[Music] [Music] e [Music] e thank you so much for being here thank you for supporting the Brooklyn Book Festival our main Festival day beautiful day outside uh it's been a while uh so we appreciate you coming out and supporting us um if you'd like to continue to support us and uh how we're able to maintain all these uh programs for free to the public you can go to Brooklyn book festival.org and support us there um we're very excited this afternoon uh for our event our featured event can the future be saved um it's a conversation with Anand gardz and Chris Hayes so um as people are sitting up everyone else seated let's give them a round of applause because we're going to get started in just a minute thank you hey everyone how's that for the volume good keep coming in keep filtering in um I uh my name is Chris Hayes before we begin I would like to let you know that the books by authors in this program or author in this program can be purchased from the center for fiction at the back of the church where the author will be signing his book immediately following the program uh so you'll go to the signing table right after we're done um and at the conclusion of this as you can tell it's a packed schedule so if you can file out so that the next crew could come in uh that would be great I think that's all the business I have to do my name's Chris um and uh I'm excited to be here today we we had Aster Taylor Who's going to be joining us um who's a fantastic writer and thinker that Anan and I both admire um who has uh Fallen ill so I mean she's fine but she's not going to be here so it's just the two of us you guys showed up nonetheless I hope like I guess if you were coming for asra and you want to leave I'll give you a second to just you get a refund on your ticket um and I'm just going to give you anan's bio quickly um and then I'll do like an opening riff and then we'll talk that work fantastic um so Anor is the author uh of New York time bestsellers of persuaders which is his most recent book which is excellent and which I recommend and which he will be uh signing after this uh and the international bestseller winners take all the true American which is a phenomenal piece of work uh and India calling he's a former foreign correspondent in columnist for the New York Times for more than a decade he's also written for the New Yorker the Atlantic time publisher of the newsletter the Inc the in if you're looking to Google it and subscribe to that he is an on-air political analyst for MSNBC received the Radcliffe Fellowship the porch light Business book of the Year award Harvard University's outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for humanism and culture wow that's impressive yeah he's only 42 so that's like when I when I won that award my mom said for what does seem a little early I'm just saying uh and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein book book award for excellence in journalism and he lives here in Brooklyn New York give it up for Anan gardas there's this is fun we're like Brooklyn crowd Brooklyn Book Festival it's fantastic it's so nice for you all to be here it's so nice to be have a little sunshine it's so nice that there's not six inches of water in this uh Chapel uh there's a there's an old joke in magazine journalism that whenever um whenever a headline is a question the actual answer is no because you you turn it into a question when like you can't say the thing um I I don't think that's the case with the title of today's talk can the future be saved um although it would be funny if we were just like no and then that just that was the that was the that was our bit for an hour um something I've been thinking about on this theme for a while is visions of the future and how uh as a sort of historiographical matter different periods in time have different conceptions of the future and particularly conceptions of the future that are uh you might call utopian right or or or Bountiful right like some golden Vision I mean obviously the you know we're in a Christian Church where the eschatological Theology of the early Christians was a specific vision of the future which was that the end of days was going to happen in their lifetime that's why they shunn possessions and shunned worldly hierarchies and and God would return uh and they would they would their vision of the future was everlasting life of of of a redeemed souls in heaven um but short of those theological Visions we have other concrete visions of of the future and and you know there's a lot from like the sort of 1890s that sort of high peak industrialism uh of a vision where like everything works like clockwork and and and and all uh problems have been dealt with um John Mater kanes has a famous essay called the economic prospects of our grandchildren where he uces that look we're sort of figuring out the fundamental problem of scarcity which is the problem humans have encountered from the time that they sort of set foot on Earth set foot on Earth and once we finish out that problem like what are we going to do with ourselves like guess like he this is a great essay it's like 15 pages if you've never read it I recommend it um uh you know what what are we going to do with all this time we'll just basically we'll just be chilling right um Marx had a vision of the future uh post uh the the coming of of socialism um he's got this famous line about how you could be you know a Critic in the morning and a painter in the afternoon and a a sewer in the in the evening that you would you would be liberated from the the toil and drudgery of the factory worker who spends 10 hours doing one thing on the line and instead be left to sort of fully flourish as a human being and pursue your different Pursuits and then there's technological visions of the future you know the Jetson's uh Cartoon um