The Strange Death of Journalism with Batya Ungar-Sargon

went on a different mentality committing that Blast for me the track you just heard is an excerpt from my brand new album Amor Fati you may remember the music videos I put out last year blasphemy Straight A's and forwards this new album features all three of those Singles Plus seven brand new songs now I put my all into this project and it's a real representation of my passion for music so if you want to listen to the whole thing click in the description or search cold X-Men on Spotify Apple music or wherever you listen to music now back to the podcast welcome to another episode of conversations with Coleman my guest today is Batya Angar Sargon Batya is a deputy opinion news editor at Newsweek and a columnist at Compact magazine before that she was the opinion editor of the forward in this episode we talk about tribalism and individualism we talk about how journalism and media became woke we talk about the shift from journalism being a working class profession to a profession for Elites and the consequences of that shift we talk about gender ideology and at the end Bhatia turns the tables on me and asks me several interesting and probing questions about myself and about my audience so without further Ado Bhatia Angar Sargon okay Bacha thanks so much for coming on my show um thank you so much for having me so uh we're gonna talk about your book bad news and your analysis of the current state of Journalism how journalism has uh changed from a working class profession that understood the poor in the working class to an elite profession that looks down on the working class that uh adopts a relatively Niche ideology that I would call wokeness we're going to get into all of that but before we do I'm curious I don't know much about your background how did you come to care about this issue of of Journalism and its capture by Elites and what was your path to get to that topic well um I don't know that I cared deeply about that topic when I first started writing about it I initially wanted to write a different book I had been doing a lot of reporting from the South during the Trump years and as like a leftist and a liberal and good standing I had been very surprised by what I found which was just um Americans were just a lot less divided than the media had led me to believe um and I wanted to write a book about that called a more perfect union about how Americans are much more united than we are divided over at least the great values that this nation was founded on um and I couldn't sell it I was I wrote The Proposal um and I shopped it around and I was told again and again by editors that there was simply no market for a book about American Unity right and finally a very kind editor sat me down and said to me um you keep telling me that we're less divided than I think um why don't I know that then why do I think we're so divided maybe you should write that book and I think that's the book I ended up writing which is why we have such a flawed view of America at least you know in in our sort of little corner of the world that is so unrepresentative of where this country is really at I think that's really what bad news really was yeah the the dirty secret of publishing is that it's difficult to sell a book that is not divisive yeah right because what grabs attention especially in the modern age is anything that pisses off at least one side right um and so organizations that try to unite people I think of something like braver Angels my friend John Wood Jr who's a great great guy works at braver angels and tries to unite people left and right and does puts on great events but there it seems unfortunately there is a ceiling on how popular such a project can get because people the market is hungry for the divisive that's why Fox News and MSNBC do so well and those will will get into it but those incentives that huge like beam of light of profit pulling media organizations to one side or the other pulling people and Brands to one side or the other has has caused media to get more polarized okay so let me ask you something about that though yeah you are a famously um calm equanimous sort of person um so I think this is like a really good question for you especially like I I get why divisiveness is sexy like I get why hating and like a certain kind of Rage um directed at other people like there's like uh response in that you know there's like something about that that's um like I get especially people who have been wronged or feel that they've been wronged right so on the right I would say a lot of that rage was kind of you know it baked into the Trump base right from the working class and then of course baked into the elites who felt that their control over this country was threatened by this Rising working class that sort of voted for Trump and and had him rest power from them which they thought was theirs like I can see at a human level like that there's just a certain freison that comes from you know that kind of thinking um you know as an editor writing headlines for pieces that I want people to click on because they're very good I often think like okay how trolley do I want to go with this headline um like what is your take on how to create that kind of like sex appeal around common ground and unity and unification like it's a real problem right I'm sure your friend thinks about this all the time like what is what is your opinion on that that is a very tough thing to do um I don't I wish I could give you a good answer I mean my for one thing I would say the perception of me as a predator naturally calm person I think is mistaken oh really let's talk about that for a minute well I think I think I present that way more than I actually am I I think it's um I don't know I think it's just a matter of how much I convey it with my face and with my tone like how much of my inner emotions bleeds through into the outer behavior and I think ever since I was a kid it's been like maybe less than normal do you remember a time where you made a decision no I I've always been described as like a calm kid ever since I was conscious like two years old but you've always felt like a wealth of yeah fiery emotion that you know or not but is it a conscious effort to not let those out no I think it's just it would never occur to you that that belongs in the public no I don't know it's it's I think there there is such a thing as more expressive and less less expressive people by Nature right so I think that I've I've learned through feedback of so many people telling me Oh you're so calm all the time and then like I compare that to my inner life I'm like what are you talking about I was like I was like I had like road rage walking here because people were walking slow in front of me I had like literal road rage I wanted to punch somebody um but I think it just doesn't it's probably genetic or so I don't even know it just doesn't translate was your mom and your is your dad like are they like that too no they're both very expressive do you have siblings yes are they like you were like your parents uh my my uh yeah my older S no no they're not like me I don't think I mean I mean maybe one is somewhat more like me are you the middle child no I'm the youngest oh do you do you uh do you believe the birth order stuff oh yeah I'm one of six and it's like every single piece of it is accurate for every single one of my siblings is that right so which one are you I'm the second oldest but I grew up in a very religious household and the oldest is a boy so the usually the oldest girl in the kind of community I grew up in ends up sort of raising the younger kids right developing that sort of ENFJ personality that's now like inescapable and plagues me so that means you are more mature more caretaking more worrying about others it means you're sort of oriented to tribe Harmony which is like the worst personality trait for a journalist because our job is to stir things up tell the truth even when it's unpopular um but um I'm glad we're talking about this because I was one of the things I was worried about Coleman is that um I was going to end up like spending the interview trying to make you angry just to test the common hypothesis and and end up saying things that I'm not even sure I believe just to get um to get a rise out of my view yes but now that I know that it's like a child I won't you know the world gets a rise out of me every day it's just I don't I don't show it much do you meditate a lot I have I've been on a lot of meditation retreats in my life I I haven't meditated daily in quite a while though yeah but also you said from a young age you remember being this way it's so interesting yeah um something else I wanted to ask you was um something I think about a lot is this question of like um racial belonging racial Pride I think about a lot in the context of being Jewish and I think about it a lot in the context of you know talking to to Black friends about this question because I think for me that's such an interesting question for the kind you're part of this you know crucial black anti-woke Intelligentsia the role that you guys are playing I mean I think really you saved us from the excesses of 2020 like just really not single-handedly but the 10 15 20 of you in the public sphere first of all I'm curious if you agree with me I feel very certain about that um but so to me this question of okay so um what's for first of all obvious and fascinating about um this group is how different you all are um and your views on many other things um this question of like can you say we need to reclaim Dr King's vision of a post-racial society an equal society and a unified American society and still claim some kind of racial Pride say no but I still am proud to belong to this race I'm still glad I'm part of this race this race does have you know values or you know this culture has values that I am proud of that I belong to and I was wondering where you are on that if you feel proud to be black if you feel common cause with other young black men if or if you see yourself in that sort of more post-racial way yeah that's a good question I think um race pride is a consequence often of race victimization usually groups that are told and treated violently and told that they're inferior or ugly often develop a counter narrative where actually black is beautiful black power I'm Black and I'm Proud all of those slogans that that we're familiar with come out of that it's a reaction to oppression basically and I I'm curious what you think the history of Jewish victimization and oppression has done in terms of that narrative in the Jewish community um so that all makes sense to me my attitude since I was a kid was that I took these slogans such for granted I had no insecurity about being black I was always I never thought black people were stupid because I was always the smartest almost always the smartest kid in my class and my classes were probably 70 white so my experience growing up was often being the smartest person in the class and being black that's awesome I never felt I never felt that black was ugly I I never wished to look different I always thought that I like looked good in my black skin I had a good self-esteem as a kid and so when I heard people say these slogans black is beautiful Etc it all felt unnecessary and it all felt like protesting too much um and that's not the case for all black people so I think but whenever I hear people say that I feel they are overcompensating for some feelings of insecurity which have a historical context and so forth ultimately the goal should be to not need to say those things because you take them such for granted that you can be beautiful in Black you can be smart and black Etc that black people have contributed um much of value to not just America but the world to take those things such for granted that such that they don't need to be said is is in my