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The Opinions
From ICE to Foreign Quagmires: Escalation Everywhere
00:40:42
The round table convenes to discuss the start to Trump’s 2026, from Greenland to Minnesota and Venezuela.
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This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
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C
I'm Michelle Cottle, politics writer for New York Times Opinion, and I am here today with my fantastic colleagues, columnists David French and Carlos Lozada. Happy New Year, guys.
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D
Happy New Year.
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C
Michelle.
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A
Michelle, Happy New Year.
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C
I was going to ask if you weren't happy, David. Come on, step up.
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A
No, I'm. I'm happy. I'm happy.
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C
Well, President Trump decided to ring in the New Year with a very special project of invading a sovereign country and capturing its leader. So we're going to dig into Venezuela and what it says about Trump's future foreign policy. But before we do, we are recording this on Thursday, and just yesterday, an ICE agent in Minneapolis fired a gun into Renee Nicole Good's car and killed her. I've seen the videos they're circulating, the moments leading up to her death and the shooting. It is awful. It is horrific. The Trump administration has claimed that the agent was acting in defense, that Good was about to ram him with her vehicle. But, of course, there's video. There's always video. And a New York Times analysis concluded that Good was driving away from the officer, not toward him. So, like, on the one hand, this is classic Trump. Don't believe your eyes and ears. Believe only what I tell you. But the sheer speed and scope of the rewriting of history here really strikes me as impressive. I feel like it probably took at least a day or two for the Trumpists to spin the January 6 riots into some kind of patriotic love fest, but this was almost instantaneous. I continue to think that the fracturing of reality is a problem we're gonna be dealing with long after this particular pack of liars is out of power. But, David, you've spoken before about the many problems you see with deploying ICE agents en masse on American streets. Have you considered something as awful as this maybe happening? Or did you expect this response from the administration? How are you looking at this.
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A
Yeah, I didn't consider this a possibility. I considered something like this a near inevitability. Because what you've done is you put a situation where you are training ICE agents for sort of maximum aggression. You are putting them in places where you don't typically have ICE agents. You are doing it in a way that's deliberately inflammatory. You're. You're trying to stoke up rage. You're trying to stoke up anger. And let's remember, these are ICE agents. These are not beat cops, for example. This is not FBI. So these are not people who are actually really trained all that much for the kinds of really tough public interactions that are the absolute and have always been the absolute norm if you're. Say you're a beat cop. So these are not even like the police who are. Are normally responsible for maintaining law and order. We have seen a lot of reports about problems in training and problems and standards in ice. And so you put all of that stuff together and then you add on top of it, you know, the poor woman is barely even dead, and already the administration's calling her a domestic terrorist. When anyone can look at that video. And I think a fair viewing of the video, the worst thing you can say about her is that she panicked and responded in the wrong way in response to a very confusing situation. That is the worst thing you can say. There's zero evidence, zero evidence that there is domestic terrorism here. And the worst thing that you could say, I don't think is even necessarily accurate either. It looked like she was trying to wave agents past to allow them to pass her and then back up and go down the road herself. Someone comes and grabs her door. Inexplicably, she's turning away. It's very, very fast. It's very, very quick. But it is not one of those situations where you can say, oh, I can totally clearly, plainly see how this person was defying the police. It looked to me like a very confusing situation that just escalated so quickly, so dramatically, in such a deadly way that this is exactly what so many of us have been worrying about.
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D
Yeah, I think that the key word that David brought up was escalated, because escalation is sort of built in to this entire system, like how it's being set up. You put ICE agents in American neighborhoods, places where they're not used to seeing that kind of presence, detaining immigrants, detaining, in some cases, American citizens. People react in protest, in concern and confusion, and then terrible things like this happen. And the President and Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security further escalate and inflame the situation with the way they respond to it. So it's one of those absolutely tragic moments that is entirely unsurprising, given the way this whole thing has been. Has been set up. What I've been thinking about over just the last few hours is how, you know, five and a half years ago, but less than a mile away from where this shooting happened, was the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. And that prompted a, you know, to use an overused word, you know, a reckoning over race and policing. And somehow I don't imagine that this particular shooting, as horrible and as tragic as it is, will necessarily prompt the same thing. I think we're too entrenched for that to happen. Believing what the President says or believing what the Secretary of Homeland Security says, it's not about conviction. It's not about belief in a certain set of facts. It's about allegiance. Right. It's about sort of showing what team you're on. That's one of the, I think, legacies of the way that this president or this movement deals with matters of truth and falsity. It's about loyalty. It's not actually about believing what you see with your eyes.
