John Judis: The Politics of Our Time

become a sustaining member of the commonwealth  club for just ten dollars a month join today to the commonwealth club i'm george  hammond chair of the humanities forum   and also here as the moderator of a program  sponsored by the commonwealth club to speak   today we have john judas the well-known political  commentator and political theorist and he has a   new book on the politics of our time um which is  a lot of very interesting ideas that we're going   to go into in just a second but first i'd like  to welcome our online audiences we've been doing   these programs for well over a year now have i  think more than 500 programs online um and we are   thinking about making you know live programs we're  thinking ahead just in the next couple of months   but we are still going to keep doing our  online programs until we can reopen live   at the commonwealth club's offices at 110 the  embarcadero in san francisco so welcome to   another one of our online programs our virtual  discussions with authors and uh john is with   us from the east coast where are you located john  you're in new york sid silver spring maryland okay   been here for a long time so uh first of all you  call the book the politics of our time but in   your book you also talk about how this these are  ideas that have been going on a long time and talk   about their history you you talk about three big  issues populism nationalism and socialism and and   all of those ideas have come and gone and come and  go on you know over the decades over the centuries   one of the things i like to think about these  things is that no idea in in human politics is new   uh they're all there and have been there before  it's just that they lose and gain market share   so to speak over time but this time we have three  big issues three big approaches which are gaining   market share and they coalesced uh together  in ways and not just in the united states but   throughout europe and in other locations so um i  thought your your perspective on europe on top of   everything else was very very helpful that this is  not just an american phenomenon this is something   that's happening everywhere so one of the things  is you compare to different times in the past um   how a lot of people talk about this these  20s especially because of the pandemic   matching the spanish flu etc that they  are going to be just the same as before   and that scares people of course because of what  happened in the 30s and the 40s so why don't you   explain what you think the differences are the  similarities and the differences are what we're   up to right now with what you mean with the uh  with what happened in the 1920s with with the   with with the increase in interest in socialism  in the 1920s and and and nationalism obviously   too and there were populism media was a little  earlier than that but but the three issues that   you write about were all happening in the 1920s  but you you cogently described the difference   uh between then and now and i thought that would  be useful for people who are worried we're about   to repeat history okay well okay we'll take a  journey through the past now i don't uh you know a   lot of people now talk about a civil war happening  in america and about our facing a time of uh   similar to central europe with fascism coming um  my in my mind the best comparison is probably from   the 1890s to 19 late 1920s early 1930s when we had  an agrarian agrarian economy uh beginning to um   lose its standing in america you know even after  the civil war most people were worked on farms   and you had a an array of protest movements on  the left and the right um populist socialists   kuka's clan really revives after a world war one  and you have these moments of where everything   seems to blow up like the early that time  of the influenza 1918 1919 the united states   mass strikes um formation of the communist party  also the again and again the clan revives then you   have these race riots in chicago tulsa so we're  having these moments of ferment but everything   has not quite come together and one of the things  i look look at is and again this is similar to   the late 1920s early 1930s is that we're really  in a time where big government is on the rise   where the public sector is going to have to take  a much larger role in our lives and you know we   see that with the pandemic we see it with climate  change we see it with the problem that we now have   with global supply chains where you know there was  a big article in the new york times today about   of apple's uh dependence on china yeah you know  that's going to be a that's going to be a big   issue again how to what extent are we going to  bring things home what to what extent can we   so in that context it's very similar to the kind  of things that happened in the late 1920s when   you know older ideas about the relationship  between government and the economy uh became   suddenly became in came into question uh we're  now at a time where things like free trade   is no longer an obvious good in the way it was  you couldn't you can't simply appeal to that   so we're going to have a much more government  intervention the question is what direction it   takes and i mean there's sort of three extremes  uh one is what happened in central europe where   you have the the right-wing version fascism um you  know there's some scary kind of things happened uh   after no after the november election um they're  really um unique in the history of this country   really where the the very base most basic thing  about a democracy in many ways is the succession   the the idea that rulers succeed  each other through election   thrown into question so you know you saw one you  talked about the headlines i have something that's   perfect right here ripped from the headlines  there was this news about trump uh in a few days   after um the uh lost losing the election having a  memo done to bring the troops home from everywhere   throughout the world didn't happen obviously um  right but but uh that kind of um action i mean   it would seem to me at least that that if  that gets well known and more widely uh   distributed in terms of information to people  military can't possibly have been happy about   finding out that that was no no i mean there  was um you know that there was you'd call it   a popular front against trump uh yeah after the  election that uh involved most of the country's   elites uh business uh military um they  refused to cooperate with this stuff   including judges that trump himself uh had  appointed so you know we didn't have our   uh we didn't have our 1923 beer hole i mean we  didn't we didn't have a we didn't have a major   fascist episode in the country and i said but  you know again these things can get resolved in   in a right-wing direction they can we can  go in a new deal kind of direction which is   what biden's trying to do or we can be in a  kind of situation that britain was in in the   1930s where we just muddle through where there's  a kind of difficulty making any decisions um and   i think that i look towards these 2022 elections  as being very important because i think that'll   really be an indication whether we're going to  have in this country kind of what our political   scientists called an unstable equilibrium  between the parties where they keep changing   uh places and where legislation and initiatives  that one does get undone by the other or whether   we are going to really go in a new direction and  and you know again there's intimations of that   in what biden is proposing uh not even so much  in relief but in the in the jobs infrastructure   stuff um so but we'll have to see because if if  the democrats lose the congress if they lose even   the house in 2022 he's going to be stalled and  it's going to be like obama was from 2014 to 2016.   