Overtime – Episode #683: Peggy Noonan, Dan Jones, Max Brooks

Summary

Real Time with Bill Maher – Overtime Episode #683: Peggy Noonan, Dan Jones, Max Brooks
Release Date: February 4, 2025
Host: HBO Podcasts

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Introduction

In Episode #683 of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," host Bill Maher engages in a thought-provoking "Overtime" segment with a distinguished panel: Peggy Noonan, Dan Jones, and Max Brooks. The discussion delves into contemporary political dynamics, historical leadership lessons, the rise of cryptocurrency, and the pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on modern society.

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John Fetterman's Senate Attire and Professionalism

Timestamp: [01:07 – 02:52]

The conversation kicks off with Dan Jones bringing up Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman's unconventional attire, particularly his penchant for wearing shorts and hoodies, even during formal events like inaugurations.

Dan Jones asks:
"Is John Fetterman being disrespectful? I read your piece on this, so I know the answer, but you can being disrespectful. John Fetterman, who never wears pants when he wears shorts, even at the inauguration."
[01:07]

Peggy Noonan responds by highlighting Fetterman's individuality and humor:
"He showed up in the hoodie and the shorts, right?"
[01:53]
She commends Fetterman's independence and ability to capture the moment with humor, recounting an incident where Fetterman humorously responded to a press query about meeting Donald Trump by saying he'd make himself "the Pope of Panama."
[02:38]
However, Noonan does express reservations about his choice of attire on the Senate floor, suggesting a suit and tie would be more appropriate in that setting.
[02:52]

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Dan Jones on Historical Leadership: "Henry 5th the Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King"

Timestamp: [03:05 – 05:12]

Dan Jones introduces his latest work, exploring the life and leadership of Henry V, contrasting him with more infamous Henrys like Henry VIII. Bill Maher queries the relevance of studying a 15th-century monarch in today's context, to which Jones elaborates on Henry V's leadership qualities.

Dan Jones:
"Why did you write your book about Henry V? There are so many Henrys. Can today's leaders learn anything from a 15th-century monarch?"
[03:05]

Max Brooks provides insight into Henry V, emphasizing his competence and charisma:
"He manages to triangulate, takes the theatrical best of one and the dogged technocratic determination of the other, puts them together with a dose of charisma and a good deal of probity."
[04:09]
Brooks contrasts Henry V with his predecessors, noting the effective blend of direct communication and resolute leadership as exemplified by Henry's famous three-word rallying cry before the Battle of Agincourt:
"Fellas, let's go."
[06:27]

Dan Jones questions the portrayal's historical accuracy, leading to a discussion on the evolution of the English language and the authenticity of Henry V's representation. Brooks clarifies that Henry V himself wrote in plain English, contrasting with Shakespeare's more poetic renditions.
[05:12 – 05:34]

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Cryptocurrency and the Rise of Dark Money

Timestamp: [07:46 – 10:03]

The panel shifts focus to the contemporary issue of cryptocurrency, with discussions highlighting its role in facilitating dark money and its potential to undermine geopolitical stability.

Dan Jones raises concerns about former President Trump's pardon of the Silk Road founder, linking it to the broader implications of cryptocurrency.
[07:58]

An unidentified guest elaborates on the dangers of crypto as a tool for illicit activities:
"Crypto is the currency of evil, of criminals. It's where you can deal in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, everything that's dark."
[08:58]

The conversation underscores the challenges in regulating cryptocurrency, with Jones and the guest discussing how crypto could enable untraceable financial transactions among the super-rich and corrupt leaders, thereby masking geopolitical maneuvers.
[09:37 – 10:03]

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Peggy Noonan's Critique of Silicon Valley

Timestamp: [10:08 – 11:40]

Peggy Noonan offers a scathing critique of Silicon Valley, questioning the ethical compass and societal impact of its pioneers.

