You know, I gotta say school. It turns out school is hard. It turns out that it's not just the alpha and the omega. There's twenty two other letters in between, and they all make different words and different declensions. And I, for some reason forgot that I was an Episcopalian and didn't have to know any of this stuff. And I taking this Greek class and it's killing me.
Not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your.
Country, mister.
Tears down this wall.
Read my lips.
It's the Wigreshet vodcast with James Wilas, myself, Stephen Hayward himself and joining us again to other Rob Long, So let's set as a podcast.
Hi, Robin, Hi, and what's your name?
Matt had to ask who you are?
Because you have to be careful.
Never read too careful.
I agree, you'll never get bored with when we never get bored.
We're welcome everybody. It's the Ricochete Podcast number seven hundred and fourteen. I'm James Lovick's coming to you today on a microphone. I think somebody stole it. I mean, I know things are better in than the newspaper industry, but I don't think we're at the point yet where people
start pawning things they find in people's desks. But we'll know, we'll figure out exactly what happens coming to you live from MacBook Air and coming to you from well, from someplace in an undisclosed place where I believe there was ceremonies and rituals. Perhaps maybe that he will explain to it his brother Rob and Stephen Hayward as well too. Steven, Rob, Welcome to both of you. Good to be here.
It's good to be here.
Yeah, good to see you. James. Yeah, you do look like you're in some dark dungeon or something. Yes, I mean we.
Should let everybody know that this that the low quality audio for James Lilacs is like a specifically designed torture for him, like nobody else would care. But I know it's killing him because I can see like the veins. The video is good enough. I can see the veins on your forehead, just kind of getting like, oh, I'm getting whatever. I don't even know what the words would be, but I'm sure that's actually to the Stostrowe supplement.
I'm so Rod, You're back. Where are you?
Beat?
Well?
As you know, James, I am. I'm a student now. I went back to school. I'm at the Princeton Theological Seminary. I am a graduate student surrounded by incredibly smart young people who have these incredibly moist brains that they can remember Greek stuff. I idiotically have elected to take Greek. I don't have to take Greek to be an ordained episcopal minister, which is sort of my think, my eventual
end here. But I did it anyway because I, like, you know, Greek's important, and you know, if you don't know a little bit of Greek, then you're always at the mercy the people who do, and it's not a very good thing.
Oh, I find my son all the time at the mercy of people bluell Greek.
Well you do, and like you know, you're selling the New Testament. You find yourself thinking yourself, wa, wait, what was that word? And how did they use it? Like two verses back and two verses for.
What is that perfect example of that would be the And there is dispute about this, correct me if I'm wrong. There should be dispute about the parable of the homily, about the being easier for a rich man to for a camel to go through the needle that a rich man going.
Many interpretations of that the beautiful parable, but they seem to center around mis translation and misunderstanding perhaps what.
They mean by the eye of a cattle, that rope, yeah, and the rest of it.
So the richer you are, the more insistent you are that there are some textual translation issues there that you could tell pretty much someone's net worth by their interpretation
of that. First, the most famous one, I think is in the world is the actually in the most famous prayer, maybe the most one of the most famous prayers ever, the Lord's Prayer, where if you are a you know, you're kind of on our side kind of you know, larger debate, a Western Christian augustin Latin kind of Christian, right, it's deliver us from evil. And if you're kind of on the eastern side, you know, the Greek church fathers like Cyprian origin, those people, you read that not as
the neuter noun evil but as the masculine. So it's so deliver us from the evil one. And I may seem little, but it's like you know you but then you look back, Okay, well, how was this used? You know in the verses before, how do is that you using the rest of mark and all that's a Matthew, sorry, and like you get in all that stuff and like you, I mean this stuff I could do. By the way, this is not my problem. My problem is the second decline of Greek adjectives and the special cases of the
word otos. And so I'm doing all right. And the other thing I've discovered in this we can talk about concurrent events. Apparently there's at lection going on, is that I've discovered that being a writer professionally for forty years is more than yeah, forty forty thirty five years, thirty something plus years. It helps you to realize you could sit down and write. You know, I can turn out you want twelve hundred words in an hour. I can do that. It's my job. I can do that. But
they don't want it interesting. They want it like they want you to support your thesis with facts and citations. And I find that rude.
Although I have to say Rob that I've always preferred the Brooklyn version of the Lord's Prayer that culminates with lead us not into Penn Station.
Yeah right, right.
Even the New Right you want to talk about evil and you know the pit of hell that captured it for me.
But well, I can ask you this, this maybe a segue into the election topic.
I forget which conservative.
Illuminary twenty years ago described our colleges and universities as seminaries of intolerance.
And you're at an actual.
Seminary, right and now, of course it's not a place of intolerance.
But and you said before we started going live, you said that it will be finding it hard.
And I think that seriously, because you know, you are there and your co students there are asking about the most serious questions about the transcendent versus the which is the election, right.
But I am curious.
I mean, most seminaries that I'm familiar with are pretty the student body and the faculty are pretty liberal.
You know, they want to write a gender neutral Bible and things like that.
And I'm not less concerned about that. But are people that are worked up about the election? Do they have grief counselors on speed dial and the event Trump wins or what's the atmosphere are you?
