P.J. O’Rourke: A Cry From The Far Middle

hello everyone and welcome to today's special  program of the commonwealth club of california   i'm brian watt morning news anchor at kqed in  san francisco and your moderator for this program   with humorist pj o'rourke we thank our audience  for your support of the commonwealth club   and if you wish to make a donation please  text the word donate to 415-329-4231 415-329-4231 text donate we also want to remind  you to submit questions for our guest pj o'rourke   via the chat room next to your screen i'll get  to as many as possible later in the program   humorist pj o'rourke says americans have worked  ourselves into a state of anger and perplexity   and it's no surprise because perplexed and angry  is what america has always been about in his new   book a cry from the far middle he goes back to  our country's beginnings to show us this and then   snaps us back to the present where the internet  and social media have brought us all together   maybe a little too close to sorted out he debates  the merits of sympathy versus empathy and makes   hilarious observations about the current political  environment today we're going to hear this master   satirist perspective on the absurdity of life  and this internet controlled platform is absurdly   perfect for this forum welcome pj o'rourke thanks  for meeting us here thank you for having me there   all right so i had this really lofty  question i was going to ask you first um   about the debate but i think before i ask the  lofty question i'll ask you did you even watch i   i watched i watched and i watched and i watched  i watched all the way through the end um gosh   that was you know i i've seen more substantive  debates take place on a bar room floor employing   fists and boots but at least they didn't last 90  minutes you know i was i was kind of wishing i i   thought chris wallace did as well as a human could  but i was kind of wishing for a bigger guy maybe   some nfl linebacker or somebody who could have  grabbed the uh trump first uh but he could have   grabbed the two candidates and by the collar and  the belt loop and heaved them out into the street   honestly and you know not to not to lay all  the blame on trump although i think about 90   of it should go there but also i'm very glad i  wasn't playing the uh here's the deal drinking   game with joe biden because if i had to take  a drink every time he said here's the deal   i would have been in even worse shape after  the debate than i was and i was in pretty bad   i have seen a lot of hyperbole on social media  about this debate um calling it a true tragedy   in american history do you think that a night  like this was like a truly disastrous moment   in our history no i mean presidential debates are  rarely very substantive i mean you know what do   we remember from past presidential debates george  h.w bush looking at his wristwatch reagan saying   there you go again you know i mean they really  don't usually contain a lot of content anyway   if anybody was wondering whether trump is  really so as trumpian as trump appears to be   that answer to that question and i i didn't feel  it was a tragedy but i was personally disappointed   in that joe biden has got a huge campaign  platform i've actually read the thing to to   for my sins uh it took two days and with a certain  amount of laying down in a dark room with a cold   compress on my head it is 506 pages long minus  the various links that that it will take you to   um and you know it basically it it's promise heavy  i mean just quantitatively the promises that are   made in in in that campaign uh so i wanted to hear  a little bit from him about how how do you manage   all this how do you get all this through congress  how of course do you pay for it um you know   so there was really a lot of information i  wanted from bite i didn't really expect to get   it in a presidential debate but it would have  been nice if you could get a word in edgewise   well since you were thinking about who might have  made a better moderator not because chris wallace   was a bad guy for the job but obviously  it called for a whole nother skill set   than the kind he brings like would you have any  suggestions to joe biden for maybe a speech coach   uh no no it was matter more a matter  of uh an interrupter coach trump was   shown himself to be better at interrupting  than biden um but but for the moderator i   would suggest somebody with a tranquilizer gun  i think that that might have been useful let   me weave the title of your book into a question  about the debate was there one moment where you   felt like the far middle might have been crying  the loudest no i i really didn't um uh joe had a   tendency to fall back on boilerplate and i don't  even know if there's a polite word for what um   trump fell back on so no i didn't really feel that  a matter of fact my wife and i were discussing   this after the debate is that you know what  we probably really wanted from biden most   is that reach out to the great majority of  americans saying look do you want four more years   of this chaos this unpredictability this um having  a you know anybody who's been a parent knows that   that feeling of finding your toddler at the top  of the stairs you forgot to close the baby gate   and there's the toddler at the top of the stairs  and you're standing down the bottom of the stairs   going oh no no no no do we want four more years of  that or do we want to go back to the old-fashioned   normal the real conservative argument you know  liberals have got all these wonderful ideas and   they're kind and they're sweet and it tells us  you know a lot of good could be done with them   and grumpy old republicans saying well how you're  gonna pay for that you know i mean what kind of   looking unintended side effects is that gonna  have and like you know um if biden were just   had stood there last night and say i repromise i  promise us a return to normal not everything that   i propose or you gonna love not everything that  you love am i going to propose but i'm going to   return this to a normal civility predictability  and uh to the best of my extent by bipartisanship   i know that's dreaming but you know i mean uh  uh is to return us to the mere anger of the   reagan years the clinton years the bush years uh  ordinary right exactly good old-fashioned rancor   yeah good old-fashioned rancor that's what we  that's what we need a dose of in this country   i'm gonna take a few questions um from the  audience they are starting to come in um and   then we can uh talk a