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C
Yeah, I was gonna say that. We have seen with this an immediate split in how people react and what their definition of reality is. And as you point out, if you look back at the January 6th stuff, I mean, the administration this week has put up an official White House webpage claiming that the Democrats staged the real insurrection and that the January 6th defendants were unfairly targeted. So it's just kind of this commitment to generating fracturing of reality that, I mean, strikes me as troubling beyond any particular incident that we're dealing with here. But, David, for people who don't follow the news very closely, who don't see themselves as having a particular political allegiance, Trump, anti Trump. Do you have a gut sense of how they're going to perceive this episode, this shooting? I mean, I realize it's hard to analyze, but.
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A
Yeah. So I think this is a situation where his bluster and his lies, because they're going to be so easily and immediately rebuttable. This is one of those rare instances where they might work against him. Because I think there's a couple of ways to frame this incident that really can affect public opinion. Framing, number one is the one the administration chose, which is domestic terrorist attempts to ram and kill officers. Well, as soon as you watch that, you're like, what are you talking about? There is zero evidence from this tape that there is any effort to intentionally kill these officers. If, however, the framing was confusing situation, officer had to make a tough call because it looked like a car was heading for him, then people would look at that and say, oh, that was confused. Where was the officer? Where was the. It makes it much more sort of difficult to analyze in a way that's inflammatory. It makes it much more technical and legal. But by going with the domestic terrorist angle right away, going with just gross lies right away, this might be. This could be one of those instances where the Trump administration actually does shoot itself in the foot through its own dishonesty.
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C
Yeah, they really locked themselves into a very kind of particular structure here.
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A
Yeah.
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C
But I want to shift from this toward another really big reality. Splitting, shaking action that I think took almost everybody by surprise, the capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. So lame duck presidents often decide to start playing abroad and making big moves as they feel like their power is waning at home. But even with that in mind, the administration's decision not only to attack Venezuela, but to lob threats then at Cuba, at Colombia, at Greenland, there's more than a whiff of imperialism in the air. Am I right here, guys? Is it. It's not just me.
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A
No, Michelle, it is absolutely not just you. You know, one of the things I. I had a great conversation with Masha about this issue earlier in the week that we published earlier in the week, and one of the themes that we explored was how nationalism almost always leads to militarism. It's a mistake to think of isolationism going hand in hand with nationalism, that nationalism leads to militarism, especially if you're talking about a person who is very concerned with greatness, bigness, legacy, to sort of say, well, you know, in Trump's second term, 30, 40 years from now, what happened then? I don't know. It seemed like it was a relatively peaceful and calm time. It's all, you know, it's all lost in a haze of mediocre presidents or whatever. No, this is not how these folks think about these things. They think about greatness, they think about legacy. And domestically, that's hard. We have a system that makes it very difficult, in the absence of a truly sweeping electoral victory, to have a giant domestic legacy. It's just hard. But when it comes to foreign affairs, and especially when it comes to the kind of Donald Trump style that we now have seen him, kind of perfect to a degree, over the five years or so he's been in The Oval Office is that he likes the big, showy military strike that is done quickly, overnight. For example, in Venezuela, victory is declared, there is a check in the box of greatness for Trump, and then he moves on. And I think that the problem he's going to face here, to the extent that he even cares about long term outcomes, to be clear, to the to extent that he cares, because I'm not convinced that he necessarily does.
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C
So that'll be zero. That extent is zero, is that he.
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Can'T create from one strike and then a bunch of bluster thousands of miles away. He cannot create and reshape an entire nation. That's just not really truly possible. And so you're looking at something that is being set up for to become a quagmire or a total failure.
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C
So, Carlos, you wrote this week that the administration is actually limiting its global influence with this adventurism. I mean, how do you interpret what Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top administration henchman Stephen Miller have been up to in both kind of word and deed here?
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D
Yeah, first.
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C
One.
