. Probably the animating notion of my politics, and that is that all humanity is equal and is worthy of that.
- [06:32]
Andrea Pitzer
A lot of what I'll add to what Klein and Coats said will be critical of Klein's positions. I know countless people have been jumping on him, but I don't mean this as an attack so much as I feel that it's vital to understand what's happening, because I think the same thing is happening in one form or another to millions of people who oppose Trump. And it's critical to recognize exactly that. We're all caught up in some pretty common and predictable patterns of reaction, because knowing that can help in sorting out what's meaningful and what's not.
- [07:07]
Philip Tetlock
Wharton professor Philip Tetlock looks into what.
- [07:10]
Andrea Pitzer
Makes people good forecasters. It's a little bit like the hedgehog and the fox, a very old concept that was popularized by philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
- [07:19]
Unidentified Narrator/Commentator
He draws on a fragment of Greek poetry from 2,500 years ago by the Greek warrior poet Archilochus.
- [07:25]
Andrea Pitzer
The idea is that some people are foxes and some people are hedgehogs.
- [07:30]
Unidentified Narrator/Commentator
So you could be a Marxist hedgehog, or you could be a libertarian hedgehog. You could be a boomster hedgehog, or you could be a doomster Malthusian hedgehog.
- [07:39]
Andrea Pitzer
It's not the most relevant metaphor, really, but the hedgehog knows one big thing really well. And the fox is clever and not an expert, but can figure a lot of things out.
- [07:50]
Unidentified Narrator/Commentator
Foxes are skeptical of big theories. You're not going to find very many foxes who are true believers here.
- [07:56]
Andrea Pitzer
Klein and Coates both have been given or have built large platforms from which they address political issues. Klein has made his career as a fox and Coates as a hedgehog. I'm going to suggest the difference between their approaches is something else, but it does touch a little on each of their styles. I would also say that Klein has bright kid syndrome. He's risen through the world by tackling big projects and addressing big questions. He feels that he has to come up with the whole answer to the question that Trumpism represents or that it's going to be some kind of failure. And since Trump's ascent, he has struggled visibly. He acknowledged as much in the conversation with Coats saying, I don't know what.
- [08:42]
Ezra Klein
My role is anymore. I'll be totally honest with you, man.
- [08:46]
Andrea Pitzer
That sense of being at a loss. And again, I appreciate that he is honest about what's happening. It leads him into a spiral he can't escape. Carla Monterosso, founder of Brava Leaders, mentioned in September about Klein that he's doing emotional processing in public and passing it off as political analysis. It's been happening for a long time. Liberal Current's editor Adam Gurry noted a year and a half ago, before Biden had even decided not to run again, that the Ezra Klein podcast is more about his personal feelings of powerlessness than about any serious analysis of the chances, any alternative to Biden has. All this is just to say that Klein has been in this state for some time. The world he thought he lived in turned out to be very different from what he imagined it to be. He has learned that far more of his fellow Americans are willing to do far worse things than perhaps he ever suspected. And he is scared.
- [10:00]
Ezra Klein
The idea that this experiment, that America could topple into something else, into something much worse, into some kind of new, extended regime, feels very real to me.
- [10:09]
Andrea Pitzer
He acknowledges as much. After Kirk was shot, he told Coats.
- [10:14]
Ezra Klein
I thought about me, I thought about you. I thought about all kinds of people. I know, right?
- [10:23]
Andrea Pitzer
This is where Coats worldview is more helpful. It might sound pessimistic to see the likelihood of many, many losses looming ahead, even as we fight for wins. But looking at the long sweep of American history, Coats suggests that political violence.
- [10:40]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Is the norm for the black experience in this country. It just is. I don't even mean like the Malcolm X, Martin Luther King variety of it. Right. Which is the norm, too.
- [10:49]
Andrea Pitzer
He talks about the power of love.
- [10:51]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Once you understand that Martin Luther King could be standing up, telling people, telling his own people, we do not embrace violence at all. It is morally repugnant. We embrace love. And that that could get you shot, not burn it down. Love can get you shot. You know, you just have a different view of, of your country.
- [11:18]
Andrea Pitzer
And then he talks about the power of hate.
- [11:20]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
People get activated by hate. It's a very, very, very strong force.
