Loading summary
Transcript113 lines
- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Matt Ebert
Some preach and pain Some die at first the way of knowing which way.
- [00:18]
Christine Rosen
It'S going Hope for the best Expect.
- [00:21]
John Podhoretz
The worst Hope for the best.
- [00:25]
Christine Rosen
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Well, we made it, everybody. It's July 1, 2025. You've gotten through half the year. And here we are. Got a couple of announcements for you. Number one, you, you came through yesterday. I said that we were at 14,800 subscribers on YouTube and that we really wanted to get over the 15,000 subscriber hump by close of business on June 30th. And you did it. We are at 15,400 subscribers. Thank you so much. Very important, very helpful to us. A sign of your support for the podcast and wanting others to see it. And we are very grateful. We are also very grateful to our friend Cliff Asness for agreeing to be the commentary roastee for 2025. This is our annual fundraising dinner here in New York City. I think it's either our 15th or our 16th roast. I can't remember. Previous roasties have included Ben Shapiro, Barry Weiss, Mayor Soloveitchik, Natan Sharansky, my. My father, Norman Pothoritz, my late mother, Mitch Dector, Bill Kristol, about whom we, we speak in respectful silence. The late Charles Krauthammer, Dick Cheney and others. Cliff Asness, a hedge fund manager here in here in the Northeast. One of the funniest people I know, a member of the Commentary board, a sage, funny guy. We have an incredible lineup of comedians, musicians and others who will be serenading him and making fun of him at an event that most people who come to it think is the event of the year. I say that immodestly because I just hear it hundreds of times in the week after we do one of these things. It's not a normal rubber chicken dinner that people are obliged to come to and give money and hear boring speeches about how wonderful the honoree is. It's a much different, much more Hamish, much more amusing event that is just like punctuated with screams of laughter and a real sense of community and delighted being together. And. And so if you are interested in joining us, please go to commentary.org roast it's on October 19th here in New York City. Commentary.org roast or you can go to our website and click on Roast at the top of the banner where you can also subscribe. You can donate, you can buy merch. There's just an immense number of things you can do in that top banner above the Commentary logo. And you will meet my fellow panelists today at the roast. They are, of course, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [03:20]
John Podhoretz
Hi, John.
- [03:21]
Christine Rosen
Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [03:24]
Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [03:24]
Christine Rosen
And senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [03:27]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [03:28]
Seth Mandel
Can I add that we, if you come to the roast, you will some, some years the commentary podcast actually puts on a hilarious sketch of some sort.
- [03:36]
Christine Rosen
So that's, we're going to do that. There, there are, there are members of our, of our team that are camera shy, I'd say a little camera shy, a little worried about showing off themselves to their best comic effect. But yes, the, that's why it's off the record.
- [03:53]
Seth Mandel
The roast is off the record.
- [03:54]
Christine Rosen
That's why we Totally off the record. Completely off the record. And one year, one joke that Dick Cheney made somehow made it into the public prints because somebody did a bad and let it, let it go. And you know who attacked us for having the temerity to have Dick Cheney at the roast and make a joke about, you know, about torture. Peter Beinart, whom I would like to torture. Speaking of torture, I don't know why I said speaking of torture, because what I'm gonna. The Senate is torturing itself with its conduct over the final passage of the big, beautiful bill. So we said yesterday that we thought it would be passed by last night. It still hasn't passed. I think a giant game of chicken is going on. And here's the game of chicken. Fifty senators can vote against this bill and it will still pass because J.D. vance will break the tie and vote for it. So 50, so two Republican senators, Tom Tellis, now retiring, and Rand Paul, who is never going to vote for the bill under any circumstances, have said they're not going to vote for it. And so they can lose one more person without tanking the bill. And there are two moderate Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both of whom have misgivings about the bill, even though they are literally 8,000 miles apart or something geographically. Like, you couldn't have one's like out in the Bering Sea ones out in the Atlantic Ocean. And here they are, they both, they both don't, don't want to vote for the bill. So I think what's happening is there's a game of chicken going on at which one or the other of them is waiting to see whether which one of them will allow the bill to pass by saying they'll vote for it so that the other one can cast the vote against it and say, I didn't vote for the bill without being blamed for tanking the entire bill. And so they are in a kind of standoff. We used to call it a Mexican standoff, but I guess that's culturally insensitive now to say Mexican standoff.
- [06:12]
John Podhoretz
Go for it.
- [06:13]
Christine Rosen
Mexican standoff.
- [06:14]
John Podhoretz
There you go.
- [06:15]
Christine Rosen
Okay.
- [06:16]
Abe Greenwald
I believe it's Latinx standoff.
- [06:19]
Christine Rosen
Thank you very much. Latinx standoff. Although, no, because Latinx covers many more, many, many more ethnicities or nationalities than merely the Mexican. So it's a Mexican standoff. It'll be resolved. This bill is going to pass because the consequences of it not passing are a colossal tax increase or more of this. It's like it's just going to happen again. So you might as well get it over with now because by the end of the year, there will be a bill that will pass that will feature a lot of these provisions. It's a terrible way to do business, but here we are. And that's life. And congratulations. Living in America in 2025. Speaking of living in America in 2025, very sobering poll came out yesterday, but which I think it tracks with everything that we've been talking about in relation to the Democratic Party, its relation to Trump, the vote for Zoran Mamdani yesterday or last week or whenever the hell it was a week ago today. So Gallup asked as it asks every year, whether you are proud to be an American or not. And this is a question I've been asking for decades and decades. And the Democratic Party number this year, are you proud to be an American? Is 36%. Democrats say that they are proud to be Americans. Grand total of 36%. The Republican number is 93. Hold on. Where is it? I'm having trouble here because I can't see anything. And I saved this. I saved the tab and now I can't find it. It's somewhere in the 90s, I believe. Does that sound right? Two guys, it's in the 90s. Okay? And here's the two things. No matter whether Joe Biden is president, 92%. Sorry, 92%. So whether or not it is Joe Biden who was president or Barack Obama who was president, or Donald Trump is president or, you know, George W. Bush is president, no matter what. The Republican number is over 90%. Republicans are proud to be Americans. Independents fluctuate Democrat. The Democratic number, I believe, is never higher than 80, even when Obama was president in 2009. And they were proud. You know, as Michelle Obama said, she was proud of her country for the first time in her Life because it was nominating her husband, whom she now apparently hates and so says she would has happy not to have sons because they would be like him, which we haven't talked enough about or maybe we shouldn't talk about it, but I mean, who the hell says the thing?
- [09:19]
Seth Mandel
That was slightly misinterpreted. I think her remark was meant to say it would have been a burden for a son to think he had to live up to the, to the incredible legacy of his father. And so that's why she was.
- [09:31]
Christine Rosen
Didn't sound like that to me.
- [09:34]
Seth Mandel
Well, I mean that, that's the spin.
- [09:36]
Christine Rosen
That'S one way, double edged sword thing. In other words, maybe that was her theoretical intention. That was the, those might have been the lyrics though the lyrics were badly written if that was the case. But that wasn't the music.
- [09:50]
Seth Mandel
No, I agree it did not come off very well.