Peggy Noonan reflects on the original idealism that drove Silicon Valley innovators:
"We're inventing this fabulous new technology. The whole world's going to be able to talk to each other. Instant communication. Doctors in Africa will talk to doctors in New York and look at the X-ray together. It was all idealistic and beautiful."
[10:08]

She laments the industry's shift towards cynical self-dealing, highlighting detrimental outcomes such as the mental health crises exacerbated by social media platforms:
"Children are becoming mentally ill, depression and anxiety on Instagram. And Instagram essentially says, what should we do about that? If the problem is the algorithms, well, I guess we'll make the algorithms even worse to get more of the kids involved."
[10:42]

Noonan expresses deep concern over placing Silicon Valley leaders in charge of AI development, fearing their flawed character and self-serving motives could have catastrophic consequences.
[11:36 – 11:40]

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Privatization, Government Regulation, and Societal Impacts

Timestamp: [11:40 – 12:51]

The panel delves into the broader implications of privatization and the diminishing role of government oversight.

An unidentified guest traces the roots of current privatization trends back to the Reagan era, critiquing the laissez-faire attitude towards the private sector:
"This is the Reagan revolution. This is the notion that the private sector should manage itself, that they're all good, decent people on Wall Street and they'll do what's right for the country."
[10:43]

The discussion highlights the failure of privatization when left unchecked, equating it metaphorically to handing over the fire department to "pyromaniacs."
[11:40 – 12:13]

Noonan and the guest assert that the government's role is to protect citizens and regulate industries to prevent harm, a function they've seen neglected with the rise of unregulated private enterprises.
[12:13 – 12:51]

Dan Jones concludes the segment by emphasizing the disconnect between private sector motives and public welfare:
"The government is me, the citizen, of course, the taxpayer. I'm looking out for me. So I'm there to regulate you before you hurt me."
[12:45]

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Bill Maher reminding listeners to catch all new episodes of "Real Time with Bill Maher" every Friday night at 10 or watch them on HBO On Demand. The final moments include promotional content and a brief sign-off from Peggy Noonan.
[12:57 – 13:07]

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Notable Quotes

• Peggy Noonan on John Fetterman's individuality:
  "He does what he says he's gonna do. He's not a dick about it, unless you're French."
  [06:27]

• Max Brooks on Henry V's leadership:
  "It's the political dream that transcends the Middle Ages. He speaks the language of ordinary people."
  [04:54]

• Peggy Noonan on Silicon Valley's moral decline:
  "I'm anxious about it, I feel angry about it."
  [11:37]

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Key Takeaways

• Leadership Lessons from History: Dan Jones and Max Brooks explore how Henry V's straightforward and charismatic leadership can inform modern political and business leaders.

• Cryptocurrency as Dark Money: The panel discusses the inherent risks of unregulated crypto markets, emphasizing their potential to facilitate illicit activities and obscure financial transactions.

• Silicon Valley's Ethical Shortfalls: Peggy Noonan critiques the tech industry's shift from idealistic beginnings to self-serving practices that harm societal well-being, particularly regarding mental health and data privacy.

• The Necessity of Government Regulation: The discussion underscores the critical role of government oversight in regulating private enterprises to safeguard public interests and prevent corporate malfeasance.

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This episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" offers insightful commentary on the intersection of historical leadership, modern technology, and political accountability, encouraging listeners to reflect on the lessons from the past and the challenges of the present.

Transcript

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[Bill Maher]

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series Real Time with Bill Maher.

[Dan]

Okay, here we are in overtime. First, a Wall Street Journal Pulitzer Prize winning comms. His new book is called A Certain Idea of America. Peggy Noonan is back with us and he's a fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and the author of Devolution, Max Brooks. And the historian, podcaster and Author of Henry 5th the Astonishing Rise of England's Greatest Warrior King, Dan. Okay, so, okay, first question is for you, Peggy. Is John Fetterman being disrespectful? I read your piece on this, so I know the answer, but you can being disrespectful. John Fetterman, who never wears pants when he wears shorts, even at the inauguration.

[Peggy Noonan]

He showed up in the hoodie and the shorts, right?

[Dan]

Should the Senate reinforce its dress code? Do you think that's something that's important?

[Peggy Noonan]

Look, I've slightly mixed feelings lately because John Fetterman is a guy who's very independent and he says some really funny things that capture a moment. When he went down after Trump was elected, Fetterman, a Democrat, Pennsylvania, was invited down to Mar a Lago to meet with Donald Trump. None of the other Democrats were doing it. So Fetterman does it. And the press went into a tizzy and somebody asked him, what are you going to say? What's going to happen? And Fetterman said he's going to make me the Pope of Panama. And it was so funny.