even Star Wars itself is sort of a vision of the future Star Trek is a vision of the future uh where you know we intergalactically travel and we you know we we have this uh governing body for the whole galaxy and one thing that really strikes me in this moment is how absent positive visions of the future are from pop culture like it's all Blade Runner no Jetson no one is Conjuring some jetpack future with some you know Intergalactic global in body like all of our visions of the future are the last of us uh World War Z uh the road Mad Max right sort of like post-apocalyptic things have broken down human beings toil and struggle regardless of it broking breaking it down and maybe that's a sort of beautiful tribute to the human will and the human Spirit but it's Bleak and I think it's an enormous Lacuna in pop culture that has cultural problems but huge political problems because um there is a a real mood of Doom I would say in the Zeitgeist I think that's fair to say maybe I'm just like expressing my own Neurosis I don't know maybe you guys are all like no everything's fine um but there's a real mood of Zoom of of Doom in the zeist and what I try what I would like to start off the conversation today about the future can be saved isn't even the question what the future what would the future being saved look like like what is the word that is the opposite of Doom like everyone just take a second right now you can picture Doom like what what does it look like if Doom comes right like climactic events like the flood that we had right like you know the infrastructure being overwhelmed maybe breakdown of society or politics your your money doesn't work anymore right everyone sort of left defend for themselves like we all have visions of that but like what is the opposite of Doom what would a future the opposite of Doom look like and I I'll start that question for you about how you think about that and where you think thinking about the future in that way fits into the political project you're describing your latest book I love that thought um and again thank you all for being here on such a beautiful day I understand the Doom culture and the despair culture and I have written those same emotional waves as all of you I'm sure you get this also I meet people who watch MSNBC I'm sometimes like oh like what show and they're like no just like all the shows like we just keep it on the whole day you know um not necessarily healthy Behavior between us in this room I always say like don't do that don't do that don't do that just 8:00 P.M um and I think I understand it but I actually think about this moment we're living in sort of backwards which is I think so many of us have been lulled into this sense that the world is ending and it's ending from a climate point of view it's ending from a democracy point of view it's ending from a like white supremacy taking over from all of these things and the story I think is true and certainly try to shore up my own sentiments around is that actually we have done an extraordinary fitful but extraordinary run of progress over a long Arc and I think we are having some major major problems right now as a consequence of progress as a result of progress and as a attempt at resistance to final future stretches of progress and I know it does not feel that way to many people because when I have this conversation with people people often think I'm I'm crazy but you know I think if you look at the Democracy thing it is absolutely the case that this is a very dangerous time and all these things are dangerous and everything that's happening at the state level and certainly the January 6 kind of like the the nationalization of one major party basically not being a pro-democracy party anymore very very dangerous but I think we risk turning them into something even bigger than they are which is some big bold creative generative movement that has really big thoughts this is a pretty classic backlash to progress thing and I think Progressive forces often forget it's kind of in the Progressive temperament to not count your own victories to not be happy about your own victories like we have changed more in the status of women in the last 50 years in this country and many countries than in the previous 5,000 right we have changed more on that I mean gay people gay people were not invented in 1973 right like like all human so most human societies were incredibly cruel and murderous often to a pretty large chunk of us and then in the lifetimes of everybody in this room there was a pretty drastic swerve not done not complete but a pretty drastic swerve in history that our ancestors would have found puzzling right um even on the climate stuff it is scary to stare at the end of a you know uh the end of habitable life on the planet potentially but we what we're trying to do at the same time is actually for the first time live in a healthful way and a sustainable way with the Earth that frankly human beings have not done in a very long time and we actually have the means to do it and we're trying to figure out how to do it and I'm not saying this in a poish way but I'm saying it to put the people revolting against the future in their proper place I think they are Barnacles on the hull of our progress I don't think they are the captains of the ship I don't think they are inventing the next story I think they are people who are uncomfortable with the future I think they are people who often feel mocked by the future I don't by the way I don't think this is often I don't think this often uh not always evil or malevolent I think if you are a man raised in a different era and you were raised a certain way you were taught certain ways of being a man you're taught certain way and and in a quite rapid blink of History there's a whole new set of norms rightfully so everybody in