again we're in a kind of critical period the way  we were in the late 20s and the way europe was   as well but it's not it hasn't resolved  itself we're in the middle of it right now   let's do a little more history then you  had some very interesting observations   um about we'll talk about populism first it's a  very interesting observations about both huey long   and george wallace and one of the  things you said about george wallace   i i had not read anywhere which was that he really  wasn't such a strident racist when he got started   that he actually did it for political  reasons more than anything else   maybe maybe not anything else but at least he  had mixed motives about it and i was wondering   how many populists you know that are uh you  know that stoke the racist fire that do you   think are actually sincere about their racism and  and how many do it just because it's good politics   yeah yeah that's a good question and we actually  don't know the answer i mean with wallace he   starts out as a new dealer and it's out as uh  influenced by the you yui long anyways and uh   he loses his election i can't remember who's  58 or 60 and he uses this phrase that he's   not going to be out niggered again i mean you  know a racist um demagogue and curiously though   when he comes reelected again i think what 76 or  78 and uh he goes back to the old george wallace   so it was opportunism i look at a guy like this  guy josh hawley the senator of missouri from   stanford very fancy elite background i had  him in my in the early versions of my books   and because i a lot of what he talked  about and what marco rubio talks about too   um rings again as a as a kind of conservative but  a benign way to deal with what the problems that   are facing us he talks about the problems with  market fundamentalism the kind of politics that   reigned from reagan on where let the free market  have have its hand don't let government intervene   but then this guy gets involved in  the january 6 to stop the steal of   the action and i start scratching my  head so i think he's a good example i i   in my revised version of the books i  wrote them out because i figured you know   i don't know uh yeah rubio though is an example of  a of a more you know again a conservative version   again you know the kinds of things that  biden is trying to do uh not pro-union um   probably not in taxes protect you know gonna  gonna do the kind of progressive taxation reform   that biden wants to do but again the need for  government to um help people uh develop industries   develop especially in these left behind towns in  the midwest and south so again uh that that's the   kind of you know the republican party might go  in that direction or it might go in a very dark   direction and to what extent they're driven by  opportunism my you know we don't we don't know   i mean i think that marjorie taylor green really  does believe all the nonsense she talks about the other people you know you get like  kevin mccarthy is all over the place i mean   i think he is he's mostly has his ear to the  political ground yeah good good good comparison   examples um you have a lot of statistics or  analysis of who voted for whom and and not   just in america but also in europe and uh one  of the conclusions that you reached was that   there's sort of this as you've been talking about  right wing and left-wing populism for example um   sort of right-wing and left-wing nationalism and  you you sort of indicated that the right-wing uh   you know versions of these things tend to thrive  in a wealthier situation and the left-wing   tend to tr thrive in a less wealthy a poorer  situation and you're doing especially when you're   talking about europe and northern and southern  um does that make you wonder whether we're in   you know as as the world becomes wealthier or  as the civilization becomes wealthy that we   are in for more right-wing versions of this  than we've had before i mean that's are you   concerned about that no i thought europe  is such a special case because of the euro   and the way really euro the euro adherence  to the euro and adherence to the growth and   stability pack which limits each country as far  as it's uh what it can do to help the economy   and they you know the other thing is you can't  do state aid you can't do industrial policy as   individual states uh really has strangled the  left so i mean what we've seen in the last few   years is a lot of the left-wing populists in the  south of europe almost in spain when i always get   their names mixed up the five million whatevers  in italy visa in greece have have really fallen by   the wayside and um because they really aren't able  to do anything uh as a within a nation and uh what   becomes much more viable is a kind of right-wing  uh populism there as well as in the north   where you're uh mainly banging the drums about uh  about immigration a welfare tourism i mean you're   for a you know a really good national health  system but you know for the people who were there   and the people who might sneak in the country  so it's a so even in the know i'd say of all   europe as a whole uh the more conservative kind of  populism really has uh has had a much met longer   life than the left-wing varieties that sprung up  in 2015 2016. um the united states is different   we have a they have a different situation here  we have much more flexibility of what we can do   and what the parties can do so you know we have  we have furman on the left and the right here   um you you said in your book um that the american  system uh the voting structure tends to move the   parties and politics towards the middle on  both sides um but in the last few decades   there there have been there have developed uh  extreme groups in both parties um and i was   wondering if you attributed that to gerrymandering  or the safety of the seats and therefore the the   the primaries became the crucial uh election when  the seat was safe for a particular party or or if   you think that there's another reason why there's  a growth on the left in the democratic party and   even faster growth on the  right in the republican party   i i think again i i would compare maybe  now to the fifth 19 let's say the 1950s   but you really didn't have the kind of splinter  movements to the same extent on on the left and   the right and certainly not on the on the left uh  you know i think we are in a time and we've been   here for 20 years or more but certainly since the  great recession where a lot of um accepted wisdom   is uh in the waste basket and when  you're really having to rethink uh their   the direction they want the country to go to and  where the kind of differences geographically and   demographically have we have widened between  somebody living in small towns let's say in   the midwest and somebody living where i live  in metropolitan dc or the or the bay area   culture the cultural differences have come  to the fore but they're partly underlain   by the economic so that has nourished  politics on the left and the right the   difference between the united states and europe  probably is that in europe because they have   multi-party systems proportional voting  you know