09/07/2023 The Scoop Squad Episode 69

[MUSIC] So Tim, you've spent your career studying moments when democracies fall apart, when empires push too far, and when people resist. And when you look at the United States right now, is there a historical case you've studied where the comparison helps most, or is most illustrative? >> Yeah, I guess I would start by saying that, as you know very well, the states that we have don't have to exist. And that's where one starts. I think the fact that the US exists in celebrating 250 years. Doesn't mean that it'll exist in five years or 10 years or 15 years. And that's where I start. Like states have a beginning and they have an end. And I don't necessarily see our present position as one, where the United States is a container, and all that happens is inside the container for better or worse. I see our condition as being inherently international, that the people who govern us or rule us now are specific kinds of internationalists who take their model from abroad. They're templates from abroad, a lot of their money from abroad. And so I am not myself necessarily primarily in the resistance versus tyranny paradigm. I'm personally much more in the state survival, state rebuilding paradigm when it comes to the US. I don't mean to doubt your question. I just want to put my priors right out there in front. Because I think that the Trump people are much more likely to wreck the US as an entity than they are to succeed in generating some kind of homogenous tyranny from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The contemporary examples that are helpful to me personally, that doesn't mean they're obnoxiously the best, would start with with Russia, where many of the things that have happened in the United States happen first in Russia. And many of the clues of what postmodern tyranny or fascism will look like. You can get first from observing Russia. You can see from Russia that hydrocarbons are a bad thing. You can see from Russia that how the centralization of media and the destruction of local reporting is very harmful. You can get from Russia how social media is can be consonant with a certain kind of authoritarian politics. So recent examples would include would probably start with Russia. As far as like general historical moments, I think we're at an imperial turning point, like roughly 100 and let's say 130, 140 years ago, where people take a certain kind of imperial order for granted. And the question is how do you react when it breaks up? So thinking again from inside the United States, but thinking internationally, how do we deal with it when we no longer exercise the same kind of power that we used to? Are we able to exercise power in new ways? Or do we choose to fall upon one another or to put it in a more historical or sociological way? As we deal with our own heritage of the masculine and displacement of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, as we deal with that, do we choose to focus on how we were always right at home? And thereby lose any sort of possibility for building a post-imperial kind of state? Or do we instead continue a conversation inside the United States, which allows us to present ourselves as as incredible power outside the United States? So I see a set at a kind of imperial transition moment, like at the end of the 19th century or the end of the Second World War. And I think part of our problem in the US is that we're a strangely provincial empire. And so we don't see our challenges as being subject to comparison or as involving other countries. Russia or I guess the Soviet Union, in this case, is also a good example of how states don't have to exist. And the situation is inherently international. Yeah, I love that you pointed that out, especially because when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the existence of the Soviet Union was as certain as anything could be in politics. And the people who predicted the end of the Soviet Union were outcasts and outliers. And all the way up to December of 1991, it was American policy to try to preserve the Soviet Union. So it's really striking that all the dissolid really can melt into air. The things that seem like the absolute bed rocks or even the axioms of political thought that those things can cease to exist. So I appreciate that remark. And there's also, I mean, there's the related point that the breakup of the Soviet Union means that the 1990s in Russia happened, so to speak, faster there than here. Time goes faster there than here in a way. And that means that the things that are going to happen in the US start to happen faster there, such as political postmodernism or the return of a certain kind of fascism or oligarchy. So the end of the Soviet Union shows that things can come to an end, but it also shows some of the possibilities of 21st century politics, which we then weighed into ourselves later on. You said it was at one point, I mean, impossible to imagine the Soviet Union breaking up. It's certainly impossible for me to imagine the United States breaking up. I guess the closest thing I ever think of is hearing occasionally, I mean, jokes or bluster about can it California is deceiving or Texas is deceiving, but does this seem like a real possibility? The way, I mean, it evidently was a real possibility that the Soviet Union would break up, even if no one was aware of it or acknowledged it. Yeah, I think it does a real possibility. And I think one where reasons why it's a real possibility is that it's so difficult to think about it. If you see what I mean, you know, like it's not, I mean, people in 1913 and Habsburg, Monarchy weren't thinking, oh, we're five years away from not existing as an empire. People in the Soviet Union to return to your equal were thinking in 1996, we're five years away from the end of our state. And so the fact that Americans aren't thinking that way or can't think that way doesn't mean that they aren't five years away from the end. It doesn't mean that they are, but it doesn't suggest that they aren't. We, if anything, were probably a little more provincial and self-centered than elites in Habsburg, Monarchy, or the Soviet Union. So yeah, I'll tell you why I think it's possible. The United States depends upon a redistributed consensus in which blue states, A-taxes and red states consume the results of those taxes. Well, everyone pretends it's the other way around. Like like a lot of relationships, there's a level, there's the level of literature or if you want to be unkind fiction at the top, you know, and that is, and that is that the red states are hardy and independent and so on. And like people in the blue states tend to humor that, right, or Democrats will humor that about Republicans. They won't deny it frontally, usually, that you're hardy and independent and self-reliant and so on. But in fact, we depend on a redistributed consensus in which California, to mention