this church I think would agree with those Norms probably but I think as human beings we can understand like change is hard for people we are trying to psychologically migrate tens of millions of people in the same era to a new understanding of masculinity a new understanding of whiteness I mean how many white people in this room grew up knowing what whiteness was right like there's a lot happening right more more new thinking and new thoughts that we all need to process around gender in the last 10 years than in anyone's lifetime prior to that right we're going through a lot Tech China no we don't manufacture anymore now we manufacture again I think I have a an understanding that from my reporting that we're putting ourselves we have put ourselves through a ton in this era you're in my lifetime and that it's choppy for a reason it should be choppy and if we need to get our heads on right that we're trying to do a thing and remember the thing we're trying to do to your point and then deal with the people who predictably reliably are going to be trying to throw a little bit of sand in the eyes I I I think I I I agree almost entirely with that I mean the the the the thing you just said about sort of gender I I think about this all the time because I remember the first time when I encountered my first Judith Butler text at the age of 19 um and you know it blew my mind first it's very difficult to read and well not impenetrable um but it blew my mind the idea that like sex and gender were different and that g the idea that gender was a performance right that this wasn't some immutable platonic Strate uh category and you know that really blew my mind and I remember thinking like wow this is far out and radical and like if you told 19-year-old me that like that core Insight would be like a dominant cultural shared view of of tens of millions of Americans like yes of course gender is performance um that really would have like really blown my mind at that time but I think the the the point that you're making here and this is where I think why there's this sort of sense of of anxiety is that what I think has fallen away is the is of is some sense of TS some sense of like the the implacable path of History going forward right so like I think in a sort of tra traditional Progressive which is sort of oxymoronic in its own way but like there's some way of thinking about you know and and and Marx is a clear example this right like Marx has this very clear vision of Tils he's you know explicitly hegelian in that way and that you know history moves in this direction and the the sort of vessel of history is the working class in in the moment that he's in and that that that idea has been really been broken for me I think and for for a lot of folks which is like there's not some wind at the back some some propulsive force that like in a hegelian sense like is in the woven into the fabric universe that pushes things forward and that in fact the experience of the step back to me is what's so traumatic and I think what like you know we've all everyone in this room has either through personal family members or through Reading has read the experience of a German Jewish Family in 1932 to 37 right and maybe they were you know pillars of the community and had a factory and were on the local Boards of stuff and were in the university and then we all know what that historical story of you're living one world that you think is going one way and it doesn't it goes backwards and into the worst depths of human evil that experience right the expectation that things will continue to progress or things will go on a certain trajectory I think that's the thing that's really Fallen away just I don't know why and that partly I think it's weird product of like the late 90s and the end of History stuff and the end of the Cold War and some sense of like the march of history but that to me is the thing that's Fallen away that there's nothing guaranteed about the progress which when I say it out loud I know that but I never felt it as much as I feel it now and I certainly don't in the story that I was telling I don't think it's automatic right no I know we agree that's the problem with those triumphalist ideologies I I think about it more as a story of what is actually happened time and again in this country which is the parties have had different names over time the figures have been different the issues have been different but broadly speaking there has been a long running contest between a smaller Wii and a bigger Wii should we build a bigger Wii or should we not build a bigger Wii right is that contest over slavery is contest over women's suffrage contest over social insurance in the New Deal and over time in ways that I think Progressive forces discount the bigger Wii has had a very very good run right it doesn't mean it's had an undefeated run it doesn't mean there's not backlashes you want your backlashes to be threeyear backlashes you don't want them to be like reconstruction backlashes right and so I'm not saying that this is automatic but I am saying that I think we have gotten ourselves a lot of the folks I know and kind of travel with have gotten ourselves into a psychological state where we are not winning we have never won we don't know how to win we like the these people have always had the country and they will always have the country forever and I just don't think it's a true story and I actually long for all kinds of figures in the broad pro-democracy movement to actually going going back to your first point to share a compelling vision of the future well that's so what does that mean right like I this is the thing I I try to think about and I don't know that I have the answer so I'm going to ask you and it's it's not sort of a fair question because I don't know if anyone does but like what does