You know? All that's interesting because the prince of Theological Seminary and Princeton University have the same DNA, right, they were born. They it was all a seminary when it started back in eighteen whatever. And then as things sort of changed that then the university kind of got more secular and the seminary state of seminary, and the seminary was sort of endowed and started by the Presbyterian Church. So Presbytery Church is still it's still it is still
a seminary for the Presbyterian Church. Is not really a seminary for the Anglican or Episcopal Church that I belong to. So I have to do a little extra stuff just to kind of like keep my thing on. But and I think this is true of other places too. I don't think it's just Princeton or Princeton Seminary. Other discools maybe maybe not. But the purposefulness of it, yeah, it's definitely liberal and that and and some of it's some of it's liberal in a lovely way exactly isn't supposed
to be. But the purposefulness of it it kind of helps. As I said to somebody, they didn't get it. The other thing is that they're not a lot of laughs here. Like my d material is getting great, great response, but it doesn't abody like the purposefulness of it keeps the riff wrath out. You're here for you know, people here. The young people are here because they really really do want to serve their church. And it's also academics and PhDs and people who have like are much more sort
of you know, academic and brilliant. But the foundational thing here is that Okay, we're doing something. There's something bigger that we're a part of and we're supposed to be doing and it's guiding us. And that is different, I think fundamentally from the secular institution across the street which sprints the university, which I think is extremely quiet these days. It's a beautiful campus. Prince is one of the beautiful
places in the world. And I I mean, I hope that the whatever, the whatever happens in a couple of weeks is going to be digested by these people in a way that doesn't cause them too much distress or too much you know, I mean either way, right, I mean, or too much whatever. But it is, I mean, it is a different way to look at there's not a lot of activism and the seminary campus and I walked through the university campus every day and there's not I don't I mean, I see posters and stuff, but it's
not nobody's yelling and screaming on the squad anymore. And they might start, but they're right now, they're they're kind of not And I think the seminary doesn't have that. I mean, somebody has has a vocal group of students who wear a kafia and are concerned about what's happening
in Gosam, right, They're not shutting anything down. And they made a they had a demonstration counter demonstration to somebody who spoke at the convocation that lasted ten minutes and it was respectful and written down and wasn't you know there was no rotating hunger strikes put it that way. So I don't know. Maybe it's the purposefulness of it
that helps. It's like, you know, you don't hear you don't hear a lot of these things going on in STEM campuses, right because people like, well I got a plot problems that I got to do it U. So maybe there's that going on, or maybe it's just a sense that like if you really get, if you're really thinking about bigger things, everything else seems like a smaller thing.
Well, I'd be curious to see exactly how politically sophisticated they are, or whether they're even interested in becoming politically sophisticated, because you can say that it's a basic biblical principle, basic human principle to take care of the poor, for example, to be aware of those less fortunate than yourselves, good
thing to think about. It's how you do that that matters, and how you do that as a whole different series of expectations and assumptions about government, people and the rest of it. And I just wonder you, Rob can be that guy who says, yes, indeed, but what if an abundance society, what if prosperity, rising tide and all the rest of that. What if that is the most efficacious means to securing liberty, justice, and abundance for all? And what if we do that by removing the state's intercession
so that individuals, I mean, they're good. Look at you like this, this thing coiled around a tree that's saying there's an apple. There's a really tasty apple. Why don't you take a bite out of that? I mean, well, can really be the you know, the dark prints of this whole thing? Would they regard you as such? If you started talking about these things. That's a very interesting question in your squishy manification.
Here's the good news. The good news for that I've this is just what I've encountered, but that there was a lot of talk at the beginning, spent the beginning semester and for the new students with me of the diversity of opinion that they're going to encounter. And one professor actually said, look, you're going to be in this class.
You need to know that there are people in this class who vote differently from you, who think differently from you, who worship differently from you, and that is what makes us a seminary and a place of learning and not something else. And I remember thinking like, wow, that's really amazing. I think they're like they must be. I couldn't I hadn't started yet. I couldn't tell. Is this something to
tell the conservatives, hey listen, you keep your whatever? Or is this something to tell the liberals, Hey listen, you keep your mits off the conservative I don't know. I couldn't tell. What I discovered later was that part of it is just what happens is that this is a very popular place to come, unlike sort of these other to the big divinity schools in the country, one at Harvard and the one at Yale. This is a place to come if you actually believe in something and you
actually have some kind of faith. Really, I mean, I don't even mean that as a joke. And so people come and Princeton has just traditionally the Princeton University has had a lot of connections to the South, so people
come from this. There are a lot of people here from the South, and I think the warning has always been to them, Listen, We're going to be in a class with people, and your professors are academics, believing academics, but academics, and you're going to learn stuff that you may not have encountered in your time in your you know, church, for instance, the very distinct, different separate creation stories that begin the book that we call the Bible. Right by
chapter three, you're already confused. And that is part of the you know, as they say in software development, that
is as a feature, not a bug. And you're just gonna have to put up with that because I think, I think there have been stories of very very bright, enthusiastic students coming here from very very very committed faith backgrounds, and they come and they spend you know, semester reading the Old Testament, which a lot of people haven't done, and or reading the Hebrew or reading the Greek and then the New Testament and then having a freak out and say, oh my god, nothing I was told is true.
It's all a lie.