view the goal and that's the reason why I don't say them and I don't resonate with them um as far as post-racial Martin Luther King ethic I mean Martin Luther King said let us look forward to the day where no one says black power when no one says white power but where we all talk about God's power right and the power of the whole human race that to me is the proper goal of our discussions and um the way we bring up the Next Generation that should be the the north star that guides our um our debates on this issue um and then the question is how we get there which people may disagree on but you know some some wouldn't even concede that that is actually the proper goal uh someone say that that's a naive goal that we will be siled into races psychologically until the end of time and it's pointless to try and achieve a kind of trans-racial human ethic uh but I don't think that that's the case I think um and many parents can attest to this parents that grow up in diverse towns kids naturally are not very race conscious at all unless they're taught to be they tend to easily and effortlessly form deep friendships with people across races people marry inform families with people across races all the time if the most intimate of all relationships is possible across race I I hold out hope that our society can push more and more in that direction all right beautifully Bud thank you I'm curious what what are your thoughts on that question um I because the Jewish Community has a lot lots of ethnic group Consciousness as well yeah it's true although the more religious get the less it's based in ethnic continuity I would say and it's more based in you know the practice right so um you know the extreme case of this is you know so I'm I'm quite religious but there are you know Hasidic satmar Jews who wouldn't consider me they consider me barely Jewish right because I'm you know not as as observant as they are um uh I you know I do think that there is a contradiction between saying oh I should feel proud of or ashamed of what some random Jewish person is doing and saying um you know you know no we're you know one nation under God and that is extremely important I I personally feel I belong to two Nations like the Jewish nation and you know the nation of America and I don't really see a contradiction there but um you know I think racial pride is it's questionable because first of all I think we all instinctively understand you know white racial pride is bad right but so if you're going to deny it to one group it's wrong to then say but this other group can have you say exactly like you said but they've been denied the right to feel that same Pride for so long but you don't right the wrong by right by by replicating it um so I do feel like ambivalent about about I feel very proud of I don't know if they've been maybe proud is the wrong word I feel very attached to being a Jew but I think when I start to interrogate is it right to feel ethnic pride is it right to feel racial Pride I mean it may be the only thing that binds you to another person of the same race is that made up concept that we all understand is like playing has the potential to play has played and is increasingly playing a divisive role destructive role role that takes us away from being able to see ourselves as all created equally before God so it's definitely something that I think about a lot zornale Hurston in her Memoir and it it pains me that zoranelle Hurston is so often taught but like this part of her isn't taught um she has a whole section against race Pride making that exact argument right if you're going to feel feel proud of your race whether you are a black white Jewish Hispanic Etc the flip side of the coin is you should feel shame right when when someone of your race does something stupid or harmful in the world that should reflect badly on you and I'm not sure that I want to take that on at all um I have to say in that context I mean something that sometimes they get in trouble for saying in Jewish context is um this country has always been um just so non-anti-semitic like to its bones you know and and the I mean the best example of this from recent years was you know Bernie Madoff right you would if that if that had happened in Europe there would have been a pogroms I mean there would have been a spike of just anti-semitic hatred because this very obviously Jewish person committed this horrific heinous Financial crime that impacted so many people right and like embodying this like stereotype right that would have immediately signaled to you know this continent that's steeped in Jewish blood like an opportunity to once again you know for people who are not not just on the margin of side but that sentiment which sort of seeps more mainstream and there was none of that here I mean none that I saw none that I was aware of you mean in your lifetime in America because someone would say like pre-World War II no yes there was quite a bit of anti-Semitism here for sure I mean the rise of anti-Semitism started during the Gilded Age because there was a class of Elites clash of leads and Clash of leads often produces you know racial tension anti-Semitism for sure I mean restricted Etc yeah yes um um but I I mean even that it's you first of all you cannot compare it to the way this country is treated Black America and you just can't I mean there's no comparison whatsoever I don't know any Jew who tries to make that comparison um you know even today when anti-Semitism is rising on the far left and the far right it's still so marginal I mean you would never have a movement that actively embraced it consciously right the funny thing about anti-Semitism right now is that both sides claim the other side is anti-Semitic right and deny it's on their own side right there's never a sense of like this is something actually we should embrace because you know it gets the the populace riled up or whatever you know it's just so not in the the the bloodstream of this country and I think a lot of Jews feel very grateful about that and it does actually it and I think very guilty of for that good fortune especially looking at at the distinction between how Americans especially you know second half of the 20th century were treated in Black Americans were treated yeah so I do want to Pivot to some of the topics of your book sure um and this is something that is perpetually in the conversation on Twitter and uh it's it's a huge topic of conversation in the National discourse and has been for the past let's say I would say eight years or so since even since before Trump was elected which is um the what what ha what is sometimes called media bias although that's not quite the way you frame it in your book that I don't think that phrase appears very much in your book but many times it's just people wonder when they read the New York Times why it seems to have such a left-wing bias and it's had a liberal bias for a long time and it didn't bother so many people in 2005 or even 2010 at least not not that I can recall but somewhere starting around you located around 2011 in your book I've seen others located more starting around 2013. there started to be a an increasing um uh Orthodoxy woke Orthodoxy at a newspaper like the New York Times which then bled into MSNBC CNN Etc where you would just see the number of mentions of something like racism and white supremacy and systemic oppression go up by a factor of like 10 per unit time or more right a massive increase in concern with these kinds of topics um so so I guess one place to start is what happened there right like what what happened starting around the early 2010s that in my view probably peaked in about 2020 or 2011 that transformed a news that had a slight liberal bias into news that was drenched in woke terminology right um so it was two factors so journalists had always been more liberal than the American population at Large um just the kind of person who goes into the the you know the industry yeah why is that exactly well it's somebody who wants to fight for the little guy right like that was always the character trait of who became a journalist um journalism used to be a working class trade so it was sort of like being a cop um or being you know working in a factory right it was a high working class trade um journalists lived in working-class neighborhoods they made working-class wages and so they saw themselves as answerable to their neighbors to other working-class Americans so you know like the typical person who would become a journalist would be like the kid who sat in the back of the classroom like cracking wise about the teacher I was always getting kicked out of class like super anti-authoritarian and maybe it was so anti-authoritarian like that they couldn't go to the factory you know because they weren't good at taking orders they couldn't become a cop because they hated authorities they become a journalist they go to Washington and they meet famous people and politicians and they'd give them a hard time just like they gave their teacher a hard time you know and they'd give them a hard time on behalf of their fellow working-class Americans because that's who they saw themselves as answerable to they would go home to their communities and go to church with these people and you know that they saw themselves as outside of power looking in and demanding Justice that was the sort of the character of a journalist for much of the you know certainly you know the 19th century when American journalism really got off the ground as a populist Revolution um and then you know up and through the middle of the of the last century what changed was um College you know which is the dis defining line on in so many questions socioeconomic questions in America just dividing people who are upwardly mobile from people who are downwardly mobile so um you know it sort of it started slowly but um it really took off with JFK who was this kind of upwardly mobile educated it was a new kind of elite and when he married Jackie O he United this kind of new meritocratic intellectual Elite with the kind of old school Elite right and created this new glamor around meritocracy right now he had worked on the Harvard Crimson when he was at Harvard which was the paper but he would never have dreamed of becoming a journalist because in the 50s it was still considered a low status job and he was he had to say it's much higher but what happened shortly after that was the whole Watergate scandal and the Watergate scandal made journalism look really glamorous not just the Scandal itself but the way it was immortalized in film it made it seem like if you were kind of Plucky smart alec right you could bring down the most unpopular and most powerful person on the planet it just made it seem really sexy and really glamorous and really high status so higher class Elites started to go into journalism and which meant that people who were hiring journalists could then demand and even higher education and even higher status Elites right and those people of course demanded higher salaries while all that was happening um both parties had sort of committed to the knowledge industry right so as this revolution the status shift is happening you know in the journalism industry itself in the 70s and 80s and the 90s you started to see the rise of um globalization you know the kind of offshoring of good working class jobs and that would have been like the main story for a journalism class that was working class right if their neighbors were all suddenly losing their jobs you know these jobs they thought they were going to have forever that gave them you know working-class Americans a solidly middle class life if they had been in those communities to see that happen that it wouldn't have happened but they were no longer in those communities because we were undergoing a great sorting where people in the knowledge industry were upwardly mobile just like journalists more