little bit more about the  book uh how would you change the way presidential   candidates are chosen if you could this is  a question from an audience member yeah well   the problem is really our political parties and  the problem with our political parties is that um   they're not organized parties responsible to  their members we you know there is no such thing   as a as a card you carry to show that you're a  republican or a democrat if you donate so much   of an as a nickel to a candidate on either side  you can't help but join these parties you can't be   thrown out the national party organizations don't  actually have much power they're dependent on the   state party organizations and territorial party  organizations of which there are 50 plus and those   state organizations don't actually have much  power themselves because they're dependent on   the county organization and who the heck gets  involved in county level partisan politics i   mean name your county democratic chairman you  know name your county republican chairman i   mean who can do it i can't do it you know and then  because these are such sort of fringe jobs being   county chairman of the political party you know  the the typical republican county chairman is some   you know retired aluminum siding salesman with a  pair of plaid polyester pants that don't match his   plaid polyester shirt and and and and a democratic  uh a a county committee a chairperson is a bitter   divorced woman with 40 cats and this is who's  running our country and so even by the time   the candidates get to and then we in the media  have our own um uh uh uh guilt to bear in this   too because um we we just can't resist the train  wreck and when we get like a nice normal candidate   um i'll give you a republican example say say  kasich john kasich who's a good governor of ohio   he brought ohio back into the into the black when  it had been in the red he was barely elected the   first term and he was selected by a landslide  in the second term he dealt with the microcosm   of america ohio's got all the labor management  divisions all the racial and class divisions and   all the other divisions immigration and so on  that the rest of the country had and when we   come up with a good albeit slightly dull  candidate like that we're just at a loss   for words there's no handle on the guy you know  there's nothing to pick him up and shake him by   so we we send undue attraction um toward flashy um  noisy and and often rather extreme candidates so   we we we have we should be ashamed of ourselves  well uh speaking of maybe a more normal uh   candidate uh there is an audience member who  would like to know why don't you run for office   the way bill buckley did well um with all  due respect to bill because i'm not crazy   and the thing is that bill wasn't really  very serious about running for president   um uh uh because if you're actually going  to run for president can you i mean i'm   i'm almost 73 years old okay i i cannot imagine  somebody my age which would be either of the two   candidates we've got now plus you know the the  the two candidates we had the last time around   you you fly around all over the nation eating  like 600 pancake breakfasts you know with this   group and 800 spaghetti dinners with that  group and giving the same rote speech to   to to group after group after group with all  that like travel in between no sleep i mean   it's it's almost as though running  for president disqualifies someone   for running from for president because anybody  who's willing to put themselves through that   not to mention the groveling and begging for money  that you have to do constantly in what few moments   of spare time you have i mean first place those  people can't be devoting much thought to the   issues because there's no time in the second place  they obviously have something deeply wrong with   them you know you know if you look up narcissistic  personality disorder in the physician's desk   manual or the psychiatrist death manual um and  you look through the the indications you know for   indications for narcissistic personality disorder  and they're like nine of them and the average   politician like uh ticks the box on 11 out of nine  um so um yeah i mean maybe we should result to the   result resort maybe we should resort to the draft  you know maybe anybody who wants to be president   i thought colin powell would have been a great  president and i know he didn't want to but i think   we should have drafted him you know i mean he was  in the military he understands the draft right let's talk a little bit about this book um  everyone who is watching everyone who's joining us   please don't hesitate to continue adding questions  in the chat space but i thought it was interesting   that you wound up having to write a pre-preface  to this book and what it shows to me is just   how much things are changing and how quickly  things are changing um just as we go and i   thought you could read some of that to us um and  just just so that everyone gets a sense of sort of   i feel like this is uh a nice uh way to sort  of see what all we've been through in a very   very short time so um and it gives you a little  flavor of what we're getting into i'm glad to um   you know i i wrote the book you know books take a  long time to go into production i wrote the book   last year and some of the pieces in the book  have been written before that and i was all   done thinking that we were living in hell when all  hell broke broke loose you know fortunately modern   printing technology allowed me to slip in at the  last minute as we go to press where i said um   while this book was being written in 2019 america  was deep in an era of idiot populism and hooligan   partisanship our country was engaged in a sort  of socio-political peloponnesian war that is we   were in the midst of a long confusing tedious  useless foolish conflict that threatened to   destroy democracy and left ordinary commonsensical  people feeling it's all greek to me then when   this book was being edited in typeset somebody  ate an undercooked bat in a wuhan wet market   panic and pandemic ensued the nation was brought  to a stay-at-home standstill whether reasonably or   not no one is quite certain and by whose authority  no one is quite sure it's like being 16 again a   friend of mine said gas is cheap and i'm grounded  then with everyone cooped up going crazy and   going broke some fuss budget with a loose mutt in  central park calls 911 there's an african-american   man threatening my life after she'd been  admonished by a