It's all been a lie. And they, you know, they call home and usually they're often there's a parent there or a grandparent or male relatives as a pastor, and they're like, they turned me, they said, sometimes these things they turn these absolutely one hundred percent faithful Christians into
total atheists. And we didn't want to do that either, but they do want you to read the book because it's the book, and the book's complicated, and so so I think part of that was like, hey, don't freak out when you When you don't, you can't answer the question who parts the Red Sea with a clear cut answer, and that again, that's like, I don't know, that's we're still we're still talking about the primeval history here, I mean,
not primary host. We're telling out you know, the early I don't know what do we page fifty and already we're confused, Like all right, so I love that part because, as you know, I'm I'm mister squishy in the middle.
Well, that's great, because I would hate to think that the diversity of the opinion means people who believe in taxing unrealized capital gains above five hundred thousand versus people who believe in taxing it about six hundred thousands. We've got all all walks of life periity theologically, would you say, and I'll leave it at this, because we could just sit here talk. We do have an election. Parure is, do you are most of the people who are coming
to the school, uh episcopalian? Would you say that they're more inclined to Biblical literalism or more inclined to sort of the idea that it's a set of tales divinely inspired mind you, but nevertheless not a not a direct transcription of what happened. We're not talking seven days. We're talking seven days describing a vast period of time that only God can comprehend.
Yeah, I think, I think, I think, I don't. I don't really know. I don't know. I suspect that the the thing about Biblical literalists are the univocalists. Maybe is that it's a hard time. You have a hard time if you're reading the actual Bible, because it's it's got it's the guy, all these doublets and all these little things in it that just seem like, okay, well this is I see here where the key author of the Old Testament came in and you know, the put it
this in front of the thing. And I could say the exit is a perfect example because you have, like this the story of the of leaving Egypt, which is this great adventure tale, and then that's the first half, and then you have this song in the middle of it, which is ancient and older than anything. And then the second part, the third part of it, on the other side of it is this list of laws, the rules, and they didn't all come at the same time. And
so that's kind of looks lovely about it. And I mean, look, the Bible can that was a pretty good book. It couldn't stand up.
As a screen runner. That must be you know, frustrating for you first acts, great steps and up we wondered, yeah right now literally wanders a little in the second part. The third act got a really clinching so she even do you have anything else on the subject because I like, I like, I say, I look forward to a Rob long podcast that is extent, that is, that is exclusively devoted to his experience. Was at the school.
I laid down a marker with Rob that I want to talk to him at least after the first year's under your belt.
I mean, not just yet.
And you know, we get into things like you know, Carl Bart versus Thomas Aquinas.
Maybe I don't know.
Yeah, there you go out right right. Well.
I guess one brief comment though about James's question, which is either literal reading or you know, figurative reading, And it seems to me depends on what you mean by literal. I believe you can take the Bible literal if you accept its premise that it's divinely inspired and your revelation
from God. If you start there, then it seems to me you don't have to have the position that it literally meant a seven to twenty four hour days creation, since the sun wasn't created to what the third day, right, which which defies our sort of categories there.
But once you accept that it's serious.
Then it seems to me that that dichotomy of the what we sometimes say the fundamentalists who take every word literally. That starts to dissolve a bit, and you think of it much more deeply and seriously, I think. And I'll just stop there because I will say I did read Leon Cass's book on Genesis.
I don't know if you know that book.
No, I do.
Yeah, it's ah, it's worth reading.
But of course it's five hundred pages and very dense. And he's he's doing a.
Sequel on Exodus that will also be fine.
It may be done by now, I'm not sure, but you.
Could be there forever. I mean, you could spend the lifetime studying the first two chapters of this Bible.
Correct.
The great thing is at the end of it, rob I suppose, and your your last classes on revelations, which is just a.
Yeah, the end of it, you know everything. That's the great dandy.
Way to wrap out the show right there with the six heads and all the rest, and requires the trumpets. Well, great pin in that move on next topic, elections, anybody has been captured following what Kabalahara said in her recent appearances, where there seems to be a great uneasiness settling in on some parts of the left that she may not be able to close the deal.
That may be the.
Joy of Brad Summer has evaporated and people are seeing somebody who just really isn't up to the task. What do your sense from the nation's reaction and eventual injudication of the merits of Kamala Harris.
Well, I mean, I think they I have to say that her team was right. What right when they kept her out of interviews, they kept her from talking. That was a turns out that was a pretty good strategy. Now we've heard her talk, and we've seen her handle really easy questions from incredibly sympathetic interviewers, and she just doesn't seem to have some kind of she seems doesn't strange. I find it generationally very strange that she doesn't. And I'm actually from Kamala Harris, who I you know, like
she didn't arrive here. I mean, as hard as his believer in live, you're an unaccomplished person. She was a prosecutor and she ran a statewide. It wasn't a great state wide, but she ran a statewide. And so she's she knows how to think on her feature clearly does because she was on to what to trials. She was
in court. So this, this terror and almost choosing to say nothing to me is the most terrible I can put it is that it's just the terror of running a going from basically small time elections to running big time elections where you're in charge instead of taking orders. That that could be. It can also be that she's just a deeply unserious person, which I think is also
true she does. But I think that's a third thing happening, which is like, I don't think I don't think that she thinks that she needs to do any of this or have any of this. Is what I find most disturbing is that I don't think she thinks of these things as deficiencies. She thinks she's just gonna, like, I'm just have to do this to get become president. But when I'm president, I sit there and preside and gab and chit chat and run a meeting which I can run.