generally so they were sort of you know coalescing into these you know much smaller more Elite more expensive neighborhoods um our our neighborhoods Now in America our cities are more segregated by class than they are even by race although most places there's a huge overlap between those two things so all of this is happening there's this huge status Revolution happening you know 1930 only one in three journalists had a college degree today it's probably closer to 98 the majority have a graduate degree what do you do a graduate degree doesn't make you better interviewing people or telling the truth it probably makes you worse at it actually right so so 98 of journalists have a college degree so it was 92 like five years ago by now I'm sure it's probably not I mean I can't remember the last time I think it's still the case that fewer Americans in general have a college degree than don't it's about 36 percent have a college degree and um another 10 percent have some college but not a degree right um so and I'll just briefly say so that this whole status Revolution among who the journalists are they were always more liberal but when they were working for and this is you know from the industry point of view when they were working for Mass publication Outlets who made their money off of how many readers they could get across the country their bosses would rein them in because it didn't pay to have your journalists writing about the news in a way that just only 50 of Americans could read it right most towns were one Paper Towns and if if you know you could you could let your journalists follow their natural leftist intuitions and Report the news from a leftist point of view but then you'd only get 50 of the potential readers if they reported the news straight and you had a balanced editorial page you can get everybody right so there was this pressure from the industry to report the news straight and to have that kind of objectivity at least in the second part of the century and that change with digital media because with digital media what most Outlets are doing now is they're not going for that mass audience that broad audience they've identified a certain Niche that they want so it now pays from the industry point of view to let the journalists follow their natural intuitions now if those journalists were still working class those intuitions would take them to report the news from a working class point of view but they're not they're part of the elites the kids you went to Columbia with like that woke mentality is a product of an elite college education it operates the same way that an accent in England does it operates to tell everybody else that you had this rarified Elite Education the thing is is that that's who the New York Times wants as its readers as well right so it's now hiring those journalists who know how to talk to their neighbors now who are corporate lawyers and you know psychoanalysts right people who have that same education and so the industry is now built on trying to nail that rich Niche audience rather than get the mass audience and so the industry has you know like the bosses at the New York Times at the The Washington Post you know the NPR the heads have said to their journalists follow that woke Avenue because the people who love that stuff are the people we want that's who we want so we can tell our advertisers we have those Rich leftist Elites who live in Park Slope who live in you know these nice neighborhoods so it was it was a status Revolution among journalists that met an industry that was nichefying in terms of who's whose ad dollars they wanted and that's how you got wokeness right yeah that's a really interesting story there's a lot to unpack in that one is the transition from local news to national news yeah um I'm even I guess barely old enough to remember a time when I felt like my Town's local newspaper was pretty relevant and like I got the newspaper every day physically as a kid and I would get you know the Montclair newspaper and the New York Times and sometimes the Wall Street Journal I guess but it was like people really paid attention to the local paper the locals papers still until it kind of existed although it was already probably in decline by the late 90s and early 2000s um one potential explanation is no is it the case that journalists used to start out at local papers and be expected to have that local paper experience for a few years before jumping to a national paper like the New York Times or something like that and that experience of doing the Dirty Work of just like reporting on kind of apolitical stories in a town context where you're not going to get a bunch of clicks or a bunch of Praise or whatever you're not going to blow up on Twitter over your coverage of the story but you might get yelled at by your editor if it's unbalanced that there is no longer really a pipeline of journalists that have that gritty experience and training and kind of like patterning to report a certain way is that a part of the story oh yeah 100 yeah so it used to be you would come up through the local news right you'd be in a neighborhood that maybe you grew up in right or somewhere close by and your boss would be somebody who didn't have a college degree right and then you know at some point eventually you know you would get to a larger Regional paper and then maybe the New York Times would notice you now if you look at who the New York Times is hiring they're hiring from Vox right right they're poaching from you know these kind of you know Outlets that are created for you know upwardly mobile upper middle class Millennials there's people that have basically gone from college sadly they've never been in non-woke waters to a journalism school yeah yeah 100. yeah and and also yeah the role of digital news in this seems big as well I mean I've you know that old movie slash is it a play to the producers yeah so there's this moment in that movie where one of the main characters and I have no idea why I remember this it's so funny what what you remember there's a moment where he says you can actually you can make more with a flop than with a hit right and for some reason they do the math like they can make more with a bad play or bad musical than with a good one and I think about that line a lot when I read articles today like I read the article that is so bad and the headline is like so offensively bad so you listed a bunch in the first chapter of your book which are like during 2021 you basically could you could literally say anything about no matter how mean but if you said it about white women it was totally fine and people pretended that this wasn't misogyny by another by by other means but you can just say like the worst most misogynist but as long as you put white in front of woman everyone was just on board like um including white women paradoxically um and and uh and they're just like a million headlines like these which I'm not even sure would be written today because of because things have calmed down a bit but then I think about what what is it the model of digital news as opposed to print news like if it was 1995 and I wasn't on the internet and I got my physical newspaper all day and I saw a an article that that was like um you know white white women are the worst right like New York Times headline I would be like that seems really strange and then I read the opinion and it's just like gobbledygook of of uh of postmodern like language I would begin to consider unsubscribing from that newspaper especially if that sort of thing showed up a lot that would not be good for their business model um today because ad revenue is is a portion of you know a lot of these newspapers merely to read the article is to partly Finance what you're reading so like it doesn't actually matter obviously the New York Times still makes I think most of its money through subscription I I I I wonder if you know the breakdown yeah so they're making about 10 million a year now I believe last time I checked from their subscriber base which they're very excited about and I mean that's a real that's why everything is so woke I mean because you're saying like oh they're good they're right like you know white women um you know I think it would a bad life from the book was um when black people are in pain white women join book clubs like that kind of thing right just just pure disgusting ridiculous but like they know their audience Their audience like that's that headline was created for you know the upper west side right like that they know who Their audience is that that's so there's 10 million Americans who want to read that kind of thing right I don't know how many more there are right I mean we know that six percent of Americans so they have 10 million subscribers yes they still do have some ad Revenue I think it's between um between 10 and 30 is AD Revenue but it's but they're trying to they're very they they figured out how to rely Less on ad Revenue which has just on the internet it never caught up to add revenue and print it just never was able to to to catch up to that um so they've they switched to the subscriber membership base which is right yeah yeah so I I guess um that sort of invalidates my point but I I'm I I wonder whether ad Revenue has made this at all worse just because you know they don't care whether you click be on this article because you like it or you hate it right well no so so companies are very um I mean as Elon Musk is figuring out right now they're very sensitive they don't want their product appearing in an ad right under for example a swastika turns out um and I think that if if the if the model was still based on ads um I think a lot of this a lot of the woke excesses maybe wouldn't have um it wouldn't have been as bad yeah I mean they they would they so the the advertisers want to know that your subscriber base is Rich but for like most of like you know this is at least second half of the 20th century the New York Times subscriber base was already you know well to do over educated over credential deletes um who made you know much more than the average American but what was in Vogue then for that type of person was a balanced report like they didn't want to read a newspaper that they knew only nine percent of its readership were Republicans that's that's true today of the New York Times that would have been embarrassing to its readership 10 years ago 15 20 years ago to go to the squash club and not be able to talk about the news with your squash partner who was maybe a republican right we've now you know the New York Times sort of abandoned that model and said look we're going to lean into this subscriber base um and it's just so funny they just you know this week There's a new Mass letter being signed by all these celebrities I think we're talking about the same open letter about the New York Times cover of trans issues yeah yeah well so it's just I thought it was so amazing because the last time this happened was in 2020 over the Tom Cotton op-ed right during the racial moral Panic they published an op-ed by Tom Cotton that reflected the views of 60 of Americans and 40 of black Americans um that if the local police could not quell rioters and looters they should you know the Trump should send in the National Guard during the the George Floyd riots he was actually Tom Khan's op-ed was actually um more moderate than 60 Americans and 40 of black Americans who were like no no it's time to send them in full stuff his editor had him add in a little bit of qualification saying you know look if they can't quell actually I don't know if the editor added that or or um it's in the book whether they added that or if he had that in the initial one but um and then there was this you know this huge moral outrage um started by um a group of um non-journalists but support staff at the New York Times who were in you know sort of digital news roles and then of course all