- [09:53]
Christine Rosen
But I think that was. Michelle Obama was only proud of America when it, when it, when it nominated her husband. And, and so here we are with the Democrats. They hate Trump. They, you know, they don't like the direction of policy and all of that. So they're so, they're not proud to be Americans. And Republicans, no matter who runs things, are proud to be proud to be Americans. And independents are fluctuate because who the, what do they know? They're, you know, so that's okay.
- [10:23]
John Podhoretz
So basically Democrats, their baseline is not to be proud when they get someone they like these.
- [10:32]
Christine Rosen
Right. They're in the 70s when they're proud. Yeah. Yeah. There will always be 25 to 30% of what we know is for a generation, 25 to 30% of Democrats say they are not proud to be Americans. And then when things don't go their way, that number doubles.
- [10:53]
Seth Mandel
But, but what's interesting is how Republicans since Trump in 2015 can be very pessimistic about say the direction the country's going, where we, you know, where we've been in recent, the recent past. But the sense of patriotism, the sense of pride in what America stands for, the idea of America, who we are, what we, what we should be doing remains steady. And that's, that's a less, far less transactional view of patriotism. I think it is notable that I think Abe on our text chain last night when these numbers came out said it's so the Democratic support of this country so contingent on who's running it. And that's not patriotism. That's a very different, very transactional, very political view of what your country is and stands for so the American carnage of first Trump term and the sort of very negative view of where the position the country's in now, that doesn't seem to chip away or corrode the country. Conservative sense of pride in one's country.
- [11:50]
John Podhoretz
Which is incredible, you know, because I kind of, I kind of think of Trump's. Well, you know, I have to keep reminding myself that the first Trump term is just different from this one and so are. So is the nature of his support and his supporters. But the, but I really think thought back in 2016 that, you know, he was sort of running down the US Almost as a daily talking point, you know, and that had traction, but it did, as Christine says, it didn't translate into this sort of deeper, genuine disdain for the country. And to me, the biggest joke or the, you know, the most interesting thing about this is so the Democrats are down in the 30s with their being proud of the country. They're the ones who are screaming their, you know, lungs out day and night saying, Trump's ruining this wonderful democracy, he's a threat to the system, a threat to the Constitution. And they're the ones that are, where's this love of the Constitution, of the enduring ideals of the institutions, whether whoever the is in the White House?
- [13:18]
Abe Greenwald
My favorite story about this topic was two weeks ago, just two weeks ago on June 13th, Politico had a story and the headline is Democrats Reclaim the American Flag. We see this every couple months, right? There's some story about like, Democrats reclaim the American. Democrats taking back the American flag. But then they poll them and Democrats are like, no, I don't like that flag. But this story was about, was about one of the. A Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania handing out four by six flags to his, his, his, his peers. And along with a dear colleague letter that said patriotism does not belong to one party flag and the values it stands for belong to every single American. And I think probably in four to six weeks from now, we'll see enough. Another Democrats Reclaim the American flag headline alongside a poll showing that 4% of Democrats are proud to be American or whatever it is. But there's this constant. It's like, it's like trying too hard. It's like protesting too much. You know, it's like every so often they reclaim the flag by calling someone un American or unpatriotic and using the words un American, unpatriotic. We don't hear a lot about being American and patriotic. In the interim, they don't talk much about what it means to them daily to Be an American and what patriotism means. We only hear the negative versions of those words when somebody, when they like to accuse somebody of being un American.
- [15:01]
Seth Mandel
Well, if you see patriotism as a brand, then you can always be reworking your brand. Right. And there is, there's a sense in which, I'm glad you brought up that, that, you know, Abe's point about the institutions, because we continue to see on the more far left version of the Democratic Party, an effort to say, you know, the Constitution is no longer valid. It just can't cope with the. With a leader as crazy as Trump or circumstances as complicated as the ones we now live in. So let's, let's, in a sense, throw it out and start over. Let's reinterpret it so that it's no longer recognizable as having any founding principles. Let's get rid of the Electoral college. Let's do this. There's a lot of disruption and threats to the institutions that don't suggest any kind of pride in them. And I think that's, that's the distinction. A sense of pride, a sense of. And this is where Obama did, I think, have a very strong negative cultural impact, which was to go around the world apologizing for who America has been and was. And there were a lot of young voters who looked at that and said, yeah, you know, we should be ashamed of ourselves. And that doesn't mean that America has not, as a nation, done shameful things. And certainly our history suggests that, but that's not the way forward. And so, weirdly, the make America great again message, I think, resonated with that very steady stream of patriotic feeling among conservatives. And so that's where they saw the hope and the opportunity despite. And I think we've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the way in which Trump himself has been destructive to certain principles and certain institutions.
- [16:31]
John Podhoretz
Just on Seth's point about the flag, they got themselves into this. Wasn't it in 2019 or so when a bunch of liberal writers and outlets started writing pieces about how people see the American flag as a threat?
- [16:49]
Seth Mandel
Yes.
- [16:50]
John Podhoretz
How certain groups, you know, when they see the American flag, it's a symbol of oppression to them?
- [16:56]
Christine Rosen
I think it's worse. It's worse than that because I believe that in some of the literature that was produced by the. That weird explosion of the disinformation tracking Christian nationalist seeking, where they were opening sort of parts of the Justice Department to look into domestic extremism, that the use of the flag was itself viewed as a Piece of datum in a larger sea of whether or not people could, could or could not be trusted not to be domestic extremists who would use violence. That it was. That it become a. It had become a marker of violence rather than simply what it is. That was their doing. That was their doctrine that when they were looking for bits and pieces of things that would allow what these algorithms to, you know, deplatform people or stuff like that. Are there too many flags on their Twitter feed? Are there too many flags in the backgrounds of their, you know, their homepage or something on, you know, does the word patriot appear too much, that kind of thing? And so this is their doing. Like nobody, nobody else would say such a thing. It came out of this idea that symbols of American pride had become symbols of American counter revolution or fascism or something like that, which is a pretty remarkable leap in a rational framework in a rational country. Now, we had gone insane, obviously. You know, I was going to say there was.
- [18:52]
Seth Mandel
There was that summer, there was that moment where you could drive through purple regions of the country and half the signs on the law, half the things, things on the lawn were American flags, and the other half were in this house, we believe, signs. And it kind of captured perfectly that weird moment in the culture war.
- [19:06]
Christine Rosen
And we had gone crazy. I mean, George Floyd, the entire reaction to George Floyd and Covid, and when you could demonstrate and was it a time to be pride, to be proud to be an American? If you lived in a state where you were, where you were arrested, if you went on a beach or if you tried to go on a playground, I mean, you know, that sort of thing that could shake anybody's sense of pride. And who reacted that way with outrage and anger. People on the right more than people on the left. And yet that number of natural pride did not decline.
- [19:41]
Seth Mandel
But that's what. So it's interesting to track the right direction, wrong direction polling that's done in sort of day to day political life, whether the, Whether you think the country's moving in the right direction or in the wrong direction, and then to see the baseline of patriotism, because it does suggest a real worldview difference in terms of how people generally on the left and people generally on the right view this country. If you think that the country's moving in the wrong direction, which I think most people who registered Democrats would say now under a second Trump term, that that somehow really implicates how you feel about America's purpose and founding and principles in a way that it doesn't for conservatives. And I find that fascinating. Lots of people said under Biden the country was moving in the wrong direction, that we were between inflation and the border problems, especially if you were on the right. But that didn't seem to move the needle on how they felt about the nation and that it's just a curious thing that in this probably started we love to blame the 60s, but it did probably start in the late 20th century, this movement on the left, away from pride in one's country, away from understanding. So much of this is politically contingent versus about principle. And that's. It's too bad. I mean that might shift with younger voters, I hope on the left hey.