And I feel like she is a classic. And I say this as a member of my generation, because she's in my generation. She's a consultant, and she's running it like she's a McKinsey consultant, and so her answers are worth salid nonsense. You think well, I don't. I didn't. I'm not hiring a consultant. I'm hiring a president. And I think that to me is like that she's not even very good one. I mean, she wouldn't be at
McKinsey or BCG or something. She'd be like one of the gray d ones because her word salads aren't that good. But I've been around enough consultants to know that they can talk for thirty minutes and it sounds good, but it means nothing. And she could talk for thirty minutes and it doesn't sound good. But she's She's right. She is the generation of Americans that believe that the highest form of enterprise is a consultancy. And unfortunately that is not the job that she is auditioning for.
Yeah, I keep expecting her to offer concave solutions to convex problems.
I feel consultantly right, Yeah.
I mean, the way I've been putting it is that we can talk about the polls if you want, but the body language of the body politic is clearly Satanly. Discomfort on all sides with her and her brat summer has become as I'm calling it, a splat fall. And look I mean, I've talked about this before, I think, but look, her reputation in California is that she was
a terrible boss. I've known people who work for in the agency's office, Democrats, career Democrats who hate her and said she was just the most horrible person to work for. She had what ninety two percent turnout I'm sorry turnover and the vice presidential staff.
And that's an amazing thing because people killed have those.
Jobs in the White House and they're willing to put up with a lot of misery to be the center of the action there.
Right.
And then finally there was a story that came out a few months ago that now I think you mentioned that she took a couple of days off to prepare for the CNN town hall where she did miserably.
The story out three or four months ago that.
Sometime in the last couple of years, she was invited to one of Davis Bradley's famous salage. Now David Bradley, for listeners don't know, he was a big He used to own The Atlantic before Marene Palell jobs bought it. And you know major publisher, U, major man around Georgetown has a big house up on Embassy Row I think in Massachusetts Avenue and he has these salons, were invited to dinner.
It's all high powered people.
She was so nervous about going that she had her staff do a rehearsal dinner for and they thought about, well, maybe we should actually serve wine at these rehearsals, so you know, what kind of what are people going to be asking me? What do I need to talk about? How do I what? So she was that nervous about going to what ought to be a layup for anybody in Washington, because everybody in Washington, I mean I lived there fifteen years, James has been there, you know, the
Georgetown cocktail party to aspire to and it's easy. There was no pressure on her whatsoever. But she was nervous about it, which shows that she's not ready for prime time. And we can go on all day about that.
Yeah, I'm just say I'm saying, can I just buy? I want to? It's I'm just taking as a given, which maybe maybe not, but I when you say somebody is just dumb, then that is over right. It is dumb, right, And like, okay that she's dumb. I don't think she's dumb. I mean you know, she passed the bar. She't all though it wasn't great law school, all us things. You know, I just did a podcast with John Padrit's, and you know, John Panriits is very very critical of her, like she's
an idiot. And I get it. I get that answer, I get that answer. I just mean that to me, it feels to me like she doesn't she she has no courage, which you desperately need to join this campaign, this this late. They're enormous. Her problem is really simple as a political problem, it's not that hard. She needs men and she needs moderates, that's it. And she needs to paint the other guy as a lunatic. Well he's gonna do that part himself, and all she needs is
that part. And she's just she seems to have a hard time connecting to that. The boiler plate answers that she could have given that, you could have memorized that, aren't you know complicated? Are just show this kind of terror and fear and unwillingness to sort of act like she wants it. You know, it's a weird way. It's almost like she thinks that, Okay, well I'm gonna be It's like a gig. It's like, no, you have to have a you have to want to take the country
in a direction. You know, when you if you answer a question, hey, look this is a very complicated question, then you have to give me a complicated answer. You can't just you know. I find it. I find amazing. Look at her now. It's how terrible this campaign has become because it started so great. I mean, you got to give him credit. Sure has a billion dollars. She made all the right phone calls. She looked really good. I mean I was saying a month ago, you know,
weirdly about her. She's actually good at this, and it's all kind of you know what, It's all kind of evaporated, the way it does when the consultant packs up and leads and the company's left to actually make the things work.
She was good at when everybody saw the picture, or the big smiling picture, different kind of energy, so different than the glowering orange amount and the rest of it. A lot of that was just vibe and imagery. I think part of the pride. I don't disagree with anything either of you said, but I think part of her problem or inability to compose herself well and impressively in these interviews is that she's suffering, she's experienced in the
consequences of a lifetime of intellectuals. The disinterest is in the world, lack of curiosity, isolation, isolation, but also lack of curiosity. Just if somebody who's hungry about the world will know enough about it to be able to be asked for a few minutes when the question is asked, he'll have a template about that issue in their head because their mind has ranged by view of the places. That's just kind of what you would like to expect she doesn't have.
I mean, right, but I mean Bill, if I could interrupt, I mean Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Remember both had taught constitutional law in law schools, Clinton Arkansas and Obama in Chicago. And I know people in classes from Obama at Chicago Law School, and.
They said he knew what the conservative arguments were.
Us to read Robert Borke in our classes with him, so they knew what the other side thought. I don't think Harris has ever for a moment picked up a copy of National Review or any other or heard anything certain argument ever, Right.
Right, Yeah, I find it very baffling. I mean, and especially I mean, because it's like we're looking these two desperately bad circus bears grappling, and you know, like last week, suddenly Trump goes to McDonald's.