of the White staff you know the high profile started they all started tweeting the same thing which was you know running this op-ed puts black New York Times journalists at risk which like nobody thought was true at the time right but they but if you didn't tweet it the there was just immense social pressure to join on in this there was immense social shaming um naming uh James Bennett the op-editor um head of the section lost his job there were struggle sessions I mean just the climate was just like insane and then there was a huge letter signed by 6 000 I think people you know demanding Justice on behalf you know for for the the crime of having when it's not bad two years later they moved on you know they've moved on from from from black issues to trans issues there's a new letter out now decrying the times is coverage of um basically uh gen what's called gender affirming Care by the left and what's called child mutilation by the right the New York Times has taken over the last few months a surprisingly balanced view on these issues um giving the transitioners a voice giving voice to the many many doctors who believe that this is deeply harmful for children that children cannot consent to being infertile and never having an orgasm like for the rest of their lives they don't know what they're consenting to their brains are not formed up so so as a result yesterday there was this new letter an open letter signed by all of The Usual Suspects from you know the New York Times and from Hollywood Etc decrying this coverage and I think it's so interesting that they moved on from racial issues to the trans issue it's it's it's I ca I think that the reason that the moral panic over 2020 is over is because it became so clear how little buy-in to the woke worldview there is from the black community I think it's just so clear how distant the views of these over credentialed Elites are from the vast majority I'm talking 80 85 percent of black Americans I mean in Poland I think that's clear to them to to I I mean I I've been making this point for three years now and I tend to make it to the kinds of people that are receptive to hearing it but my sense is that you know when I was saying in 2020 that defund the police was extremely unpopular in the black community and all you had to do was look at a Gallup poll to see that Gallup poll is done during 2020 right during the height of or just like talk to you know walk into any barber shop or talk to any black cop like yeah yeah right um to me I I haven't noticed at that point is more widely known today than it was a few years ago I mean maybe it is but I haven't really seen that you know I think it's it's more clear I mean I get called racist less when I point it out now than in 2020 and I will say also there's a coming showdown between you know the Black Agenda and the trans agenda because black Americans are not bought into this there's a new poll out of Pew showing that uh 66 of black Americans do not believe that you can be transgender they believe that your gender is assigned at Birth full stop 66 Which is higher than the number of Americans overall which is just 60 who think your gender is a sign of birth will stop so they totally reject two-thirds of black Americans totally reject the view that you can be trans two-thirds of black Americans call themselves moderate or conservative and I think it is it is absolutely unforgivable that the Republican party has not made more inroads with the black community given these views but but the so it the the Democrats they're making a huge mistake in going all in on on you know this kind of maximalist version of what it means to to be trans and to have dignity as a trans person and um you know I'll just make one more point about polling so 64 of Americans believe that transgender Americans should be treated with dignity and protected from discrimination and housing and in the workforce but if you ask them should a trans girl be allowed a trans woman be allowed to compete on a girls sports team that support for that drops to below 20 that's where Americans are right everyone should be treated with dignity don't tell me that my eyes aren't seeing you know don't tell me not to believe my own eyes right and I think the black community is very good at at having that moral compass you know saying like look I'm not gonna I'm not gonna believe not believe myself just because you're telling me to and so it's it's very interesting to see this shift at the times or at the outrage at the times right from what it was in 2020 to now you know this outrage that you're even allowing in the views of 60 of Americans and 66 percent of black Americans like you are not allowed to allow to to print that in the New York Times or we're gonna have or we in Hollywood are going to be outraged on behalf of this marginalized Community it's they're they're just loose they're just hemorrhaging credibility with all of this everybody who signs that letter or is on board with the silencing of the skepticism of the average American like how dare you like from your position of privilege in Hollywood how dare you try to silence the views of 60 of Americans and 66 percent of black Americans I mean it's like yes so um The Audacity [Laughter] what's interesting about the letter to me I mean one thing that was interesting about it is they basically complained about two things one they complained about the amount that the New York Times has been covering the trans issue recently saying something like they've devoted 15 000 words to their issue of gender affirming care as if this is a this is just on its face evidence of some kind of weird Obsession that the New York Times has with this issue and then their second complaint was all the coverage has been far right right and Jesse single is a Nazi essentially um I mean the first critique strikes me as so strange because newspapers often cover Niche issues you know a lot or like dedicating 15 000 words to something that is only one percent of the population that's not strange at all that's been you know we cover issues in proportion not just to how many people they affect but in proportion to the controversy surrounding them and it's a it's it's a simple fact that you know whether to give say puberty blockers to a 12 year old that is asking for them and under what circumstances to give those puberty blockers and what are the long-term consequences of that that is an extremely live issue for people even if it's I mean even if it's only a few percent of teens that are going through this the stakes are high because you know either one side believes that you're basically denying someone their civil rights and it's basically Jim Crow 2.0 but on the gender issue and another side thinks that you are medically intervening on children in a way that has long-term consequences that we actually don't understand right and that are probably harmful uh and that and that you know Abigail schreier and others have pointed out that there's a social contagion going on where uh maybe even the majority especially of young women of teenage women who believe that they're that they have rapid onset gender dysphoria as opposed to the the more stable kind of gender dysphoria that usually onsets younger in childhood that a lot of that is a social contagion effect and it's not likely to remain with you your whole life and it's likely to desist on its own so that going on puberty blockers puts you on a path towards medical and surgical interventions even that like you said can lead to infertility lack of ability to have an orgasm and all the rest and to do that to a child uh even if they're asking for it that's a very controversial decision um so I think it's it's a really strange argument to say you shouldn't talk you should just talk about this issue less and also you should talk about it the way I want you to talk about it because I I guarantee if the New York Times were parroting the the far far left trans activist talking points on this issue they'd have no problem with the amount that it was covered right so it was a very strange letter and my prediction though is that because it's not 2020 I'm not sure I think the times may have a better ability to hold the line against the uh people complaining than they did in 2020 I'm curious if you agree with that yeah definitely because um like um all good people should still be bothered by like what we did to black people like that's not dead and over so when somebody can Marshal that to win an argument good people will say how do I know I'm right about this and if they don't have black friends to tell them like this is nonsense how are they going to know that and they probably don't have black friends because of you know how segregated this country still is from a class point of view so like you could see how I think what they did was wrong and Craven but you could I could see how there was like um how they it was it would I of course understand why it was so hard to resist also if you're if you're say a journalist in the New York Times the black friends you do have are likely to be totally other journalists at the New York from Harvard and Princeton and Yale and yeah race independent of race share that Elite world view and I will say not from the community oftentimes which is another no yeah right so there's The Stolen Valor from like people who like we still I mean I know you don't support reparations I do like we still do oh certain people certain things and we never gave them like there's like a you know um anyway uh we don't have to get into that but um you know so they are it's like um a lot of what they talk about when they talk about racism is nonsense but there are still things that are bad that like we have my friend Charles love is gonna laugh video we say there's like Senator Tim Scott he got a new car one year and claims he was pulled over 17 times like that's not about class that's about race and we still do have this you know there are still certain things that remain if you can't say that black kids are getting a the same educational opportunities as white kids you just can't and that you know that could be you don't have to blame racism for that but okay but how are you fixing it they're not nobody's fixing it nobody's investing in fixing that so there is still like real problems seventy percent of the victims of violent crime are black like okay maybe that's not because of racism but okay so what's it because of what are we doing to fix it nothing like nobody isn't so that stuff should weigh on us and when the only black person you know writes a letter and says like you running this off bed is the same as that now sign it right I could see why a person would not have the moral fortitude to say no I know where the racism is and I'm I know I'm doing everything I can to fight it and this is nonsense right um with the Trans issue it's just like I think that it's so much clearer um first of all because so many gay people have come out and said this is an attack on being gay like maybe persuasive arguments about how any girl now who shows the slightest bit of like tomboyness is slightest bit of masculinity right which is like just a staple of how young girls who end up being gay learn about that right now is being urged to transition to become a man like the world that they're envisioning is one in which there are no lesbians right like there's all and in fact Iran does this they transition people because they hate gayness because it's a fundamentalist country right like that that's there's so many persuade and they're rather you be a straight trans exactly exactly marry a woman and live you know nobody will know who will be the wiser right right you know it's um I think that there's you know the the misogyny of a lot of this is is very clear to people and it's just like the Normie view it's just harder to tell people like you know when I say look I'm looking at the data I'm talking