it look like when we win like we we win whatever that means what what's it look like and I'll give one example I was telling you this I love this example so I love this example because it's an example that's so benal but so compelling which is Lula running for election uh in Brazil in this last campaign had a campaign stop where he talked about like his vision for like what Lula ism is democratic socialism whatever in Brazil and it basically was like we want you to have a weekend where you don't have to work in your healthy and your family's healthy and you have a little place that you can go that's clean in outdoors with a grill where you can Grill up some food and you can have a beer and your friends and your family could be by and they're healthy and you don't have to worry about you're not working everyone's off and you're just enjoying being outside and Grilling and drinking beer and I thought like that is a good vision for that is a really freaking good vision for politics cuz like even as I say that I can watch you all like and you know maybe some of you don't like grilling or you don't like beer or whatever but you get you get that Groll Tomatoes if that's how you roll you get that feeling that we've all had of like when you really feel like you're you're embodied and you're yourself and you're not toiling under some yoke of stress or anxiety or work deadline where you're in a place of people you love doing something that feels free not like in the monetary sense but in like the deeper liberatory sense and as Bal as that is like you're grilling on the weekend him saying that in a campaign speech of like this is what we're about I was like that's good like that I I would sign up for that political project first of all I think Joe Biden should run in 2024 on a platform of Brazilian barbecue for all I think that would be like Fogo dechow like ntion just National um they are sponsor of today's event I'm just kid um I think that's such a great point and I think it actually the reason I love the example is it it's one of those examples that immediately makes you realize how missing something is how how how like weirdly missing something thing is so having covered and written about a lot of democratic candidates selling big bold ideas the American public in in the last decade what is so striking to me is I can I almost struggle to think of a single time I heard any of them describe an end State like this around any of these policy ideas right so think about Bernie advocating Medicare for all in my opinion a fantastic policy and in Bernie's telling of it it is about these insurance companies are doing this to you and here would be Medicare for all great all accurate valid important the correct policy and effective rhetorically buils a pretty remarkable movement around it but I think for a regular person the really transformative thing about Medicare for all would not be Medicare for all it would be what life is like if you didn't have to actually think about Healthcare very often as most people in advanced countries don't it's just not something that you sit at the kitchen table looking at paper over because there's no paper you just get your health care and you go home and like make love to your spouse or whatever they do in other countries when they're not stressed out all the time about medical bills it only happens in France yeah ex the only place it happens and so I was just really struck by the ab no one's made a video of this as far as I like what would it be like to go to the doctor in a country where we had this what would your marriage be like right like and it sounds silly but I think it's actually true like I I I think people would have much less stressed out marriages if they weren't as worried about saving this many $100,000 for college and there's all these things that we worry about that people in other countries do not worry about do not have to worry about and surely it affects how much fun we have with our friends how much joy we have in our relationships whether we read a book to our kid or snap at our kid at the end of the day and we are very bad at translating policies which if we are honest are not things most people think in terms I not a language most people maybe people in a church on a Sunday for a Book Festival are very sophisticated about policy but yall are weird and we're weird and most people Medicare for all is like a word a phrase they hear they have some idea but we're not good at picturing what the world looks like and I I would apply that to climate I think there is a in fact instead of an ideology of like we're going to take away this from you take away that from you you're going to sacrifice here there's a beautiful vision of what it looks like for us to actually finally live right with the Earth like for the first time ever there's a beautiful way to talk about that invite people into it I think there's a beautiful way to invite people into an idea of a multi-racial democracy that is not does not feel lecturing or does not feel like you don't know the right words or you but just feels like it is so much more fun when we're all there the food's going to be so much better in a multi-racial democracy um certainly the dancing and and so um I think we there's where there's often a little bit of like why are very dangerous people doing well with the electorate and sometimes we lean too easily on the kind of rigging stories they're Jerry mandering and all of that's true but it lets ourselves off the hook a little bit are we offering a truly enthralling galvanizing picture of the future where frankly so fun so compelling that even people who disagree with it on the bullet points just want to get into that party yeah it's a it's a great question I mean I think I think you're right too about the my family's leaving but hopefully it's not