- [11:24]
Andrea Pitzer
If you see the long arc of the problem, it releases you from the bright kid syndrome, from the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world. You understand that to do so is impossible. You are at most going to be one piece of that solution in a chain of many people that begins before you were born and continues after you die. Cote's long view gives everything a kind of historical context, and others who are historians get dinged for looking at everything through that kind of defining lens, as if it might result in outdated references or tools for today. And I'd agree that it's important to realize that different lenses can be useful in figuring out what to do. So it's a good idea to consider things from a variety of angles. But my sense is that most people like Klein, those with a big platform who see themselves as pragmatic liberals, have accidentally become reactive centrists because they don't have a clear idea what it is exactly they're doing or what their role is. They don't look often enough at context, past or present. Instead, they seem to see each moment as an independent crisis or often missing how many times the same dynamics have played out or indicators of how to proceed have already happened. As I mentioned last week on the podcast, Klein had recently mentioned running pro.
- [12:51]
Ezra Klein
Life candidates in Kansas and Missouri and Ohio.
- [12:54]
Andrea Pitzer
That came up in the conversation with Coats, too.
- [12:58]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
But how do you square the fact that, in fact, reproductive rights has proven to be pretty popular in red states? And I'm thinking about referendums that have been passed such that they've had to, you know, change the rules? Like, how do you. How do you separate them?
- [13:15]
Andrea Pitzer
Klein also danced around how unpopular trans people are and how worried he is about the ways that Republicans will make this an issue in coming elections.
- [13:25]
Ezra Klein
Every single survey you can offer on like trans rights has gone in the wrong direction in the past couple years.
- [13:33]
Andrea Pitzer
That Klein is stuck on these examples shows how deeply he is stuck on the framing that the Republicans have put forward. I'm using these examples because these are the ones that Klein mentioned as areas in which he felt that people on the left should perhaps compromise in selecting politicians or accepting policies that they don't really want. Klein appears to be scared enough to allow additional harms to come to two populations that are already paying a horrific price. When you're Scared. You get tunnel vision when everything's malleable.
- [14:07]
Ezra Klein
Maybe I haven't been about separating the question of what I believe from what I believe will win power, because I currently think that the cost of losing power is horrifying and dangerous and we can't keep doing it.
- [14:27]
Andrea Pitzer
Potential imaginary or future harms start to seem equivalent to concrete harm, even violence happening today. You start to equate things that aren't equal and you lose sight of your power. Coats and Klein talked about meeting people where they're at. But if you not only listen to someone but reinforce their worldview by pretending, for instance, that Charlie Kirk was not a hate monger, you are lying to yourself or you are lying to them.
- [15:00]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
When I read his words towards trans people, Jesus, when I read, you know what I mean, the language towards Haitians specifically, which was very, very Haitians will become your masters if you don't elect Trump. I mean, this is very, very familiar to me.
- [15:15]
Andrea Pitzer
It's true that the arguments or political beliefs Kirk's audience or MAGA supporters have been sold about trans people or the border have been sold to them in bad faith. They might have accepted them in bad faith because they actually just want violence against these groups, or they might genuinely believe those arguments to be true. But the answer is not to lie to them again, and it is especially not ideal to reinforce the bad faith lies they've already been sold. When you start doing that, you lose your way. Here's where Coates clarity comes in handy. You treat people humanely. Everyone. People can come in the tent without agreeing on every policy, but you have to make the demand that all people will be treated humanely, and so that guides what you yourself will do. You don't buy into the Magalies to get supporters. You give them a vision of what you support and you call them to that. Author Cislaw Milo wrote that a man may persuade himself by the most logical reasoning that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs and thus rationally convinced he may swallow a first frog, then the second, but at the third his stomach will revolt. How does a person convince themselves that they need to swallow live frogs? They see themselves as being pragmatic in difficult times and willing to make difficult choices. They think that doing something unpleasant is the same as doing something effective. They think it will save them. But developing a rational theory of eating live frogs is not going to save anyone. And at some point they're going to throw up. I'm reminded of the large news organization my spouse used to work for years ago. When a maelstrom hit one that was affecting all of journalism, a top editor called together the newsroom to talk about the future. They would, he announced, have to decide which of their core values they were going to keep. The whole point is, they're your core values. By abandoning them, the outlet lost its principles and soon went into a tailspin that was in no way delayed and perhaps even accelerated by abandoning its values. The point is, if you figured out those are your core principles, then they will guide you about what to do. Remember, you're not just performing an idea. It's your life. It's who you are. I think Klein, like many current or former liberals or liberal adjacent people, is getting rolled by his exposure to people who imagine themselves to be free thinkers but are actually adjacent to people like Christopher Ruffo or Richard Hanania. And if you don't know who those guys are, don't bother. But because he doesn't currently locate himself in a tradition or else he has lost the ability to do so, Klein seems to be imagining that the pain of trading away core values is a positive example of compromise. But those self described free thinkers will never become more like him. He will only become more like them.