to black people I'm you know immersed in this topic and I can tell you this is where the racism still is this is where it's not it's not like I'm still a white person saying that and like there's always there should be a part of you that's like are you sure are you sure because we know we have that history so you better be sure there should be an element of skepticism there you know but when you're dealing with children the are you sure needs to be on the other side of the medical intervention right like you should be you should be more hesitant to surgically intervene on on a 16 year old in a way that's going to permanently foreclose certain typical human opportunities to her right like you should be really sure you're on the right side of that right right you watched a video with George Floyd So I mean puberty blockers isn't is a perfect case here right if we're gonna if we're gonna say that this is totally a kosher thing to give to a 14 year old 15 year old we should have really really solid long-term meta-analyzes of several study double-blind the highest standard to say this is totally safe the bone density issue is minimal and and that's that's not the case right now um and you see countries in Western Europe the medical systems were so often told are at the Vanguard of the world and the ones to be admired and the ones that make our American System look cave Manish we're seeing precisely those countries hitting the pause button on gender affirming Care on puberty blockers in particular because it seems like the evidence the the policy recommendations of trans advocacy groups have gotten far ahead of the evidence on puberty blockers uh and that that and I'm sorry it's a it's a valid issue for the New York Times to write 15 000 words about I'm happy that the New York Times has presented this issue in a more balanced way it has come too late but it is welcome nonetheless and I think um I I hope people talk about this more frankly yeah I think I've been heartened to see that this does seem different than the racial issue um you know I what I was going to say before was you know when it comes to like police brutality right we know that there has been a racial component to that so if you want to be Heather McDonald and spend your life finding the evidence that that's being mitigated in certain situations and that's that it's not because of that great the burden of proof is on you right which I think I think she has actually done a really good job with you know marshaling that evidence right when it comes to something that's really new clearly socially contagious right and being pushed only by a tiny fraction of Elites the burden of proof is on them to show that this is net that this is a civil rights issue and I don't think they've met that burden and part of the proof of that is if you look at how they treated Ron desantis's parental rights and education bill right they had to make up a new name for it that lied about it in order to sell it to the American people right they had to call it the don't say gay Bill even though literally what the bill says is you can't talk about gender and sex to my six-year-old right like that's the bill right is like you gotta wait till they're eight to tell them we are having sex with right they had to make up this new name because they knew that if they accurately represented what was in the bill if Americans actually knew what was in it the way that most Floridians do it would get 60 support from Democrats right which is indeed what it got so I think the seeing that you need to misrepresent something in order to get people to your side it's kind of a tell I think a really powerful one right so in your book you talk about one thing I found interesting in the way you frame this issue was the New York Times Like many really like many outlets has found a niche a niche or a niche audience that is actually a wider feature of the content landscape I think right we're we used to have a situation where there were how many channels there were like 13 channels basically and all of them had to have content that was palatable enough for the whole family to watch families were often of mixed politics um I think one major Trend just in content and multimedia content over the past 50 years has been the nishophication the bubbleification of everything which is to say content has become more and more targeted for smaller and smaller audiences that get that feel more passionate passionate about about the content I think that's true of that's true of Netflix shows that's true of I mean just like how many show it's probably true of movies as well how many shows you know today versus 50 years ago are watched by like a large percentage of people I think it's just a fewer number full stop well my favorite show The Bachelor is still watched by many people well yeah I'm sure it is um but but yeah in 1960 was probably Washington right there was this great short video um on Twitter on a is it Sunday that Game of Thrones or House of dragons was playing yes and it was this like um I think it looked like one of these really nice buildings in Manhattan and somebody was standing outside filming and you could see that like every apartment in this like really nice upscale Manhattan building was watching because the the you can hear the credits yeah you could see the credit like just the blue light like in the exact same way and it was just when the show was starting and it was like yeah I mean that's what I would argue is like this initiification is happening along class lines not along um political lines but there is a superimposition of class in politics because of this college divide to where content created for the college educated is going to be increasingly leftist and increasingly woke like everything that we're seeing on Netflix and a lot of the Amazon Prime stuff and a lot of those directors by the way signed this anti-new York Times translator um you know this kind of that that you know the people who like the sort of you know all of this woke posturing in Hollywood is done on behalf of like that's that's you know they're Democrats they're leftist they're liberals yes but more important than that their upper middle class their households that make between you know 200 and 500k a year um now we know that 65 percent of households making more than 500k a year are Democrats now so there's been this like class stratification which is what I argue in the book is that wokeness is not about politics and it's not about race and it's not about gender it's about class and the sad thing is you know used to be like yeah okay you could sit in your house and have your wrong views about these issues and you know you made more or less the same as your neighbor who was maybe a republican who had the opposite views but now because um of that class stratification all of these benefits are accruing to people in the top 20 percent I mean fifty percent of the GDP so much more money but also health benefits they live longer their children are upwardly mobile and meanwhile so much downward mobility in the working class so there's something like to me truly disgusting about sitting there atop your pile of cash and all of your privilege and then sneering down at your political opponents and calling them racist while you gobble up more and more of the pie like but that's essentially what the New York Times represents and the way you frame it is that basically their their clientele their client class upper class college educated Etc has particular preferences right they have all the typical rich people preferences so you point out that there will be like a Cartier ad yeah on the same page as an article about you know black activists yelling at a group of white restaurant goers in Beverly Hills or something right and those two products are actually for the same person because the preferences of the New York Times reader the prototypical New York Times reader is someone like I want my normal rich people content I want like top 10 vacations to go to and they're all super expensive because that's for me but then I also kind of have this quasi-fetish for being like masochistically yelled at by black activists and told how racist I am so it's all for the same kind of person uh and it seems paradoxical but it actually makes sense once you consider the overall preferences and beliefs of the New York Times sort of client class right 100 yeah they're two sides of the same coin you know the BLM fetish and the Cartier ad they're literally two sides of the same magazine and two sides of the same coin because they of course all of this woke language is just is a protection of the class interests of the educated Elites it is you know essentially to say that they are the moral Arbiters and therefore deserve to rule because of their higher morality their higher intelligence their higher Talent you know we've become a society that is so you and I would probably disagree about this like I think in some way this is um built into the idea of a pure meritocracy the idea that the talented and the smart should rule which is why I'm a populist I don't you know that's like there should not be that big of a difference even between even if you're truly so much I mean you're used to being like the smartest kid in every room you're in right like it's like well at least when I between the ages of like zero and twelve right okay since then you've met someone who's uh well I want to I I went to a private school starting at 12. okay and I was I was still often the smartest kid in class and often got the best grades but not as like easily and reliably as I did when I went to public school okay got it got it yeah yeah to work a little harder and then I went to Columbia right so yeah there's I think even in like you know I think there's a lot of Libertarians you know um people in the center they think no what the problem with America is that it's not a pure meritocracy you know that's true that is terrible we're not a pure meritocracy you know but their their answer is like well if only we could get a few more people of color into the elites so it's a little bit more you know a little bit less embarrassing a little bit less obvious though it's not just you know from our own work that we got here right because I have to remember he's white like you know if we could just get the elites to be more diverse that would solve all of our problems you know and I think obviously I want more at least more you know a more diverse Elite I obviously want every little budding on Einstein who's stuck in south side of Chicago to be at Harvard like want all of that obviously you can't but I also want there to be a less of a gap between the elites and everybody else and I I totally reject this idea that the smart should rule or should tell people what to believe or you know so much of what ruling is so much of what government is supposed to be about is to reflect what people want and they have a right to be wrong and if they want to be wrong about taking a vaccine they have that right and it's it's deplorable to think that because somebody has a higher IQ they have the right to tell somebody what to think what to believe you know what attribute do you think is lacking among the ruling class clearly not intelligence what is what is the attribute that you would want to well I don't think I don't really think they're more intelligent than other people I could you know they probably they probably score higher on IQ you if you could grab one knob and increase it on the ruling class right it would not be intelligence according to what you just said what would it be no I don't want there to be a ruling class like I don't I don't want there to be there's always a ruling class but there doesn't have to be so do you only in like an anarchist society would there be no ruling class right why we you could have government and and police and fire departments and you know Public public