- [20:55]
Christine Rosen
Everybody, it is summer. It is thrilling to be summer. And it is time for me to talk to you about Quints. I am the last person to chase trends. Conservative Jewish magazine editor. Not a trend setter, not a trend follower. But I am all about stuff that fits right, feels good and actually lasts. And I keep coming back to quints. Their lightweight layers and high quality staples have become my everyday essentials. You know this, I've talked about the sweaters. I just bought a whole bunch of lightweight shirts for summer. The kind of stuff you I'll wear on repeat like breathable flow knit polos. Those are the ones I bought. Crisp cotton shirts, comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and dressed up dinners. And the best part, everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. By working with top artisans, cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quints. Go go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U Y-N C E.com commentary to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary hey everybody, it's John here to talk to you about Shopify. You know, Commentary is an old line American product produced physically mailed as mostly the way we do business with some newsstand sales, subscriptions, checks, cash, all of that. Only in the last 15 years have we had to become a digital product. And I got to tell you, if I were starting out today as a digital entrepreneur, what I would want on my side is Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And 10% of all E commerce is in the US from household names to brands just getting started, it will help you just take off into the stratosphere. You get started with your own design studio providing you hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify will help you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style. It will help accelerate your content creation. Packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your products photography. It will help you get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns whenever you're and wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your business idea into cash, into an income, into a life. With Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/complymented. Go to shopify.com commentary shopify.com/complyment what, what.
- [24:17]
Abe Greenwald
Is a land acknowledgement if not, you know, the idea that we shouldn't be here in the first place, right? It's like the scene for. It's like the line from Clerks. I wasn't, I wasn't even supposed to be here today, right? That's America to them. We weren't supposed to even be here. And then there's the way that American complicity is. The word used so often gets rolled into every bad thing that happens in the world. And if you're, you know, if you're anti colonialist now you focus on Israel, but you also say, and you know, America, this American capitalist system, you know, is, is, is the engine of it all. And whatever the, the, the, the anti colonialist and whatever the sort of academic anti Americanism that we see on the left is very much like Great Satan and Little Satan type discourse, right? It's like we were yelling at Israel, but it all comes back to the Great Satan, which is America. Except Americans talk that way.
- [25:29]
Christine Rosen
But that is a very important point because as we see these numbers, particularly among the young, of a, of declining support for Israel, though I think it's wildly overstated or has something to do with the way the question is asked. But there are these declining numbers. There was one Pew poll that had American Americans disapproving of Israel more than they approved of it. I don't see that you can't look at these pride in America numbers and not see an analog or a parallel or a foundational expression of this. Americans supported Israel, particularly evangelicals. But you know, Republicans after. After the 1980s when this big shift happened, when Republicans went from being very lukewarm about Israel or sort of 50, 50 on Israel, to becoming overwhelmingly so supportive of it that. That. That was connected to national pride and issues of national. American national pride and acceptance of the idea that Israel and the United States were both nations formed on the basis of an idea or a set of ideas, and therefore were exceptional and connected in a way that almost no other nation is or was. I mean, there are a couple of other nations on the planet that were formed on the basis of an idea like Liberia, right, Which was a nation established to be a free place for former slaves in the United States. That's an idea. I don't know that I can think of many others that have that quality that, you know. And so America is based on a set of ideas that predate and are held to be higher than the country itself in a weird way. You know, in other words, when you. When you write the Declaration of Independence and you say, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what you're saying is that is superior to land and soil. It's superior to where you come from. It's superior to everything. It's an idea. And that was the binding glue of the United States as people from all over the world came to the United States to settle here, was you could become an American because there was no such thing as an American per se.
- [27:51]
Seth Mandel
This is. This is the original principle of healthy diversity. And that's why it's ironic that the left sees this as oppressive. It was not. It was what allowed the kind of extraordinary diversity, both of faith, of background, of ethnicity, all of it. That's what made it possible. And so the fact that. And we're about to. Sorry to get all wound up, but we're coming up on the 250th anniversary of this extraordinary document which enshrined this.
- [28:16]
John Podhoretz
Principle, you know, on this point of diversity. So what's also somewhat ironic here is as of yesterday, we were in Pride Month, right? Now that's LGBTQ plus, whatever, Pride, right? And that's another factor here, which is that now you are supposed to be proud of your camp. You get. You get your Pride Month, you get a Black History Month. I only learned this year there's a Jewish American history or a Pride Month or something, right? But the thing about these, it always goes very well, yeah, the thing about these, these, when it's, when it's Pride Month, when it's Black History Month, what is all the programming about? It's not really pride. It's about the horrors that you've endured in this as part of this segment of the population. The horrors you've endured as a result of being in the U.S. what's missing.
- [29:27]
Seth Mandel
On that side is gratitude. It's gratitude for what this nation represents and what it actually has achieved. It's a lack of gratitude.
- [29:35]
Christine Rosen
By the way. It's not just gratitude about the nation alone that we can get back to that now. I'm going to get self referential. I have a piece in the July August issue of Commentary which is called we are Awesome A Rant. And it's a piece about anti Semitism and the attempts to sort of denormalized Jewish life in the United States since October 7th. This is a surprising and astonishing attack on, on Jews, Jewish life, Zionism, you know, the national aspirations of the, of the Jewish people which, which are foundational to Judaism, as I keep saying in relation to any Jew who says they support Zoran Mamdani, which is that, that the, the, the document that is the defining document of Judaism, Zion, of the Torah is a direct, a document that directs the, is the story of the Jewish people and its journey over, over millennia practically to the homeland that God has promised Abraham at the beginning of the life of the Jewish people. And so if you don't, if you say you like Jews or you like Judaism or you're a Jew or something like that, and you actually say that the Jewish state shouldn't exist, that's anti Jewish in a fundamental sense. But the central point that I tried to make in this piece is that the Jewish story is the Jews shouldn't have survived. The Jewish story is that after the expulsion from, from Jerusalem and from the holy land in 135 CE, no other tribe on Earth would have withstood the two millennia of statelessness and homelessness and you know, wandering this and constant persecution by the people whom they lived among and whom they were a minority among. And yet Jews did survive and made it through and have this connection, this mystical connect, not even mystical but actual practical connection to the past through the fact that as I say, if, if one or one or another of us went into a synagogue in the third, if we time traveled and went back to a synagogue in the 13th century on, on a given Saturday they're reading the same torah portion on July 7, that they would be reading on July 7 in 1322. And I could read it, and I know the prayers, and I know the liturgy, and I know some of this has changed over time, but it's exactly the same faith with exactly the same book with exactly the same through line. And that's an astounding story. The Jewish story is a story of two millennia of persecution, of. Of efforts every couple of centuries to wipe us out. The Inquisition, pogroms in Poland in the 17th century, pogroms in the 19th century in Poland and in Russia and early 20th century, and of course, the Holocaust, and all kinds. And all kinds of other things. And yet here we are, and here's Israel, and here's Jews in America and all of that. And so you can tell two different stories of Jewish life, which is, Jews are the most uniquely oppressed people who have ever lived. They were oppressed in Egypt. They were oppressed by Joseph, was oppressed by Potiphar, you know, at the beginning of. Of. Of the faith that, you know, this is. But that's not the story that Jews choose to tell ourselves. And the story that we should tell ourselves, which is that, oh, my God, this is astounding. We are part of this glorious transcendent tradition that has survived for thousands of years. Similarly, black people, whatever, you could tell the story that your history is one of constant oppression, or you can tell yourself the story that they brought you here. Your people were enslaved. You know, they were made to suffer hard labor in the fields and build things that were not their own and all of that. And then there was this moment of liberation, and there was still oppression. And yet here we are in 2025, and you are still here. They didn't kill you. You are fundamental part of the American experience. Children have the connection, same connection to the past that Jews have to their past. That is awesome. That is a story of survival, of perseverance. That. That's pride. That's something to have pride in. But we've turned pride, as Abe says, into a celebration of victimhood, of tragedy and of the acknowledgment of tragedy. A lot of us have had a problem for 40 years with the rise of Holocaust education, even though obviously we want people to know the Holocaust because we keep getting horrified that people don't know about it and then seem to forget that this happened within the memory of many people in our lifetime. And yet, you know, here people are evoking it or saying, you should go back to Germany when we can't go back to Germany because they killed us in Germany. When you live this life, you need to be able to look at the fact that you're there and say, I thank God for the life that I have. And that's also part of American pride. Because why are we all.