various other kinds of deals   a party can stay around that's getting only  seven per or eight percent in the in the polls   and then suddenly spring to life when let's say on  angela merkel lets in a million uh refugees from   syria within six months and all of a sudden the  alternative for deutschland goes from two percent   in the polls to what's i think 16 percent and ends  up as the main opposition party and you know now   it's back to like ten eight or nine percent but  it'll probably stay around in the united states   things really flicker and die in that way and only  when you have a really big upheaval like we had   great great depression uh civil war where  the parties realign in a dramatic way   we we're not there yet what we have are two  parties that both have uh extremes attached   to them and the elections are almost going to be  decided as to which which extreme becomes more   more more salient i mean one of the reasons the  democrats did well in 2020 and they won let's say   in a state like georgia where they want two senate  seats was that people were we were identifying   republicans with trump who was you know believe  it or not very unpopular guy i mean you know   with three percent unemployment or something in  2018 the republicans lost the lost the house so   the the the the trump became salient and if he  ran again in 2024 that would be fine if if on   the other hand people mainly are voting on the  democrats as identified with causes like defund   the police then the democrats could be in trouble  so you know i mean we have we hey we vote both   sides um you know i'm a little more sympathetic  to the left than the right but there are a lot of   a lot of problems with the extremes on the  left and you can look at a you know portland   seattle and places like that that really where  the um protests that were entirely justifiable   descended into mayhem on looting and into demands  that turned out to be totally dysfunctional um   to see the kind of potentials that we have on on  the democratic side for a kind of craziness that   could again identify the democrats with that so so  that's the kind of stalemate we're in uh right now   well you're you know more of an analyst than a  prophet i'm sure um but the what's going on in   israel right now of course has has brought  up another split in the democratic party   um and i was wondering if you thought that  that was going to you know become stronger and   stronger and whether that was going to affect  democratic politics here uh no i don't think   it'll affect democratic politics that much i  mean it'll affect fundraising to some extent   you know i i i'm jewish myself and i  wrote a book on truman and israel and um   i have my extremely strong feelings about  it and and my feelings run along pretty   much along the lines of sanders and the  people who were who who want to see us um   use our whatever powers we have to force  the israelis to find some kind of peaceful   resolution to what's going on there and to end  the occupation but that part of the world has   less and less influence on our politics here and  the reason is because oil is not as important   we're relatively self-sufficient you know 50 60  years ago it was an enormous deal now it's more   gonna get fought out uh uh you know dearborn  michigan with a lot of palestinians are going   to be very mad if biden ends up not doing anything  forceful uh in new york city and parts of you know   orthodox new york city or my neighbors and  kemp miller got to be mad if he puts a lot of   pressure on on israel but i don't think it's uh  i don't think it's going to be a decisive issue   in american politics itself well um let's go  since we're just in foreign policy in in your   portion on nationalism i thought you you  did a great and concise job of explaining   where our u.s foreign policy stumbled seriously  time and time again especially in the middle east   but we were just talked about that but on russia  and china and i i'm always reminded of you know   not that we did something that caused japan to  to to uh engage in world war ii uh directly but   that we handled the whole situation so stupidly  from you know 1900 until 1930 that we certainly   were a proximate cause or whatever you mean just  something off to the side and it seems to me that   you you had a very good beat on both what we  did wrong in russia and china and what their   nationalism if we don't take it into account we're  just going to keep getting it totally wrong and i   really love to hear you you know tell everybody  your your perspective on both of those issues   oh boy yeah yeah even if it takes the rest of the  hour i i thought it was no no no it's the most   crucial most crucial uh i think um part of the  knowledge about you know where we could go wrong   dealing with both russia and china in the next 20  years is we certainly don't want to repeat what we   just have done for the last 30. well i you know  uh during the iraq war i wrote a book called the   folly of empire that was about the lessons we  could have learned from theodore roosevelt and   woodrow wilson both of whom um started out in some  senses as especially uh t theodore roosevelt as   proponents of american imperialism and ended up in  different ways seeing that uh what could go wrong   but that kind of evangelical vision of america of  what we can do and what it's possible for us to do   uh has functioned in such a ways to get us into  situations where we really don't appreciate uh   other countries and what their national interest  is and other people and how they see their own   destinies and you know the obvious thing and  what sparked me to write the book at the time   was iraq where we thought that um you know that i  didn't think so but the people who were in charge   in washington thought that the american troops  would be greeted with uh you know flowers and   confetti and parades and stuff like that instead  we got into a you know decade-long war russia   uh early 1990s cold war ends we get into again  this kind of evangelical and i'm not using it in   terms of probably you know the modern protestant  but again the idea of america is the new israel   is an example of changing the world we get  to this idea that word that there is uh that   it's that we're a unipolar world and that we can  really change the world according to our image   we don't appreciate uh russia so  we go ahead uh contrary to what we   uh promised to gorbachev and expand nato and  we're still living with the results of that um   you know you have to go through the particulars  but again the rise of putin is a product partly   of the way we uh propped up yeltsin in in russia  and that was again based on the idea that we   could bring some kind of free market capitalism  to russia which descended into a kleptocracy   and uh you know and partly on the idea that russia  wouldn't mind if we kept expanding the the reach   of our alliance to their borders so you know  both these things um lead to to putin's rise as   a nationalist china we're under the illusion that  uh if we put them in the wto they will become not   only a free market capitalist but capitalism  nourishes democracy and that we would get a   you know we we would after a decade or two get a  country that was very congenial that was sort of   a huge version of let's say south korea which did  begin as a dictatorship and ended up now it was a   wonderful country and stuff but you know it didn't  work out that way and not only did it not work out   that way from the standpoint of their