Oh.
Rob, you, as a show business person, you have to thought that was a master stroke.
It was brilliant. Oh, I totally. I think it was absolutely But but I thought to myself, like it took them. How long? It's October fifteen, whatever, he was October twentieth. It's a couple of weeks for the election, and this is the first time this guy has done this. The laziness with which that campaign has, like, well, let's give another rally, give another rally. No, no, no, you put him and McDonald's. I would take him to Costco. I would put him. I would have him do the checkout
at home depot. I would have this guy, this billionaire, orange billionaire, at every real job in America once a week. Don't do the stupid rallies where he blathers and lies his way through fifty minutes of nonsense. He was great at McDonald's, and people, the voters like to see that
the president knows what a McDonald's looks like inside. And I mean, yeah, he was there fifteen minutes he made some jokes that should have been I tell you, I honestly believe from labor day on, he had the job a week and not a stupid, embarrassing, insulting rally, he'd be twenty points up.
He would have to be a job a week because people absolutely would forget the next thing. I mean, we've moved on past the assassination attempts pearled, and he would have to. You're right, Rob, do this every single day, rotate through all of the various franchises, sparing nothing. He'd love it too. I mean, just imagine the jokes, the self deprecating jokes. Who could be done if you put on the orange apron. You know, you just sit there
and talk about it. Matches. Before we go any farther, though, I'm going to welcome Rob back by forbidding him the opportunity to bust my segue. I'm simply going to go right into a spot.
Oh yeah, no, listen, I want to say this, James. I, as you know, I'm I'm on my way to taking religious orders. So I'm trying to take take seriously the only two commandments that we as Christians have to follow, which is one is God, honor your God, basically gratitude, and the second is to love your neighbor. And so in the spirit of that, I'm I'm not going to interrupt your sege to your spot.
It is a philosophical disquisition I would love to have if somebody is saying they are not interrupting your spot, but yet they are interrupting your spot. Does intention count or does the effect of their actions? We can talk about that a little bit, but.
It's a Christian paradox, James, is what I think.
Certainly, there's no paradox when it comes to data security. You need it, you want it, and it's a big problem when.
You interrupt somebody's spot. You know it, I mean, you do it. You just go right to like you with intention, that's the most important thing. That's actually the most important thing theologically I think see is intention is like this is what I have. You know this is there's no half metage anyway, right, you were something, you're right.
But if someone believes actually that their interruption is actually improving that it's a bit that is a joid by all. Then there's a little bit of the overweening ego in there that says that you're not actually doing a good thing, You're doing something to aggrandize yourself. Say, having said that, I would like to remind people I had made a point about data security and why it's important. I thought
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want to in clung Yee, but probably not. And anybody who speaks of telling me is probably just wet themselves in my accent. All right back to the election that we have now. Rob was saying that it'd be a great thing if Trump continued to do this, but the blowback would be so delicious. I mean the fact that that one McDonald's trip generated so many pieces of hair on fire about. You know, he wasn't wearing a hairnet.
Two of them. I saw about that. Somebody else went back and pulled the records to see what.
You know, It's not real hair. It's an antibacterial, micro antimicrobial fiber.
Well I would like to know that. But you know, for being the most vetted candidate in modern history, somehow we haven't gotten around to the microfiber nature of it's here. But they don't see the latest thing, of course. And I'm going to say something which I know it was going to be shocking to you guys, but it appears to me as if they're trying to make Donald Trump sound like Hitler I know, I know, or a fascist.
Now we all are old.
Enough to note that every single president of a Republican nature in our lifetime has been Hitler, and I was the one. If you go back and search in Lexus nexus, I am convinced that the first mention of this phrase is mine a long time ago, which was in the future, everyone will be Hitler for fifteen minutes. And I mean Reagan was Hitler Bush Hitler the one word I and Kamala Harris I believe gave a speech today what she
called them a fascist. And these people have very little understanding what fascists I mean other than it's the things I don't like, and they know they don't. They don't like it, so I'll give it to you. Then is ninth time to charm? So the old Hitler fascist thing.
He would have thought that at some point, let's do this.
Let's stipulate that Trump is as awful as they say he is, or that Rob sometimes says he is.
I think he's not. But all right.
The point is, you would would have thought that somebody in the democratic hierarchy would at some point have read the old fable of the little Boy who Cried Wolf and reflect that they shouldn't have made such damn fools out of themselves. Going back seventy years now, by the way, I have all receipts on this. The first instance I can find was nineteen forty when Henry Wallace, in a
Democrats charged that Wendell Wilkie. He was an old one world, right, Wendell Wilkie was Hitler's preferred candidate in the election that year. And by the Hitler was a real thing going in nineteen.
Forty, right. I can't remember this from the history books. Yeah, and then you know Tom Dewey was Hitler.
That's what Harry Truman said actually right about the same week in the ninth forty eight election cycle, late October.
And then Goldwater.
Oh my god, I mean I go on for pages about all the ways that he was made out to be Hitler, and any go on down the list.
You know, Regulus Hitler. Right.
The only Republican who has never called Hitler was Eisenhower. If you think about it for two seconds, it's hard to make it stick on the guy who actually routed Hitler on the battlefield.
Right, right, right.
But so, I mean, I think they made damn fools of themselves saying this.