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D
Second. Let me just follow up on something David said. The sort of nationalism leading to militarism and the sort of legacy building, you see it in so many other leaders as well, right. For Xi Jinping, it's so important. You know, Taiwan is so important. For Vladimir Putin, you know, expanding the sphere of influence is also vital. And for both those leaders, that is kind of like history making, legacy making stuff. That's how they see it. And that actually connects to your question. Michelle. I've just been struck by the kind of chest beating from the administration over what is in effect, a kind of regional retrenchment. Right. When he had his first press conference announcing the Venezuela operation or explaining it, Trump said American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned. And then the State Department tweeted on its official account on X, this is our hemisphere. It sounded like a football coach getting the team. Like, no one comes into our house and pushes us around. And that's usually what a football coach who loses some away games tends to say. But the notion to me is that they're hunkering down around north and South America, you know, going from America first to, well, the Americas first. Right. That is where we are and in a sense, owning up to kind of the sphere of influence model of the world. Like, you know, let China have its stuff, let Russia have its stuff. This is our hemisphere. This is what, what we are doing. At the end of the Cold War, you know, when America is sort of like strutting around the world, basking in the unipolar moment. It would have been absurd to imagine that we would be so proud about limiting our sphere of influence to this hemisphere. And so I keep thinking, you know, how is, you know, how is Beijing or Moscow going to react when they see Washington sort of busy and satisfied with the duties of sort of merely regional hegemony when you've abdicated being the leader of the west and instead you're the leader of the Western hemisphere?
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A
Carlos, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Chest beating over decline. That's what they're chest beating over. Because if you're talking about, well, NATO isn't that critical anymore, we're going to pivot to the Far east, but we're not going to be doing so in a way that's projecting strength in any real, truly substantial way. And so you're talking about really this diminished American influence that is accompanied, as you said, by chest beating. And it feels like, are you conning me? Are you punking me here? Because really, what you are talking about is not make America great again. It is recognize America's limitations. Now is sort of the. One of the ways that you would, maybe a sympathetic way, you would actually even encapsulate or talk about Trump policy that wait, maybe what's actually happening is that some people in the Trump orbit believe we're just overtaxed, we can't do all that we've done. We can't do that going forward in the future. And so therefore, retrenchment is necessary. How do we, how do we sell retrenchment? How do we sell being less to the American people? In a weird way, you sell being less by pretending it's more by pretending you've got some sort of empire or domination plan. And then the one thing I just want to say very quickly is that when I was doing working, you know, getting ready for, to publish the piece I published on Monday about Venezuela, one of the things I wanted to look at is how true is it really that we don't need allies? This sort of notion that we're just so strong that Europe drags us down, that our allies drag us down. And I looked it up, and there was recent RAND Corporation study that found that the US when you're talking about all of our allies and the total collective defense of the, the United States and all of our allies, we contribute about 39% of that total burden, 39%. The rest of our allied world contributes 61%. Okay? So it is not the case. Now. Can they do more? Sure, some of them can do more. But it is not the case that we're being restrained by our allies. It is the case that we're being empowered by our allies. And that has always been the case for America at its best. We are a. We create alliances of cooperation. Whereas the Soviet Union, for example, tried to create an empire of domination. Our alliance proved more durable and stronger than their approach of domination. And we're now doing what? Backing away from the successful approach to try to adopt something that looks more like the unsuccessful Soviet, Soviet approach. It's completely backwards.
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D
It's the difference between dominance and leadership. Right. I mean, the United States isn't claiming leadership in the Western Hemisphere, they're claiming dominance over the Western Hemisphere. And those are two very different approaches to how you engage with the world.
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C
So it's hard to gauge what the administration is even claiming its reasons were for this little adventure. But part of what seems to be driving Trump here is oil. Venezuela could be a big producer. How much of this do you think boils down to Trump's grab for natural resources and his imperialist conquest?
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A
I mean, if you listen to him, that's the ball game. I mean, you know, it's, it's really interesting. There's this pattern in the Trump administration now for two administrations, although less now than it was then, where you would have statements from administration officials that would be reasonable to greater or lesser degrees, you know, or in compliance with existing political patterns and practices to greater or lesser degrees. So you're still going to have a Rubio out there talking about making life better for the Venezuelan people. You'll have Rubio out there talking about freedom and democracy to some extent. And then Trump's like, oil, it's the oil.