a vote on by Bri great to see you bye guys do not do what my family is doing they're like our future is out of this building yeah um yeah I mean I think and I think on the politics it's an important point right so there's there's there are structural reasons that you have these sort of minoritarian Institutions from the Electoral College the US Senate to the Jerry Mard maps of the states of North Carolina Ohio Wisconsin but there's also I mean you're right about that there's you can rest too easy on the rig story cuz like there's you know they're persuading people they're people of a vision that that that some people like and they listen to that and that it wins people over part of me also thinks that like it'll always be that way I mean there's a little bit when we talk about these sort of Final End States right I mean you know one of the things about liberalism in the small L sense is that it takes as a sort of Baseline stipulation that these conflicts are just enduring they're going to swirl around around different axes different conceptions of the good and those might be different things like at different times like should we or should we not have a National Bank should we have a gold back dollar or a silver back dollar should we prohibit alcohol or not like all of these seem like ludicrous debates to us now but they were really toome at at at different times in American history so one of the things that I think there's there's a little bit of tension in in the here is that liberalism sort of functions on this um you know there's a there's a famous Freud quote which I'm I'll mangle a little bit because it's translated and sort of been run through the ringer but Freud once described his project as transforming um acute misery into ordinary unhappiness well it worked and I I kind of I love that right because it's it's that that captures something in some ways I feel like you know liberalism as a political theory is a little like freudianism in that sense right like the project of liberalism is to convert like people killing each other in the streets over their factional sexal confessional racial differences into like people yelling at each other in Parliament over those same differences like and so part of what I think is a little there's a little tension of we talk about this sort of vision for the future is that like part of the project is just like we get we kind of live with each other even if like at lots of points don't love each other or like we annoy each other or we disagree with each other that getting everyone into one poity across lines of difference where you don't have routine political violence where you don't have systems of Oppression and exclusion that in of itself is kind of a world historical achievement in fact there's never ever been a enduring multi-racial democracy of our size anymore than it's us India and Brazil basically and everyone's got their own problems that's you know that's sort of what you you have and so part of the issue too is that like what the goal is and what success looks like might look like normal politics like people arguing all the time people having different conceptions of the good that's never going to go away I so agree with that and that's part of my that sense of hope I was talking about at the beginning that I think we sometimes fail to tell the most important part of the story which is the kind of America we're trying to build right now which is the cause of all of this Mayhem and the kind of reaction to it we just skipped that part of the story a lot of progressives are kind of embarrassed about talking about America as America or embarrassed about like over complimenting their own country and I am not one of those progressives I think America is an extraordinary country I think I think we need to say that more it is a flawed country it's a country that's done bad things the way most countries I know have done bad things I think sometimes again France perfect exactly the hygiene um um you know and it's interesting in this era I think often the the progressive view of America feels to me like a actually a very National view it it actually doesn't feel internationalist in its understanding of what human conditions are elsewhere and we often confuse I think a certain bad essence of America with actually just like a kind of bad essence of human beings I feel so strongly about this particularly on the question of like particularly on race and racism and and bigotry generally there is a very there can be a very cramped American view of all this stuff that like Americans invented bigotry and it's like no dude like it's it's like you know this is this is an enduring problem across every human society I mean when you look at Immigrant politics in some places you know we the this is a this is a welln universal and I mean across all kinds of different lines right we because the Central Access of this in America is race because of slavery and because of slavery is this foundational part of the American experience and I think Inseparable from any story you tell about America fully race and slavery as this sort of foundational distinguishing aspect of the country it is easy to lose sight of the fact that people find all different kinds of reasons to hate each other in all kinds of different ways such that like like you know the politics around Venezuela and refugees in Columbia right now are really really ugly really ugly there's hundreds of thousands of folks that have come from Venezuela to Columbia and there's a lot of like build a wall kick them out politics there's not a racial difference in some traditional sense that we would even conceive of it between Venezuelans and Colombians there's not a linguistic difference it's just that they're from over here and now they're here so it doesn't take much like and and you know