government  but trade relations they were able to take   advantage of the rules of the wto as a developing  country um to outprice us and you know put a lot   of industries out of business in the united states  two million well i don't know you know there's   different estimates but um again that contributed  a lot to the rise of trump and biden himself   is still trying to figure out how we deal with  china and china's economy and with a lot of the   companies like apple as we learned today from the  new york times um who have this incredible stake   in china and in fact are inc are contributing to  the uh dictatorship that's going on there that   kind of cyber dictatorship so in all these cases  not appreciating other people's national interests   having this kind of view  of the world that we could   make the world remake the world in our image has  led to all kinds of mistakes in our foreign policy   i'm sure freud would have a field day with the  idea of how we project what we don't even have   here on to everybody else and say that they  can get there in three years or whatever   whatever it's just it seems um so um  well afghanistan is the latest and it's   it's a tragic situation there i mean you know we  can't do anything i guess we have to leave but   a lot of girls and schools are going to get  killed it's just it's an awful situation but   again it's intractable we don't know we can't  remake that country and we've tried for what   you know 18 years or something yeah and we  we you mentioned about the promises that we   made to russia about not you know not bringing  nato to its doorstep and so on and i think of   the promises that were made to the kurds at the  time of you know the the first war against saddam   or the kuwait war um and then you know so every  everybody should revolt against saddam you know   and then when they did we didn't do anything you  know and then it was particular yeah the shiites   and the kurds right exactly okay and and so after  you do something like that it's very hard uh for   either of those groups to trust america is not a a  good colonial power we don't do good at that stuff   i mean i'm being partly sarcastic i mean but you  know the british had you know 100 years of stuff   occupying places screwing around with them but the  united states goes in we really are not very good   at uh becoming a uh you know the uh the the having  this the lord mountbattens are not around in the   united states to take over uh in the same way and  so we screw things up and you know pi if you think   that's electrical america do you think that's  to our credit as americans that we can't be good   colonialism it's not to our credit that we try  it that we think we can do it that's the problem   we go in and we're really uh we really don't  have it and we don't have the public commitment   to doing that thing and people are not with  us on that kind of adventurous foreign policy   but again if you you know again our  immigration crisis with central america   underdeveloped countries still dealing with  um uh you know almost failed state regime   kind of things to what extent is that a legacy of  american you know la imperialism in the central   america um i don't i don't know but we haven't  done a good job there the french are dealing with   algeria tunisia you know all those countries they  get the immigrants and some of them start blowing   things up and now you have an enormous political  crisis there and people are talking about maybe   marine le pen can win the next election i don't  think so but again the uh the failure of their   imperial adventure in north africa coming back to  haunt them yeah um you mentioned evil morales in   bolivia um in his 2006 election as an example um  of a populist uh leader and uh you didn't flesh   it out very much uh in in the book as an example  i was wondering if you wanted to talk a little   bit about that background i have a little bit of  personal background on that that i'd get to in   a second yeah you know 400 times more than i do  about okay i'm not i'm not a i don't know a lot   about latin america and i'm not going to fool your  audience into thinking i know anything about it   well i'm not a political analyst but i i did it  was just interesting it was like one of those um   butterfly wings events uh you know that that you  just can't believe how how it lined up but i was   doing some work uh for bolivia four um you know  having uh more uh elect water energy hydropower   plants being built and stuff like that for la  paz and uh then in 2000 and 2001 there was the   uh crisis in california's electric system which  was caused which nobody knew at the time but was   caused by enron's traders and and so we were  down in in bolivia working on something else   and the government tried to get us involved in the  idea of taking their natural gas and bringing it   down to the coast and then bringing that to to up  to california so that because natural gas was what   would really supply the electric power industry  but they worked on this for for oh about a year   or something like that and it was interesting  that the history got in the way because it cost   300 million dollars to develop this to go through  peru and it costs only 50 million to do it through   chile but they didn't want to do it through chile  because they would have to use the land that chile   had taken from them in the 1890s in a war so so  that was politically impossible so anyway they had   this whole thing going on for about a year and a  half in the government and it was during that time   that people got fed up with the whole idea and  that evil morales began campaigning in 2001 2002   saying that this you're giving away our natural  resources and you can't do that and he became   elected to a lower level office and he developed  his whole growth was based on this thing going   wrong which was designed to develop their natural  gas industry that was based upon enron's traders   cheating california and california not realizing  that that was what happened and that's politics   right and that's that's a and enable morales  then ran the country for a long time and if enron   traders had not done their theft of the market  uh you know and and so on the manipulation of   the market that probably would have never  happened oh and they had a succession crisis   i do know that yeah and they just and they and  they just said yeah exactly so it it's it's um   as you say there's always got to be um a catalyst  for things to come out there's you know the events   keep moving along in a certain direction but  something has to catalyze it to to make it move in   in a in a different direction so um you we  the last time we talked we talked about the   last portion of the book on socialism but i  i think it's really useful to go over again   some of the big principles um that you lay  out because you you talk about how socialism   um has a lot of different strains and you talk  a lot about bernie of course and uh and that   was we last time we talked it was before the  election and bernie was still in the election   process um but it's interesting how you laid  out where socialism has gone since marx or or or   you know and since communism and everything  and i think it's very helpful for people who   keep throwing around the word socialism now  to show a little bit about those different   uh entrance ways for socialism into our  society and how different they are well i i i   i wrote the book um because uh to my  astonishment as a socialist from the 60s   i you