- Good afternoon. My name is Page Herrlinger, and I'm a member of the
Bowdoin History Department. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the first event in the
series, "After the Insurrection." The idea for this series was born with the attack on the US
Capitol on January 6th. A stark reminder to us all that if we take our freedoms
and our democracy for granted, we do so at our peril. They require our attention
and our engagement. This series of virtual discussions with experts in subjects that relate to the current state of American
democracy and its future, is part of a concerted effort toward that attention and engagement. Over the course of the semester, the series will feature discussions focusing on speech on the internet, voting rights and elections, the white power movement, our political system, and the role of business in democracy. Today, we begin our conversation with our guest speaker Timothy Snyder. The Richard C. Levin professor of history at Yale university and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, where he is now. A Marshall scholar at Oxford
where he did his doctoral work, professor Snyder has since
received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Carnegie and
Guggenheim fellowships. He also holds state orders from Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland. Professor Snyder's
publications have appeared in 40 languages and have
received about as many prizes. His many books include,
"Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin", "Black Earth: The Holocaust
as History and Warning", and two New York times bestsellers, "The Road to Unfreedom:
Russia, Europe, America". and the short but powerful
"On tyranny: Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century", which I understand is soon to come out in a graphic edition,
and finally "Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary". Most recently, as many of
you will undoubtedly know he's published a very
popular and important essay in the New York times
entitled "The American Abyss". About the sources and meanings of the January, six insurrection. In addition to his many publications professor Snyder has also
appeared in documentaries, on network television, and in major films. His books have inspired poster campaigns and exhibitions, films, sculpture, a punk rock song, a rap
song, a play, and an opera. His words are quoted in
political demonstrations around the world, most
recently in Hong Kong. He's currently researching
a family history of nationalism and finishing
a book about freedom. So I'd really... I'd like... With all that you have
going on professor Snyder, I think I can say on behalf of us all we truly appreciate your taking the time to be with us today. And before we begin, I
would just like to mention to the audience that if you have questions for professor Snyder, the
Q&A function is active. And after some brief introductory remarks, we'll try to get to many
questions as we can. With that, I'm gonna turn over the conversation to professor Snyder. - Okay, professor Herrlinger
thank you very much. Thank you for the kind introduction. Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be with you and to speak with the folks at Bowdoin. My understanding is that my
job is to lead the discussion with a few brief remarks about the state of our
democracy, circa 6 January, 2021. So I'm gonna do that for
the next 15 or 20 minutes, and then I will be at your disposal all of you listeners for
the discussion that follows. I'm gonna make about five points. I'm gonna talk about five things. I'm gonna speak very briefly
about a permanent aspect of the human condition,
which is epidemics. I'm gonna speak secondly, about a longue durée aspect
of us history, which is race. I'm gonna speak about a more modern or a more recent component
of mass politics, which has arisen lately
and become very important for us, which is the big lie. That's number three. And then fourth, I'm
gonna talk about mob rule. Mob rule that's now
alternative to democracy which has emerged very clearly
for us in the last few weeks. And then I'll save a
couple of moments to talk about the future and about
some things that we might do. So I didn't want to overlook the pandemic. It's very easy in the rush
of the events of January 6th. It's very easy to yield to the temptation to think that all political things have immediately political causes and all ideological utterances have immediately ideological sources. But I do think we have to keep in mind the fact that the United States had been in a terrible state of health for the previous year, that this itself and the falsehoods told around it, and the controversies that'd caused had something to do with
the mood by early 2021. If you construct an alternative history of the year 2020 without the pandemic, a lot of the things
which we felt as crises as particular crises probably
wouldn't have happened or would have happened in
a slightly different way. So I wanna make an assertion but with that assertion, I
also wanna make a suggestion which is that part of the reason why the US is always
more anxious and fearful than it has to be, is that we have such
disastrously poor healthcare. So when something happens like a pandemic, the levels of anxiety
and fear and disagreement are simply greater than they have to be because we have such a disastrous system or non-system of national health care. And so, although the point
may seem very distant when you're thinking about, for example, you know some guy with
an Auschwitz t-shirt or some other guy with a Confederate flag rushing through the Capitol... I'm just gonna insist to you at the outset that there are background structures which are also very important to our mood and to our
overall comportment. And that one of those
structures is health, okay? So epidemics, health are pretty much... As any historian would note, are pretty much permanent
aspect of the human condition. Now let me narrow it down a little bit and talk about a deep... Some colleges would probably say, the deep truth of the
US political history. Which is the history of race. Now in connection with
the events of January 6th, I think the crucial question
is, what does democracy mean? Who are the people who rule
in that word democracy? Who is actually to be represented? In American historical terms, which I'm sure many of you out there know more about than I do. The turning point here is
the civil war reconstruction or really the failure of reconstruction. Very often folks ask, where can you look around the world to find comparisons so you can think about
what's happening in US now? I'm very happy to do that because I'm historian of many
things, but not of the US. But I do know enough about US history to say that you don't have
to look around the world. That the failure of reconstruction the so-called compromise
of 1877 leads directly to what we would call now
a series of authoritarian, you know, non-democratic
authoritarian regimes. That is the Southern States. Places where the vote
is artfully if possible, and violently if necessary,
repressed such that de facto for the better part of the next century, African Americans are not enfranchised. So this leads to... And this by the way... Let me just go off to
the side for a second. This is very important when we
think about these comparisons to other countries. Because often, there's this
debate among my colleagues about whether one should talk about fascism or not talk about fascism. I think it's very important
to talk about fascism because every historical
reference point you have, every comparison you can
make enriches your ability to evaluate the present. But what I wanna suggest here is that it's not that
these things like fascism or even national socialism are so distant from our own history
that we have the luxury of saying, "Oh that's
a comparison," right? It's all part of one history, right? The history of racial discrimination, the history of racial politics
is not one which is limited to one country or to another country. It's all one broad history. Okay, but bringing it
back to the United States. So in our political
history, since the 1870s there's basically been one party which has been the
voter suppression party. For a long time that was
the democratic party. They were the voter suppression party. For the last 50/60 years it's
been the republican party which is the voter suppression party. But we haven't been able to
get out from under this curse of having one of the two
major political parties, be a voter suppression party. And when you are voter suppression party, it's not just that you're
committing the evil of suppressing votes, it's
not just that you're standing for a system which is not
completely democratic, it's also that the habit
of suppressing votes leads you in certain directions, which bring you to a point place which it looks much like January 6th. And this happens in several ways. Number one, if you're a
voter suppression party, you're less and less interested in policy. You're more and more interested
in the kind of ideology or rhetoric, which would justify
you being in power, right? But you're less and less
interested in policy because policy isn't what
is keeping you in power. You're not actually competing. You're gaming the system. The second thing which happens if you're a voter suppression party, is that your own constituents become more and more racialized, right? Since your whole object is to win the vote by keeping the African
Americans and others districted in such a way that
you do win local elections. Step-by-step, year by year as
it has happened to Republicans your own constituents, your own electorate becomes more and more racially homogenous. Of course not perfectly, so
there are plenty of Asian and African American and
so on who're Republicans. But the general trend is clear, right? So you become more and more
de facto a racial party. And then the final thing
which happens to you is that if you suppress votes
over and over in a democracy, you stop thinking about democracy as democracy with some exceptions, but you get to that habit of thinking of the system as a game, right? It's just there to be gained. That's what it is. And once you get to that view that the system is just
there to be gained... Let's call that the Mitch McConnell view. You're not very far away from the view that the system might as well be broken. Because after all it's just a game, right? It's not a system, it's
not a moral commitment, it's just a game. Why not change the rules? So that's one logic which pushes you towards what happens on January 6th. Another logic coming out of the past is the notion of fraud, right? So who is represented? Whose votes really get to count? When Newt Gingrich, for
example, on election night goes on television and says, there's gonna be fraud in
Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee. What is he saying? He's saying that in cities i.e. where there are black people, the votes don't really count. And Mr. Trump picks up this language not very long after that. You've mentioned cities, right? Lindsey Graham does the same thing. He says, there's a history
of fraud in Philadelphia. There's no documentation for those. There's no reason for him to say that. What he's just trying to suggest is that these people are
not really representative. And so this whole idea
of fraud in our country is deeply racialized. It goes all the way back
to post reconstruction. It goes deeply to the question
of what democracy means, who gets to be represented, right? And so when you imagine then
that scene on January 6th, where people are pouring
into the Capitol building and they're chanting
whose house our house, this is what this means. It's an old... I mean, it may seem shocking but it's an old American dispute about who gets to be represented, and why. Does every citizen get to have a vote and be equally represented? Or do certain kinds of
people get to be represented? Only certain kinds of people. All right. That brings me to the third
point that I wanted to make. Which is a more recent part of this time international history,
which is the big lie. Now, the transition
here is that the big lie that Mr. Trump told, and which
lots of other people told along with him. The big lie that he won the election, this is identical to the
big lie of American history. The big lie of American history is that black people are not human beings. And that big lie of American history is what makes Mr.