my my family comes from India originally they my parents immigrated from India you know Isabelle Wilkerson wrote this incredible book cast comparing hierarchies of United States on Race India on cast and Nazi Germany and coming having that background of India and I I also started my career as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in India move moved to where my parents had come from finally listened to all those trolls we're like go back to where you came from so I I did um and you know India is I think this is widely agreed by people who study India India is like constitutionally not in the sense of the document but in sense of the in the bones constitutionally a hierarchical society it is the essence of how people process life it is it's not just law it is how people I mean I've seen in my first book about India where I had gone it's a very typical kind of moment in India where I had we we had friends over and we had borrowed a mattress cuz my parents were visiting when I lived there and we went to these friends house for breakfast and we forgot to return the mattress so it great breakfast and they had a cook in their house who was so gracious and you know obsequious in serving this kind of very uncomfortable way that is common in India and then two hours later having forgotten to return the mattress I went back to the same house I had changed into shorts and a t-shirt I was no longer with my whole family I carried this mattress under my arm and went to return the mattress we borrowed to same house the family was gone but the same cook who worked for them was in the house and he didn't recognize that I was the same person who'd been there for breakfast who he was so obsequiously serving he thought I was a like a delivery man and he treated me with so much cruelty you know barking put it down there put it down here and I I it took me a second to understand what was going on but it was a very defining Indian experience where this man is used to being either profoundly below you or profoundly above you and he code switches those things many times a day and I would say personally people may disagree that is a hundred times more pronounced as a way of life in India where my family came from than in this country there is for all of our flaws an idea an aspiration of natural human equality that is I don't even think a widespread ideal in India I don't think the most enlightened people in India actually think people are born equal I don't think there's a very large number of people in India who think that's a thing right all I say this to say we have to be very realistic about our problems our flawed history but there's something cool here we're trying to do there were ideals here that were actually quite compelling quite radical in their time that we have gotten actually much closer to achieving and when we start the story with the Charlotte and the and the fascists we neglect to tell the story of we are trying to build a kind of country that actually hasn't existed in history a country made of all the world people from every country on earth a country that kind of poaches Brilliant Minds and artists and scientists from everywhere and turns them into the fullest versions we failed it in all kinds of ways we've gone backwards we've gone forwards but it is a cool project India is not a country made of the world China is not a country made of the world most European countries are very safely white countries with a very carefully managed helper population we are not that actually we are actually trying to do a difficult and in my view much cooler thing and I think it's worth giving ourselves that credit and and understanding why it's going to be tough going sometimes well and I think the reason that's important is that it's very easy to fall back on um when you when you talk about building something what the future is right and I think now we're talking about building multi-racial democracy in a in a like like a fully egalitarian multiracial democracy um which we don't have which is aspirational um that it can get you see this on the right a lot um where they will fall prey to a kind of naturalistic fallacy that where they'll move between what is descriptive and what's normative right so it's like it'll be like human beings are tribal or human beings protect their own or are aggressive towards women these are these are descriptive matters and that's the way it should or has to be and I think one of the things that you can fall into in in the face of say like demagog on immigration which is very powerful right now I don't know how much Fox News you guys watch probably a lot In This Crowd yes it's big big fox crowd here um it's truly I however much you think they cover the Border it's more I mean it's really I have it on all the time for professional reasons and um and it's it's obsessive it's neurotic it's neurotic it's a it's a Neurosis it's like scratching something I mean it's like really really sick um you can you can you can start to seed too much to the Allure of demagoguery if you concede that like that's what that's what really grabs people or these these these base things and and when you see it be effective like we have seen it be effective I think it's to lose sight that like you know actually that that Vision has some appeal but one of the one of the things that I found I found really heartening and this is really true in 2022 uh and I think is actually starting is that this to my mind truly vile and Despicable obsession with the gender formation of folks with particularly trans kids has has completely Fallen flat as a broad political message like in the state of Michigan on Election Eve the keynote speaker at the big day before election day rally in Michigan on that Monday where all the Slate of candidates was was like the one swimmer who like is mad