- [35:36]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, this is why. How American history is taught for several generations now is implicated in this. This problem. And it's, it's. And I see it. You see it. Actually, I saw a recent story about anti Israel sentiment among young conservatives, and I was reflecting on that and trying to figure out, you know, is it. Is it just anti Semitism? Well, in some cases it is, but what it really is is the fact that they see themselves only in negative contrast. So they say we have to put America first, not Israel. But they don't really understand what that means. What does America, America mean? Why would you want America first if you don't. If what you've been taught about America is, as we've been discussing, a narrative of persecution and moral ambiguity and all these. All these things. So they're. They're almost like a negative reflection of what they should be experiencing because they haven't been taught well. And that history, how history is presented, which for a couple generations now has been episodic and thematic rather than chronological, rather than a story of, as you say, John, of progress, of opportunity. Not a perfect story by any means, but one that has a trajectory towards freedom. Not away from it, towards liberation of opportunity, towards free enterprise, towards all of these things that actually are useful. I've spent the last week, and now this week teaching college students and high school students, and I'm struck by how many of them will be quite critical of system, system, systems like capitalism. They'll say, I don't. Capitalism this, capitalism that. But a lot of them will say, but of course, I'm very proud to be America. I'm so grateful to live in America. And I think that contrast, where they've been taught that these oppressive systems are terrible, must be torn down, must be revolutionized, is. Is a. They struggle with that. They struggle with what that means when they're Americans, young Americans in particular. So that's something that we should think about when we think about how we present the history of our country to each new generation.
- [37:37]
Abe Greenwald
One of my favorite stories on this idea of how we present ourselves and our story is about 100 years ago when Churchill went to bake the rounds in Mandate Palestine. He went to some of the Jewish settlements and he went to Rishon Lizion and which, you know, and he went to Rishon Licion and the people there in the village had an argument over how they should greet Churchill. Should. They were half. It was sort of split over age, I think, but they were have that said we should show him how dangerous it is here to live as Jews in the desert, whatever what we're doing here and, you know, how tenuous our situation is and, you know, and what we need and all that and the difficulty of this project because we're trying to get support for it. And then the other half said, no, we should greet Churchill like he's coming to, you know, a kingdom. We should show him, look at all we've accomplished. Look at how great we've done here. And that latter one was the one that won the argument. And when Churchill arrived in Richo and Lizion, there were like Jews on horseback at the, at the village gates to greet him like some sort of royal procession. And Churchill came back just glowing like, you, we have to help these people. We have to have to. This. They have made the desert bloom, all this stuff. But that's, that's sort of the. That's. That's the age old, you know, question of the story that we tell ourselves is, is it, is it all, you know, somebody save us, Woe is me. You know, look at how difficult or is it. Look at how difficult this position was when we started and look at what we are able to accomplish here, which is a very American sensibility. The idea that, you know, we're gonna go settle the west and we're gonna go keep exploring and one day we're gonna go to Mars and all this other stuff is that it's. It is a very American alongside a very Jewish thing to end up at the. You know, and we survived and, and now we eat.
- [39:59]
Christine Rosen
So just to finish that story. So Churchill went to Israel or went to mandatory Palestine in 1921 as the Secretary of State for the colonies. So he went as an official of the British government to go see the British colonies. And it was a very important trip. You can read about it in beautiful detail in Andrew Roberts's biography of Churchill, which is one of the great books of the last 20 years. And yeah, so what he saw was a nation, a borning or young, tough, vibrant, threatened people that were trying to build something new. And even though he was of course a conservative in the sense that he believed in, you know, conserving the old, he understood that there, where there was nothing, something was sprouting. The reason I brought up Holocaust education is precisely this. My previous meandering monologue is that there are these two ways of looking at the Jewish life, one of which is Jews need to focus on the catastrophe that befell us and tell everybody about the catastrophe that befell us so that they can understand the catastrophe that befell us, so that they'll feel sorry for us and so they'll be nice to us because they'll know that something really monstrous happened. And therefore they should give us a passion, they should let us have our state, they should be, they should investigate crimes against us as hate crimes and therefore, you know, give us a pass. And then the other view, which is sort of the Ruth Weiss view, which is, no, we need to show the world that we are here. We've been here for 3,500 years, we're going to be here for 3,500 more. And you know what? You give us a country, we're going to build a nuclear bomb. And if there's going to be a much more powerful and richer country a thousand miles away that's going to give us trouble, we're going to, we're going to infiltrate an entire society of people sort of like Esther and Mordecai, have them live there for 20 years, take over the entire management structure of the country and then destroy it from within so that it can't, so that it's program to destroy us is interfered with and then convince the most powerful country in the world to come in with us on the effort to finally deliver, you know, the blow that what the world needs to know is that the Jews have power, the Jews are strong, the Jews are self confident and that it is useless efforts to take us out are useless. So how does this connect now to the not having pride in being an American? Because we've, it's, you might think that we've run far afield. It's exactly the same. Why is it important for the United States to hit Iran's nuclear program apart from preventing, protecting Israel? Because these countries need to know in the 21st century that we're not going anywhere. Because these countries need to know that we are going to police the planet for our own sake. Not to make it a better world and make everybody nice. And Mike Gerson saying everyone is going to be free. That's all lovely, but it's tertiary to the main mission and it's like, no, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon because we say so. And I don't know, you know, at some point we can talk sweet reason and be nice and explain why it's dangerous. We've done this now for weeks about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the Middle east and the problems of not taking care of problems before they become crises.