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C
Give me the oil.
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A
And then, you know, when you're like the President is saying, it's the oil. Oh, well, you can't listen to him. It's not really about the. He's the President, it's about the oil. But I think if he's thinking that what he just did was he just created some sort of giant windfall for American oil companies that will benefit him in some way. A lot of the oil infrastructure in Venezuela is dilapidated, it's damaged. There's got to be any enormous level, an enormous level of investment in Venezuela to bring it up to the standard it needs to be to really resume full scale production. And you know what? You need stability and peace before people are going to be investing tens of billions of dollars to develop oil fields and oil facilities. And right now, Venezuela is anything but stable. I mean, this place is still being run by the street gangs and the street militias. And so I'm not sure what he thinks is going to happen right away.
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C
I mean, I, as you know, I'm obsessed with Landman, the show about the Texas oil industry. And while I've been watching this weekend, when I was catching up on Landman episodes, and they, you know, they talk about failing infrastructure or all of the challenges just to deal with this stuff in Texas, and all I could think of was, oh, well, that's going to be great when we try to have, you know, oil companies translating all of this to Venezuela. That's going to be easy. Just flowing. Oil is going to be flowing any day now.
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D
It's infrastructure week in Venezuela now. It's infrastructure, you know, like, like, I, I hope it works out better for them than it. Yeah, what, what's interesting to me about this, this question of the oil is when you look back on past American interventions, say in Iraq, there was always this, you know, great care on the part of the administrations to say this was not about oil. You know, the, the criticism is not blood for oil. No blood for oil. You know, and it's like, no, that's not what we're doing here. It's like it's up front. It's sort of naked and obvious. You know, some folks have referred to Trump as like, neocon don in this sense for engaging in regime change. I think it's completely the opposite. Right. The neoconservative dream was that a country, say, like Iraq would become a beacon of light, a beacon of democracy for the Middle East. Trump does not see beacons of light. He sees oil rigs. Right? There's no regime change. He's at least consistent in the sense that he's not into nation building, he's into nation fleecing. Right? Like, that's what he's trying to do. And do you remember he complained in the 2016 race that in Iraq, we should have kept the oil. We should have kept the oil. And it's sort of the same philosophy coming to the fore. I agree that someone like Rubio, you know, probably in his heart of hearts, is not necessarily in the same vein, but he's, you know, he's in a tough spot. My grandmother would always say, when you would complain about your job or something, she would say, you know, you wanted to be a soldier, well, now you got to march. Right? And that's what Marco Rubio is having to do. He's like the ambivalent, reluctant Viceroy of Venezuela now. And I want to hear more from David on this, because I think he's more plugged into Republican politics than I am. All I would say is that I think there's a really interesting kind of mini primary happening right now between Rubio and Vance. And I believe Rubio has already kind of said he would be sort of deferential to Vance being the next guy. But we have to remember that Vance in Signal Gate, right, in the infamous Signal chat that Jeff Goldberg from the Atlantic was somehow on, Vance was the guy who was kind of pushing back against airstrikes, American intervention around the world. And it took Stephen Miller stepping in and saying, the President's decided, so everyone shut the heck up. And so it was interesting to me that Vance wasn't present in that moment. It was Miller and Rubio and Hegseth, but not the vice president. And so if this goes well, it really elevates Rubio's star and Rubio's vision. If it doesn't, I think it plays more easily into the more oscillationist, perhaps tendencies of someone like J.D. vance. But anyway, I'm speaking at a school. David, what's your view on this?
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A
Yeah, I'm asked all the time, what's the impact on this, since this isn't what MAGA necessarily voted for, because you're at the no foreign wars, no more endless wars, etc. And I. I feel like you just kind of have to stop and remind people that you got to distinguish between the twitterati in MAGA and the actual millions of Republican voters. And the millions of Republican voters are, by and large a lot less ideological than we thought, say, in the era of the Tea Party and leading up to the 2016 election. But they're very invested in Donald Trump winning and Donald Trump being successful. And so they're not nearly as concerned with is he successful according to certain kinds of conservative doctrine or populist doctrine or whatever doctrine. They like to see Trump win. You know, a lot of Republicans are absorbing the news about how well done the military operation was, and it appears to have been brilliantly executed. And so when Trump is accomplishing things, MAGA is happy. When things crumble, MAGA takes scalps, but not Trumps. So this really is what Carlos said about Vance and Rubio, I think, is very salient, because if things go south in Venezuela, the last 10 years of history have taught us that Trump will be the last one held accountable. The people who will be actually held accountable are the layer below him.