Trump's big lie possible. Because what he's really saying is I would've won the election, if you don't count all those quote unquote fraudulent ballots. Which is to say, I really
would've won the election, if you don't count those black people. I really would've won the election, if you only count those white people. And of course, that's true. If we lived in a country
where you only counted white people's votes, he indeed
would've won the election. And so when you tell the lie
that you win the election you're basically repeating the
big lie of American history which is that black people don't count. Black people are not really people. But the big lie itself has a structure. And I wanna dwell on that structure because big lies are
incompatible with democracy. And once you have a big lie in the system, you've got to surround it, you have to take the air out of it, you've gotta deflate it, you have to make it go away because a big lie's
incompatible with democracy. Okay, why do I mean this? And what is a big lie? Well, a big lie... I mean, first of all is
something which is just not true. Clearly not true, right? In this case, you know, I
don't have to recite it all. We know what the institution said, we know what the court said. We know what common sense says that he was only calm... He was only challenging
the vote counts in States where he was close and where
it might turn things for him. That part is obvious. But the second feature of a big lie it's not just that it's not true, it's something that if it were true it would change the world, right? I mean, all politicians tell lies. I mean, controlled mendacity
is part of the art of politics. But lies the politicians
tell most of the time don't have the quality
that if they were true the whole world would be changed. A big lie does. If you believe that Mr.
Trump won the election, you have to believe a whole bunch of other things as well, right? You have to believe that judges, and state representatives,
and attorneys general, and voting machines, and Hugo Chavez. You have to believe a whole bunch of other things in order
to believe that lie. Which is what makes the lie a big lie. It takes over a huge amount
of your reasoning space. It takes over a huge amount of the world. And so if you believe it, and
belief is the key word here you find yourself drawn into thinking that life is divided up into groups. Believers, the people
who believe this thing that you believe, and
those who don't believe the thing that you believe. And relatedly, if you
believe in a big lie, you have to accept it, you have to believe the conspiracy theory. The two go together, right? Because the only way that
Mr. Trump could have lost, if he really won is if
there was a conspiracy against him, right? So de facto, when you believe a big lie, you're also taking part
in conspiracy thinking. So, a big lie then is
incompatible with democracy because a big lie means that you don't trust the institutions, you regard many, probably
most of your fellow citizens as being evil because they're outside of your group of belief. And it also means that you're attached to the person who's telling the lie. And this is where things get interesting. Because looking into the future... Because the person who tells the lie first is not always the person
who rides it to power. So Mr. Trump tells this big lie, it got him as far as
a violent insurrection and in storming to the Capitol. It did not keep him in power. However, the lie continues. And not just because he
continues to tell it, it continues because other people in his political party
continue to tell it. Including the aspirants
for the presidency in 2024, like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Holly. And so what's interesting... I mean, interesting in dark way, is that the lie can keep going, right? The lie has shaped the
way people see the world that creates its own alternative reality in which you can keep living. So just here's something to think about. An original big lie in 1918 was that Germany would have
won the First World War, if it hadn't been for
the stab in the back. If it hadn't been for
the Jews and the left, Germany would've won The First World War. That is a big lie which was told by top ranking German officers to explain why they lost
The First World War, why was, someone else's fault. 15 years later, that lie is
being told by Adolf Hitler who did not originate it, but who took it and who developed it. And so when we think about
the future of a big lie then we have to ask, okay, in 15 years what will
the United States be like if people are still saying this? If we're in a country where people believe that the 2020 election was stolen, where major politicians
are still saying that, will that country still be a democracy? I think that's very unlikely, frankly. The fourth thing that I wanted to talk about was the problem of mob rule. And here... Let me again just kinda
back to first principles because we're confronted
with these things, right? When I say mob rule, you immediately know
what I'm talking about. I mean, your mind probably involuntarily sees that mob of people
crowding the Capitol building, breaking through police lines, bringing in a gallows in the news, talking about killing Mike Pence. Some of those people were
actually looking to do harm probably and perhaps even to kill our elected representatives. When I say mob rule, you
think about all that. And you should, 'cause it's important. But we need to take a step back and realize that mob rule is
actually a form of politics. It's not just something which
happens every now and again. I mean, it's not like getting
drunk, it's like alcoholism. I mean, mob rule is not just this chancy once in a lifetime thing, it's an alternative set
of political principles which democracy is designed
precisely to oppose. The whole point of
representation is that we vote, and then people following
rules represent us so that we don't have to use
violence against one another, and so that we don't have to
use violence against them. Democracy is meant to
work against mob rule. Mob rule is incompatible with democracy for a couple of very important reasons. Number one is the rule of law. Democracy depends upon the rule of law, and the rule of law depends upon the State having a monopoly on the
legitimate use of violence. Mob rule says no, any
one of us has the right to use violence at any time
basically because feel like it. But there's also a deeper, more subtle but maybe even more important
point which goes on here. What mob rule does is that it says our representatives in so far as they're afraid of us, that's what matters. Not because they know what's good for us or because we elected them or because of the law
or anything like that. They're doing stuff because
they're afraid of us. And that's a completely
different principle, right? That's a completely different principle. And it's a principle we saw on display on the 6th of January, sadly. We saw it on display. We don't wanna look at this
because this is too painful but that's of course what happened. It's not just that on January 6th our elected representatives, some of them tried to delay or maybe even destroy, set
aside an American election. It was that our elected representatives even after the Capitol was stormed they still voted against democracy. And you know, that's a bad thing. Like, if you owe your job to elections, you should be voting against
mob rule and not for it. And then what's even worse than that... And I'm gonna insist that this is worse. Is the aspect of fear. So a number... I mean, they're mostly anonymous, and this is reported secondhand and so on. But we know that a number of
Republican representatives and senators saying, "We're
voting the way that we vote on January 6th, or we're
voting the way we vote on the impeachment trial,
because we're afraid. We're afraid. We're afraid of our own electorate, we're afraid of violence,
we're afraid of Trump encouraging violence." And then we think, "Oh, you
poor people, you're afraid." And I wanna stay here very strongly, that's the wrong reaction. That's the wrong reaction because that's giving into mob rule, okay? Fear, like there are all
kinds of female journalists and all kinds of people
of color in politics who are getting threats all the time. All the time. And they get on with it, right? When an old white male Senator feels like he's in some
kind of threatened position, then we all say, "Oh, okay
that's a very bad, I'm sorry." We've gotta be careful here, because if that's our move... I'm noting now that it's heavily gendered and racialized because it is. But if that's our move, then what we're saying
is mob rule is fine. If we say like, if we take this turn in January/February 2021, and we say okay, those guys are
afraid therefore it's fine that they don't vote their consciousness, they don't vote the law. They just do this stuff