had this guy bernie sanders in 2015 2016  getting uh more votes in the democratic primary   than trump and clinton put together and running  as a democratic socialist so you know something   happened in the in the meantime and i i think  that what you saw with sanders and what you see   in the united states and to some extent also in  europe uh is that um the the young people are   rediscovering socialism but the socialism they're  rediscovering is not the socialism of karl marx or   vi lenin or trotsky or stalin or mao or you  know chavez or castro or any of those people   but much more similar to a kind of advanced  social democracy that you find you know again   in scandinavia to some extent in germany  france um where the public sector has has   a much larger control where there's a really  uh robust uh safety net where people don't   have to worry about health care they don't have  to worry about the losing a job in the same way   that americans do they don't have to worry about  housing all these kind of different things where   there's a kind of platform under people and where  again or ordinary people and workers have more say   in their government and what what's going on where  workers are on boards of directors where unions   are more powerful now a lot of what's happening  in europe with the formation of the eu is that the   social democracy that was built there after world  war ii has eroded but the socialist parties that   have tried to uh find their way in that are simple  i have been throttled by the rules of the eu   uh united states um again we have a very divided  population for people who grew up in the cold war   a lot of people still identify socialism with  russia or you know in south florida with uh   venezuela uh so uh cuba and so for them it's not  their democratic socialism is a kind of oxymoron   uh there and it became and i think abigail  spamberger the politician from virginia made   this point that the a lot of the congressional  candidates in swing districts i had to say i'm   not a socialist i don't believe in defunding the  police etc etc so so right now it's really a it's   a fledgling kind of movement and trend in american  cultural and political life but it's not a kind   it's not it's not it doesn't have the status let's  say of the conservatism that arose in the 50s and   60s and would capture the uh republican party  i think that you know what you see instead is a   kind of shadow socialism where some of the same  principles are at work but they're not called   socialists and you know to my amazement uh biden  has has really moved very far to to his own left   um in the course of his campaign and presidency  i mean he's advocating things in terms of uh   taxation in terms of making uh unions mandatory  and federal jobs um invested different kinds   of investment that you know would have been  uh were foreign to the obama people in 2009   2010 so so we're moving in that direction but it's  not going to you know i don't think it's going to   be called socialism maybe in 20 or 30 years when  you know when us old people die off and uh again   because there's a certain attraction to the word  socialism social versus individual cooperation   um it has christian roots uh socialism in the  19th century so again there's this very attractive   thing about it but it's also got a very a very  bad name from the soviet union and china and so   my my favorite anonymous quote is an idea is  not responsible for the people who believe in it   yeah that's right so yeah wasn't  happy about marxist you know exactly   um in in looking back uh again uh one of the  things i found uh charming about your book uh   was uh when you you talk about sort of uh what's  useful about nationalism you know and what's not   useful about national you talk about what's useful  about social what's not useful about social media   taken in this direction and you you have a kind  of common sense idea about both of them how that   they can develop a better society for us but i  thought some of the ideas you you you laughed in   your in your in this version of the book a little  bit and you said be careful what you wish for you   might get it and you were talking about donald  trump because he actually did a little bit with   the nationalism that you were thinking should be  done but he did it in such a way that it was not   right not what you were looking for so why  don't you talk a little bit about that when   you present an idea and then politics  runs away with it in a different way   because it must be fascinating to watch anything  get done but then it gets done never the way i'm   sure you think about it right well you know it's  nationalism is a major issue now in a way that   socialism isn't i mean it's a major issue in  the uk it's a major issue in the united states   and the democrats on the left are going  to have to come to terms with it and   uh to to some to some real extent by biden has  done so and the the the basic idea is this that   um people are born and raised in a country and  come to see themselves as citizens as common as   having a common ground with other people in that  country as americans as french as what have you   and that kind of common sense ability  is essential for a democracy to have a   democracy you have to believe that other  people should have a right to determine   uh who's going to be the president and if they if  a majority of them believe the x and you believe   why you're still going to accept it because you're  all americans uh you know again if you say if   you had mexicans or you know people from belgium  voting in our elections it would be very strange   and it might be a little discordant and you might  not you know people wouldn't accept the results   if you have a welfare state if you have a state  where you're going to give unemployment insurance   to people where you're going to give them old age  insurance i have to be able to believe that the   taxes that i'm paying are going to go to somebody  that i'll never know i'll never see but you know   who's worthy of getting them because that person  is also an american and is also paying taxes or if   it not make that because they're you know got  hit by a car or whatever got that handsome so   you have to have this basic kind of national trust  and feeling and a lot of the problems we're having   in the united states in europe and uk is because  it's that kind of common sentiment is fraying   and it's fraying in you know obviously in  in two extreme ways on the one hand you get   you know whatever white nationalists crazies   and on the other hand you get people that say well  the american revolution was crap it was really   made in order to promote uh slavery and america is  basically a racist nation you know in other words   nothing good about it i was when i went to britain  uh for the labor conference before the election   i was just amazed at how the people were  running running down their own country and   you know blaming it for climate change because it  started the industrial revolution uh thinking that   you know it should pay reparations to all these  different countries you you again countries are   good and bad and we have we it's a complicated  thing but if we start questioning the basic what   we have in common uh then we get into trouble and  suddenly people don't support an advanced welfare   state suddenly they start questioning uh democracy  i mean one of the things again this was you know   you wonder why the labor party is now uh on you  know on the verge of collapse