They can't seem to come up with anything original, and it just shows their desperation.
In my mind, they just said one other things. Well, I'll stop there, let roam on the Hitler.
I was just gonna say the fashion thing to think about fascism is like, I mean, okay, stipulate that fascism is bad. We don't like it, but it doesn't seem like it's not much of a you know, it's like racist, you know, it's like okay, yeah, it's have any value. And I don't think it's connecting to the voters the way what you want to do. What she's just they're failing at that one thing, which is we've seen it. We've seen this movie already, the Trump movie. She's change,
She's going to bring back change. We need change. Turn the page. He's exhausting and crazy and and incompetent in many ways, and there's a little bit of a trap there for him for them because, in my opinion, the thing that disqualifies him the most, aside from post election nonsense, is his handling of COVID, which was atrocious and wrong. But they agreed with it. So that's the problem, right, really,
was that they agreed with everything he did. They were applauding, like if you could shut down the country more, they would like to do that. Like Trump, Davin knew some plan for the United States economy was to destroy it.
He wasn't fast enough about COVID.
Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we need a little Ronda Santis Brian Kemp to keep the trains run on time in this country and so they but they're not connecting to what they should be connecting to. And weirdly he isn't either. But I think he's going to start. But I just to me, it's just it's it's it's banana. It's like it's like a faculty lounge argument, which they still don't know is not America.
Well, the approximate cause of this, the charge of this week is that General Flynn said that Trump said.
I wish I had generals Lelly Doenal Kelly Sorry, oh god.
Yeah, that Flynn was the one that yeah, yeah, very general.
Maybe he is the kind of okay.
The point is that apparently Trump can't name a single World War two German general.
Apparently he never heard of Irwin Rommel when somebody brought him up. So I mean, really, you take this seriously?
Uh and oh Trump said this four years ago now and we're only hearing about it now two weeks before an election.
Gosh, that seems awfully convenient, doesn't it.
Maybe he was saying that he just wanted to, you know, the sort of generals will leave a bomb under the table. Yeah, that's right, and take a phone call outside.
Yeah.
I mean, part of the problem is that we already had four years of Donald Trump and he did not annex the sedateent Land.
The Battle on b As one of their typical classic headlines, it was Democrats tell us Trump wanted to be Hitler in his first term but simply forgot right.
Indeed, well, the whole idea of nothing outside the state, nothing, that basic fascist concept is not something that sticks well on the right, because the left is very very progressives, are very proud to tell us how much everything should be gathered into the loving and embrace of the states, of the village, of the rest of it. We must have collective effort for climate change, we must have collective effort to reduce systemicisms, and all the rest of it.
I mean, they're all about using the instruments of the state, maximum powered in order to force course change human behavior. So I find it amusing when they make that charge, still believing somehow in their heart of hearts that it's nineteen sixty eight and that they're the party of just nothing but free love and absolute, total free expression and freedom for all the rest of it when they've morphed into the very sort of authoritarian apparatus that they supposedly
aided in sixty eight. But moving beyond Trump and Kamala something even more important British election interference in American politics. This is a weird, strange story, and Steven, I think you might be the one to describe it for people.
Yeah, so Kier Starmer the new Prime Minister of Britain with the one of the largest labor landslides ever. They've got like four hundred and twenty five seats on the six hundred and fifty.
That you have in the House.
And by the way, the opinion polls show that Starmer is more unpopular than any new prime minister has been in the last fifty sixty years.
I mean, he's cratering already.
And in the midst of this, he decides that he and his party they want to come over en mass, like one hundred members of the House of Commons want to come over and campaign for Kamala Harris. Now there's two things about this. Where are the screams of foreign
interference in our elections? And second, how stupid could Starmer be I mean, with all the momentum right now behind Trump and the likelihood that Trump is going to win, why would you want to alienate for no good reason of your own the next president of the United States, who you're gonna have to deal with about Ukraine and the European.
Union and all kinds of other things.
It's just to me, is this shows how incredibly inept a Starmer is as a political leader.
I was just over there, and you're right, he's not loved. And there are a series of steps that were being towered in the Telegraph. Yeah, I know the Telegraph, but it's not exactly a raping right wing paper. The Telegraph was noting that there's been a series of art movements in number ten Downing Street paintings that have been removed. Yeah, because they have the wrong message. Sir Walter Rawley, he's out Elizabeth first, she's out of here.
Slavery for both of them.
Gladstone I think got the boot at some point. She took down Margaret. He took down Margaret Thatcher's painting, right, because there's it on the wall, and he says she had nothing to do with her politics. He just didn't like paintings in which someone was looking down on him, And I thought, if you took thatcher's portrait and put it on the floor, it would still be looking down on you, mister Jover. The other thing that he recently
took out was William Shakespeare. Apparently that one had to go and is going to be replaced by something that's a little bit more diverse, Walkie Sparkly, et cetera. They took all of the paintings of men out of eleven Downing Street, a meeting room where they meet four people, and it replaced them with women or pictures of women, in order to show their commitment to empowering the rest of it. So these are kind of tone deaf things. There are statements that you make to placate a certain
number of your base, but they don't. They fall like a cold coal on the floors of the rest of the people in the country. You are wondering exactly why this was necessary exactly to do, But that's what you get from all the year zeroach type. We think it's bad over here, there are There was a proposed legislation that new rules to govern whether or not a pub owner an obligation to interfere when the banter between some mates in the back having a pint becomes injurious to
the sensibilities of various protected groups. It's in order to keep the workers health and safety. Of course, that they might themselves having their ears upbraided by an off color joke would suffer harm and distress. So now there's talk of the publitions have to be banter cops, that everybody has to look around their shoulder and see if there's somebody who's taking down what they said in the local boozer.