harvard educated bird watcher   who if videos anything to go by is the very  picture of a harvard educated bird watcher   on the same day that that central park display  of american inclusiveness and mutual respect   members of the minneapolis police force decided  to take a knee on the neck of george floyd after   nearly nine minutes of suffocation floyd died  he was accused of spending dollars in the form   of a banknote that had no actual value the  u.s senate and house of representatives are   currently spending billions of dollars in the  form of bank notes that have no actual value   would the police employ the same bigotry and  violence on them no all across the country the   police would employ bigotry and violence on people  protesting the bigotry and violence of the police   chaos cried out its appeal the thieves and the  vandalistic are friends of chaos and when their   friend calls they come the president of the united  states called for peace understanding and unity   in a pig's ass he did the president waddled down  to his bunker heidi hole under the white house and   urged the us military to invade the country they  live in then he talked trash and went to church   he could use it attacking thousands of  non-violent demonstrators to get there   not a very christian way of going to church and  that's where things stood as this book made its   socially distancing and peacefully protesting  way to the printer all this is to say that my   book looks back on an era of troubles that in  retrospect seem to have been the good old days   and now i who have covered politics and all  its works and all its empty promises for half   a century and who had so very many things to say  about them am left mute there are people possessed   of the expertise necessary to explain analyze and  make judicious commentary upon the present and   future effects of the novel coronavirus and there  are i suppose people endowed with the foresight   to determine the outcome of the social upheavals  accompanying the pandemic i'm not one of either   of them and the last thing the world needs at  the moment is more pundits who don't know what   they're talking about journalists are supposed  to provide answers but all i've got is questions   starting with isn't somebody supposed to be in  charge too many of america's elected leaders have   been acting as if the pandemic is a children's  party game where they're all blindfolded and   swinging sticks except they're clobbering  each other instead of the virus pinata   under microscopic view coronavirus does look like  it would make a swell paper mache target full of   lethal pathogens so let's leave the politicians  to amuse themselves while we skip this fiesta   which raises another question about this book  itself is it now completely beside the point will   american politics be fundamentally changed by the  pandemic will americans emerge from their grievous   health crisis lock down isolation economic  collapse and material deprivation with a newly   calm pragmatic and reasonable attitude toward our  political system will our reawakened awareness of   systemic prejudice cause us to critically analyze  and democratically restrain our civil institutions   will we abandon the factional hysterias and  histrionics of the early 21st century in favor of   a polity based upon competence civil discourse  and good will or will we revert to our petty   arguments and stupid admin or i can never say  this word i can write it but i can't say it and argument so let's stick with petty or petty  and stupid arguments uh or or having spent   had had all this time alone to dwell on our  grievances and fronts will we maybe even return   to our spiteful quarreling with renewed vigor this  is often the way human nature works and um and i'm   betting human nature will triumph over adversity  and challenge and i don't mean that in a good way thank you very much i i  thought that that was a neat   way to sort of remind everybody that the  world has changed really quickly and a lot in   really 2019 and 2020. you know look at the eye  really it's yeah i mean it's it's kind of hard   to believe when you all the things you ticked  off george floyd the bird watcher in central park   um the pandemic i'm curious what how you're  living this let's talk for example about masks   are you wearing a mask when you go out of the  house what's you bet i am i'm i'm 70 almost   as i said i'm almost 73 years old i smoke i  drink i've had some prior health problems as   you know somebody my age who smokes and drinks  probably would uh of course i wear a mask and uh   i gotta say people in new england are pretty good  about wearing masks not great not perfect it seems   like that there's a certain sort of more macho  type that that issues the mass but mostly people   are pretty good about it here but it does it's  you know it adds that uh boy if i have to go on a   plane flight or something or wear one you know for  eight hours in a row i'm gonna have to shave this   beard it gets really uncomfortable under there  and you you know get it just adds this little   extra layer of annoyance you know to to everything  we live way out in the middle of nowhere in new   hampshire and so in many ways this didn't affect  us all that much one thing about old line yankees   they're good at social distancing they've been  social distancing since they got off the mayflower   you know the only time they get closer than six  feet to each other is when they're hanging witches   in salem you know so um you know it's probably  the right place to live during these times what are you asking for in this book if  it's a if it's a cry from the far middle   what's what's the cry for well it is you  know what we were talking about a little   earlier it's getting it's getting  back to old-fashioned rancor let's   let's it's there's a lot of really you know in a  in a country as large as ours where the government   is large as ours and our desire to have that  government do so many things for us which our   desire for for uh more things from the government  often results in more government than we want   so you have you constantly facing this conundrum  plus there's you know they're limited resources   so i'm asking us to get back to to arguing  the substance of this you know i i mean it   doesn't mean that we all have to be fence  sitters but we could make that fence top   wider and more comfortably padded and go  sit on it for a while and have a little   neighborly chat about these things because  there are a lot of things to be decided   and there's going to have to be argument  