What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?
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George Will on Andrew Sullivan’s podcast.
From the show notes:
two clips of our convo — on why the presidency has too much power, and the necessity of stopping Putin — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: growing up in Lincoln country; the son of a philosophy prof and an academic editor; Isaiah Berlin was a family friend; George and I both attending Magdalen College, Oxford; his meeting with Thatcher in late '60s; how socialism is stultifying; Oakeshott; industrial policy as crony capitalism “from the start”; Milton Friedman; why “secure” is the most important word in the Constitution; just war theory; Vietnam as the “professors’ war”; collectivism vs national security; the trauma of 9/11 and the Iraq War; the China threat today; Gaza; why natcons are jealous of progressives; Elizabeth Warren; why Woodrow Wilson criticized the Founding as quaint; FDR and his fireside chats; in praise of Eisenhower; the spread of the administrative state; Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement; Reagan and the national debt; his bad wager on the Laffer Curve; the meaning of his smile; presentism; Hume at a dinner party; Madison’s genius; George the “amiable low-voltage atheist”; Christian nationalism; evangelicals for Trump; the entitlement crunch with Boomers; “not voting is an opinion”; our disagreement on immigration; the “execrable” 1924 law; climate change as a low priority for Gen Z; why Trump is unprecedented; Biden’s age and his “stupendous act of selfishness” in running again; Gina Raimondo; DEI as the new racial discrimination; the deep distrust in media; the flailing WaPo; “happiness is overrated”; the appeal of baseball; and the reasons why America is exceptional.
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Loury of course agrees with some sentiments expressed here about Biden's Morehouse College commencement speech.
Link to videoHis conversation partner McWhorter provides the interesting perspective that you can't even be mad at this sort of institutionalized psychological abuse of black people, because it's just what people like Biden say.
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Another clip from Glenn and John. Glenn introduces it like so:
Link to videoMy friend John McWhorter is a calm, rational, reasonable guy. So I was truly shocked when he implied some weeks ago that he wished someone would assassinate Donald Trump. I thought maybe John just got carried away in the moment. But in this clip from our most recent conversation, you’ll see him apologize for making the statement without quite taking it back. When even a moderate centrist like John, who is usually so mindful of his language, feels license to talk like this about Trump, we must be in a very dark place as a nation.
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Russ Roberts’ latest (EconTalk): Sam Harris on Jew-Hatred, Radical Islam, and The West.
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Bari Weiss talked to a panel of Democrats who will be voting for Trump. Good listening for those of you who can't possibly imagine how any sane or decent human being might want to vote for Trump. Of course I do realize that after these people go through the meat grinder of the TDS addled mind, they will be some combination of insane and/or indecent. But, it's still a valuable exercise for those of us who can't imagine how or why the opposition might believe as they do.
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Ezra Klein did a monologue podcast a few days ago that IMO is the state of the art case for Trump the existential threat. He acknowledges that things weren't that scary under Trump's first term, but that there is a reason for that. In Trump's first term, there were people there controlling him, keeping him from his worst impulses. Klein mentions the NYT best seller by an anonymous white house insider, about adults in the room containing the disaster. Klein says such people won't be there this time. Klein mentions that Trump has talked fondly of unleashing the military against his political opposition. Klein imagines all governmental apparatus bent to Trump's whims, and nobody there to contain him as he becomes an autocratic dictator. It was breathless in places. At the beginning of the monologue, he mentions the big five psychological traits and how Trump might score. He also mentions his own scores, and admits that his neuroticism is rather high. That checks out.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Today on Bari Weiss' podcast, Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro faced off over Trump. Sam gave his version of the state of the art existential threat argument. A few of his arguments I've long since considered and dismissed (he's been making them for quite some time). He'll always mention that "some republicans around 2020 were in fear of their lives if they didn't get behind Trump in lockstep". He mentions the suspiciously alive and well Liz Cheney, and Mitt Romney. This argument, I find completely absurd. Liz Cheney has objectively increased her political capital with her attacks on Trump. There are no sacrifices there, but for a nearly irrelevant house seat that her ambitions obviously far outstrip. Then Sam mentions all the generals and close aids from the first Trump administration that have come out against Trump. While I agree that's an interesting point, suspiciously absent from that rhetoric are examples of all the things Trump would have done, but was prevented from doing, by the adults in the room. Those adults are now deploying top shelf existential threat rhetoric against him, but for all their first hand experience with the terror that is president Trump, they have no specific example of something that would have happened, but didn't, because of the guardrails they provided.