- [43:40]
Seth Mandel
Isn't it more. It's even simpler than that. I think it's not just that because we say so, it's because they want to destroy us and we will ensure. It's the same reasoning that Israel correctly has about Iran, which is they have said over and over again for decades they will, that they will destroy us, they will destroy Israel. We are saying no. And I do think it's a signal also that we're not demoralized anymore because there is that. There's been this period of time where you can see it in the language of foreign policy among our leaders. You can see it in the sort of cultural expression of what it means to be an American and, you know, even the encouragement of a sense of shame rather than pride. We aren't a demoralized country. And I think that, particularly for young people, is a message that resonates. If you talk to them about, do you think America has a role in the world? They will say yes. Now, they're a little vague on what it should look like and they've been fed a lot of stuff that maybe is misleading them about the particulars, but they have a genuine sense that we need to be a leader in the world that we have been granted through this amazing gift of survival, a great power. And with power comes responsibility. And the responsibility aspect of it is the part that I think we need to teach more, particularly in K through 12 education.
- [44:51]
John Podhoretz
And there's also, you know, in the US hitting Iran, it's also this message to the world that there are still things that we think are worth fighting for. We will pick up arms of one sort or another. We are not done with that aspect of survival.
- [45:12]
Matt Ebert
Hi, everyone, I'm Matt Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash. On Pod Crash, we'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a Champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take Crash Champions from a single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [46:06]
F
Hey, this is Donny Deutsch. I host the podcast On Brand that comes twice a week. We give you two for the price of one. One day a week we do our big interviews with our big personalities, some of the biggest names in politics, entertainment, culture and business. And on the second wave, we do what we call our brands of the week. These are the brands that are shaping the zeitgeist. Who's up, who's down, and you can really enjoy both of them. So tune in twice a week to On Brand. You can get them anywhere. You get podcasts, Spotify, Apple, anyplace else. We look forward to seeing you and hearing from you.
- [46:39]
Christine Rosen
Well, Ben Rhodes last week said, oh, it's such a sad world in which people think that using military force is better than using diplomacy. How sad is that? And the answer is, well, you know, we tried this in the 1920s. It was called the Kellogg Brian, you know, act. And so the world forswear the use of War in 1929. Where did that get anybody?
- [47:06]
Seth Mandel
Well, it's.
- [47:07]
Christine Rosen
How did that work out for you?
- [47:09]
Seth Mandel
It's also a rebuke to the, to the, to the negativity that a lot of which comes from the extremes on the right that says we're a decadent late stage empire. We really can't. Like the enlightenment was a mistake. I mean, there's a whole strand of very nihilistic thinking about what's possible anymore. And I think it's a rebuke to that reasoning as well.
- [47:29]
Christine Rosen
I want to talk about this too, because I think I mentioned this yesterday or I also did my other pod, the goth podcast and talked about it yesterday. So I don't remember when I said what and on which pod. This is the world that we live in now. And I can't remember.
- [47:42]
Seth Mandel
Pollination. It's fine.
- [47:44]
Christine Rosen
Okay, so there is this astounding interview last week, Ross.
- [47:50]
John Podhoretz
We talked about it after the podcast yesterday.
- [47:52]
Christine Rosen
Oh, we did? Okay. Ross Douthen's interview with Peter Thiel, which is on the New York Times website. It was his. He's got a podcast called Interesting Times. You can watch it, you can listen to it, you can read the transcript. So Peter Thiel, of course, one of the founders of PayPal, young, conservative, intellectual who was at the Stanford Review. I met him in 1994 and 1995 when he was a kid, started PayPal. Very odd political figure, very gay, but very conservative. Catholic, supported Catholic institutions, intellectual projects like First Things magazine and others. And then was one of the earliest tech people to support Trump, obsessed with the notion of creating independent societies apart from government. Right. He wanted to do seasteading, which was somehow plant islands where you could go that would be beyond the reach of. Of the laws of. Of all countries. And then famously said that everything was going wrong in tech because we were promised flying cars, and instead we got Twitter, we got 140 characters instead of flying cars. And on this podcast, he begins by saying he'd had a conversation with Musk, and Musk is done with Mars. Musk's whole life ambition has been to go to Mars. And Musk, in the last year, has decided that it's useless to go to Mars, because if you go to Mars, it'll just be woke. We'll get there and woke. AI will control everything, and he doesn't want to do that. And he's done with Mars. And, my God, what does it mean for the world if Elon Musk is done with Mars? Says Peter Thiel. This is the future. This is, you know, American ambition, and he can't handle it anymore. And this is just part of the decadence of our society, that ambitions like going to Mars are falling to pieces and we don't innovate anything. And, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, And I was listening to this on this thing that I have in my pocket that didn't exist 18 years ago, where I can say, how do I get from New York to Dublin, New Hampshire? And there'll be five of these things that didn't exist 18 years ago. That will not only provide me with a route, it'll provide me with three routes. It'll tell me how much time it'll take for me, if I get in my car to start driving there, if I'm on my way there and there's traffic building up ahead, it will direct me off onto another road to, say, 15 minutes. I've never had to take out a sheet of paper that will help me explain how to get there. This is just one tiny aspect of this revolution.
- [50:43]
Seth Mandel
Call that thing a map, by the way.
- [50:45]
Christine Rosen
Yeah, the map that's called a map. Right. But I'm just saying, like, there are 10,000 billion different things about the last 40 years that suggest that we are going through a revolution that is entirely parallel to the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that was extremely disruptive and in which people went through a lot of trouble and a lot of heartache. And the emptying out of rural England into the factories that led people to get sick and have terrible life experiences and terrible conditions of, you know, that that had to be improved. Just as we're going through the suicide epidemic and the social media effect on kids and our general seem to be alienation from each other and all of that. These are all aspects of everybody digesting this massive technological revolution and these two leaders of it, these two people who are central to its existence, Musk and Thiel, are saying things like, it's all over, everything sucks, everything's terrible. How crappy is everything?
- [51:53]
Seth Mandel
But to be fair, these tech titans have always had contempt for the messy, slow moving, inefficient democratic process. So they're coming from a place where, I mean, I actually do believe that, you know, Elon's worried that they should remake the Martian, but with like Ta Nehisi Coates as the star instead of Matt Damon or something. I mean, his concern is that why, why replicate a society that he feels is rotting at its core. So. But they have also been very contemptuous of what, again, back to the founders and their principles. The idea that every human life has dignity and shouldn't be coerced, controlled, manipulated. And the pursuit of liberty is what we're guaranteed, the pursuit of happiness, but not the guarantee of happiness. And I do think that the Peter Thiel question that also, that struck me as being interesting is when Ross asked him like, do you think humanity should exist? He had become, he's become so nihilistic that he sort of paused to think. Well, and you hear this on the extremes, more, more on the extremes of the far left, the kind of extinction, rebellion, people, people are the problem. And I do think there's a trickle down version of that where people look at the United States and say, no, we're the problem. This is the green revolution where nobody wants to look at the numbers coming out of China and India and other, other places that produce the world's pollution. And instead they say you should drive an electric vehicle or else you're evil. So the moralization that overlies a lot of the tech guys talk I think is a way for them to avoid the fact that they don't actually like how the process works here in the United States.
- [53:24]
John Podhoretz
I think that's right. And I think, you know, look, I thought the interview was fascinating for so many reasons and too much to get into when they.
- [53:33]
Seth Mandel
But Ross's reaction face is worth. It's why you should watch it, not.