institutions that are not that don't like but they don't rule in the way that our ruling class today does they have functions and those functions are to represent you know Democratic institution I totally believe in Democratic institutions I'm not an anarchist at all but I I think that there's it should be extremely limited and that that's where the media gets into trouble they think they should have the right to tell people what to think and that's why Fox News is doing so well because they don't they don't they don't try to lecture people or moralize at them I mean a Fox News Fox News has values and they tell you what they think they're very connected to what their viewers think it's a much more populist model you're not going to sit there lecturing people about you know you're not going to hear lectures out of them about I mean some you will you know not on prime time obviously you know there's you know people give their their monologues but they're very connected to where the median voters which is how they got so many Democratic viewers they just siphon them off of CNN when CNN got woke so all of those viewers moved to Fox so you know Tucker Carlson for example the number one viewed show not just among Republicans among Democrats because working-class Democrats they just don't see themselves reflected in CNN anymore they can't watch it because it's got so woke right so your idea is Fox News I don't know I wanted to talk about Fox News because I know you had some thoughts about the way that they waged the culture War right in your book I mean you had a line about uh you know the culture War uh basically is not meant to be won you had something like this where um it's it's basically it's not meant to be one and it often revolves around issue issues that can't be solved um and and I was curious to ask your ask your take on that you also had it's connected to Parts in your book where you know there was this question often asked by liberals more 10 years ago than today even 20 years ago which is why do right-wing voters vote against their own interests don't they know that the Democratic party is the party of higher taxes on the rich more redistribution of wealth and yet all of these working class right-wing voters keep voting for tax cuts for the rich libertarian policies free trade agreements that don't benefit them what's wrong with Kansas right um and the way that Republicans have gotten those voters is often by being on their side on culture War issues on you know don't tear down my statues don't speak ill of the founding fathers um a traditional views of uh gender gender roles of homosexuality and you know religious intolerance of homosexuality and and all the rest so what what do you make of that classic sort of liberal question is it a well-founded question is it an unfair question and how how do you feel Fox News has addressed that question historically in today well so in so Fox is very it's still sort of um quite free market so on economic policy it's definitely much more weighted towards Elites and the rich than it is towards the working class but I I will get booked on Fox News to represent the populist point of view and I cannot during the Trump era where they was did they take Trump's line on protectionist trade policy some yes some know Mario Bartiromo is a big fan of trump um and and those policies immigration is it a purely economic issue for most working-class Americans so on on immigration yes they were much more populist in nature but that's so so there's one example of like you know so leftists like to say oh and people who don't you know support Mass immigration or racists when you poll people the reason they don't support it is because of the economic impact that it is having on their lives by the way black Americans have borne the vast majority of the ills of mass immigration leading to a wage decline of 20 to 40 percent over the last 40 years yeah one of the many awkward facts for people on the left is that black Americans often don't support high levels of immigration for that reason right and yet they are civil rights struggle struggle has Valor stolen from it to support importing non-citizens to this country so then they're asking black Americans who this country still owe something to to pay taxes to support Mass immigration I mean it's disgusting but they that that's how they use race to hide over the economic impact of their virtue signaling and of course it's the elites who benefit from Mass immigration because they are the people employing you know these people as nannies as as landscapers you know they like to go to a nice restaurants and much cheaper if you can you know the whole back of the house is people who are undocumented so they're really benefiting from it economically and then they talk about it with this patina of like morality which hurts black Americans it means it's really really staggering um but so so Fox so so on immigration which is an economic question Fox is much more populist and has the view takes the view that Bernie Sanders took in 2015 right which is that open borders is a Koch brothers proposal that's right then Bernie Sanders of course changed his mind in 2020 and now he can go and talk about it on MSNBC and CNN because you know supports decriminalizing um illegal border crossing so on immigration it is very much on trade there are some on either side obviously Taco cross was very much in in favor of it um you know now there's sort of it's It's funny because now they're so anti-bidden that whatever Biden does you know they have to you know but but on some things on some limited things Biden has furthered some of Trump's tariffs yeah Bob Biden has sort of adopted some of trump some of them yes he kept the tariffs Michael Monahan made a good point that it's not that so much that Biden has taken Trump's line on trade it's that Trump took the less line line on trade yes that's exactly right although um when it comes to the green agenda Biden he'll abandon everything right so they kept the tariffs on aluminum trade and then he sort of got rid of them when it comes to importing these like wind turbines that are made by slaves in China because obviously the green agenda is more important than anything else human rights you know workers rights in America what have you um so what I was going to say though is that like Fox will have populists like me on to talk about you know the the working class point of view the trumpian point of view on trade on the economy but you won't get that on the leftists and liberal Outlets so there's much more debate at Fox than there is they have a show called the five where they have one liberal you know you could say okay her job is to lose you know but like at least she's there and you don't see that really on the other channels you'll only get you know the sort of never Trump point of view which is essentially exactly the same as like everybody else who's you know on those channels and um I would say the never Trump point of view is the same as uh overall it's not the same as as like the liberal point of views right like the the raw staff it's in David Brooks often have substantial differences from the rest of the opinion columnists at like the times right but if you don't I mean that's not that's not the the thing that divides them from the other columnists is not the dividing line in America today the dividing line in America today the most important one the most important person is college educated yes and that very much maps on to how you feel about Trump or it did until the scientists showed up right right so if you want to be a person who claims that you're listening to people across the if you want to be a person who claims you believe in like open debate and Free Speech you need to be a person who knows why people love Trump and understand it like if and that's not happening anywhere on the leftist media anywhere in the liberal mainstream media so I I really my moment of political Awakening was 2016 when Trump won because I at that point I think I was a freshman at Columbia and I had heard what Trump said about Mexicans not sending their best Etc I had heard you know his ideas of maybe putting Muslims on a registry or something like that and it sounded potentially fascist to me to my to my Elite ears um and I was as concerned as everyone around me in in that uh I thought he might be um I thought he might be a fascist and not only that I was absolutely blindsided that he won I was so blindsided in fact that me and my friend who was half Mexican we cooked a Mexican dinner to celebrate in anticipation of his loss on Election night and then we just saw the numbers going the wrong way something very big change for me the moment he won which is I went back to the drawing board and I said clearly I don't understand something because when you have like as a scientist or a rational person more broadly when you have a model of a system and you make a very strong prediction and it goes the other way it means your model of the system is wrong right some variable is way off right if you drop something enough times and one time it just shoots upwards you have to change your model of gravity that's just basic rationality maybe the most basic principle of rationality so my model of the country was wrong and it was shattered by Trump's Victory by my failure to predict or understand the support for it and basically some something has to explain that right the explanation on offer from all of the kind of magazines I would read at the time all the kind of podcasts that I would listen to at the time was there is a sudden unexplained spike in racism right right so that did not pass the smell test because it just it doesn't make any sense that within four years right since we re-elected a guy named Barack Hussein Obama a black guy that between 2012 and 2016 there was a sudden unexplained huge uptick in racism such that it would explain Donald Trump's election right that made no sense as an explanation and yet it was the explanation that like the media linked arms and went with so that was my moment of political Awakening because I realized they were not wrong and they were not psychologically placed to actually find the reasons for Trump's appeal they failed to explain why there were counties that had voted for Obama twice and had voted for Trump eight million Americans we're talking about the same people that were comfortable pulling the lever for Barack Hussein Obama twice yeah and they went for Trump over Hillary so that's the phenomenon really to be explained and so I I my my political Awakening was wrapped wrapped up with um essentially the cluelessness of Elites and their inability to do any uh theory of Mind work with how their bubble May inoculate them from understanding the majority of their fellow countrymen so I consider myself to be as Elite as all of the people that you and I have been criticizing but I because I think for whatever reason um reason led me to become very curious about how the elite bubble misunderstands the world as a result of being in a social bubble and in a subculture right like we're all in it's not even necessarily bad to be in a bubble everyone's in a bubble of some sort especially in in modern society but you have to be if you're a person that writes about the world you have to be curious about how the how how the um the boundaries of your bubble distort what's outside of it right and um if you're if you're not constantly correcting for that like taking the elite glasses off so to speak you're going to just get things wildly wrong you're going to mispredict brexit Trump you're going to get things wrong over and over again and you're not going to develop a deep understanding of the world that you're trying to write about yeah I mean the worst part is is like yeah people can be forgiven for being in a bubble but not when your job is literally to be on a campaign Trail following people