people that they at   their labor conference voted to allow eu anybody  who came from the eu to vote in the national   elections in other words they wanted you know if  somebody came over to work you know for six months   they should be able to vote as the prime minister  now that just struck me as crazy because again   you're you're violating a base a basic kind of  thing a nation is for us for our last 300 or   whatever years the basic unit on which we have to  found our democracies and welfare states then if   you start taking that away you get into trouble  and you know that's the kind of trouble that the   eu is in because it's again overreached i think in  terms of what it wanted to take control of common   trade customs union all these common foreign  policy fine but when you get again into dictating   the economic policies of each member country  then you're going to get chaos and you know i i   i didn't get to include the chaos over the vaccine  and what happened there with astrazeneca but that   was a perfect example of again the dysfunction  of that kind of supranational institution so   again nations as basic units is important and that  we have to respect that but it can obviously go   crazy it can go awry and that's what happened with  uh trump and the mec you know mexican rapists and   you know charlottesville and what what  have you we've had we've had a real bout of   very malignant nationalism but that shouldn't  lead us uh to reject the principle and when   you know joe biden talks about he wants  to make a united states he's got that   it's united that's very good wants to make things  made in america very good those are those are good   sentiments and we should support that so that's  my that's my pitch on uh nationalism well you you   talk in your book about how it's an outgrowth or  or a a bigger version of the feelings people have   for their own families you know and maybe the  clan and then moves out to the whole nation and   so so that significant issues uh why why you would  think big bigger cultural issues would matter do   we all agree on democracy do we all agree on  this but actually language if we all speak the   same language that's probably more important  to most people as they would in the family but   your statement about it just reminded me that  you know a family will invite lots of people to   certain things but other things they're never  going to invite anybody outside their family   to because this is just this is just the family  and everybody in the family and they may not even   like their family members as much as they like  some of the people outside but they'll still   draw the line around around their family so um  writ large it seems to me what nationalism often   amounts to in spite of the fact that that  has both positive and negative elements to it   right it's a i use a comparison of again if you  think of of circles the first family biological   you really it's very hard i mean you know people  are orphans and things like that but families are   knit together by this biology at the very other  extreme i'd say are sports fans you know i'm   i've i gave up the oakland raiders finally  when they moved to las vegas you know   you know for a long time but you know you give  you you're not you give up your allegiance even   though it's important to people i mean i you know  i i'm i don't think i'm the only one who would   i go to i'm depressed at night when the cubs  chicago cubs my baseball team loses it's a it's   an allegiance but again nation is closer obviously  with nation you know they're people who emigrate   and our country was you know based finally on  people who left england but there is this kind   of common feeling and common sentiment  and we have our holidays thanksgiving   um the battle about the monuments again is very  much about american history and about being an   american so we are we are going through a period  of real upheaval in terms of the definition of   american and uh if we don't have that if we  don't have that common feeling then we are do   splinter as we are splintering along a sort  of social cultural as well as economic lines   um you you talked in your book about um somewheres  and anywheres and then you you said anywheres are   really actually cosmopolitan and you gave away  you just mentioned the chicago cubs you gave   away your chicago roots uh in in your book uh by  saying when you when you said well cosmopolitans   have more identity between themselves and  other big cities than they would between   racine and something else and you mentioned  racine wisconsin as if everybody would know   what racine was but you have to be from from the  chicago area to no racing so i thought that was   interesting i didn't even remember mentioning  racine i've been there i i grew up in kenosha everybody knows because of canada and  everyone knows kenosha now but they   didn't didn't before but anyway so the chicago  cubs and being depressed about them not winning   that's a an experience it's a matter  again of multiple identities this is   my original idea i got a lot of it from a  guy named david goodhart a uh the political   theorist in great britain who was writing about  brexit and was using that term to analyze it   and uh basically what you have in the country  especially if you look at small town america   de-industrialized areas like west virginia that  used to be strong mayan mining used to be coal   mining used to be strong you have these kind  of areas in the country where people have been   stripped of much of their basic expectations about  life that they would have lifetime employment   their kids would work in the same kind of  jobs that they had neighborhoods wherever   they were going to know everybody  there were bars there were churches   and in that situation they very much fall back  on very basic kinds of things like family flag   guns as a way to again protect protect  the home whereas for somebody who   again went to a fancy school with a lawyer  at a big law firm and lives in washington dc   or bay area whatever they have multiple identities  they have their college you know and uh i used   to tell a story about when i when i went first  arrived in washington i used to count in my mind   how long it would take before people would tell me  what fancy college they wanted and sometimes they   tell you also what prep school they wanted to they  would just ache into the conversation but again   they're firm they identify with they you  know again they have a multiple set of of   of identities where you know the the union hall  no longer exists in mansfield ohio where sherrod   brown used grew up big uaw united auto workers  steel plant all that stuff is gone the uh the   the union hall is now a uh jews for  jesus uh assembly hall so there you go   but again this whole kind of air web of identity  becomes uh becomes shorn and you get you get a you   get very basic things becoming important and so  something like that happened with brexit i mean   brexit wasn't just a calculation in great britain  about well we'd be better off um you know if we   got out of the european union though i think  there were good arguments for that but again it   was an idea of nation we we should have our our  national identity it was the importance of that   and um for a lot of the people the remainers  uh it was that that was just seen as bigoted or   the product of imperial nostalgia they wanted  to go back to the victorian era or whatever so   again this is a big issue in the united states now  obviously and it's