that they should do 'cause they're afraid, we are then complicit
in inviting violence in as the final determinant
of our own politics. And 'cause the problem here
is, this is an old game, right? This is a game that mobsters play. It's a game that the secret police play. Once you admit, "Oh, I'm
afraid I'll do what you want." Once you do that once, then they just keep coming back for you. And they're gonna do it again. Or maybe somebody else will come back to you and they'll
threaten you another time. So the problem with mob rule is that it's not just that we have a mob, it's also that we seem to
have elected representatives who are willing to say, "Oh,
I'm afraid of that mob." And once you say, oh,
I'm afraid of that mob, that's when you have
the real problem, right? That's when you move towards something which I would really not like to see in United States of America, but which history shows us can happen. Which is a parliament, which
is basically there is a facade. A parliament which is
basically there to provide a kind of pretty cover for decisions which have actually been made
by a competition of violence. Which have actually
been made by the people behind the scenes who provide
the most credible threat against given elected representatives. That is where we do not wanna go. We do not wanna go towards mob rule. Now, we've taken some
steps in that direction because a mob seize control the Capitol, because we've had these two votes January 6th, and the
impeachment trial vote which were clearly influenced
by the fear of violence. We've taken steps in that direction because we have a
politician now in Florida who clearly is interested
in issuing threats, right? So we have to name this
problem for what it is. Recognize that mob rule
is not just something that happens now, and again, it's not
just some random event, it's an alternative form of politics that you'd have to be able
to name and to head off. So the last word I wanted
to say is about the future. And I am... You know, I do have lots
of optimistic things to be able to say about the future, but not enough time to say them here. But so where I wanna close on
is just a word about learning. So on the negative side, the people who study coups will say the problem with a failed coup, is that a failed coup is usually
the last thing that happens before the successful coup. So when a coup d'etat attempt
fails in your country, which has just happened in
the United States of America, you don't then go home and say, "Oh the institutions saved us." I mean, when I hear that... I'm not really frightened by
that many things in politics, but that particular reaction frightens me. If you people say, oh well,
the coup attempt didn't work because the institution saved us, no, that's not the right reaction. If you get this close, like if
you really have armed people and bombs in your parliament. If you really have a president who's trying to overturn an election, you can't say the institutions worked. What you have to say
is, how can we improve those institutions? Because the people who fail in a coup are teaching the people
who are gonna succeed in the next coup. So if you're not learning
yourself from the coup attempt, you're gonna lose the next time around. Now the positive side of that is that what this teaches us hopefully is that the United American democracy has a lot of room for improvement. That posture that everybody... Not everybody. That so many people took in 2016, 2017 that the institution... We're an exceptional nation, you know, greatest
democracy ever and so on, our institutions will protect us. That posture did not work, right? So what this suggests to us is that democracy is not
some kind of a machine. It's not some kind of
historical inevitability. Democracy needs support. Democracy needs moral support. We have to say that
this is a system we want not some other kind of system. It needs structural support,
which we can talk about more. But one of the structures
that it needs is healthcare. Another structure that it
needs is support of factuality and also democracy needs, you know, not a whole lot, not
every day, not all the time, but now in the end, it also
needs a little bit of courage. Thanks. - So thank you very much. Lots of food for thought already. And we have quite a few
questions coming in. I think I'd like to
start actually with one of the very first questions that came in. That asks you to elaborate
a little bit more on this question of where
we are as a democracy. And it starts with the freedom house. This is from... I should've have
mentioned Dr. David Dixon, Bowdoin class of 1976. Asking about whether you agree with freedom house's assessment that the US is no longer a full democracy, and do you concur that
the dominant faction of the Republican party is authoritarian in the wake of its behavior
following the 2020 election and its ardent support
of voter suppression. But I wanna follow up on that a little bit and ask you for some more structural ideas for how we can, moving forward, combat some of these very real problems that you have been mentioning with respect to mob rule, fear, you know, for example with term limits. Would that be something that you'd see as check on some of this? I think a lot of people have been asking what is the road forward
and what can can we do sitting from in front of our screens, but what can we do to help
pave a better path forward? - Okay, so Page your amplification of the question is so broad. That I'm gonna say a
couple of things about it, but I'm gonna wait and
let other questioners like ask some more specific
questions about the future. 'Cause if I try to answer it wholly, I'm gonna take a ball of
our time, which I don't- - Okay, I just wanna put it
out there this is not me. This is actually coming in, people are writing in
asking, what can we do? So (laughing) I wanna echo that. - All right, cool. So I'll take several cracks at it starting with this one. On Dr. Dixon's question
the first directly. Yeah, I do agree with
freedom house's assessment. I mean, the interesting
thing about freedom house and it's actually a positive sign about American civil society is that it's an American organization which breaks democracies. I know a little bit about how they do it. And it's a good thing that freedom house is capable of breaking
America's democracy. I mean, that's not what it was
really founded for honestly but it's a very good thing. And I agree with her assessment. I mean, I agree with... They've done a good job
in noting that democracy has been in retreat for... It's about the last 15 years, which is good to have that on the record 'cause it's only the past few
years that we've noticed it. But the trend is actually
much longer than that. And yes I mean, it'd be hard to characterize the United States as a fully functioning democracy given the inappropriate role that money plays in our elections, given how difficult it is for such a big part of
our citizenship to vote. I mean, given that we
just had a non-peaceful transition of power, and then
there are all kinds of things which might seem secondary. We have a very poor
information environment. We have an educational system which is getting worse and worse. So yeah, I think that it's good. It would be a very good
thing if Americans thought about democracy in terms
of pieces that you can fix rather than like, yay we're a
democracy or boom, we're not. Because often what we'll do is just say, yeah we've been a great
democracy up to now but all of a sudden
things have gone wrong. Oh well, too bad. But that's not how it works. How it works is that you
have these problems already, and if you can pick them off, you can make things better. So now let me try to address a little bit Page's synthetic question. The really important, smart
part about this question or these questions is the
emphasis on the future. So democracy can only work
so to speak in the future. It can't work in the past. And this is a key part in the way authoritarianism works now. And you can see it on the
example of Mr. Trump as well. You cancel the future, right? You cancel the future. We're in the year 21... we're in the year 2021... Sorry I got ahead of myself by a century. Where we're in the year 2021. That is a science fiction year, right? Like if you're like me and
you grew up in the 70s and 80s of the last century, the year 2021 like if that were a book title, I mean, that would be
announcing some kind of year of like a fantastic possibility. But that kind of future, like that sense of the future
is going to be way better or very different, at least for all of us. That's gone away. And that's crucial for understanding present day authoritarian trends. Because if you... You know, what's happened is that, a lot of people's own futures
have gone away because... And this is something Mr.