- [53:36]
John Podhoretz
You should watch it. And when, because when they come around to Thiel's ideas about the Antichrist and Ross's challenge to him, it would be. It was just beautiful and fascinating, but it is also, it is just generally a window into how some of these Silicon Valley types are so disconnected from humanity. When Thiel talks about why our current technological age is basically one of stasis, he seems only to be measuring progress in what any new industry or tech or advance can contribute to gdp. That would. That were. That was his sort of way of dismissing the digital world, you know, that it didn't. It didn't add many. You know, it didn't.
- [54:28]
Christine Rosen
What did it.
- [54:28]
John Podhoretz
What did it really do for our gdp? So that, that's not, you know, that's not. That's not an advance. That's a. That's a very strange way of looking at. I mean, I get it, you know, GDP means something, but that's, that's. That's not the only way to, to, to measure even.
- [54:47]
Christine Rosen
That is demented because I'm just looking this up. So PayPal, I think, hit it or either was started or really sort of exploded outward in 1997. The GDP of the United States in 1997 was $8.5 trillion. The GDP in 2024. Hold on, where is the number here? I'm looking for the number. Come on, man. I'm getting percentages. I'm not looking for percentages. It's something like 25 trillion, I believe. In other words, it's tripled in 30 years. God, this is really. Come on, this is a night.
- [55:33]
Seth Mandel
It's ironic because it's the Peter Thiel level people in our economic class system who've benefited the most from that increase in GDP. And I think that's actually where we're.
- [55:43]
Christine Rosen
Over 30 trillion in GDP. We're at 8 trillion. So we have tripled, more than tripled in less than 30 years. And he's, as you say, he keeps saying, well, half a percent of GDP here and half. What the hell is he talking again? It's like my brain is going to explode. I don't understand how you can look at the world in 1990. Yes, the world between 1860 and 1920 changed in so many revolutionary ways that the person who was born in 1860 saw the birth of the modern world in, you know, in real time, right? Saw telegraphy, you know, telephony, the internal combustion engine, air flight, mass communications, radio, television, bombing, you know, aerial bombing. All good and bad things all at once. And none of that existed in 1860. Right. So that was a kind of transformation the likes of which the world has never seen and will never see again. But I'm 64. What have I seen in my lifetime? Space travel, men in space, you know, the rise of the personal computer, you know, miniaturization. 10 zillion things that have made the world entirely transformative. And it's like these guys are, you know, ants sitting on top, you know, like they, even though they are part of the leaders of it, they have no perspective on how life has changed for the ordinary person. Like yes, they're, they're impatient for some transcendence. Peter Thiel wants to live forever. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Peter, people built Chartres Cathedral, probably the greatest building on earth. It took 250 years to build Chartres. Maybe it'll take us 200 years to be in a position where we colonize Mars. The people who started Chartres had an understanding that this task was going to be something that would have to be completed by their grandchildren or their great grandchildren. And they didn't mind because they saw the world in a much different and more transcendental way. These guys, if they don't see transcendence five minutes from the moment they are interested in something or see this as a kind of through line through history. It's a very Jewish idea by the way, you know, that history has meaning. They're disappointed, Peter, that the overwhelming subject of the Peter Thiel conversation with Ross Douthat is his deep disappointment in America. And that's where we can connect this. Even though he's not a Democrat and he's not, you know, it's not the 36% of Democrats, but if he can look at America and what it has done and be disappointed and he's worth $5 billion. Yeah. What does a Zora Mamdani voter think who's making $120,000 and share apartment two roommates in New York City?
- [59:10]
Seth Mandel
I think it's important because he can, he can be disappointed, but he still can retreat to his compound and enjoy the luxuries of his own success, which came because of this system. I think the thing that is worth listening to about these guys and their disappointment is the fact that actually some measurements of success and progress for Americans have gone down. Life expectancy for certain groups has gone down. People's sense of well being and human flourishing has gone down. And so exploring why that is, what might cause that and then how to fix it. Because their solution is always the same. It's more technology to solve the Problems that technology might have caused or, or throw money at this new crazy scheme to go to Mars. But actually these are problems that the founders had predicted would happen. They didn't foresee the things we struggle with now. But the idea was if this problem arises, our system is literally designed to help everybody come together in who disagree and find a solution that works. That's the 250 yard vision that you're describing with the building of Sharjah. And we do not do enough long term thinking and we don't both politically. But our cultural figures are not keen on long term thinking except in this like go to Mars way. But what's the path to Mars? What are the specific dates like the space program used to do when, when you describe that as being marvelous as a kid? John they said we're going to get to Mars by this date or we're going to get to the moon by this date. We are not. We're really bad at strategic long term thinking and our cultural leaders reflect that.
- [60:38]
Christine Rosen
But you know, strategic long term thinking can be a terrible mistake.
- [60:41]
Seth Mandel
Yes.
- [60:42]
Christine Rosen
Very complicated because you can make a plan to do something that is already overTaken by Events 5 years after you.
- [60:49]
Seth Mandel
But the enemy of living in a society that does no long term planning and that seems on the brink of bankruptcy.
- [60:56]
Christine Rosen
The word that I think I've been struggling for this entire time that there is an enemy engaged that Americans and Democrats are engaged in, which is this kind of like. I don't know, there's something. I'm just not motivated. My life is not motivated or my life. There is. I'm. I'm kind of depressed. Right. We talked about this the other day. That conservatives are happier than liberals by every. Everything that we can measure shows that. And we've said it's because they're. Liberals are constantly told that the world is a terrible place and that we're going to blow up or melt or you know, everything and inequality and everything is structural and there's no way to save yourself from anything. But anomie. Is this idea one of the classic ways you lived your life is the greatest of all Jewish jokes or one of the many great. There are so many great Jewish jokes. But it's the Jewish joke where a guy comes out, runs into a friend and he says how's your wife? And the other guy says, compared to what? Because it's like you can't just say how's your. You can't say how's America? You know, it's not that simple. I mean, I have pride In America. I live in America. I'm. I have, you know, I feel about America the way I feel about my family in many ways. Ways. But even if you don't have that connection or you don't like your family or whatever, compare. Where are you gonna go? Tell me, by the way, by the.
- [62:21]
Seth Mandel
Way, that Thiel and Musk do not have wives. And I mean, there's something in that joke.
- [62:26]
Christine Rosen
That's just me, Harem.
- [62:30]
Seth Mandel
He doesn't have wives.
- [62:31]
Christine Rosen
Well, he had a wife. He's had wives. Well, he has ex wives. He was married to Grimes.
- [62:34]
Seth Mandel
Have ex wives.