that she lost to a trans athlete do you know this woman she like goes around she's mad that she lost whatever um that was the keynote that was like the big that was the closing finish it's like here you are in front of the state of Michigan which we know is a swing state to be like here's our message to you Michigan about why you should elect us and Senate and Congress and governor and it's like because someone lost a swim race and it didn't work they got their butts kicked they've gotten their butts kicked so much on this issue that they've basically dropped it they didn't say the word woke once in the last Republican debate so I think there can be this liberal thing that happens where you see that kind of hateful message and you think like oh god oh no here it comes it's going to work it's going to work it's going to work this is what people want to hear and it is worthwhile to a give people credit and B also have some confidence that like a vision of like inclusivity can beat a vision of us first them a vision of you know all of us in together can actually work against we vers them like it it can and has many many times in recent memory through the course of the American experiment I think that's right I I think they're very wedge appeals like that or on CRT or on um you know the book bands and things like that I don't think that that's not the thing that makes me most um concerned about the rights appeals if I if I kind of look at it forensically as what is it doing tactically and strategically that does most worry I mean that I frankly I think you know the pro democracy side could learn from I think in spite of the stupidity of those appeals the right is very good and I talk about this in the persuaders quoting Alicia Garza the right is very good at giving people a sense of home and I think we are often asking people for their vote transactionally often asking disaffected people whose lives have not been improved by voting in the past to believe that their lives will be improved going forward by voting and the right is offering a home a an in and and they the right has home at all levels like if you're a you know minority of a right-wing person on Harvard Law School campus there's a home in the Federalist Society if you homeschool your kids there these networks where you can connect and there's a home gun clubs are a home you know uh if 20,000 person mega churches where you go multiple times a week our homes they have a very elaborate infrastruct and and just rally Trump like there's a there's an kind of human understanding of people's desire to be part of things frankly there's an understanding a shrewd understanding of just how bored and stuck in routine a lot of people are how lonely a lot of people are and in a kind of derated country how far people live from family how little people have in terms of human Connection in many parts of this country and there's a provision of home and the wedge some the wedge issues are sometimes just the way to like try to coax people in but the home is real and when I look at the pro democracy side of the argument I don't see a similar interest or skill at building political homes right I don't I don't see in here in Brooklyn New York a very you know solidly Progressive place I don't see a lot of hanging out a lot of kind of organizing in physical space along these lines I was asked in the in the Trump era pre-co I was asked for $5 as as all of us have been you know more times than I can remember I can't think of a time that I was invited to Fort green park by those same email lists saying let's let's go stand together and you know sing songs celebrating immigrants when our immigrants are being maligned or just anything anything hanging out doing things just seeing like a physical presence right all this amazing Mutual Aid stuff happened at a scattered local level in Co was a Democratic party or any of these larger structures involved with any of it did they send one email saying okay that's a great idea let's have 1 million people from this mailing list put out a community fridge in their neighborhood here's how you do it here's how you connect with others nothing so at some level I worry less about these kind of bogus issues which come and go but I do worry that there is a lack of Interest around real social infrastructure and real human infrastructure and real like a a kind of movement that that hangs out that sees each other yeah I mean I think that's that's true I mean part of the reason that I wanted to come do this today other than my admiration for you and Astra and your your work is that I really like this event Brooklyn Book Festival um and I got you know I got three kids and not that much time off and and so um you know I was like oh Sunday but I like this event because of you know what this is right here which is a kind of home and and part of the thing I think that's difficult about defining home is that the more more pluralistic your Coalition is the more variegated and Prismatic their definition of home's going to be like so you know the the the the sort of the the huge thing that you're trying to do when you're trying to lasso a bunch of people across lines of difference into a coalition is people have very different views of home and and part of what we're trying to do right is to say like whatever your vision of home is is good with us and we're knitted together but the question of like defining what that thing is right like this this is one specific vision of it which I'll be honest like I like right like I'm a Cosmopolitan Brooklyn nerd so I like the Brooklyn Book Festival this is what we call a safe space for you yeah right yes this is a very this is a safe space um and you know the Acoustics in this beautiful uh church are are great um thank you for hosting us um so yeah this is what it looks like to me