Trump has right actually the American dream being dead. Social advancement is much harder in the United States than it used to be. And there are things we can do about that. We can make it easier for
trade unions to function. We could work on inequality
of wealth and income, which basically amounts to the same thing as lack of social mobility. We could build up the welfare state so that people have more predictable lives and have a better chance
of changing their lives, because some things are more predictable. You have to give people
a sense of the future. If the people don't have an
individual sense of the future, then you don't have a
collective sense of the future. And democracy depends
on sense of the future because democracy depends on... It's in this little element
of faith in it, right? This idea that if we
roll the dice this time we vote this time things might
be better than the last time. So it depends on your own ability
to think about the future, to learn to think that this
election might be better than the last election. And then my two personal big ones. And again, note that these things have to do with the future. My number one would be factuality. So I mean, underlying a lot of
this stuff which is going on like the possibility of the big lie, the anger of the mob. Underlying a lot of that, even the racism which is worse
than the conspiracy thinking. Underlying a lot of that
is the social media reality which we've allowed to
arise in this country. And when I make this point... I mean, I made this point
earlier today on a TV show. People say like, oh, but
that's just like a nature, you can't change that. That's just nature. But no, I mean, social media in the US functions differently
than in other countries. I'm in another country right now, and I can say that, that's true. And these things are all historically contingent, they can be changed. In the late 19th century,
early 20th century, there were also lots of big concerns. Like big firms. Trusts, they were called back then. When people said, oh these are big, it's nature, you can't
do anything about it. And you couldn't until you did. I mean, there's a reason
why we have antitrust. Antitrust is there to create competition. We have a situation where too few firms are in charge of too much information flow and they work too well in the sense that they're too good at making money. And the way they make
money is by playing off the things you already believe. In other words, I mean, I'm
simplifying a little bit but not that much. Social media is basically a con game. It's a con game and that
it gets your confidence by telling you the stuff
that it's figured out that you already wanna hear, and then drawing you further in there to keep your eyeballs on the screen so advertisers can make money. Which is the opposite of being informed. I mean, hearing what you wanna hear and having that monetized, is the opposite of reading the newspaper and finding things out
that you didn't know, and maybe surprise you but
you really should know, like for example that your
children are drinking, you know mercury in the water,
I think a classic example. So one of my big ones is
we have to have local news. We can't do without local news. That has to be a project,
because local news creates... It allows for conversations about the things that
actually matter to people and prevents us from medially
jumping to Washington. 'Cause of course we have
different ideological values, that's fine. But we have to have a common set of facts without that, you can't
really have a democracy. And then climate change. I mean, climate change
seems a little connected to all this a little bit. Like, a little bit like health but it's directly connected. The sense that... If you don't believe in climate change then this may not affect you, but for the vast majority
of Americans who do. The fact that there is climate change and we're not doing anything about it, or not doing
nearly as much as we should, that also compresses the future and makes people feel hopeless. It makes us feel like, well,
what's the point in acting now? Like we don't really have that long of a time horizon anywhere. It increases anxiety and fear. If we could fix climate change, I mean, this is the thing about it like, we could do it. It's not harder than the moonshot. It's not harder than a lot of
other things that we've done. We could do it. We could turn it around, you know. And if we were solving climate change, that would be pushing the future outwards and we'd feel much less afraid. And we'd start to have a future into which we could look. So those are some of my
big ideas about that. - Wow, yeah I mean, I'm
glad you brought up this. You keep emphasizing
the fear that I think... A lot of us share although
about different things, but that fear is not a strategy. It's not a starting point
for healthy decision-making. And to set it aside. I think also the pace of
change that we're confronting on all of these fronts
that you just mentioned is for many of us really
overwhelming, right? I mean, we're not only
talking about big problems, but we're talking about
feeling the pressure of solving these big problems yesterday. And that's only increasing
our anxiety and our fear. So it's a cycle. A lot of questions have come in. I think I'm gonna use my
privilege as the moderator to actually pull up one from
one of my former students, Alex Kogan who is asking a little bit more about the big lie. And he ask specifically
what historical examples are there of honest democracy
overcoming the big lie. Mentioning that in Nazi Germany, the alternative reality of the big lie did not fully unravel until
the latter stages of the war. That is after genocide and brutal war. I think the bigger question here is obviously, you know, are
there real things that we can do to combat it right now? As you said in 15 years, if it's still around our
democracy is in trouble. So do you have any suggestions for how we might begin to combat? - Yeah, it's a great point
that Alex Kogan makes about the big lie. And that's something that
has me very concerned too because unfortunately he's right. You don't usually get out of a big lie unless you're shocked by something. Because it's like any other
form of addiction let's call it. I mean, it's very hard... The whole point is that
once you're inside a big lie you can't really be reasoned out of it because it's internally
consistent for you. It doesn't depend upon external evidence. It's internally consistent. And so anything or anybody
which appears to be against it, just in a way confirms it,
because you already know that the world is
divided into us and them, you already know there's
a conspiracy against you. So it's hard to penetrate it that way. And unfortunately, the
sociological reality is that it often does, depending
on some kind of a shock. So in the case of Germany, I'm afraid, I mean Alex
Kogan was quite right. Right down to the end of the war, if you read like Victor
Klemperer, for example, about examples of like returning
crippled German soldiers in April 1945, still thinking that the Fuhrer is telling the truth. Still thinking that like somehow
there's a miracle weapon. And what I wanna avoid is an America where we have a deep lie
which is so entrenched in us for so long, that we have to be shocked like that to get out of it. Eventually we will be, because I mean among
other things believing in a big lie like this,
well it will make.... I mean so much of our... You know, we're not trinded We wanna be trinded,
that's a different story. But if America's gonna work, America depends upon it's trust society. And trust societies depend
upon habits of truth and truthfulness, at least, you know within some kind of a limit. If we stop being a trust society and start becoming a belief society, you know then we're divided up into clans where one clan believes this
and one clan believes that, and it's not just that
politics won't work then the market isn't gonna
work as well then either. A lot of things that we take... The laws ain't gonna work as well, civil society isn't gonna work as well. A lot of things that we take
for granted will stop working if we're living in this big lie. Okay, enough dark stuff. I do think that there's
some things that can be done about this particular big lie now. I mean, number one. Politicians in Washington had... Beginning November 3rd,
better late than never. The obligation to simply talk about what the election results were. And insofar as they're not doing that, they're taking part in this big lie. Number two. And now there's talk... I mean, this is something
that I've been talking about for seven weeks now, but I think that Congress
is actually gonna do it. There has to be some kind
of blue ribbon panel. Some kind of commission which brings in... And by the way, like if you like this idea please tell your elected representatives about it because I think
it's much more important than they realize. There has to be some kind of condition, which includes forensics people,
digital forensics people, lawyers, security experts, historians, scholars who work on race. A total view, which tries
to get our minds around what happened on January 6th. How it was possible,
institutionally, historically from every possible angle
and to produce a report which is there on the record for any judge in the future who needs it. For any historian in