i mean real argument i don't mean the kind   of argument that we saw last night there's  going to have to be argument about how to how to go about doing these things and it's  a legitimate argument that we need to have   and instead we're just busy  screaming at each other as a journalist or content creator you write  something real funny about your transition between   those um do you see your place as in the middle  or far off to the side your place in all of this   well you know i mean i mean humor  i'm a humorist i'm a commentator   um you know i'm a some kind of pundit or  something so that you know my job has always   been to be opinionated and to make fun of people  and so on and so forth but i'm also a reporter   and as a reporter i spent a long time you know i  mean between between stints of just making fun of   stuff i spent a long time as a reporter i spent  uh 20 years as as a foreign correspondent first   for rolling stone magazine and then um for the  atlantic monthly um took me from um the old soviet   union the civil war in lebanon to the gulf war  the war in iraq and um when i'm being a reporter   it is my job just to report the facts it is is  well not just to report the facts because you try   to have to try and explain what the facts  mean but you can't get it factually wrong   and have any sort of self-respect and  there has been a blurring of the lines   i think between like the two sides of my job  i try not to to to blur them i try to make it   i try to make sure that people know as we  said back in the 60s where i'm coming from   um so that they can allow windage for  my my point of view but you know i i i i   it's it's important to to stick to the facts do  you feel like that profession of the reporter   the journalist has been under attack more  viscerally and viciously in the last four years   than oh no doubt about it no doubt about it i mean  but but but but trump has given extra voice to   and and huge exaggeration to a a tendency that's  been going on for a long time and i dated back   to watergate days is that this for a long time  um i think ordinary people in the united states   have felt a little disconnected from the world  of journalism perceiving it as being sort of um   not all liberal i mean obviously there  are conservative voices out there   but all being sort of elite um uh and and  you know sort of looking down their nose at   the consumers of news a bit and i blame it  on on on a shift in the industry that that   happened as i say back as early as watergate you  know in the old days reporters were blue-collar   blue-collar guys they mostly were guys you know  i mean there were women reporters excellent women   reporters but but it was you know mainly it was  a blue-collar guy profession and if you grew up   in a trashy irish neighborhood like i did and uh  uh you wanted uh you didn't want to get up real   early in the morning and lift heavy things for a  living and he liked to read uh uh he liked books   you basically had two choices you could be a  newspaper reporter or you could be a priest   you know so it was this choice between well what's  it going to be whiskey and women or just whiskey   you know and you know which one's more  likely to get me free hockey tickets so it was a craft and uh this is not to say  old-fashioned journalism couldn't be very partisan   but it was fundamentally a craft it was in and  reporters looked upon themselves like other   craftsmen do like plumbers and electricians and  bricklayers and so on then along came watergate   and all of a sudden journalists became world  savers you know and it's like all the people   who were lined up to join the peace corps went  to journalism school instead you know journalism   school i never even heard of journalism school  when i didn't even know such a thing existed and   so that a lot of do-gooders flooded into um  into the field of journalism and do-gooders   whether they're right-wing do-gooders or left-wing  do-gooders or even middle do-gooders can make a   good mess out of a lot of things if they're  allowed to go too far with their do-gooding   and i say let i'm gonna get a few more questions  in uh from the audience um definitely appreciate   that they're coming in one audience member wants  to know uh what are your thoughts on both parties   essentially being controlled by the same forces  corporatists who will come out fine no matter   who wins that's the question and it's a question  that raises a good point um the uh the influence   of giant corporations in the united states is like  awesome to be behold and and i'm not sure i mean   awesome in in a very pretty way um we have to let  loose of the idea that we're gonna get money out   of politics even if we publicly fund elections  that's still money and that still comes from some   place and people are going to influence where that  money goes and how that money goes um the um yeah   uh what to do about about giant corporations  and and their influence is is a very difficult   question do you take the you can take a sort of  anti-corporate stand but on the other hand we   owe these corporations quite a bit of our material  responsibility and we don't want to punish people   for success or tear down something that works  and it really is a a huge conundrum and the   probably uh the the answer lies in more  responsible corporate boards and more   input on those corporate boards from citizens  stockholders and also i would say that the um   the people who operate in a purely financial  realm we're moving huge blocks of stock around   all the time um probably need to be kept a little  better eye on i say this as a as an old lying   capitalist but honestly uh when when when you look  at the gigantic movements of the money managers   um uh the the way that they sort of dominate  the market as opposed to individual investors or   relatively small entities um that that that  needs looking at there's no doubt about that   it's a it puts us back in a kind of a parallel  situation to teddy roosevelt trust busting another audience member wants to know might the  us be better off with a parliamentary system   well judging by what's going on in britain with  um um brexit and uh uh boris johnson and uh   and and scottish independence questions and they  were still remaining mess in northern ireland   and uh noise from whales no absolutely not um  you know what what what we're better off with uh   you know i talked a little bit earlier about our  our parties don't exercise sufficient control over   who runs for those parties but one of the  things that makes america great