And you know, I talked to people who can labor all their life and they just they grit their teeth and they just sort of despair of this nonsense ever ending.
Yeah, I mean, like I remember years this is sort of somewhat similar. But years ago when New York City had a smoking in Restaurants ordinance, and of course it went it got you know, everybody knew it was going to happen, and those restaurant owners hated it because it's like,
come on, let me just do anything. And you had to go when you went in a restaurant, you're, oh, I'm an old man, right, Remember when you go to a restaurant, they go smoking or non r and oh, it doesn't matter because the smoking section non smoking section. And of course it was like masks no masks. It was stupid because like there'd be a table that was in the smoking section next to a table that was
a non smoking section one. But you had to designate a certain number of tables, a certain amount of things you had to have, like the smoking area had to be like it was incredibly, incredibly onerous, and the city Council Andre Sultaner, the great chef Andrea Sultner, who ran one of the best restaurants ever called Lutesse. You know, he cooked almost every meal there for thirty plus years. When he retired. It was a front pace show of
the New York Times. When he retired and his uh, somebody asked his wife, well, what are you gonna do with all your free time now? And she said She'd live in New York City for thirty three years because you know, I've always wanted to see a Broadway play. But of course she could ever see one because she was always working anyway, So he went down to town Hall and he was like arguing against this, He said, what are you doing. I've run a restaurant in the
city for thirty years. I think I know best how to keep my customers happy. I think I know how to run a restaurant. Why are you telling me how to run a restaurant? And they looked at him, they acted like he was like from he was, well, what's the worst thing you could be? Like he was some kind of fascist, right, he was to bliedly Right, He's like, if I don't if I don't serve my customers, they will not come. That is the only regulation I need.
And he was right, And it's the same thing. But these pub owners like, if I let things get out of hand and I don't step in. Everybody who's ever been behind the bar knows there's a time when you step in, there's a time when you people away. That's the job of a bartender, partly like you don't need a commission to tell you how to do that, and if you do, you're going to be out of business soon anyway.
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the unboxing to the using. It's a cool device and we thank Luman for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. Before we go, gentlemen, anything else that you would like to discuss elon musk say anything this week that we should be worried about. I'm never really worried about anything that he says. I mean, he'll repost something on next Twitter and then say either wild or two exclamation points, and from that I'm supposed to infer that he too is hit or his handbath.
Yeah.
Well, actually I make a comment on Rob's point and your question about having a commission to regulate what goes on in pubs. Look, you know, I always show to students the public opinion polls showing the complete collapse and confidence in our institutions. And one of the reasons for that is that our government is no longer competent of doing its basic task like, oh, I don't know, policing
the streets, providing quality public education, of picking up the garbage. Right, But they want to start policing what we think and what we say because their competence apparently extends.
Into that right and people.
I think this is why people don't respect their institutions anymore, as they aren't any good.
And the media same thing.
Right, people can see that the media is completely partisan and superficial and so forth, and that explains I think some of Trump's appeal, and he's crude about it, but when he says we never win again, I think a lot of people import into that exactly, that sentiment that gush, no, nothing seems to work. That's supposed to work. And meanwhile they're telling us we have to wear masks, pa is what we say, We're gonna censor Twitter and so forth.
And so here's where let me try this, James. I'm gonna see if I can reach concord with brother Rob's and I don't know if we're gonna see the election.
Brother Rob.
But let's let's stipulate the that that Trump may not deserve to win. For all of the criticisms that you and many others make, but I believe the left richly deserves to lose to Trump. Not just a Republican, they deserve to lose to Trump.
Great, that's a theological question that meant to be right. Well, I don't you know, I don't think anybody deserves you know, I believe in salvation by grace. I'm not sure that.
Well, we may need that after Trump wins.
But I think that we I think that we as a country and as a culture, deserve President Trump or President Harris. I don't think these are two of our best choice. Is I don't thin they're two of our best leaders. I think we're kind of in a decadent phase where we think that all the questions are small and little and they can be sort of either insulted away on X or words slided away and some other way. And I think that we, you know, we the country
kind of agrees, right. And what I what I what I object to about from my liberal friends is this idea that this is somehow new and oh those you suddenly discovered this like and it just drives me up the wall because it's like, this is not new. This this the the stupefication of American and political conversation is something that's I mean, I hate sounding like the kids saying you started it, but you started it and congratulations
because you the left. And I think in many ways that the institutional left, which simply operated on the assumption that the grown ups will always be in charge, the grown ups always hold me back. I could do whatever I want. I'm a spoiled kid, and it's okay cause Daddy's Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna pull me back from the abyss. They're gonna they're gonna keep this from getting
too weird. So you know, we can say nasty, horrible, ridiculous things about President George W. Bush or President HW Bush for that matter, or Mitt Romney or anybody we want, and we can go way over the top on that. But you know that's okay because we're the kids and we're allowed to do that, and the grown ups will never do that. And now they've discovered now you've created
a whole new political movement. You've energized the political but half the people like that half, but a huge part portion of the energy and the Republican Party now are people who are been Republican for about twenty five minutes. And that you created this, and you you set the table for it, and now guess what people are coming
to eat And they're not the people you expected. And now you want to go You want to put the toothpaste back in the tube and say, oh no, can we just please go back to what it was like when it was nice? And if you're if you were a sentient conservative or even center right figure of a certain age, you're like, well, you guys hated all the Republicans you love so much. You hated and vilified and called fascist, as James put it, So like, what do you expect me to do.