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C
If I'm Marco Rubio, yeah, I'm sleeping with one eye open. I'm very nervous about this.
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A
You're in the hot seat. You've made a big gamble.
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C
Yeah. I think it's interesting you pointing out, again, I think it can't be said enough the difference between the online MAGA folks and the Republican voters in general. So, like, this has popped up, this issue, Venezuela has popped up in Kentucky. David House race. Thomas Massie, he has been a thorn in Trump's side on a lot of issues and he has come out hard, smacking the administration for the Venezuela stuff. Well, Trump had recruited a challenger in the primary for Massie because he can't have this kind of disloyalty running around in his own party. And the challenger, Ed Gallerin, has fired back at Massie for being disrespectful and not appreciating Trump's great adventure in Venezuela. And this has become a little sniping match between the two. And when you talk to the folks around the Gallerin campaign about, like, well, are you worried that the America first folks will be unhappy about this? You know, that they'll support Massey's position? They're like, you know, people, voters don't really pay attention to isolationism and isms and, you know, is Trump sticking with this? You know, what is America first really, you know, like, all about? They like to see him doing studly things in other countries. That's exactly kind of what they're looking for. Like, if anybody even remembers what's going on in Venezuela by November, it's just not gonna, it's not even gonna matter with the voting. So. But we'll see.
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A
Tell me if you think I'm too cynical.
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C
Almost never. What you've met me.
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A
Yeah, I, I feel like every major city in Venezuela could essentially burst into flames with rioting and chaos. And so long as there weren't Americans being killed in that, as long as this wasn't impacting the American economy, I think that American people would have already moved on and most of them will not even be aware of it if Venezuela collapses into chaos. I mean, and when I say most, I mean the overwhelming majority of people. I, I really think one of the actual secrets of the Trump administration is that they have, very cynically, in a way that I've never seen other administrations quite do, hacked civic ignorance. They realize how little attention most Americans pay to political news, and they've realized if they can get out there with a top line message very aggressively right away, they can set the terms of the debate regardless of the underlying truth of the matter. And so they do things all the time, they say things all of the time that are just designed to get them through the next news hour or the next news day with extreme confidence that all of this just fades away and you really begin to see how much the American system has depended on the honor system since the conception that it is depended to some degree on politicians agreeing to act with at least some degree of truth and honor in their relationship with the public, because the public will not, we now know, even be aware enough of the facts on the ground to be able to hold politicians to account when they are systematically dishonest.
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D
David, what you said about people only caring about something that's happening in the world when Americans are affected reminded me of the movie the Paper. Do you guys remember the Paper with.
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C
Absolutely.
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D
It's like one of the absolute best journalism movies ever. It's like Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Marisa Taylor, Glenn Close. And there's a scene where they're having their. Like, their afternoon story meeting, and the foreign editors are desperately trying to get people interested in what's happening on there, you know, and they're like. They're like, you know, train derailment in Peru. X number died. Nobody from New York, you know, because this is a New York tabloid, right? Or like, you know, like, you know, tornado in this place, you know, monsoon somewhere else, and then, like, witnessed by someone from New Jersey. It's like, oh, okay. Then suddenly. Suddenly it's gonna go in the paper, you know? So, yes, I think that, you know, well, beyond politics, there's a kind of, you know, narrow obsession with how does this affect me or people I know?
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C
Okay, so we have this illegal adventure in Venezuela, but what should the response be of critics? Like, if you're the Democrats and you're looking at this, how. What should they do? How. How can you push back on this, you know, without falling into the whole. They should have come to Congress first, which no one cares about.
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D
Let's just.
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C
Let's just stipulate that Americans hear that and they're like, it doesn't make it wrong. Please. I mean, it's not. There are a lot of things that aren't wrong, but it is not a complete.