For Shapiro's part, he leaned into the fact that things were pretty good during Trump's first term, and he expects more of same in a second term.
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@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
n Trump's first term, there were people there controlling him, keeping him from his worst impulses.
I agree with this. As mentally incompetent President Biden is, I am quite sure that there are handlers keeping him in the lane so that while he may SAY stupid things, it would be difficult for him to DO stupid things.
With President Trump, andbody who is not a "yes man" either leaves by themself or is forced out. With nobody to direct him, I dont have complete confidence that President Trump will stay in the lanes.
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@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
n Trump's first term, there were people there controlling him, keeping him from his worst impulses.
I agree with this. As mentally incompetent President Biden is, I am quite sure that there are handlers keeping him in the lane so that while he may SAY stupid things, it would be difficult for him to DO stupid things.
With President Trump, andbody who is not a "yes man" either leaves by themself or is forced out. With nobody to direct him, I dont have complete confidence that President Trump will stay in the lanes.
We never got specifics about things Trump tried to do, and that he would have done, if not for the adults in the room. There are no such specifics in the anonymously written book from the white house insider at the time, and there are no such specifics from any of the insiders currently calling him a fascist. The closest we come is hearsay about how he "wishes he had Hitler's generals", whatever that is supposed to mean.
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several come to mind without even thinking about it...
Get the DoD to seize voting machines?
Have his VP pick and choose which states to certify based on who they voted for?
Bomb Mexico?
Block the ATT/Time Warner merger due to his dislike of CNN coverage?Oh - and I have one from personal knowledge. A certain FEMA director would get call from him saying things like "don't give any disaster aid to California'. The reply was always "I'll do whatever I can consistent with the law, Mr President."
DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr -
@jon-nyc said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
several come to mind without even thinking about it...
Get the DoD to seize voting machines?
Have his VP pick and choose which states to certify based on who they voted for?
Bomb Mexico?
Block the ATT/Time Warner merger due to his dislike of CNN coverage?Oh - and I have one from personal knowledge. A certain FEMA director would get call from him saying things like "don't give any disaster aid to California'. The reply was always "I'll do whatever I can consistent with the law, Mr President."
I guess we're all free to take those as seriously as we'd like, and to forecast them into a next term as seriously as we'd like. The election denial stuff is off the table, as he'll never be in a position again to be re-elected. Maybe the US would have bombed Mexico if the adults hadn't been in the room. Maybe CA would have received no disaster aid if the adults hadn't been in the room. You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.
Education is extremely important.
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@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.
How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not? If a president says something, I think that the default is that you believe him. You cant give President Trump a "pass" just because you think he was not serious.
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@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.
How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not? If a president says something, I think that the default is that you believe him. You cant give President Trump a "pass" just because you think he was not serious.
I can't? So I have to think that, without the adults in the room in 2018, he would have bombed Mexico? I'd rather be stupid and right, than smart and wrong. Hopefully we'll get another four years to gradually, over the span of 1400 days, prove the smart people wrong. Again.
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@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.
How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not?
It helps to have a sense of humor.
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A heartwarming bromance and discussion between two of the smartest and most interesting thinkers on the planet, Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson. Hanson has been thinking about culture lately, and they bat around a few ideas here, mostly that the dropping fertility is a maladaptive cultural drift allowed for by a lack of selection pressures on culture.
Link to video -
I will certainly listen. Just reading your sentence though I am curious why they say there are no selection pressures on culture. Those cultures with below replacement rate fertility rates will eventually die out and those above replacement rate will prosper. That’s how selection pressure works. It just takes time.
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For those of us who hate watching videos is there a podcast this appears on?
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@jon-nyc said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
I will certainly listen. Just reading your sentence though I am curious why they say there are no selection pressures on culture. Those cultures with below replacement rate fertility rates will eventually die out and those above replacement rate will prosper. That’s how selection pressure works. It just takes time.
Caplan makes this point, and Hanson acknowledges it. The selection pressures are not immediate enough to convince anybody they are behaving against their own interests, would be the point.
And my own take would be that there is a certain cultural suicidality associated with our current mainstream leftism, and many are convinced that "not this" is better than "this".