around and you know they would sort of the way they covered try me mataibi writes about this like so well like Trump would talk about jobs for two hours and make you know an awful racist joke and then that's all they would cover they wouldn't talk to any of the people there and if they did I mean for years and years you couldn't read a New York Times article about Trump voters without at some point them calling them racist for being against immigration which as we just established the opposite is the case you know it's probably more racist to support Mass immigration than it is just for limiting it um this comes back to the what's the matter with Kansas argument um I hate that argument and I totally reject it and when you talk to to working class Americans and ask them about it they'll say number of things the first is you know people and this is people who come from democratic families who went through that shift you know around the 90s you know 2000s from Democrats Republicans they'll say first of all my interests are not just what's in my a bottom line like if to join this Union I'm going to have to put my pronouns in my bio that's in that's my intro that's my belief like you can't buy me off you can't buy my values off you know let's say I'm religious and that's just like totally against my religion you're going to tell me to engage in collective bargaining I have to do that maybe I'm going to say no to that because maybe having that extra money in my bank account is not worth doing something that I feel is against my values that's that's the first thing they're not neoliberal subjects you know they don't see them so the be-all and end all is the paycheck you know you saw this with the railroad Strikers they wanted more autonomy they're well paid actually they didn't want more money they wanted another paid sick leave they wanted another day that they could choose to use how they wanted I mean autonomy is extremely important in the working class and it's something liberal Elites do not understand at all because they they've grown up in this very paternalistic worldview and it's just that paternalism is the opposite of autonomy they don't get how important it is to working class Americans to Define and decide their own lives that's the first thing they'll say the second thing they'll tell you is like what the Democrats have come to represent is there's this great article actually in the New York Times Jennifer Medina shout out she's the best She interviewed a lot of Hispanics who were planning to vote Republican and she would ask them why and again and again they would say to her because the Democrats are the party of the poor and I don't want to be poor and there is there is Coleman a deep tension between an agenda that is working on behalf of the poor right the dependent poor who need welfare who will never be able to support themselves and an agenda that's built around autonomy for the working class for labor for people who are in that you know not the bottom percentile not even the bottom two let's say but the middle used to be that working-class Americans had access to a middle class life that's no longer the case the thing that will get them there and the thing that Democrats are proposing there's a huge disconnect between that I mean the idea that the Democrats represent the economic interests of the working class is simply false they don't see it that way they're better on Unions that's true and and the Republicans really need to do a 180 on that because it's true the unions are also compromised right like we saw that with the teachers union right over over covet how they totally abandoned poor and working class and black children just completely could not care less about them right the unions are very much in the Democrats pocket in a way that harms the most vulnerable but you need to create an alternative right you have to there has to be something else okay I get it Republicans United unions because of okay whatever what are you offering working class Americans to give them collective bargaining there's another problem with unions working class Americans don't want an antagonistic relationship ship with their bosses this is America it's a very entrepreneurial country people feel like they want to be able to Excel and if you have an adversarial relationship with your bosses which is something unions often impose that gets in the way for people to be able to say well maybe I'm going to be the best and then I'm going to be able to get ahead and so it's it's a delicate balance I I still think unions right now are providing the best in terms of collective bargaining to working class Americans you cannot compare the conditions the pay the the safety conditions between unionized and non-unionized workers and that's very important but I also understand why a lot of working-class Americans are not in unions the union membership is not growing significantly six percent of private sector workers are in unions they're not wrong about what is in their economic interests when they say this is not going to do it for me and if you want to be a working class party which the Republican party is now making a lot of noise about right it's very clear how the Democrats have ceased to be that you have to have an economic agenda that works for the working class by asking them what they need and collective bargaining is just always going to be extremely important because they will never have the same kind of power as the corporations so I think actually what we're seeing now is the Republicans some in the wake of trump recognizing that realizing that there's that the populist spirit that got them all these votes needs a policy agenda to represent it and you're seeing energy from people like Marco Rubio Josh Hawley of course a little bit Ted Cruz to kind of think of what would it look like to have a conservative working-class party that works for for working Americans you can get back on track to that to that you know American dream where a man can support his family and dignity buy his own home and retire in dignity [Music] there's one other point I wanted I don't think we really directly covered that I thought was a great point from your book and and it's a point others have made too which is when you talk about the difference between Class politics and race politics and and you think of you know what it is that Elites college educated left-leaning Elites have to sacrifice for their politics right if you're a college educated left-leaning Elite you make good money you're in the top decile of income it doesn't really make sense to have class-based politics because you suffer from that right if you if your politics are Bernie Sanders Circa 2010 if you have basically Marxist politics you know tax the rich redistribute wealth Etc that is actually painful to you right whereas if your politics are to forget class and simply diversify the elite racially that actually doesn't necessarily hurt you right like if you if you work in the New York Times and you have to just make The Newsroom 30 people of color but you survive that transition if your politics become more and more about race rather than class that's actually a bargain that makes a lot of sense financially right it's like if you're on the board of a company let's make the board more diverse let's get some more women and some more people of color on the board but we're still all millionaires right we're not actually lobbying for an increase in our own taxes or or a wealth much less a wealth tax not to say that any of these are particularly good policies I would support but the bargain kind of makes sense is that how you see the popularity of race-based politics among the most with let's say the ruling class um it's very close to that I always say it's like it's like flying first class like they're very happy to pay for everybody else in in coach to fly for free as long as that curtain comes down and nope there's no upgrades right as long as they're in that special place right where they get the special treatment right they're happy to subsidize everyone else to fly for free like that's kind of the mentality and I think you're right that switching from class to race definitely absolves them of any kind of redistributive urge but I I my thinking has evolved on this is I think that sort of tax the one percent is very consistent with their that Elite view which is why you often hear people in the top 20 and the top ten percent demanding really the top one percent they have so much class resentment the top point one percent they have so much class resentment against the billionaire and the millionaire class and so what they want is for that to be redistributed down to them Working Class People the ones I've interviewed the you know tens and tens if not hundreds I've interviewed for my next book they're they don't they don't believe in that like they see Millionaires and billionaires often as Jobs creators so yeah they want better wages they want better working conditions they want housing that they can afford but they don't necessarily feel that they are owed a portion of the success of some billionaire who made a lot of money by taking risks and investing money Etc the professor National class that don't create any jobs right that's sort of just sort of you know live off the fat of you know the excesses of you know sometimes billionaires actually when they buy their newsrooms or what have you right um you know they feel very much this resentment like how dare they make all this money where the Smart Ones where the educated talented ones like that should we should be getting part of that our ngos should be getting part of that and then of course you know and the poor should get some of it as well right so I think that it's you know they do have a class-based analysis but you're completely right that there's no idea of widening the pathway that gets you to that Elite Education college is getting more and more expensive so if College was once you know a vector of upward Mobility it's now the gatekeeper keeping people out but even worse than that is you know the jobs that many of us in the ruling class do are like totally meaningless I mean if I didn't do my job like the world would be totally fine the world would not be fine if every truck driver went on strike we would all starve we would literally starve yet we sit here reaping the benefits of the knowledge industry and saying oh you're totally replaceable you shouldn't be given any of these benefits you know like it's it's reversed like the the people whose labor that we rely on and frequently will say oh you know what you know the model now that the Liberals have for an economy the way they see it is you know all production will be done in China you know by slaves in China and we won't have to worry about paying them a living wage all service industry jobs will be done by you know desperate Venezuelans who will import from you know failed socialist States right we in the top 10 15 we will be living you know on these you know incomes you know these you know households with 250 000 to 500 000 a year right sitting pretty and everyone under us the 90 will be living on universal basic income and Welfare right we'll pay them off not to work that's kind of the way the economy now is is I think is being perceived by the left so of course working class Americans are going to say no they don't want Universal basic income they want to be paid off not to work they want to be paid a living wage so they can support their families and live the American dream the left is totally given up on the American dream if you read articles about housing in the New York Times it's always about why do people need to own their own homes right written by people who own their own homes right so it's it's again that first class right happy to pay for everybody to live in these high rises that we're going to build for the homeless you know as