That was yesterday. It was yesterday, and yesterday is everybody deserves.
Everybody deserves what they Everybody deserves what they're going to get, and they deserve to get a good and hard.
Well. I'm not so inclined to believe. So I like, when I say that we deserve this, I don't think we do. But the very fact that everybody has chosen it willingly tells me that I'm probably wrong. But I'm many things. What I don't know is, am I, uh well, Robi you had a piece for commentary, but the Daily Wire Matt Walsh is, am I racist? Tell us a little bit about that on the way out.
Oh sure, yeah, well, I mean, if you if you want to. I mean, in choises is the crisis of comedy. They're looking for comedy, know what makes people laugh? And Matt Walsh and I guess producer of The Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, who's a really smart guy, and Ben Sapiro they sort of produced this movie. And Matt goes around and he has these I mean, it's like, I can't even I don't want to describe it. If you haven't
seen it, treat yourself. It's it's the funniest movie you're gonna the funniest and truest movie you're gonna see it. And it confirms the things that we've all known, which is that the sort of TEI nonsense, it's nonsense, and that it's not really serious, and that those people are kind of like off their rocker. All that stuff is in this in this movie and it's and what I love about it is that not only is it does it do? I agree with it? And I am applauding
to it. I'm also laughing at it because it's like genuinely funny, and it is a It is a financial box office success, which is great. That is good news for everybody.
Really, what it says something about the bubble in which a lot of these people live. If somebody was saying, I want to do a movie on what is a conservative and they wanted to talk to me, and they called me up and I said sure, and I show up and it's John Stewart in a grout show. Glass is with the notes, And I would say, but you're John Sewart. Mel wolves can go to all these people and nobody ever says, I where have I seen you before? Oh?
It was that movie about what is a woman? That was all over the place or it was that twitter the rest of it, no intersection whatsoever. That's the point non contiguous information streams. Steven, have you seen the movie? And if so, uh, why not?
Yeah?
I know I have seen, but I haven't seen I haven't seen that, right, I haven't seen the whole.
Thing yet, and I've been no good reason I was overseas whatnot. But at the point is is it used to be Michael Moore who was the funny guy who had ambushed and now our team is doing it just as well. And yeah, I mean Walls won't be able to get away with that many more times. But it's what you just say is they didn't know who he was and so they were utterly candid with him. Uh and you know, oh and of course the left, like the devil Rob hate to be mocked and laughed at.
And yeah, well, I mean, you know, then don't be so funny. There's a I started out as always commentary columns. I try to like talk more about show business than anything else. But reminding everybody this is great. There was great long running TV hit called Candid Camera, Right, Alan Funt did it for years if you're a certain age, not even that old, like you remember Alan Funt and his son Peter took over after Alan got too sick or too old. And there's always been Hayden camera shows
on TV. There's Ashton Kutcher had punked and there was like a bunch of them, a bunch of them. And the tagline for Candid Camera was we catch people in the act of being themselves. And it was this wonderful, warm, funny thing like normal people being normal and it's just it's funny, it was, and that is exactly what Matt Walsh did. He caught people in the act of being themselves and they will never forgive for it.
I believe that candid Camera grew out of candid microphone, which is on the radio, which is a whole different thing. It's like ventriloquism on the radio that release on how that works. But ended camera, unfortunately, I think, sort of spawned prank culture, which is a lot more boorish and a lot more yeah, I mean, invasive and mean and
the rest of it. But I too remember a candid camera when I was a kid at Grappa's place watching it on whatever night it was, and that's the sort of little giggle that people got when they realized that they were in this. And the very fact that an
entire culture, i mean, the show was very popular. The idea that you might be on Can did Camera was sort of this omnipresent question in minds so bad millions and something weird happened for you for decades you thought you look around for the camera because Alan Tunt with a little bald paint might stick itself off from a
potted plant. And you give you a big smile and said, you've just been on the national television back before the days where everybody, of course wanted to be an influencer and make full of themselves for absolutely no reason having done so, that might just myself here, No, for a very good reason. To promote Ricochet and to promote Lumen and Incognitate, two great products, lumin for your metabolism and Cogni for your digital safety, and we thank them for
sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. We thank Rob Long for coming back. Of course, we thank Steven again a regular member of the Flagship podcast family. And we thank you for going to Apple last week and giving us those five star reviews. Really, we thank you you, on the other hand, who hasn't done it yet, go do it. And also, by the way, if you haven't joined Ricochet, this is a great time because we're having a lot of fun discussing the election
and there are meetups in person. Yeah, and we're gonna have a lot of fun discussing the election afterwards too in the member feed. But you've got to be a member to be a member of the member feed, he said, tutologically, that'll do. Guys. It's been a lot of fun and I hope to see both of you next week. In the meantime, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point.
See you soon, PILs, Great to see you, Rob, Good to see you guys too. Yeah, bless you my sons.
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