[Dan]

It is.

[Peggy Noonan]

And so unafraid. So that's the fabulous side of Fetterman.

[Dan]

Right.

[Peggy Noonan]

I believe that he's in a grown up business and he should be modeling for young men how we go forward in life and how he is.

[Dan]

He's modeling shorts.

[Peggy Noonan]

Yeah. But I do think on the floor of the Senate, the end States of America, he should be wearing a suit and a tie.

[Dan]

Okay. Dan, why did you write your book about Henry V? There are so many Henrys. Can today's leaders learn anything from a 15th century monarch? Usually if people know any of the Henrys, it's Henry viii because he cut off so many heads and he's, you know, they've made movies about him. But Henry V review who that is for us.

[Max Brooks]

Henry V, the great hero of Agincourt went over and I know what that is.

[Dan]

You have to go deeper than that.

[Max Brooks]

A guy called Shakespeare.

[Dan]

Shakespeare, yeah. No, no, no, I know.

[Max Brooks]

Wrote a play about him. The greatest of all the medieval kings of England came along at a point where the kingdom was at the nadir. It was in the pits. You had one ruler who was. Who's vain, pompous, thin skinned, paranoid into the act of being a king. Not really doing kingship.

[Dan]

Thank God we got rid of that.

[Max Brooks]

Then along comes a king who was once somewhere in the dim and distant past, a sort of competent politician, but is now ground down, decrepit by age. A technocrat, really, just struggling along towards the end. That doesn't really work either. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, with the economy in the toilet, the after effects of a pandemic, along comes a leader who manages to triangulate, takes the theatrical best of one and the dogged technocratic determination of the other, puts them together with a dose of charisma and a good deal of probity.

[Dan]

It sounds like Obama. That's.

[Max Brooks]

It's the dream, it's the political dream that transcends the Middle ages. When England's fighting France and battles no one's having.

[Dan]

How do we know he was really like that? I mean, we're talking about the 15th century.

[Max Brooks]

He could write English. And.

[Dan]

Half. I mean, you cannot read Shakespeare without a guide. Half the language has changed.

[Max Brooks]

But actually Henry V himself wrote in English and in very plain English.

[Dan]

But old English, that's not Arnold.

[Max Brooks]

No, no, really modern English, you could easily read 50. So Shakespeare's poetry. And that 16th century is very mannered. Henry V in the 15th century is very direct. So Shakespeare gives Him. This soliloquy before Agincourt, what year is Chaucer?

[Dan]

That's the canon Chaucer.

[Max Brooks]

Late 14th century. So that's.

[Dan]

Okay. Well, that is absolutely not in English, even though it's in English, because, again, the fucking Germans. The English are German.

[Max Brooks]

But one generation later, English has evolved. So really, one generation. Shakespeare gives Henry this. Overblown poetic soliloquies. The best account of what Henry V said before his most famous battle was not some sort of great florid poetry. It was three words. Fellas, let's go. He's simple. He's direct. He's imperative. He doesn't waste words. He. He does what he says he's gonna do. He's not a dick about it, unless you're French. He's a big dick about it, then. Right, so this is like the dream of leadership. He speaks the language of ordinary people. He can mix as easily with aristocrats as he can with British.

[Dan]

Why is that a good thing? I mean, I know the history of what he was doing was. I mean, this went on for a couple of centuries where England was owning half of France. This is what Joan of Arc. People know Joan of Arc. This is what she was fighting against to kick the English out of France.

[Max Brooks]

Right.

[Dan]

Why is being an imperialist something that you admire so much?

[Max Brooks]

Well, it's not the imperialism I mind about. I mean, that's the historical context of the age. That's just the norms of the age. If England's not conquering France, France is conquering England. That's just how it works at this time.

[Dan]

Well, Germans. Well, it was the Germans. And then the Northmen, the Normans were really a combination of the French and the Scandinavians.

[Max Brooks]

That's right, yeah.

[Bill Maher]

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[Dan]

All right, let's move on. What do you think? Max Trump pardoning the founder of Silk Road, the dark web trading site which was dubbed the Amazon of drugs? Tell us what it is first.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay. I mean, this is part of a bigger picture, which is the Rise of crypto, which is the ultimate dark money. And the reason that crypto is now so popular is because we are now in a tech bureaucracy. Right. This is where the super rich are gonna run everything.