is that it   is also that we don't have political  parties in the european sense of the word   um that what we have is two broad tendencies uh  two broad general tendencies and one broad general   tendency is to think the government should  take care of of problems and the other broad   tendency is the government is the problem  and these are two ideas that can be held   at the same time in the same mind without causing  insanity or cognitive dissonance uh anybody who   has sat down to fill out all the forms necessary  to get some government benefit that they deserve   and need um has known that thought to to think  at the same time government should solve the   problem and government is the problem so we  have these two broad tendencies sometimes they   have more overlap sometimes they have a lot of  overlap sometimes at the moment for instance the   the two vent venn diagrams are are barely touching  each other but it it it allows us to um uh repair   our partisan anger more quickly than is that is  possible in countries with a multitude of parties   um or countries with a um a sort of out of  control congress which is parliament is that   can produce all sorts of results  that nobody in britain foresaw both of our parties have either had to do battle  with or even make peace with the amazing level   of national debt uh one audience member wants  to know how do we get out of this debt that   we are in as a country uh from your perspective  oh we just uh throw it off on our grandchildren   well there are two ways out there's the hard  way out which is to limit government spending   and not necessarily reduce it but keep it within  bounds while doing our best to encourage economic   growth this is basically how we got out of there  we were in a similar debt and deficit situation at   the end of world war ii we owed a ton of money um  and uh and we were running you know huge deficits   obviously to fund the war it's for a good purpose  but nonetheless it had effects uh we put ourselves   through a temporary recession right after the  war it was short mercifully and we clamped down   the truman administration did somewhat the  eisenhower administration actually ran surpluses   uh we kept our spending in control and we kept  our and our and remember that that tax rates   back then were very high so we kept our government  income up we kept our government expenditures down   and we grew economically now of course there was  a lot of pent up demand and there was a lot of   savings from war bonds and so on to to help us  with that but it can be done the the easy way   is to just keep piling on the debt and but  this is going to end badly somehow i don't   i'm not an economist i don't know how you know  i don't have a crystal ball so i don't know when   but you know we could have runaway inflation  we could have a loss of the u.s dollar as the   international reserve currency which allows  us to almost unlimited borrowing powers uh we   could have a a a massive devaluation  of the us dollars which would make   all foreign products and we use a lot of  them all foreign products wildly expensive   so you know that that's the easy way out so so i'm  voting for the hard way out you know but i'm not   nobody in either party seems to be willing to  mention the hard way out i thought that used to   be one of the fundamental um divisions between  liberals and conservatives was that you know   liberals were spent spend spend and conservatives  were going well where's the money coming from   now it's like spend spend spend from both sides  right admittedly on different things and uh and   nobody seems to be paying any attention  to where the money's coming from yeah   there is a question uh from the audience uh about  the internet um i'm gonna i'm gonna ask it but um   it actually takes me to another passage in  the book that i think i told you that i really   appreciated and thought the audience would  appreciate hearing a bit of so the question is   how has the internet impacted serious thought in  america and i feel like you get to that right here   uh in in a chapter that uh i want you to name and  and give us a little taste of here yes i have a   chapter uh in the book that pretty much addresses  that question and the chapter is called whose   bright idea was it to make sure that every idiot  in the world was in touch with every other idiot   and in that chapter i'll just read a  little bit from the beginning of it   social media comes in for a lot of other criticism  as well the big corporations that operate social   media platforms have the ethics of opioid addicts  with jobs as oxycontin pharmaceutical sales reps   user privacy is equivalent to getting a prostate  exam in the middle of times square on new year's   eve while you and your urologist ride the ball  drop social media turns us into easy victims of   fraud and financial manipulation darn it of all  the nigerian government officials i spam blocked   the one who actually had 100 million dollars  that needed to be wired to my bank account   social media is giving young people a bad case  of phone face with big permanent samsung galaxy   note 9 pimple between their eyes and it makes our  kids into victims of bullies or perpetrators of   bullying depending on whether our kids are dorks  or jerks and in my experience every kid is both   um social media polarizes our politics  by allowing us all no matter how wrong   we are about a political issue to find a large  enthusiastic group of people who are even wronger i i love that last line so much that's um  i i i do wonder if more people are looking   for validation in social media than they are  looking for accurate and helpful information   validation yes worst invalidation a a sort of  like egotistic presence a shout from the rooftops   a a look at me sort of thing and of course  the way you get people to look at me is by   doing something unusual and doing something  unusual is usually means doing something stupid   um it's very interesting you know that there was  this idea prevalent back in the 50s and the 60s   that we we should all communicate we all need to  communicate if only parents could communicate to   their children the generation gap would be closed  if if if only uh uh uh uh black people and white   people could communicate the the the the racial  gap uh uh the inequality gap would be closed if   only the usa and the ussr could communicate with  each other then then the cold war would would be   over and a lot of us like thought that was a great  idea and paul really bought into that and our   and our hero was marshall mcluhan