the future who needs it. For any school, any college in the future that wants to teach it, you know, in a hundred-page report. Maybe it has 10,000 pages of appendices, but in a hundred-page report,
which it's clear what happened and how it could've happened. It seems like a simple
step, not very dramatic but it would make a huge difference. I hope that will happen. And then the third thing
I would say is that into what I already said. That the big lie works in a certain kind of media environment. And so you don't address it directly but you address it effectively. If you can fill up the
world with more factuality give people other things to care about, things in their own lives to care about. That that will also... It won't do away with it, but
it will change the atmosphere. - Great, Joe Leghorn has posed a question about whether or not you
believe Americans still share a set of common values. And if not, (chuckles) how
can we as Americans try to retrieve a set of common value? So in other... And I think when I was speaking
with my class earlier today I think this speaks to the
question not only of values, but when we are so polarized in our kind of core beliefs or
at least imagine that we are, how do we even begin a
conversation where we're using I dunno, even the same vocabulary. How do we even initiate that? I think we're all struggling
to figure that one out. You know, even within our own families, I think many of us saw the
letter that Adam Kinzinger the Illinois Congressman's
family sent to him when he voted his conscience
and voted to impeach. And his family... If there was a kind of tribalism, but it was steeped in
a shared set of beliefs that they felt that he had betrayed. And if that's happening on
the level of the family, how can we as a society find that space for a real dialogue over issues. Not even the issues that
are sort of the ones that divide us, even if
there are common values. So this is a two part question. Are there common values? And then how do we start a healthier productive conversation about them again? - It's a wonderful question. 'Cause I think you can't
really do without values and that's gonna be the
beginning of my answer. I think one thing that
conservatives have had right and liberals have basically had wrong is the necessity of values for democracy. I mean, a democracy is not just about my individual preferences, or your individual preferences. It's not just about my
individual interests or your individual interests. A democracy depends upon valuing. And I'm not saying by the
way that conservatives always have the right values. I'm just saying that I
think they have been right about the issue of values. A democracy also depends upon values. It depends upon for example,
the value of pacifism that you're not gonna fight violently about an election result. It depends on the value of toleration that your neighbor has the right to vote differently than you do. And I believe it depends on the value of truth that democracy
is an enlightened project which assumes that we as
creatures can do better than just responding to our
immediate urges and impulses. That we're also capable of
learning and drawing judgment. And I think like, that value commitment to truth is part of what I think folks on the left or
liberals should consider or since I'm not being
really straight forward, I think they should embrace it. Because what's happened with... I mean simplifying a little bit, but what's happened is that
the embrace on the left of the idea that there's
not really much point of pursuing truth because every experience is individual and subjective,
is then of course weaponized by the people who actually have the wealth and the capacity to project subjectivity. And that's Mr. Trump. I mean, that's the story
of Mr. Trump in a nutshell. He weaponizes the idea that
there's no objective truth and there's no moral value in pursuing it that all that matters are feelings. And it turns out that when
all the matters are feelings, what really matters are the
feelings of the powerful, not surprisingly. So the way that you get at the powerful is not with feelings. The way you get at the
powerful is with facts. But you can only have
facts if you've decided, our priority that facts are a valued, that factuality is a value. And by the way when I say
that, I don't mean to dismiss at all the different experiences of people in United States. On the contrary, I mean
embracing factuality means, for example knowing how
many people are incarcerated in the United States. It means knowing how
much more likely it is for an African American to dive of COVID in the United States. It means knowing how much more
likely an African American woman is to die in childbirth
in the United States. Those are all facts. And on the basis of facts. I mean, wealth inequality
is a classic example. I think wealth inequality is
probably the biggest problem in this country. But wealth inequality
is a matter of numbers. And if you don't see the numbers, if you don't, you really can't appreciate the qualitative reality of it. So I think if a value
commitment that we have to have is the value commitment to factuality. And then the last thing that I wanna say about this is that there is a value that I think a lot of people... Not everybody, but a lot of
people in the United States, probably most people in United States would say that they
accept, which is freedom. And here, I think our big problem is that when we say the word, we don't know what we're talking about. Or we're talking about... I mean, sometimes it's hard to say we're talking about nothing. We're talking about what I
feel like doing at the moment. And what I feel like doing at the moment is what I feel like doing at the moment, but it's not freedom. I mean, what I feel like
doing in the moment, there's so many things that go into that. So many humans and machines
and causes and accidents, which go into how I feel at the moment. My freedom is something else. My freedom comes from my
ability to decide who I am and how I'm gonna project
myself into the world, and how I wanna change the world. And so, I mean, the thing that
I'm personally preoccupied with now, and you nicely
mentioned this already, I'm trying to write a
little book about freedom. I'm yet to try to get to
put some meat and some bones on this idea of freedom,
because I think like in a way freedom is a special part of this problem, which Joe's identified, which
is that we all talk about it but it's not clear what we mean by it. And I'm hopeful that
if we had a discussion about what we mean by it, we
might get a little bit closer to not to all having a
common set of values, I don't really believe in that. But get closer at least to having some of these core values, that
democracy depends upon. - A few questions have come in inviting you to speak a little
bit more to the question, the role that health
care plays in democracy. And as part of a broader question about our wellbeing, and I guess our role as citizens in a democracy. Both our physical wellbeing but also our material wellbeing which are related in many ways. So, I for one would like
to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on our
healthcare or lack thereof. - Yeah, I mean, it's a great following from the last question because I think that healthcare is a way that
Americans get freedom wrong. And we line up the healthcare debate as though on the one side, there are the people talking about freedom and the other side, there are
people talking about health and then we kind of shake our heads and say, oh yes there's this terrible, we know clash between freedom
and health you have to choose. Americans like to do this like, it's a way that we have of denying ourselves freedom. We constantly set up these false dilemmas. And then we say, well we have to choose between freedom and security. You know, these people say
we have to be more secure, so I guess we have to be less free. When like, even in that classic example, there are very often
things that you can do where you can be more free and
more secure at the same time. Like that's possible. But we've got... I mean, and so this is like, that's a classic way of
thinking about freedom which I think we should stop doing. But in the case of health,
it's a good example of how there isn't a clash
between values, right? It's not that you have to trade
off freedom for healthcare. On the contrary, if you have healthcare, you're a freer person. I mean, in "Our malady" which
is the book that I wrote basically after I got off what could very well be my deathbed. I make a couple of arguments about this. One is that... Just the very basic one which is that when you're
sick, you're not free. I mean, there are too many
Americans who are too sick too much of the time, and
those people are less free. I mean, when you can't
walk, you're less free. When you're facing
physical or mental illness, especially that could
be cured or attended to you're less free, just as a human being. And this is a taboo thing
to say in the United States. I mean, the US like
we're free all the time and we're happy until we're dead. But there's that zone of when we're sick. And so many of us are
sick of so many things, you know, from so many
things which are avoidable as well all the time. And that means that we're less free. But also, when you don't have