[Dan]

You write about this too. And Silicon Valley, you don't trust them.

[Unknown Guest]

No, no, no, no. I mean, they're running everything and they need a dark money way to pay for everything that nobody knows about. Right. This is how geopolitics is going to be conducted. Certainly while Trump is in office, it's gonna be conducted with Putin saying, well, listen, I will. Let's say if Meme coin just happens to get a trillion dollars, maybe Ukraine will happen to disappear. And that's what's going to happen. That's how these super rich are going to pay each other. And we will never know.

[Dan]

But this guy who was on Silk Road, the Amazon of drugs, it was not just crypto.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh, no.

[Dan]

It was crypto being traded for anything. Right.

[Unknown Guest]

Crypto is the currency of evil, of criminals.

[Dan]

Yes, it is.

[Unknown Guest]

Crypto is the currency of evil. It's where you can deal in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, everything that's dark. I mean, the reason we haven't had another 911 is because after 9 11, we followed the money. We saw how the terrorists were getting paid, where the bank accounts were, who was funneling money. We know that also with Gaza, we know the money that came in for humanitarian aid to build Gaza after the Israelis left in 06 went into the coffers of the Hamas leadership. Right. Once that goes into crypto, it's all going to go in the shadows.

[Dan]

I remember when they were not the longer they were afraid of cash because you can do things on the black market, you know, cash, you know, who knows? It's for drugs and strip clubs and, you know, cash is terrible.

[Unknown Guest]

It's all going to go away. No more barrels of cash, you know, being buried in the Colombian jungle.

[Dan]

You don't need it at all. You don't need any.

[Unknown Guest]

And it's going to go from the, from the people, the outlaws, to world leadership now. That's how it's going to get done.

[Dan]

And your thing is with really the personalities of these Silicon Valley people, right.

[Peggy Noonan]

As far as their essential nature and character is what worries me. Essentially, Silicon Valley people are people who 30, 35 years ago showed up, said, we're inventing this fabulous new technology. The whole world's going to be able to talk to each other. Instant communication. Doctors in Africa will talk to doctors in New York and look at the X ray together. It was all idealistic and beautiful and let's talk. But when you look at the record for the past 30 years, you see a certain.

[Unknown Guest]

What could possibly go wrong?

[Peggy Noonan]

Yes. Oh, my gosh. You see a record of cynical self dealing. You see, you know, oh, the data comes into the office that children are becoming mentally ill, depression and anxiety on Instagram. And Instagram essentially says, what should we do about that? If the problem is the algorithms, well, I guess we'll make the algorithms even worse to get more of the kids involved. So it's one thing to just insult people who started an industry that is a great industry, but it's another to know their mistakes, flaws and characterological, I think, problems and say they're in charge of AI now and AI is the future and can eat the world. And those are the guys who have invented it. And it's the same cast of characters.

[Dan]

They don't care.

[Peggy Noonan]

I'm anxious about it, I feel angry about it.

[Dan]

They don't care where it's going.

[Unknown Guest]

Well, and didn't this start in the 1980s? This is the Reagan revolution. This is the notion that the private sector should manage itself, that they're all good, decent people on Wall street and they'll do what's right for the country. And in doing that, we handed the fire department over to the pyromaniacs. And look what's been happening.

[Dan]

Because this is the wrong town to make that analogy at this moment. I don't know. I don't know how we didn't do great with the fire department here either.

[Unknown Guest]

Well, no, but we do talk about privatization and we talk about what privatization does, which it can be efficient, but that's the point of the government, Right? Right. The government is me, the citizen, of course, the taxpayer. I'm looking out for me. So I'm there to regulate you before you hurt me. Because the job of Wall street, the job of the private sector is to make money. Good for them. But that's all their job is. Then the government, the people were supposed to come in and say, all right, now let's make sure that it's safe and it benefits all.

[Dan]

Okay? Yeah, that's how it should work.

[Unknown Guest]

Who's not again?

[Dan]

Who's not for that? All right, all right. Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate you coming.

[Bill Maher]

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch him anytime on HBO on Demand. For more information, log on to hbo.

[Peggy Noonan]

Com.