uh the great  media theorist who um um who said that television   this is before computers of course the television  was going to create a global village and we're   going oh global village that's so cool well the  thing is we were we were lauding mcluhan without   reading mcluhan and if we'd actually  paid attention to what mcluhan was saying   we would have realized um um that he was far more  skeptical of the outcome of this global village   than than we might have thought and i found a  radio interview with mccloud a canadian radio   interview with mcluhan where the interviewer says  well dr mcloone you said that television was going   to create a global village and mcluhan said i  never said the villagers would like each other   it was mcluhan's feeling that if people got closer  and closer to each other if people really knew   what other people were thinking if they could hear  as we can today what other people are thinking   it would be like well you know it would be like  always knowing what one's spouse was thinking   about one you know unfiltered or listening  to donald trump you know so um yeah uh uh uh   putting us all on the same brain wave uh  has not really done us all our favor one   of the things that i don't know how successful  we've been but we've tried to teach our kids   is kids everything that pops into your  mind does not have to pour out your mouth   right right well you know i'm i'm thinking about  back to the debate last night the the moment that   really got social media um and the internet crazy  was these opportunities that president trump had   to denounce white supremacist movements and  very specifically the proud boys and this   stand back and stand by thing as soon as he said  it just went out there and the proud boys were   proud they were even more proud and it was able to  echo through social media that was just horrible i   mean that was unconscionable i mean you know i i i  i've been covering politics for 50 years i expect   them to lie i expect them to exaggerate i expect  them to interrupt each other but when you have an   opportunity to denounce evil you know what's  your what's your opinion of hitler well you know   he had some good ideas he had some bad ideas you  know he got out of here you know that was like i   mean it was such a softball and you know i i i you  know chris chris wallace is not a hostile review   not a hostile interviewer although he's he was  getting there by the end of the night but he's not   i mean it's this is fox news you know and that was  such a softball from him and all trump had to say   was i mean he he could have even been as flabby  as saying i divide i denounce violence by anyone   anywhere at any time that is not the way  we solve our problems in this country and   of course he could have been like much more  forthright and say you know that that that that   you know race racist groups white supremacist  groups are are repellent and and and disgusting   uh it was so simple and yet he couldn't bring  himself to do it what is the matter with him i   mean a lot of people are thinking was to set  some sort of like dr evil plot of his to get   all 11 proud boys or however many of there are  you know out to vote um i think you know there's   a side of trump that we don't give enough credit  to or not credit is not the word i'm looking for   but there's a side of trump that we don't pay  as much attention to the guy's not very smart   he's crafty he has peasant cunning there is no  doubt about that um he is uh uh he's he's sneaky   is is you know it's not that his mind doesn't  work at all but we're just not talking about   a very smart guy and that does not excuse the  the the failure to to to field that softball   but uh uh but it it does like it's a light  that we don't cast enough on trump is that   in so many ways he's i mean he's he's he's  not all that smart and he's massively ignorant an audience member wants to know who is better  at propaganda the far left or the far right   well neither one of them are doing a very good job  as far as i i'm concerned is that that you know i   i sometimes think that that uh antifa and uh and  the rest uh must be on trump's payroll because   they're at the moment they're running the only  effective campaign for trump that i've seen out   there uh on meanwhile i wonder if joe biden isn't  paying for donald trump's twitter account because   donald trump's twitter account is pretty much  the best campaign for joe biden that i've seen   so now i don't think either one of them are very  good at propaganda especially if we look back to   the people who really were good and this is using  propaganda in in in a neutral or or even a benign   sense if we look back at the civil rights movement  as it grew through the 50s and and and came to   full fruition in the 1960s the the people who who  believed in the civil rights movement and they   were good people they did a good job at changing  other people's minds they did a really good job   they were patient they were rational they were  non-violent they worked very hard and you know and   they thought deep and ultimately it mattered it  didn't happen overnight you know it probably took   20 many more years than that really but in its  most active phase it probably took 20 years   but they were effective propagandists  after all not all propaganda is untrue i'm just curious what the what you think  is the modern day version of that civil   rights the the civil rights movement of  today that you know isn't just going to   help people understand a better way to live but is  also going to get us to a place where we can share   facts and analysis that are similar so that we can  work together well i don't see that movement out   there although i do feel that there's a strong  libertarian streak that's probably uh a think   tank like the cato institute in washington with  full disclosure with whom i've been associated   for years and years i think they do a pretty  good job of doing that but you know it's it it's   we we don't see for instance we we don't see  anything resembling the civil rights movement   and i take that as one of the great liberal  moments the really commendable liberal moments   in in american history uh nor do we see anything  like the um the groundswell that was for the   reagan administration that was warning us about  a uh having a large an over large but over weak   a federal government a federal government that  couldn't get out of its own way but at the same   time didn't really seem to be able to project any  sort of strength around the world you know those   