it's a big issue there as well   yeah you as we were talking earlier about  uh not understanding say the russians or   the chinese uh it seems that the cosmopolitans  and the somewhere is the people who are located   in their communities and that's their that's  their life um don't understand each other you   know i can't can't see how strong certain issues  are for them for the exactly the same reasons   but almost everybody that's talking about the  issues uh comes from the cosmopolitan group   because they're the writers and they're the  they're they're the speakers and they they go   to the big cities and talk about these things  and write the books so it's true that there   are representatives of of the other group too but  the vast majority of people who write history who   write this who write that are all people who look  at it from a certain point of view uh well i would   yes you said a majority yeah the majority there's  fox there's whatever whatever that other thing is   called one on or something like that newsmax  i mean there are other there are alternative   uh media and one wonder some of the people work  for them uh the same question that you asked me   about politicians what they really believe some  stuff that they talk about so there are obviously   all alternative visions in america and there  are people who try to appeal again to the other   one half rather than the other but to a great  extent the is dominated by cosmopolitan america i'd like to ask a question about your  writing you know i mean you've done   so many books writing and what what made you  get into writing and also you've just finished   a really big project three books and then combined  them all into one book you must have another thing   on your on your uh plate for the future um so if  you could talk a little bit about how you got into   writing and then what you're going to do next  that'd be great oh god how i i you know i got   into writing because probably because i was an  only child and had a miserable teenage year and   you know it's a kind of and i read books a  lot and and it's a way of expressing yourself   i think you'll find that same kind of story among  a lot of people who turn out to be uh writers and   you know before i did politics i thought i could  be a novelist and i you know tried tried out at   that for a while and it didn't didn't do very  well um and i finally got into writing about   uh politics but but again it goes back to when  i was i don't know 12 years old 13 years old   stuff like that i mean you have a lot of stories  about you know lonely girls of the bronte sisters   i mean i don't know no but but that was that's the  experience of finding some way to express yourself   and not yeah and not being just part of a whole  social social network again to get back into that   term where you don't have to worry about it i  mean i was introverted lonely kid so that's the   that was i think the basis of how how i got into  writing i'm not sure what i'm going to do next um   um rui tasher and i who wrote the um we wrote the  emerging democratic majority together have talked   about doing another book together but i don't  quite know i think we're gonna have to wait   to see what happens in 2022 uh to decide well uh  another issue that's a little unusual in america   right now that uh you know our generation is  responsible for uh is in this last election   almost all the front runners were over 70 years  old um i thought it was extraordinary almost to   the extent that i thought you know it really it  really should not for any particular person that   was involved but you really probably should say  the first time you run for president you know   you have to be 65 or younger so that you know  eight years later you're 74 or whatever and   if you run for the two terms so that people  aren't president after they're 75 years old   it just seems like it's i i don't i think  biden's doing a fine job everything that   everybody said about how he wasn't going to be  able to do it doesn't seem to be true at all   but but it's a lot of pressure for somebody  that age um to stand up under and you know   you can be advisor in the background sort of  thing but it was just seems reasonable to to   set some kind of age limit i mean i hate to  i'm already over the age limit myself so um   it just seems like you know why it seems like  a baby boomer kind of thing to do to to to   just never give up the the positions  in at the universities or in politics   just hold on to everything um i i worry about that  and i worry about that with the democrats i think   the republicans are a little better situated there  but i think in the democrats there's a real uh   generation gap and you go from the people  who were over 65 elizabeth warren biden   sanders uh and you have to go back to the real  you know to see some real fire and interest to the   uh alexandria ocasio-cortez katie porter  and california a lot of younger people   but you know in between uh the people  who are being groomed to be the next uh   presidential candidate the next barack obama or  bill clinton uh it's it's harder to see there's   been a there is a kind of loss the generation  the party and it's partly a product of of the   democrats getting slaughtered in all these state  and local elections so we don't have a lot of   governors and state officials work working their  way up um whereas you know the republicans have uh   they're they're going to have a lot of people  running for office or in their 50s and 60s   i think in 2024 unless the the wild man trump  decides to run again and people were scared   to uh contest him uh so uh and i you know i i  i share your concern about people over 70 um   being that myself and and uh by biden's ability  to do the job but he surprised us so far so   you know so you have a lot of great perspective  on uh europe how did you develop this you know in   addition to studying america you started you must  have studied what's going on in europe because   you always have a lot of similar and contrasting  experiences that went on in europe in your books   um how did you develop i don't i can't claim to  be a big student of europe you know i i did the   books partly because i wanted to learn more  about europe i actually went to japan a lot   in the 1990s and i knew and i wrote about that  but i didn't i mean i paid attention to europe   but i didn't go there and do interviewing  and stories really until the 2000s or so   i got into some junker with all these german  foundations and they kept inviting me to come   over and i spent six months living in berlin and  it's like that so you know it was it was during   that period but it didn't didn't go back very far  i mean i was one of those people who really didn't   except for going to maybe vancouver and mexico  city i didn't go to europe until i was 50 or so so   wow i'm not a world traveler i'm always i  mean and i still feel that america is the   place that i really know about but when  i was doing the they just my publisher   just reminded me of this story when we were uh  negotiating the populist explosion the first book   it was in the small spring maybe of 2015 may or  maybe early very early summer and they wanted me   mainly to do euro europe because that was where  things would be happening i said well you know   america is the thing i know about and i'm  not going to do this book unless i can do   trump and sanders and people like that bro he's  he's going to be out of the race in two months that ended up being the strong point he could  