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D
Let's not devolve into the politics immediately.
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C
It's.
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D
It's okay to. To ask for that. But anyway, go on.
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C
You mean you can. But that is not a. That is not kind of a powerful response. What should they be doing, you know.
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A
For one thing, that you definitely do not want to do. You do not want to whitewash Maduro or in any way be seen as putting yourself on the side of Maduro. Maduro, horrific. I do think, however, a lot of the legal technicalities I agree with you do not match with people's interests. Their eyes glaze over with technicalities. So what you have to do, I think, in a lot of ways is skip a step over to why do we have them and go to that issue. Because what happens right now is we're talking about you're playing with fire, with the world, you're playing with fire. This is dangerous. So that's a top line. Number one, it's dangerous. Top line, number two, it's lawless. Lawless and dangerous is a lot more effective, I think, than saying, well, you didn't go to Congress first. One of the interesting things here is I think a lot of Americans, both as a combination, as a result of our sharp polarization, and also just the very different circumstances of this, there hasn't been a rally around the flag effect here. You know, they have compared this to Panama, and that's a poor comparison on a number of fronts. I mean, namely including that the Panamanian government had declared a state of war against America. The Panama Romanian military had engaged in live combat with American troops, killing a Marine. I mean, there was a lot different stuff. So when Bush hit Panama and deposed Noriega, the rally around the flag effect was extraordinary. There was extraordinary public support. This point, it's just not had an impact on Trump that we can tell at all. So a lot of Americans are skeptical, and it's up to Democrats to sort of say, I'm going to tell you why your instincts are, what your instincts are telling you and why you look at this with side eye. You're naturally looking at this with side eye because it's dangerous and it's lawless. So keep it simple. Keep it simple.
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C
Okay. Carlos, did you have a thought?
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D
Yeah, I mean, I guess just prompted by David's comparison to Panama that was, if you remember, that was Operation Just Cause. Right. And this kind of feels like Operation Just Cause, you know, like it just. It's sort of something that there doesn't seem to be, like a clear, vital interest at stake. And really, it's not even about, like, not whitewashing Maduro. I think that a legitimate line of attack, and I don't mean like by Democrats, I mean, just by anyone observing the situation, is that, you know, you talk about what a Terrible guy. This is how you had to get him out of there. And then you're just dealing with all the same people, you know, in his own. In his own regime, you know, and so it's sort of like it quickly puts the lie to the sort of righteousness of, you know, decapitating this odious regime, this truly odious regime. But you're actually not doing that. And to me, that's kind of the simplest criticism on the substance of the operation.
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A
Well, and it's the kind of thing is if she executes some sort of deal with Exxon or another company, that's going to be their Mission Accomplished banner. They get rid of Maduro, they inc. An oil deal, Mission accomplished. And then they don't care if the. If the militias are running the streets. They don't care about that at all. And so, you know, one of the interesting things, I mean, just sort of thinking out loud about a response to this is every time the Republicans emphasize how bad Maduro is and was, you can say, well, then why'd you keep the whole regime in power? Like, if this was an animating purpose of the intervention was to get rid of this undeniably horrible human being from leading a country, why did you leave the whole undeniably horrible infrastructure in power? You don't get to make the human rights argument when you keep the tyrannical regime in power.
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D
But that's the argument that Trump is making, right? I mean, he's paying lip service to the, you know, what's good for the Venezuelan people, but, you know, he's very obvious about, like, he's not concerned about Venezuela's democratic infrastructure.
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C
Okay, so I think let's land this plane for the week. But as we wrap up our first episode of the new year, I wanted to take this moment to know, in the interest of making a fresh start, give me something that you think we should leave behind in 2025. This can be something personal, a tired catchphrase. Balloon jeans, maybe. Anyone go boy that.
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A
You know, I've. Ever since I saw that prompt, I have been thinking about what am I trying to leave behind in 2025 that isn't sort of like the lame normal thing that everybody says they're trying to leave behind in 2025.
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C
Wait, wait, what's the lame normal thing?
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D
Extra pounds.
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A
What's the lame normal thing? Well, I will tell you, the lame normal thing is gotta minimize social media.
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C
Oh, okay.