reliable access to healthcare you're also less free. Because when your mind is
full of avoidable anxiety, you're less free, right? Like if there were a
demon who had the power like to put... I'm looking at professor Herrlinger here so I'm just gonna talk to her. She's the only face I see. If there was a gremlin
who could put anxiety into into professor Herrlinger's mind, we would say, well, she's less free because there's all that
anxiety, which is there. It didn't have to be there. That's what the absence of a
predictable healthcare is like. It means that Americans live basically in this environment of
totally artificial anxiety. If you don't know whether you can go to a doctor or whether you
can afford a doctor, right? And we're looking at tens
of millions of people who de facto cannot
afford to go to a doctor. And even if you do have insurance, you're still rolling the dice. You know, when you go to
the hospital, sad to say. Maybe you've got better insurance, but if you've got worse
insurance who knows. And even if it's okay, and this is kind of the
tragic part about it, you're still thinking about
it the whole time, right? I mean, this is another
taboo subject in the US so I'll just like out with it. But when you're in the hospital, you're thinking about
money the whole time. And you're wondering like, not even just do you have enough money, it's is the doctor making the
decision based upon money? And you're right to be worried about that. Is the thing. And all of those levels of
anxiety make you less free. If you could pull that
anxiety out of your mind you would be more free. And this is... I mean, it pains me to
say this is American, but this is one of the things
that I noticed in Europe. Is that this is one of
the ways the Europeans are more free than we are. Because they don't have
that artificial anxiety in their lives. They're calmer, and they
have more mental space, more emotional space to
think about other things. And that's freedom. If you have more mental
and emotional space to think about other things, that means that you're
free, I mean you're freer. So all of these things, you know go into why I think healthcare
is an important part of our free society and
important part of the democracy. And now I'm just making just
empirical point about this. If you look at the countries
on that freedom house list which was mentioned earlier, think about the healthcare systems in the countries that are
doing better than we are. There are people in this
country who, for whatever reason seem to think that if you
have a healthcare system that means you're less free. But look at the countries on the list who are doing better than we are, and ask yourself do they have
health care systems like ours? Or do they have healthcare systems which involve everybody being insured? - Thank you for that. You inadvertently answered
one of the next questions which was to sort of compare our system to other functioning democracies and what makes the difference. And of course that was the answer you just gave right of healthcare. I think this is actually
a related question but it takes the the issue in a slightly different direction. It's from a recent Bowdoin
alum, Arthur Kalendoff. Who asks, I'm wondering
if professor Snyder knows of any historical parallels
or can offer a perspective on the enthusiastic support
of politicians and rhetoric that is clearly against
their own interests. For example, there's plenty
of demonization of immigrants by other immigrants, and
polling of the 2020 election shows that many people of color
voted for president Trump. How do we understand individuals
who embrace ideologies in politicians that don't represent them? - Yeah I mean, that's a great question. Can I just talk about other
democracies for a second though? - Yeah, yeah by all means. - There's hope that
healthcare is one of them, but there are also some much
more surface level differences which are really important. Other countries don't allow
dark money the way we do. Other countries have publicly financed political campaigns that
have beginnings and endings, as opposed to obscurely
financed political campaigns that don't have beginnings and endings. Other countries don't allow, you know all the darks or companies
to intervene in elections in States that they
have nothing to do with. You know, why Ohio has in gambling? Because people far, far away intervene with lots of money and TV advertisements. Most other countries that are democracies don't think that it's
particularly democratic for people who have disposable wealth to be able to frame
the whole conversation. That's a difference. Citizens United the
2010 Supreme court case, basically ruled that money talks. Like, money is a person. I don't happen to believe
that money is a person. I think money is money,
and people are people. I think people have
voices and money doesn't. But that's a view that has to be defended. And in the US, we have
kind of let ourselves slip to this point where we accept that if you have a lot of money that means you get to
frame the conversation. Other democracies don't accept that view. And I think that makes a big difference. Other countries are also doing... I mean, the European Union in general is doing a much better job handling the big social media platforms. Okay, but I'm not dodging
Arthur's question. I just wanted to slip
a few things in there. I wanna take Arthur's question to the next level though, because it's not just
migrants or black people, I would say own interests. Most white people knew
it's not black people that vote against their own interests, it's white people who vote against their own interests, in the US. I mean, if you used interest in the kind of most academic
least-contested sense, which is economic interest, right? It's not black people that are doing that, it's white people. White people are the big practitioners of identity politics in this country. I mean, if you mean like... So I'm just taking interest
in a very narrow sense like, you should be
voting your pocket book. That's white people, I mean that's us. That's the white people
who are doing that. The white people are
engaged in tribal politics. Because if you're voting
against the welfare state, if you're voting against
taxing rich people that's when you're voting
against your own interests. And voting against taxing rich people and voting against the welfare state, that's what white folks do. I mean, again there are exceptions, right? I mean, I understand,
but most white people in most elections are voting
against their own interests. Or if you wanna do a red State blue State, the red States, almost all
of them are net recipients of federal money. And the blue States, most
of them are net in payers to the federal government. So, you know, Senator
McConnell, for example complains a lot about
the federal government, but Kentucky gets roughly
three times as much money from the federal government as it puts in. And that's typical, right? I mean, in very red States
that's generally the case. And so every time a red State votes red it's voting against its own
interests, every single time. If we're just talking about
narrow financial interests. So I just wanna expand
the question and ask why? I agree with you, why? And then, you know just
posing the question that way, realizing that most people are voting against their interests most of the time kind of makes it seem less normal. It makes it less abnormal, and makes you think okay, what actually motivates people to vote? And I mean, I guess the
way I think about it is that there are two
different political equilibria. And you gotta fight to get
from one of them to the other. And one political equilibrium which is a good one for democracy, folks are generally not racist. Historical discussions about
difference have taken place. There is a healthy information environment in which you can more
or less make decisions about your interest by
having accurate information. That's a kind of idealized
equilibrium point for democracy. For authoritarianism, the
idealized equilibrium point is there's not a really good
information environment. Historical differences are
magnified rather than resolved, politics becomes a matter of us and them. So your own personal
interests don't matter so much 'cause it's all about the us and the them, it's all about the leader who tells you about the us and the them. And in that political equilibrium point, you suffer, right? You're supposed to suffer. I mean, you suffer and that shows, you don't wear that mask, you don't take care of yourself. You suffer, and you think
that suffering has a point. And that's... I mean, there's a sadism and masochism which comes into authoritarianism. You need to put like direct labels on it. People like to suffer. They like to... In this world, right? They like to be lied to. It's not just they are lied to, it's that they like to be lied to. It's not just they suffer,
it's they like to suffer 'cause they think it's serving
some kind of a point, right? And that is how human beings could be. And that is why democracy is a struggle. Because if you just tell people, "Hey, don't you wanna be free?" That's not really enough, right? That will not get you democracy as we're seeing in the United States now. I mean, we are hovering between these two political equilibria points, and people are very capable of both but it's democracy, which