people worked very hard to get their point across  during the run-up to the reagan administration and   during especially during the first term of  the reagan administration i don't see that   equivalent out there either the libertarians  probably come as as close as as we can get   albeit libertarianism can sometimes be a little  hard to deal with when when they get into issues   like foreign policy you know i've been pointing  out to years my non-interventionalist foreign   policy friends that foreign policy is off after  all its foreigners who are in charge of it so it's   sometimes sometimes a little hard for us to get uh  uh do just what we want in terms of foreign policy   uh i have a another debt question from it's  actually two questions from an audience member um   do the chinese still hold most  of our debt and who do you think   holds the president's personal debt that we've  learned a lot more about in the last few days   um i think that actually the president's  personal debt is mostly held by some   extremely unhappy bankers but uh i i i'm not  i'm not one for great conspiracy theories i   i think it would be fun to find out that the  russians held trump's uh um personal debt but   uh i don't actually think that they do  you know conspiracy theories are always   based upon the idea that the world is  so stupid that even i can understand it   you know so if i don't generally go with that uh i  really don't know i i i'm i'm no economic expert i   really don't know how much of our debt is held  by the uh uh is held by the chinese government   nor do i know how how easily they could liquidate  that debt you know i mean all all forms of of   of you know stocks bonds all forms of promissory  notes and so on uh have a market and it   they may they have a market price but if you  try and sell a million of them at a time or   a billion or a trillion of them at a time that's  going to flood the market and the price is going   to go way down so the chinese i'm sure they hold  quite a lot of our debt i know they'd hold quite   a lot of our debt but it may not be that easy  for them to get rid of it but you know if they   do know enough about macroeconomics to know  that if the chinese were to let the remember   but their currency float so that their currency  was freely traded against other currencies   uh given you know if if they're able  to continue their phenomenal economic   growth that could present an alternative at  the moment people are a little unwilling to   buy into chinese bonds because it is a  dictatorship the rule of law is suspect over there   so it isn't as attractive but you know rule of law  is getting a little suspect here um i don't think   we're headed for a dictatorship uh fortunately  we have enough checks and balances for that   you know whatever trump says to the contrary but  um rule of law is not happy i when you mention   the russians it i you know grew up i was just in  that sort of cold war this sense that you know   one unresolvable conflict between us and the  russians could result in nuclear war you know that   was a that was a real fear of mine when i grew  up and i frankly have just been surprised about i i don't hear enough people talking  about russian meddling in our elections   um i i feel like the republican party which used  to be kind of obsessed with the russian threat   does not seem to be very interested in talking  about it now no they don't you know and and of   course it's not the um um uh it it's not probably  the meddling per se i it's the thing about russian   election meddling was that something  as complex and and uh uh difficult and   elaborate as the american electoral system the  idea that the russians could get in and fix that   well i've driven russian cars i'm doubting it  you know um so you know i understand um that   that some republicans may feel that russian  interference was was overplayed but they   don't seem to be as scared of russia as  they ought to be russia has still got   all those nukes and if anything the current  government under putin seems less responsible   more impulsive uh uh more aggressive  indeed uh and and and much less predictable   than the old commies were bring back brezhnev for  you know as far as that goes and then the chinese   of course also have the capability to blow up  the world and i don't think that xi jinping is   likely to do that as i think you know it would be  a black mark on his record if he blow up the world   and probably wouldn't help economic  growth in china but the chinese system   of selecting their leadership is utterly opaque  we have no idea what's going on back there   and we have no guarantee that they won't get  their own putin in all due time so we should be   we should probably be as scared about  atomic weapons plus there are more of them   india's got them pakistan's got them maybe  iran has them you know israel has them we   should probably be more scared about nukes than we  were when we were crawling under our desks as kids an audience member would like  to know uh as as we get closer   uh to the to the end of this uh discussion  um will trump win and if not will he concede   uh i i don't see how he can win but on the  other hand i have been wrong about donald trump   in general and in detail in every respect  since the guy first started making noises   about the presidency back in the 1980s i  have just absolutely been dismissive of him   um i don't think that he can win he's got  his solid base and he's not going to lose   that solid base but i think there are a lot of  people who sent trump to washington basically   as a direct disrupter who were frustrated with  the federal government and said look we've tried   we've tried republicans we've tried democrats  we've tried this we've tried that let's let's   let's just send a circus clown down there and  let him you know kick over all the buildings and   and sort of start over again um i don't think they  have been pleased with the results or not enough   of them have been pleased with the results so i  i would predict actually i think that um biden   will win and i think that the democrats will  take the senate and you know for a conservative   libertarian like myself that's going to mean  a couple of very expensive years with a lot   of governmental errors but i'm willing to pay the  price to bring american politics back into the uh   into the realm of reality will he concede  yes he will concede there's like too much um there's too much pressure and precedence and  weight of government america is a big ship of   state and we've got a lot of keel on this