have been out of the out of the race but so   basically america is my my home and that's  what i know the most about and europe is   i'm fascinated by but i'm not a uh your  europeanist so to speak um you mentioned this uh   answer that you you did something in  japan in the 90s did you did you find   some of the effect on japanese culture to have  been due to the american occupation after world   war ii did you see any influences there that  you that you noticed or do you think that it   was that they had more or less um recovered their  own way of doing things um i think they recovered   their own way of doing things and you know in  foreign policy they were still in hawk to us   and and still are to a great extent part of the  nuclear umbrella and so um but but in terms of   government and things like that very  different from the united states   much more uh status than america  much less individualist than america   i mean american individualism has many good  things to it i mean you couldn't have had   silicon valley and you know wozniak and jobs  in the garage and all that stuff without the   are on from individual entrepreneurship but  during this vaccine pandemic boy you really saw   again the the dark side of it in terms of  try getting people to wear masks all this   stuff that when still we can't get uh you know  a large number of people in america vaccinated   uh you know from my standpoint it should just  be compulsory like a driver's license i mean you   should be able to go driving on a road similarly  but but again um japan not japan i always used to   make fun of the people because they wore mass all  the time you know on the street because they were   worried about coals and infection during the flu  during the winter but now it turns out that they   were they were ahead of us in that respect yeah i  was going to say that that shifted the i lived in   hong kong for a while and also i've done a lot of  work in asia and i it certainly shifted that idea   the vision of people walking around with the mass  on saying you know are you over doing it but no   yeah that's right now you don't feel  that way anymore it's quite different   yeah but you touched on it you know you you say  if you make it compulsory you know as soon as you   say it's going to be compulsory you know the the  the conspiracy uh concept say you know everyone's   trying to to you know bill gates is trying to  control our entire lives but she needs to follow   that kind of stuff yeah and the courts would throw  it out too i bet so yeah but but still that's what   i believe i mean because it's not a matter of  freedom to be able to infect other people right   it's just like the old quarantine rules you know  right it's it's it's a a health issue the question   is as you said before how much do you trust the  people who make those decisions and if you trust   them a lot you cooperate um you know and if you  don't trust them you don't and uh we're in a   divided time when people really don't trust it or  at least a big chunk of people don't trust it so   yes that's the other thing you have to have  for a democracy you have to have expertise   you have to have you have to have an effect  i don't want to say a ruling class but you   you have to have an uh a knowledgeable elite that  has the trust of people who don't have the time   during the day to learn the details of a trade  agreement or dna or you know whether a drug is   going to be safe and all this kind of stuff and  if that starts to break down again you have a   your democracy is in trouble and again one of the  scariest things about trump during 2000 to 1920   was his attack on expertise and science and this  isn't to say that the cdc did everything right   obviously right i mean they screwed up and you  know fauci made a lot of mistakes but again   it's a that kind of knowledge is remediable you  know you can you can recognize errors and improve   on um a more quasi-religious faith in q anon or  some conspiracy theory is not verifiable one way   or another it's just you're always going to find  things that tell you it's true and that kind of   that kind of knowledge came to the fore and that's  scary again and that has echoes of the 20s too   right it seems one thing that's kind of splitting  in a way that we we neither need to bring it back   together again or we're going to face more of  it is if you like in the case of voucher or the   cdc and so if you think that they're making  mistakes but they're trying hard and they're   sincerely trying to do the right thing then you  kind of trust them because you expect people to   make some mistakes in situations like this but  if you think that they have ulterior motives   for you know and everything that they say that  then has to be revised was part of a big lie and   they're just lying all the time then then you  don't and i think that's where the trust is can   you trust and can you trust the people who are  making the decisions to be at least trying to do   things on behalf of the public good um and and  every every person that's in that position who   doesn't do that undercuts that and that's to me  what undercuts the the trust in democracy the most   are the leaders who who don't have that  attitude they can make mistakes i don't   people have a pretty high standard right now  and ask everybody who's ever been an artist   or whatever to never have made any uh comment  that was uh you know off color or anything for   their whole lives and all that kind of stuff  so there's the two highest standard anyway but   if you just say yeah you'll make some mistakes but  you shouldn't make any really big ones yeah it's   just in new york uh in business you know it's kind  of a sort of unwritten rule that if you're really   good at this you air about two percent of the time  and and you admit it when you make the mistakes   you know anybody who's saying they're right all  the time is clearly wrong um and anybody who's   making mistakes ten percent of the time is not  good enough to be doing this job but somewhere   somewhere in the sweet spot is willing to admit  you're wrong only making mistakes two to three   percent of the time then you're top professional  that confident so it's a it's a it creates trust   if people are both skilled and honest about  their mistakes and and when you don't have that   combination it doesn't create trust that's part  of the problem yeah and and your books your books   always events exactly that you know professional  combination which is you know one of the things i   think that they're so powerful about so thank you  very very much uh again for uh you know talking   to the commonwealth club audience um is there  anything you'd like to to finish with no i just   hope california's in good shape because i'm coming  out there in september for my birthday you know we'll try to make it as good as possible or your  arrival everybody help out because john's coming   all right so thanks a lot uh again uh john and  uh thanks again to the audience and so ends   another event at the commonwealth club in its  119th year of enlightened discussion thank you you

Channel: Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

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Keywords: CommonwealthClub, CommonwealthClubofCalifornia, Sanfrancisco, Nonprofitmedia, nonprofitvideo, politics, Currentevents, CaliforniaCurrentEvents, #newyoutubevideo, #youtubechannel, #youtubechannels, johnjudis

Id: Eo-KK-jksEY

Length: 69min 16sec (4156 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021