but you know a lot of people won't this would be like the the you know the last thing in the world later tonight I'm going to go to the Jets Chiefs game at MetLife Stadium where a lot of people in the tailgate party will feel at home different idea of very different scene than this scene right but part of the trick here right the tricky thing is like you want to get the people in that Stadium tailgating at the metti game and the folks in this room like together in the same Coalition but like those are real different visions of home and and that's that's that's the real tricky work rhetorically and you I mean you write about this in persuaders right because part of the the the the the the work and I've gotten very I've gotten very zealous about this as time has gone on and as the threat to democracy has grown and I think also because it's it's professionally the only thing I have any expertise in is the only thing that I know anything about in a deep way is trying to communicate for large groups of people in a Democratic Society that's it that's the one my one pretty good skill job it and I mean I talk for living which is a strange thing but that's the only thing I know that that you know I've done my 10,000 hours on that I've done 10 years of it I've done 15,000 segments i' I've I've put a lot of thought and repetition and I I don't have it figured out but it's a but it's a thing I think a lot about and that is what the pro the project of trying to get the folks at the who I'm going to see later tonight the metti stadium and and these folks who by the way like are in a political Coalition together by and large to feel something deeper than the thin connection of politics right because that's what you're talking about you know your your political part of your stuff that's thin stuff that's the you know home is deeper but the Deep stuff across lines of difference is tricky and and rhetoric and persuasion and talking and how you communicate ends up being a huge part of the project of bridging those I think that's so true I'm going to stick with this kind of party metaphor this party and that party or this Festival in that tailgate um because I think those of us who think about politics a lot which again this room is probably skewing very off the charts we are not normal necessarily um overthinks how people's allegiances form and I think sometimes the secret to pulling people in is just kind of being the more fun party not in the political sense but like in the like party sense like music and drinks sense um and when you look at it that way the right is again it's offering this insanely dystopian Vision but in certain ways it it is able to cast itself as the more fun party Trump rallies are parties and we are on the pro democracy side I think very head oriented very brain oriented very policy oriented very facts oriented very fact check oriented very outrage oriented and sometimes forget to just be more fun than the other side right just be enticing so that if someone is walking by the kind of proverbial undecided person is walking by they're like what's going on in there yeah I was I was quoting to you uh as we walked over here I saw a great tweet once I I can't remember the person's name sadly but the the Tweet was the secret to winning in politics is to have your side not be totally exhausting and sometimes in the righteousness in the beautiful pluralist Visions we have in all of that in all the righteous fights sometimes overall our cause can read as tedious as hair splitting as kind of judgy as like you got to have it all figured out to get in instead of we're self-confident enough that if you don't get it all you can still come in and we'll help you get it and not really expansionary not actually interested in converts thinking of a church um and I think this needs to be reversed I think actually the kind of vision of multiracial democracy we've been talking about a vision of living healthfully in tandem with the Earth that we've been talking about these need to be offered to people as not just important and righteous and like fact derived but fun projects to be part of fun and good it it'll actually be quite fun to save the planet Earth in our lifetime that's actually sounds kind of great how is that not being offered to us as a thrilling project like how did this get reduced to a solar credit I want to be summoned I want my president to be telling me to show up somewhere in tandem with this whole neighborhood on Saturday doing something people are willing to struggle people are willing to sacrifice think of the awful Wars and people are willing to give a lot but you have to explain to them what they're doing it for what that picture of the future is what them you have to help them make the meaning around it and you have to kind of convey a joy even in that struggle and I think all the ingredients for it exist saving the Earth is is is a good thing a fun thing a multi-racial society is a fun thing with much better food so on and so forth and I am frustrated but also hopeful um that we will be able to figure out not just telling people the policies that will get there or lecturing people about their you know failure to be future compliant um but actually summoning people into something that they just can't wait to get into Anan gas um wait wait wait I have some business to attend to hold on second give me one second it's not here um any questions or what happens now no so the next thing is going to Happ happen is um he's GNA anan's going to go back there and if you would like him to you can purchase books back there yeah and sign books back there um I'm going to get on my bike and bike back to my kids um but uh thank you so much for joining us this was really wonderful really really appr than you Chris thank you 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