ship  and we can take water from the right we can take   water from the left and and we have a tendency to  write ourselves we've been through people say oh   america is so divided i go well you  know i i i'm from the 60s uh and   not not only do i remember when america was much  in much worse state of division than it is now   i i i actually helped make that division you know  in my own small personal way and forget the 1960s   what about the 1860s what about 1861 i mean say  what you will about the situation at the moment   fort sumpter is not taking any incoming so uh  i think we'll write ourselves um uh i certainly   hope the uh that that uh uh um joe biden uh who  like i say is not my favorite politician in the   world but i hope i hope that he wins and but  i don't think there's much question that that   trump uh uh will will concede there might  be a little ugly little court fight in here   this does take us back though it doesn't slice it  takes us back to bushfigure and if you remember   really the truth of the matter if we think  back about this is that after all the sort   of ups and downs and the service and the uh and  the mind rattling of the clinton administration   we didn't really care whether it was it was like  and it went on forever but it wasn't like there   was any rioting in the street or anything  people were going bush or whatever you know   it's a little different now  it's a little different now   oh wow just a few minutes left i i  i think an audience member wants to   know just get back into the heads of people as  they process all that's flying at them but the   question really is simple do people generally  believe what they want no matter the facts   um yes on impulse they do after three drinks  they do you know but i i think most of us are   able to coldly consider in in the light of day you  know i mean the the the first and most necessary   uh uh requirement of democracy is the capacity to  change your mind one of the things that i really   loved about bill buckley was that bill buckley  always said you know if you come to me with a   better argument i will change my mind i don't know  if he ever did change his mind but he you know   he at least you know at least he said he would  yeah yeah so no i i think people's minds can   be changed we've watched people's minds  be changed very recently i mean not i was   talking about the civil rights movement but much  more recently on on the question of gay marriage   i think that was if we go back 20 years you'd say  that's a no starter that's never ever going to   happen people change their minds about it and  i was one of them i was always in favor of of   civil unions i was always in favor of the equality  you know uh uh that that you know a committed gay   couple should have the same legal rights as a you  know i thought i just was thinking of marriage as   being separate from the law that that a civil  marriage is a contractual obligation and that   and uh you know marriage is a religious ceremony  so on and so forth and so i thought really there   there should be a distinction here and i talked  to my gay friends and gay friends of mine said   um explain to me how important gay marriage was to  them as being something that made them part of the   larger society and i thought making people part  of the larger society that's a really important   thing plus it means a lot to these people it means  much more to these people than i had realized that   it meant i changed my mind you know i didn't have  to go very far to change my mind on that it wasn't   like i was coming from you know some sort of uh  born-again point of view but but but nonetheless   people do change their minds and our nation  changed its mind about that just a few years ago   and yeah we're capable changing our  minds this last question i'll ask you is   really something that i kept thinking about as i  read your book particularly particularly in the   part about being able to find the echo chamber  out in the internet but do you think it would   help if we all didn't feel so compelled to have a  strong opinion about everything yes i honestly do   i honestly do i i've been a reporter for  a long time and one thing being a reporter   teaches you is how much you don't know and how  many experts there are and out there and yes   the the sort of internet driven um idea that we  all have to have strong opinions about everything   and that we all must be heard um some of  us could be most eloquent by shutting up   you know i mean i i say in the book i think that  i think that the that we you know america would   be better off with with fewer people who knew what  it would take to make america better off that we'd   be better off with fewer opinions especially  political opinions and including my own um   yeah it's very important to i mean when you  when you face something like this health crisis   and if you think about the complications  and and how long it took to figure out   what it is we should be doing what we should  shouldn't be doing and and how hard it's been   to convince people of what we do know and how what  we know changes from day to day um it's important   to keep an open mind and to listen to people that  know more than we do about a subject you know i'm   uh you know i'm gonna listen to you about  radio you know i i i i you know and if you if   you were writing a book i would hope you would  listen to me about prose you know and um um um   like it's just to say you know i listen to my  mechanic when i take my car i don't go in so   no i don't i don't feel i don't feel like  the muffler is bad i feel like the car is   making loud noises because you know i offended it   humorist pj o'rourke thank you very much uh  for as i said meeting us here in this forum   with the commonwealth club well you're very  welcome it's always a great pleasure to talk   to the commonwealth club no better audiences  and no better questions are available anywhere   pj o'rourke is the author of the new book a cry  from the far middle which i have really enjoyed   reading it is of course available at your local  bookstore we also thank the viewing our audience   if you'd like to watch more programs or support  the commonwealth club's efforts in making virtual   programming please visit commonwealthclub.org i'm  brian watt thank you and everyone please stay safe you get it you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

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Keywords: CommonwealthClub

Id: 1GsnwqhLc4Q

Length: 65min 2sec (3902 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020