long as there's no upgrades into first class from the like hoi polloi so what's the solution what do you um if you were if you were Czar of the Democratic party or the Republican party what would your prescriptions be for both of them interest especially with a tight labor market like ours right now to to paying people living wage to building tons of housing obviously secure the Border I mean I should stop everything I don't believe in czars everyone who don't really want that kind of power um but um you know upward Mobility it's like it's very obvious like the things that lead to Upward Mobility marriage you know having children in wedlock not out of wedlock you know you know um the the thing that I think really is required um is a kind of um for for for government to talk to the owners of Corporations um in a way that makes it clear to them that we are going to be uh encouraging um restoring manufacturing and paying a living wage you know New York City had will have paid by the end of this year 650 million dollars to house and feed illegal immigrants it's not clear to me why we can't take that money and pay to Americans to work service industry jobs in a way where it's a living wage if we're going to be subsidizing workers which is essentially what we're doing Biden has decided we're not going to have a border it's open borders I'm sorry that that's the case the migrants when they cross they say this right they understand that it has been promised to them that they can come you know you don't get two million people in a year without essentially opening the Border he's done that because it's essentially they've essentially subcontracted hiring to the cartels you know where we have it we just that's happening we have a tight labor market right and they they you know people in cities you know they need their cheap workers right if we're going to be paying for this like we should be paying America American workers I think Trump's whole America first point of view when it came to foreign policy when it came to a domestic Economic Policy was like really on the right track and it was such a just just such a Despicable mistake not to for the for the leftist not to be like gosh he's doing everything Bernie Sanders was like dreamed of you know and his fever dreams he couldn't have imagined like a trade war with China who even thought that was possible and so I think there's a there was a lot of great stuff happening there the economy really reflected it and um you know the situation is not as bad as one thinks you know home ownership rate in Fort working class Americans is around 50 percent so it's not like it's not disastrous you know a few tweaks here and there and we could really be you know cooking on what are those the Expressions cooking with grease you know like there's there's it's not as bad as the left wants us to think but it's definitely not as good as the right ones as to think so yeah well we could probably talk for a lot longer but I think we're about to run out of studio time here um are there any last questions you had wanted to ask me because I didn't I didn't get to anything I didn't get to any of them we have a couple minutes okay um I wanted to ask you what is something that you think um your followers are wrong about something I think my followers are right like something that you know people come to you and they're like but there's um something that you feel like you don't understand why the people who are kind of in your camp believe that yeah like what they're getting wrong I don't know that's a tough question because like if I say everything I think on this podcast so naturally I would repel people that are super wrong in my view right but you're not like you're hard to put in a box well okay let me ask you this um like are you a class Trader oh um in a way I'm I'm I may be because I'm an elite that is frequently critical of Elites and or your parent where your parents Elites as well um it's a good question my uh they may have well my mom grew up in the South Bronx extremely poor um but was the first in her family to go to college never struck me as having Elite sensibilities really my dad grew up a black middle class in the Midwest and they both ended up getting several degrees so you could say they're inducted into the elite but not born neither was born into it by any means um you you talked about being in on a recent podcast about being scared when you were in college in at Columbia to admit that you didn't hold these views and that you would secretly listen to podcasts and then secretly have conversations with your friends I was so surprised by that like that there was a period when you were a normie like the rest of us like scared of how did you overcome that and start to how did you overcome that fear I didn't I just felt it and and spoke anyway in the times that I chose to um there's that great Audrey Lord quote I think about like you can learn to you can learn to speak when you're scared like you can learn to work when you're tired wow you know it's like I'm not I don't transcend fear by by any means I I still feel it really yeah sure I feel social fear if I if I know I have an opinion that's unpopular in the room like what for example any one of my opinions on racial inequality about not everything is racism anything that uh you know anything that I know can get me marked as a bad person I feel that social fear just like the rest of the rest of everyone yeah what could you learn on the topic of race that would change your mind about your views um it's a hypothetical I think as a hypothetical I would say evidence really solid evidence using sound methodologies of massively higher levels of racial discrimination against black people than I believe exists across like multiple um and I do believe some exist in the housing market and policing I've seen rigorous evidence of that but it is not nearly enough to be the primary driver or even close to the primary driver of the racial disparities that we see in my view but what would change my mind is you know to see an order of magnitude more racism shown by the most rigorous methods of of of of of doing that and what accounts for the disparities in your mind what accounts for the disparities in my mind is um is a myriad of factors but it's you know the kind of things that uh it's an actual skills Gap right like an actual human capital gap between black people and white people between different ethnic groups of white people you see Nigerian Americans doing far better than Jamaican Americans saying you see um white Americans of Russian descent doing far better than white Americans of Irish descent right and clearly in this era although discrimination against the Irish for instance was a huge thing in the 19th century most of those identities are not even active anymore right white Americans by and large view themselves as just white and a lot of them don't even care where in Europe their ancestors came from and yet you still find large disparities everywhere everywhere you look right um you see disparities between Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans and most Americans couldn't even really tell you the difference because we're not sensitive enough to whatever slight differences in appearance could be there um and yet you see big skills gaps that have to do with the history of each group that lead to disparity all across the board very smart um I wanted to ask you about um do you tell young people I get asked this a lot when they tell you talk to you about being sort of scared or feeling like they have to censor their views do you tell them no you should speak up or do you tell them don't ruin your life uh just keep it to yourself that's a good question um it's a good I think I've done both I know me too I've done both because sometimes I get a piece of advice that is like hey Coleman this is my situation this is my job I have a family I want to speak out at work what should I do personally I don't feel I can advise that person to say what I would say because I don't pay the price that that person pays I'm not going to be there holding your hand when you've lost your job and your wife is pissed off at you and you have to pull your kids out of some after school activity because you're not making enough money right I'm not going to be there with you so it's a little bit like you know when when Jerry Seinfeld had this thing of every time someone comes some kid comes up to him and says I want to be a comic he says don't do it because he knows the ones that really should be a comic won't listen to him and there may be something analogous where like I'm not sure it's my role to tell people always speak up no matter the price um but I know that the people that really need to speak up will do so whether or not I tell them to I don't want to have that blood on my hands in other words I can I can pay my own price I have no problem paying my own prices and taking responsibility for what I have gained and lost in life as a result of my choices but I have trouble telling other people what to do um all right uh so Nikki Haley announced she's running for president her big to me before she became Trump's uh ambassador to the U.N her biggest achievement was taking down the Confederate flag um from the um South Carolina state capitol after Dylan roof murdered all those people on that church while wearing a Confederate flag she then said she gave a speech and she said look the flag does not represent hate to everybody to many people who represents family honor history it doesn't represent slavery and racial hatred but we're taking it down because he appropriated it in that way now I um know a lot of people in the South who feel that way about the flag um who feel that it does not represent slavery they never supported slavery their families didn't have slaves but it represents to them their pride as Southerners but I also know a lot of black Americans especially in the South who it that flag has one meaning to them and being slavery so what I wanted to ask you is what you make of this whole situation do you think there was any Merit in what Nikki Haley said um who do you think has the right to Define what the meaning of that flag is and what do you think it means that's a very tough question I want to be respectful of people that have different viewpoint on it from my point of view that Flag represents the Confederacy which was an attempt to secede from the United States to leave this country because of a desire to protect the slave way of life and the slave economy so it was an attempt to do a bad thing for an evil reason and that's what the Confederate flag means to me I can't impute that meaning onto someone else right if I if you were sitting across from me and you said actually I grew up in the South I grew up seeing that flag and it meant it means the pride of my region I think that's okay that all I can give you is what it means to me and all I can do is to receive what it means to you I think it should be I don't think I should be in charge of whether that flag comes down I think in a democracy when we're living together has to be like a negotiation you know and and you have to you can't drag people along with you you can't Hector them it has to be a negotiation um so that would be how I answer it I think that's all our time I think we're about to get kicked oh no okay um so thank you so much thanks for having me yeah [Music]

Channel: Coleman Hughes

Views: 32,806

Keywords: politics, news, politicalupdates, policies, currentaffairs, political, society, highsociety, modernsociety, contemporary, intellectualproperty, debate, intellect thoughts, opinion, public intellectual, intellect, dialogue, discourse, interview, motivational, speech, answers, Coleman Hughes, talkshow, talks, ethics, intelligence, discrimination, music

Id: fm-O3QStRI0

Length: 105min 28sec (6328 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023