- [62:35]
Christine Rosen
He was married to Grimes. Yeah, right, right. Well, yes. So Thiel doesn't have a wife. But I'm just saying how. Meaning, like aside from everything else, even if you don't have a transcendent experience of understanding in your heart the depths of the Declaration of Independence, or you don't believe in the nation of ideas or something like that, where do you want to live, Ghost? Really? Where do you want to live on this planet? Even if you are one of these people who is suicidal in their basement on fentanyl playing video games, where are you going to go that's going to free you from that? Exactly. That's a soul sickness. It's not cure. It's a problem of our existential crisis created by living in the age era of technology and poverty, post religion atmosphere. But where are you gonna go? At least this is where Zora Momdani comes in. At least 100 years ago, when these radical socialists were living their deranged fantasies and hopes of revolution in the United States to overthrow the existing order, they had a model in their heads. It was an insane, berserk model. They wanted to live in the Soviet Union or in a communist country, and they therefore overlooked all of the evils that were going on there or pretended they didn't exist or something. But they had a we want to be that and not this. And now it's we don't want to be us, we want to be what? What do they want to be? What is a democrat who's not proud of America? Where would he be proud of? What country would he go to where he would feel pride? And there was this experience in the early 60s where black nationalists moved to Ghana. Maya Angelou moved to Ghana. Bunch of people were living in Ghana. I believe Zoran Mamdani is named for the president of Ghana, right? Named Nkrumah he his middle name. They went there because they said, okay, here's this new world that we can live in. As free, you know, as. As. As black. Liberated black people where we can manage. And they lived there. And then the country went totalitarian and they came back. You know, Malcolm X in the autobiography talks about going to Ghana and saying, wow, this is kind of amazing here in Ghana. Like, I just met this woman named Maya Angelou. She's really fantastic. And then he came back and then he, you know, he didn't like it either. So I don't know. There is a.
- [65:24]
Seth Mandel
It's a search for belonging in a way that. And you see that we have versions of this with celebrities who, after every election that a Republican wins, announced loudly that they're moving to Europe or something. And then many of them also come back. But this pursuit of belonging.
- [65:37]
Christine Rosen
Snyder and his wife, of course, have moved to Canada.
- [65:40]
Seth Mandel
Right. But they.
- [65:42]
Christine Rosen
Because he got a $500,000 deal at the University of Toronto or something like.
- [65:46]
Seth Mandel
That's actually why I said, Anna, me. Because I. When I listened to Teal, look, Teal has a husband. We shouldn't. When I'm talking about Elon Musk and his harem, it's just in part because I think having children is. Is a vote for the future. It suggests some optimism about what comes next. And we are seeing also declining birth rates in this country and throughout the world. So when. When you think about this sense of belonging, yes, people can go to other countries and they come back because I think what the lesson they learn is that America is unique in welcoming others, even at this time of immigration debate, and who we accept and who we. Who we don't and how they enter the country legally. This has always been a place that's rather rapidly welcoming once you're here. And if you compare that, if you've ever lived in a foreign country, you learn that lesson immediately. You can be accepted, you can live there. But the sense of belonging and community takes. Takes a very long time in some places, because they are not built on the idea that of ideas, they are built. In France, for example, you're not truly French unless you meet certain criteria. And that's true in many countries. So that the radicals often have to leave to come back and appreciate that.
- [66:56]
John Podhoretz
I want to paraphrase CS Lewis, because you were talking. Reminded me of something you said when you. When you were talking about, like the Mamdani voters and what do they want? Where do they want to go? And as he wrote, you know, then this was he. He was. He was talking about British educators.
- [67:19]
Abe Greenwald
Last.
- [67:19]
John Podhoretz
Century, and he said, they don't teach theories, they teach assumptions. And that is what the Mamdani voter has no theory about what would work in why and better. They have an assumption that this is bad and that is all they need and that's what they're going on. They never thought it through beyond that.
- [67:50]
Christine Rosen
It's a very, it's a very difficult thing to sort through, in my view, because we just. It's very hard to understand living in the United States for me and not feeling pride in being an American. I mean, it requires me to interpret the behavior of others without even being able to summon up the empathy that would explain to me how they get to this feeling because it's so deep rooted in me, you know, and, and so I then look at the Mamdani vote and the, the question that I guess is raised by all of us as we look at this and we say, okay, well, it was actually only chosen by a, my pretty small minority of overall New York voters in a, in a, in a primary. Do people really believe what he believes? And how many believe in what he believes? And I keep thinking, well, it can't be that many really. It's not that they know that.
- [68:58]
Abe Greenwald
They like, does he really believe what he believes?
- [69:00]
Christine Rosen
I believe he believes what he believes. I have no problem believing that he believes what he believes. Why shouldn't he? He is, he, he is a person entirely divorced from cause and effect in his entire life. So the idea that, you know, one of the reasons you're not supposed to be a socialist or you're not supposed to be an anti Zion is cause and effect, right? So it's like if you eliminate billionaires or if you have the government run grocery stores or, you know, we have centuries of history and simple economic logic that says to you there's no, as, as Robert Heinlein said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you're going to give everybody free stuff, somebody's got to pay for it. And then you know that that is a terrible system because then people skim money. However you want to slice it, he's a guy, grew up, came to this country. His parents had free housing at Columbia. He had free schooling at Bank Street. He had free schooling at Bronx Science. I'm sure he had a scholarship at Bowdoin, even though his parents are very well to do. And he has grown up without having had to have a job. He lives in a $2 million apartment in Chelsea. He is a person whose entire life is divorced from elementary cause and effect that would lead him to have any sensible notions or ideas about how the.
- [70:18]
Seth Mandel
World works then isn't the question. It's a question about the, that's not his voters. But, you know, pathologies of the Democratic Party right now are less about him and more about why there weren't alternatives to him that were palatable to the primary voters. And this is a problem on the right too. And that's a broader problem. To get back to the patriotism idea of America, it's difficult to recruit people to run for political, political office now for a number of reasons, but one of them is that it's difficult to go up against an extremist and come out looking anything other than battered and, you know, beaten up on, certainly on social media. So the Democratic Party couldn't find anyone other than Cuomo to actually launch any sort of reasonable challenge. And we do see this. If you look at congressional elections and even state and local elections, it can be very difficult to recruit good candidates for higher office. And that I think, has to be linked to in some way each generation's understanding of service, of, of obligation, of, of wanting to perform those roles. Many smart people just say, why would I bother? We need more people, good people to bother with politics.
- [71:25]
Christine Rosen
Well, that is also a transitional thing about our time, which is to say that you're saying, why couldn't the Democratic Party. There is no Democratic Party. The Democratic Party does not exist. It is a, it is basically a kind of shell that has administrative and technical jobs to do in relation to elections. But there is no brain trust that chooses candidates, that elevates people, that moves them through the ranks, sort of like a farm team system in baseball and that sort of thing. You individuals decide whether they want to run for office. Is that up to them to fundraise for themselves, to make a showing for themselves and all of that. This is all the result of changes in the campaign finance system that disempowered parties and empowered everybody else. And things are not yet sorted out. In an odd way, Trump's takeover of the Republican Party and turning it into this one man band, despite the fact that everybody looks at this and says, well, this is terrible, it's a cult of personality, it's not a party anymore, and it's only at his whim. But he is creating a form of centralized party control that institutionally could live on after him, that will make the Republican Party a more organized thing in some fashion when he departs office than it was when he came in because he exploited its very weakness, weakness to get himself the nomination and then the presidency in 2016. But he has already seen that that is not a functional system by which to exert and get things done as a matter of, you know, executive power or partisan power. And the Democrats simply have none of that. In part because of this atomization, because of Balkanization and identity politics being elevated over the fact that being a Democrat or being a Republican was once a form of tribalism itself. One of the few forms of tribalism we had before we went so balkanized and tribal was not that you were a liberal or conservative, but that you were a Democrat or that you were a Republican was one of the defining things about you as an American. And that, you know, although people crossed party lines much more than they used to, it was at least something that was a defining characteristic. And it stopped being. And but let me just ask you, Christine, you're not running for city council in Washington. Like, you know, I don't know.