- [18:50]
Ezra Klein
When I say we began writing people off, I think that something that happened and I think something I saw in this debate, but kind of like underneath it, was that the work of politics, of bridging over a lot of profound fundamental moral disagreements, I think became somewhat demeaned, diminished.
- [19:13]
Andrea Pitzer
And I'm curious who he thinks his audience is. It's not Charlie Kirk fans, because they will never be convinced by Ezra Klein. They have bought into a very different worldview. And if he's trying to persuade politicians to compromise, it's not necessary. Politicians, even good ones, often cherry pick pundit ideas to bolster their platforms. But pundits rarely shape politics. And as for compromise, Klein needn't worry. Most politicians have already shown themselves more than willing to do it. His encouragement is superfluous if his listeners are his intended audience, which I would hope he's doing them a disservice when he broadcasts his sense of being at a loss and transforms his personal drama into a national one. The truth is that Harris lost the presidential election by 1.5%. She did so in a post Covid headwind that threw out incumbent parties globally and outperformed incumbents in most countries.
- [20:17]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I think about how much you argued that, like Biden shouldn't run again. What if he doesn't earlier and you have a Democrat who wins the presidency? You know, I get other big explainers that I can see for it. You know what I mean, that don't feel so diffuse.
- [20:39]
Andrea Pitzer
And this is not a discussion of whether and how Harris could have run a better campaign. It's more to say that in context, the loss is not the kind of signal that Klein seems to see it as. It was a devastatingly close result in a series of devastatingly close results in the US in the last decade that have gone both ways. You don't have to burn all the bridges and retreat. You can make a principled stand for what you believe in while inviting in alienated voters looking for hope and community. We are in for a long haul. If Klein wants to serve as listeners, I'd argue that this is the message he could be delivering. The more he persuades them into some malleable middle, the more of them he will coax into becoming just as lost as he is. I believe he's in the throes of a real struggle over how to proceed. But as of right now, he is only serving the political movement and business interests that benefit from a morally compromised, morally compromising political left. His lack of compass in the moment means that he is being played by a system that benefits from his confusion and his willingness to spread that confusion as if it were political analysis. I appreciate the honesty that Klein and Coates showed in their conversation. This episode isn't meant to humiliate or insult anybody. It's to show the dangers of how a smart person with good intentions can talk themselves into swallowing live frogs. And honestly, I think that many of us have gotten stuck imagining that we are also pundits and politicians and somehow responsible for figuring out the whole crisis and having opinions on each aspect and who should do what. But let me just say, you don't have to do all that. You don't even have to know exactly what you think everybody else should do. Some of those are tough decisions. You just have to know what to do yourself. And although I admire much of what he's written, I'm not saying to make Coats your personal hero. There are complicated aspects to Coates's position that could be picked apart, which I did not do here. He himself acknowledges that politicians have different responsibilities, for instance, than he does, and that they wouldn't be able to take the path that he has taken.
- [23:07]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I shouldn't be running for President of the United States. You know what I mean.
- [23:11]
Andrea Pitzer
But the truth for nearly everyone is simpler than that. You don't have to make the national crisis your personal one. You just have to think for yourself. Know what tradition you're aligned with, whether it's a philosophical, a religious one, or if it rises out of a particular past oppression, or all of the above. There might even be one you're reacting against. If you haven't thought about these things before, read less Daily News and try to find a tradition that reflects what matters to you. Having answers to that can do a lot to give you direction.
- [23:49]
Ezra Klein
I have lines where I think should and should not be acceptable, but those lines clearly have no relationship to my country, the politics, and I think I've been asking the question without really having an answer. I want to be honest about this of what follows from that.
- [24:07]
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I think you do have a line.
- [24:09]
Andrea Pitzer
But you don't even have to dig that deep to make a difference right now. Figure out today what your core values are and don't trade them away. Find ways to act in the world close to home that rise out of those values and that will be enough. And that's it.
- [24:36]
Philip Tetlock
Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.
- [24:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Thank you for listening and thank you for watching. If you do have the means, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber and you can do that@Andreapitzer.com just go to the newsletter link which is in the first paragraph of the homepage and you can sign up from there.