requires more of the effort. And it's a structural effort. It's not just a moral effort. It's a structural effort
to build structures such that people have
access to information, such that they learn to
think in terms of interest and not in terms of tribes and so on. - I thought you were going to
connect that to your argument about the politics of eternity. 'Cause I definitely see
some connections there. Is that not... Do you not see those as connected or? - Absolutely, yeah I
was trying to stay away from my own terms but- - Okay. - One way... I mean, in the authoritarian point of political equilibrium,
there isn't a future, right? So if there's not a future then the whole notion of
interests doesn't really exist, because an interest can
only exist in the future. An interest is something where you make some kinda
commitment or decision now, and it gets paid off in the future. 'Cause you have an interest. But an interest only exists in a timescale where there's a future. If you can take the future out of politics and make politics only about making America great again, for example. If you can only make politics about envisioning the time
when America was great, then what you've succeeded in doing is taking interests out
of the center of politics and replacing politics
with identity, basically. Like, let's identify with that time when we were on top, right? Let's not do anything to give ourselves a better chance in the future. Let's just identify with that
time that we were on top. And so time is very, very
important here, you know. And that's why politicians
like, like Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin is also very good at this. Politicians who are
able to knock the future off the table, are also
knocking the question of interests off the table. And then suddenly the question isn't why aren't people
voting their interests because there's no future you
can't really have an interest. All you can have is an identification. And identification doesn't demand policy. Identification just demands reassurance. Identification demands clear
definition of the enemy. Identification demands a story. But it doesn't demand policy. It doesn't demand policy
that affects your interests. - Right, and when you were speaking about suffering earlier, I was thinking the word sacrifice might also be appropriate, right? That (garbled speech) comes
through that sacrifice for this identity cause, basically. That's a way of connecting. So we have another question from... I'm gonna probably
mispronounce the name here so I apologize for that. But Ryan Kovarovic, who ask
what is your take on the idea of quote, toxic liberty, unquote. As in the ideal in America
that some people have... They think they have the right to do whatever they want
because America is built on liberty, in contrast to Europe where unconditional liberty is not part of their identity. Do you think that this
issue of toxic liberty has an effect on the current
state of our democracy? - So I mean, I can't answer
that question directly 'cause I'm hearing the
phrase for the first time. So I don't know quite
how to judge it on space, but I agree with the spirit
of the question, I think. Liberty doesn't mean doing
the stuff that you wanna do. I mean, that's what a two-year
old thinks liberty is. You know, I say that as a parent. But it's not actually what liberty is. I mean, if liberty is something
which and here as in people, then I have rights but my
partner also has rights, my friends also have rights, and my coworkers also have rights and everybody has rights. And those rights clash and
that's what democracy is for. And that's what the law is for. And that's what institutions
of civil society are for. Is to regulate that
necessary clash in values. So, you know, if I believe that my liberty means I do whatever I want, that means I can put my finger at someone else and make
them a slave, right? That's what I wanted, I wanted to make them a slave, why not? That was my thing, you know. Or I wanted to kill them. But that's what I felt like. I felt like taking out
my gun and shooting them. That's what I... You know, freedom. But obviously the first step
in every serious thinker about freedom, including from caught forwarded through the founding fathers, I mean every single serious
thinker about freedom understands that if it's a
human value, it's reciprocal. And therefore the first
problem with politics is the fact that more
than one of us is free. I mean, if I'm allowed
to do everything I want, then I'm an absolute Monarch. And the whole point of the republic is not to have a monarchy. The whole point of a republic is that a republic means the common good, a republic means
something which is shared. And so freedom has to be
shared, or it doesn't exist. If one person creates a situation where he or she can do
whatever he or she wants, then that's by definition tyranny. That's not actually freedom. So I think I'm agreeing
with with the questioner. The second point I would make about this is that freedom requires a lot of work. So people... You know it's... I mean, Rousseau who says, "We're born free but we're not." I mean if you've never given birth or like you've never seen a birth happen. Like, I mean, the idea
that you're born free, it's pretty absurd. You're born to helpless. You're born dependent upon other people. You're not gonna make
it without other people. The idea that you're
born free is just absurd. In order for there to be free people, there have to be institutions
which help us to become free. 'Cause freedom involves having a notion of who you are as opposed
to other people are. It involves having your own ideas. And that involves being able to figure out what's true for yourself. And we can do those things. But in order to do all those things we need a lot of help along the way. And so the American idea that freedom just means leaving people
alone, that can't be right. It can't be right. 'Cause if you just leave babies alone they're not gonna grow
up to be free people. If you just leave five-year olds alone they're not gonna look up... To raise free people, I think is a wonderful national project. But to raise free people
actually involves... And this may seem paradoxical at first. But it actually involves a whole lot of social and political
cooperation to raise free people. I want there to be free people. Because I want there to be free people, that means I know that there
has to be a lot of cooperation. There has to be a lot of investment put in children, for example. - Thank you. So another question. And we're getting to the
end of the hour here. So this comes from Joe Gordon, and it asks it's as hindsight is brilliant but foresight remains the challenge. How do we anticipate such a catastrophe and not take action to address it before it becomes a tragedy? I'm hoping this will be a time when you can not only do what you do best, which is to help us use our past to make sense of our future, but also give us something
which many people have been asking for. Some things looking forward
that we can actually think about and maybe even do. I should know, you did
actually write your piece on the American abyss
before it happened right? Before January 6th. Although historians are
loath to predict the future, you seem to be particularly adept at at least understanding
what is possible. You have the imagination. So any thoughts that you might leave us with today, looking forward. - Yeah, thank you for saying that. So I don't have to say it. I mean, I did actually write in two or three different places that there was gonna be
violence around this election. And I took a lot of heat for it. But I was comfortable in doing that precisely because in the
spirit of this question, if you don't think about
what's very likely to happen, you're living in this kind of
unreality, the bad guys win. And then once they win, you normalize it, and the whole process starts again. And that's why part of
my answer is history. You know, history is not about hindsight. History is about things that can happen because they did happen. So the richer your background is and things that did happen, the richer your background is
and things that can happen. I mean there is this cliche an historian shouldn't predict the future. But frankly they do a better job than other people as far as I can tell. I mean, one of the funny
things I've noticed about public life is
that everybody's expected to predict wrong. Like, public commentators predict
things wrong all the time, it doesn't stop them from
reappearing in public life. People who predict
things correctly however, they don't actually get very much credit (clears throat) because
it's kind of annoying when people (chuckles)
predict things correctly. But my intuition here is that history is not about being a
Monday morning quarterback, history is more about situating yourself with the flow of things. And so it may seem too easy or for some people too boring, but knowing more about
history does make it easier to figure out the things
that could happen. I mean, even if you only
pay attention to US history, the kinds of things which happened in the last few weeks are
gonna seem less surprising. There have been violent riots in the US before about
voter participation. There have been takeovers