- [74:05]
Seth Mandel
Never say never. I'm still young, okay? No, I'm not a middle aged. I'm thoroughly middle aged.
- [74:10]
Christine Rosen
Second shout out of the week for Bethany Mandel, Seth's wife, who did in fact run for office in Montgomery county.
- [74:18]
Seth Mandel
Trying to put our commentary contributor, Naomi Riley ran for, ran for school board. Like we have lots of. There are lots of people actually contradicting my broad and sweeping statement earlier. Yes, good people.
- [74:31]
Christine Rosen
No, but it, but I mean, yeah, like you have other things to do. It's just the interesting thing that the.
- [74:37]
Seth Mandel
Cream of the retirement project.
- [74:40]
Christine Rosen
Look, there were always two kinds of people in politics. There were like hacks who went into politics almost as like a career as kids. And they went, they went through the machine and they did this and they did that and they were, you know, graft and all that. And then they're sort of non entities and they got slotted into things so that the bosses could control them. And then they became congressmen and senators and things like that. And then there were sort of like the best and the brightest who wanted to be a part of the American experiment and not, I don't mean that. That's a, that's a term, that's a bad term I use. But sort of people who wanted to be part of the American experiment and exert themselves as, you know, public representatives and all of that, who had much higher, loftier goals and principles and believed in representative democracy and stuff like that. It's that second tier. I mean, in some ways both tiers have vanished because there is no career to be had like going through the political ranks in party terms. And there doesn't seem to be Any profit in wanting to be like a good senator.
- [75:45]
John Podhoretz
There's, there's another problem that's new, which is that I would say from this moment onward, who would want to go into politics when we live in a world where everything you have ever done, said, written, laughed, joked about is recorded somewhere?
- [76:05]
Christine Rosen
Yeah.
- [76:05]
Seth Mandel
I mean, okay, come back to why Gen X will save us. Because look, I was in the marching band, but that's not online because I was pre Internet. So we are the transitional generation that might have to do that job.
- [76:18]
Abe Greenwald
Well, it's also the nationalization of politics because, you know, the thing that happens, the things that, that are decided by your local government are much more will impact your life on a daily basis, probably more than, you know, what your state decides and then your national government decides and all that stuff. But that just has been completely swept aside, the idea that it, you know, nobody wants to be, nobody wants to spend their time, half their time at Borough hall and you know, half the time, you know, on the under planning board of adjustment or whatever. But that's what it, that's what people used to do. And it was a way to rise up, but it also was a way to, to stay where you were. You didn't, you didn't necessarily have to have national ambitions if you wanted to be, you know, on the, you know, on the Toms River Borough Council or whatever it is. But that, you know, if you were on or if you were on the school, school board locally. Right. Especially, you know, where I come from in New Jersey, you got to decide what everybody paid in taxes. Yeah, this is, this was, this. These were the things that mattered day in and day out to you. And I, I feel like there's just, just like, you know, it's harder to find local news. It's harder for local news to make it in, especially print in this, you know, in the digital world. It's harder for anything really to be localized. And I think that that sort of dismissiveness toward the idea that, you know, well, what's your ambition? You want to be a city councilman? Well, yeah, you know, and mayor, like, you know, you don't have to run for president after being mayor of the third largest city in Indiana. You know, you can just be a mayor in Indiana who likes what he did. But no, you have. You. I'm going to run for president and then I'm going to be transportation secretary and then I'm going to maybe run for Senate or governor of Michigan. You know, it's like there's always something once you get to mayor, it's like there's always something, what can I use?
- [78:18]
Christine Rosen
I want to, this is an important point because I want to get back to Christine saying, why couldn't the Democratic Party have surfaced? Da da da, da, da. So there were three candidates in the mayoral race in New York City who, under conventional, under conventional understandings of who should be mayor when there's an unpopular mayor who can't, who, who should be defeated for reelection, which is the case with Eric Adams who were in the race. Scott Stringer has been a New York city Paul for 30 years, has had three different jobs. Brad Lander is the controller, Scott Stringer was the controller, and Adrian Adams was president, was the head of the City Council. So you had the three top jobs in New York City. Candidates who had, who had been doing local spade work for decades and had shaken the hands of tens of thousands of people and gotten hundreds of thousands of votes going into this race as mayor and getting absolutely no purchase.
- [79:19]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I guess, I guess I should have phrased the question is why didn't Democratic voters turn to those people that were in the race? Because the party, really, it's about what the voter wants in a politician.
- [79:30]
Christine Rosen
Right. And, and by the way, it's not even that they're bad, Pol. I mean, I, I, Brad Lander is a disgusting person. So I'm glad that he didn't go anywhere. And Scott Stringer is not, and I don't think would be a better mayor than any of the people who are currently maybe contesting for it, but wouldn't have been my favorite. But these are people who did the work and now doing the work doesn't matter. And that's a real problem in politics because, you know, you learn things, maybe it makes you too cautious, but you also learn things about what is and what is not practicable. And that is like Trump first term, like Trump wanted to do things or get things done or have things done and sort of had to learn on the job that you couldn't just wave your hand and have things happen. That's America is a system that exists, our government system that exists to retard change, not to facilitate change. And he didn't know that because he was a businessman and he knew nothing about politics. And so that world is a world in which people who learn that lesson then come to run, say, hi, I'm a realistic person who wants to try to do good for you. And it's like, well, that's not exciting. Tell me you're going to change everything. For the better. And so, I don't know. I've no, I have no solution to this problem. But I do just want to point out again, Democrats, 36% of Democrats say they're proud of America. And that's shameful. It's a shameful. It's a fact. It's not. Maybe it's not shameful because it's a thing that we have to deal with, but it means that there is a patriotic party and there is a party that is not patriotic. And it's. I. You know how that goes over time. I really don't. I really don't know. No wonder they're not celebrating what happened in Iran. They don't think that America dropping a bomb on a totalitarian, you know, irredentist, millenarian, anti Semitic regime and making sure that they can't project their power in nuclear terms or trying to work at making sure that doesn't happen is something worthy of celebration, because nothing is worthy of celebration, apparently.
- [81:47]
Seth Mandel
And so on brand to bring it back to the crushing morosity.
- [81:50]
Christine Rosen
I know. Okay, I'm gonna make a recommendation. Even though we're like. We've gone on for like three hours, we haven't made a record in weeks, and I'm making a recommendation. I think someone made it already, but I'm now doing it months after because I only started watching this thing a couple of days ago. The Pit on Max is the best medical show that's ever been made. It's a. It's an absolute. I'm nine episodes into 15. It is an absolute masterpiece. It is the Platonic. It is the Aristotelian realization, the Platonic conception of what a doctor show should be. I don't know how. How better to say it. There has never been a Doctor show as good as this. I've seen them all. I love them all. It is a breathtaking achievement. If you are not watching it, go watch it. It's a little woke. It's not that woke. Fortunately, I didn't watch it because somebody told me it was awoke. And then I was like. Like Elon Musk. I didn't want to go to that Mars if it was going to be woke. And it. There's a little bit of it, but compared to other things in show business, it's not so bad. And you're just never going to see it better. It's practically. You're never going to see a better television show than this, in my view. Anybody else watched it? All right, start watching it. We'll be back tomorrow for Christine, Seth and Abe. I'm John Pot. Horat's Keep the Candle Burning.