- [35:01]
A
And even depart to the extent that I. Because. And I know it's lame. Everyone says a lot of people say this now, but I just think it gets more and more urgent because I don't know if you're. You guys are noticing this. I think there is an increasing difference between the people who live in the online world and the people who do not. And it's not an increasing difference that's good for the people who are online a lot, that the people who are online a lot are really, really increasingly occupying a kind of a different world from everybody else that's angrier, that's more bitter, that's more divisive, that's more anxious, that's all of that. And, you know, I will tell you, when it felt so I could feel that so clearly was this summer. I went to a game at Wrigley and I'm in the bleachers, which is the only way to see a game at Wrigley because it's like dinner and a show. It's like the game and then the show in the stands, right? And I was struck that almost nobody was on their phones, that every. It was just a. A joyous moment. I mean, they were much more concerned with creating a snake of empty beer glasses from the top of the bleachers to the bottom than they were Instagramming any given moment. And that sort of dichotomy of the joy and sort of spontaneous community of the real world, I don't know, there's just that moment. It sounds sappy, but for me, it kind of like broke something in my mind that's like, I need a lot more of this and a lot less of this. And so, yeah, so that's what I'm trying to leave behind, I feel.
- [36:41]
C
You can go with that. You can go with that.
- [36:46]
D
I'm going to go with a sort of pet peeve of what we're doing now of the podcasting world, of the opinion mongering world. There's a question that folks always ask on podcasts and in panels and in these kinds of conversations, and it sounds so thoughtful and kind of like chin stroking and it's, how did we get here? Right? And I'm so sick of how did we get here, Right? Because it. It purports to be this kind of, you know, big dot connecting moment. But really, how do we get here just depends on your own personal beliefs about the world. And you can just go back and pick whatever moment makes sense to prove the point that you actually have. How did we get here is not about dispassionately assessing the past. It's about subjectively dissecting the present. And it just, you know, proximate causes proliferate. You can always go back and find the one thing that leads to your particular silo, your particular vantage point right now. And I think the real question is not how did we get here, but what is here? Like, where are we? What is actually happening? Once we have a consensus, even a basic agreement on the present, then let's go back and talk about. And talk about the dots. So what did we get here? Always bothers me. And I see it everywhere. I was reading an article yesterday, I was on a flight, I was catching up on an old New York Review of Books and like, boom. How did we get here? Like, it's just, it's everywhere and I'm done with it.
- [38:25]
C
This is very philosophical Andy Rooney rant for you. I like this. I love this.
- [38:29]
A
I like it.
- [38:31]
C
Okay, so I'm gonna go really personal. I'm going really personal and everybody can just. I have, I gave this a lot of thought and I think I have to leave behind in 2025 lecturing my children, which is easy enough because they don't pay any. Like they're 20 and 22, they don't pay attention anyway. But also lecturing my 79 year old mother. This is something like if you find yourself dealing with parents whose health fading who are like sliding into some golden year issues, I just, my, my sister and I are terr trouble about this and I have vowed to stop this now. That of course means as my methadone. I'm going to start lecturing you too. So. Or if you'd like me to call your parents and do it, I can. But I gotta stop doing it to my poor mother or she's just gonna stop speaking to me. That's it. I got that. And balloon jeans. No balloon jeans, people. Let them go.
- [39:25]
A
But one thing though, I have to put a pin in. Before I saw our prompt for this week, I was fired up and ready to unleash on all the haters against the Stranger Things finale. So I got to put a pin in that. At some point. That's just got to happen. I have to mount my vigorous defense.
- [39:43]
C
We can do a whole episode on that, whole episode on that. All right, guys, that's it. Thank you.
- [39:51]
D
Great to see you guys.
- [39:52]
A
Thank you. Michelle, Carlos, great to see you.
- [39:54]
D
Bye.
- [40:17]
B
If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcast casts. The opinions is produced by derek arthur vishaka darba, christina samulewski and gillian weinberger. It's edited by kari pitkin. And alison bruzek. Engineering, mixing and original music by isaac jones, sonia herrero, pat mccusker, carol sabaro and afim shapiro. Additional music by raman sahota. The fact check team is kate sinclair, mary, marge locker and michelle harris. Audience strategy by shannon busta and christina samulewski. The director of times opinion audio is annie rose strasser.