of US Capitols before. And this issue of who gets to vote is maybe the liveliest issue
in US political history. So I don't mean that as a cop-out, I mean it very seriously. I think one of the things
you can do to look forward is to pay more attention to the past. And this also... I mean, part of our authoritarian
problem in this country is the crushing of the humanities, right? Because I mean, I've
nothing against science, love science, my kids love science, I love science. I was a math team champ, it's all great. But the thing about that stuff is that it doesn't actually prepare you for the values of the future, right? I mean, it gets you set up... Especially the way it's taught now. It gets you set up to
be a functional person, a problem solver, and so on. But only the humanities
create the possibility of thinking about how
the future should be, and only the humanities
create the imagination that allows you to broaden
possibility, right? Because the actual
possibilities for good and ill are always much bigger
than we think they are. So one thing... And again, it seems indirect but it's not. I mean, there's a reason
why the same people who don't like democracy are the people who try to crush college campuses, and particularly the humanities. And that's because the
humanities are the thing which gives us some
imagination about the future both in terms of should,
and in terms of can. I mean, there are lots of smaller things that people could do. If every one of you goes
home after this election... This is a lecture, this is not election. Goes home, (chuckles) It's later Goes home after this seminar and subscribes to a newspaper,
you've done something good. Because the reporters are the people who're actually making a difference. Especially if you subscribed
to a print newspaper, you're doing a lot of good. Run for local office. You know, there's this
kind of terrible gravity in the US where all we talk
about is national politics, and that's one of our syndromes. The democracy is actually
gonna be decided by the States. And that's where it's
most at risk actually. And that's American history too. Is that democracy is most at risk at the level of the States. So, running for office. Like, we need good people
to run for Attorney General. We need good people to run
for the local positions that involve elections. Those are things that people can do. And then their value commitments. I mean, which I don't expect you to immediately agree with me about, but I would like you to at least think about like, the value
commitment to factuality. I don't think we can do without that. Because if we have... You know, it's the people who want change are not sure about the existence of facts, and the people who want authoritarianism are confident of their beliefs. Then you're doomed, right? If it's false convictions
up against uncertainty about the existence of truth, the false convictions
are gonna win every time. So there's some value things here that are worth thinking about. And for me the most important
value is factuality. - We have taken up more
than enough of your time, but if you have 30 more seconds for our students out there, especially. How do you consume your own news? Are there sites that you would recommend that they go to, or? - That is such a great question, because again, now I'm gonna
sound like a therapist, but I mean, so much of what's gone wrong, comes down to how we spend our time and where we put our eyes. And we can't fix that for other people, like, it's difficult,
but the way to fix it for other people is to pass laws. I mean, but there should be laws which force the social platforms to pay taxes to support local news, that
would change the country. But for the time being, what
we do is really important. And mood is really important. Like that word, fear that
you used earlier Page, it's really important 'cause fear is like, it's managed for us. You know like, American
politics creates reservoirs of fear about things that we
don't need to be afraid of, or shouldn't be as afraid of as we are. We shouldn't have to be
afraid our own health, the way that we are. We shouldn't have to be so anxious about the education of
our children as we are. These things are all
artificially produced for us. And then when you add to that, the anxiety which is produced by screens, then you're in real trouble. Because I mean I hate to be like old guy. Okay, so now like, I used
to be a computer programmer. Like when I was a kid I
could programmed computers that's what I did, it was my thing. I'm not against all of this. You know, I was a science fiction buff, I love computers. But the thing which has
happened is that computer... Like, the idea was that man
plus machine was gonna be God. And what's turned out is that
man plus machine is beast. And you know, that's something
that's a simplification, but social media is designed to basically bring out the impulsive side of us. And that exhausts us, and it
also makes us less capable of making sound decisions. And this is... I am trying to answer the question about how I get news. I try to get news from paper. I try to walk somewhere
where there's a newspaper and buy it and then read that newspaper. And if anything I find is that... This isn't meant as a boast, but I generally think that
I retain the news better, and studies show this too. Like, you don't really retain stuff you read on the screen very well, you retain much better from paper. And also if you read newspapers, the newspapers, they aren't algorithmized to the stuff that you wanna hear anyway. And so you're even surprised by things and you learn more because the arrangement of articles on a page is not... You know, there are reasons for it, but it's not personalized to you. And you don't want things
that are personalized to you because frankly, you're
already enough you, right? You're already enough you, you're fine in being you, you don't need to be more you. You need to be challenged by things. And so... I mean I try to read... There are kiosks in Vienna. I go to kiosks I buy newspapers, put them under my arm. And then I take pleasure in reading them. When... In the old world when there
were cafes and things, I took pleasure to read them outside. Like that's part of my habit. In terms of sites and things. Again, I think it's better
to subscribe to stuff and to be a day or two late, than it is to just stare at
and like let the machine choose what comes into your eyes. I do that too, everybody does it but it is kind of a
passive anti-human posture to let the screen decide... To let the machine decide
what's gonna come into your eyes and to let the machine
decide which aspects of your personality you're
gonna develop, and so on. There's something creepy about that. So subscribe, right? So like The Week is a good
thing to subscribe to. The Week condenses the news of the week. It has right-wing publications, it has left-wing publications. it has all kinds of publications. It gives good summaries of what happens. You can tell, if you
happen to be on the right you can tell what people
on the left are reading and vice versa, but it also
just gives a good summary of all kinds of news. You know, The Guardian
Weekly is a cool thing to subscribe to. They have the US edition. And you get a slightly
different perspective because it's The guardian,
rather than the US paper. I think Sunday papers are a good idea. Like if you can subscribe
to the Washington Post on Sunday or the New York Times on Sunday, you know, you don't have to be... Then you meet middle year
story reading on Wednesday 'cause it's really thick
but you'll find out that you're learning more. I mean, in terms of like... I read a lot of foreign news
because I'm a Europeanist, but in terms of US stuff,
I think Vox does a nice job of explaining... Like things that are online now. I think Vox does a nice job of explaining, and explaining is good. That's one that I would recommend if we're gonna be online. Yeah, the rest of the
stuff that I read online it's pretty specialized. So maybe I should leave at that. - Well, thank you. Those are great suggestions. All right. Well, again it has been a pleasure. There are very many
questions still out there. I'm afraid we weren't able
to get to all of them, but hopefully I think your
comments were so wide ranging. I think you actually did
touch on many of the things that people were interested in, so thank you for that. Thank you for joining
us, for enlightening us about how our collective
present can be explained or at least understood a little bit better by your own knowledge deep knowledge, I should say of the past. I also wanna thank the
Donald M Zuckert class, Bowdoin Class of 1956 Fund
for supporting this series, and last but not least, I
want to invite all of you to join us for our next
event on Monday, March 1st, which will feature Suzanne
Nossel speaking about speech, the internet, and democracy. With Katie Benner, class of 99, US Department of Justice correspondence for the New York Times. So thank you again to our guest and all of you for joining
in the conversation. I hope it's the first of many more good conversations to come. - Thank you very much.
On one hand this is true, but a commission to debunk lies sounds dangerously like a propaganda commission.. Don't you have the time to use education and demographic change to debunk lies? Will it take that too long?