the state you mentioned, or Massachusetts or New York, they pay taxes so that Kentucky and Alabama and Mississippi can have stuff. And that's the way our country works. And it's a financial reality, but it's also kind of ideological reality that people in blue states believe that they ought to be funding in a redistributive way. And people in red states believe that they ought to be pretending that that's not happening. And so like that's how the relationship works. That seems to be me not terribly stable as a model for a relationship. And then, you know, bringing it then home to the financial side. Second point, if you, if that's the reality, which you kind of waste disguise or you justify because of your belief that the country should work that way, what happens when you no longer believe that your taxes are doing the right thing? So if I'm in California Massachusetts in New York, and I think it's fine for me to pay taxes because I believe I should be holding the United States together. But what if I believe my taxes are going to fund a 1.5 trillion military, which is totally unjustifiable and unbelievably corrupt? Or what if I believe that my taxes are going to fund a cluster of all the article billionaires around the president who already have way too much money? You know, what if what if I no longer accept the premise of the redistributive consensus, which is that the federal government actually works to redistribute? What if I start to see the federal government as just a way to make a family of people even wealthier than they already are? Why do I keep paying taxes then? Right? And like that's going to take a few tax cycles to get through, but I think it's not an impossible conclusion for people to draw. And then the third point, again, like speaking to implicit ways that we believe the country works. One implicit way I think it's fair to say that most people believe the country works is that the United States military is not supposed to be running things inside the United States of America. And meanwhile, in my view, we're tipping pretty close to a politics in which the federal government and people at the top of the federal government are saying that that's what they want. And your evidence to this would be the rhetoric of the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States who talk about the homeland as being the source of the greatest problems and the homeland and you, that means me. And that it mainly means, you know, African-Americans and people of different views. And the second piece of evidence would be the systematic purges at the top of the civilian end military side and the Pentagon and also within the armed forces purges which are obviously politically motivated. And the third bit of evidence would be the proposed military budget, which is just a bribe. I mean, there's literally no doctrine or technological logic behind it. It's just a bribe to try to persuade the men and women in the armed services that they should be on Trump's side when his party loses elections. So let's imagine that something like that happens. You know, and I'm not saying it has to happen. I think it's obviously, I think it's obviously something that can be resisted if it's named. But it's something like that happens. Then that's a breakdown of an implicit consensus of how the United States is supposed to be run. Like if we do have the US military in the streets in purple states in November, then that would be, that would defy, I think a pretty important piece of the consensus of why we need to know how United States works and that it should exist. So yeah, I mean, I'm in favor of the United States existing. I don't know how it could be better. But I don't, I mean, I guess another thing that I would point out is that the people who run our country are completely indifferent to its existence, right? Like for that, it's just for them, it's just one big laundromat. Like it's just a way to enrich themselves. So, and that's an unusual situation. The people, let me just rehearse like an argument that I've had for the last decade. I say Trump dangerous. And then other people say Trump transactional. And the thing is, Trump transactional is supposed to mean not dangerous because if he's just transactional, then he can just, and the idea is that he can just be, he can just be systematically paid off and nothing will get to be too bad. But if you're really just transactional and I agree that he is, that means that you don't have any sense of a national interest or a state interest. You have nothing called patriotism. There's no value anywhere, which would hinder you from overseeing or presiding over the United States. But also if you're just transactional, that means that it's not just the absence of values. I mean, that's too model way to describe it. It's also that you're a kind of nihilist, right? You actively don't care about a lot of things that other people do care about and would like to think that maybe you care about. So if you're just a nihilist, then why not collect American tax money to try to pay off American soldiers to try to transform the American political system? Like that's where transactionalism actually leads. So I mean, the character, Trump's character, the way he sees politics, even if he put it in the ostensibly neutral formula of transactionalism, I think also leads to the conclusion that the republic is at risk. - There's a lot there for a remit of bite onto, but I'll just start, I guess, with this red state, blue state, financial, economic, tax base disparity that you mentioned at the outset of your response. And it seems to me like if the blue states are providing the revenue and the red states are consuming them, a right-leaning leader like Trump would want to keep the tax base around in the form of the blue states and would not want the United States to break up, whereas it would be a blue state or a democratic president who would want the United States to break up for financial reasons. But the military dictatorship budget that you've talked about and written about seems like it would be in favor of the United States staying together. - Yeah, so I would accept that if we were in a kind of like rational choice paradigm where the Democrats only sort of cared about where the money was flowing, but they clearly don't only care about that. I mean, as difficult as they can be to deal with sometimes they clearly actually believe in the existence of the United States of America. And they don't, when they see these financial flows, they usually talk about them in terms of values and policies and so on and not in the kind of just cash flow of the United States sense. And with respect to Trump, I think the thing which is missing here is that he believes that people are perfect idiots, which isn't quite true. Like we're all idiots in some way or another, but we're not all perfect idiots. And so what I mean is that he'd, I don't think he believes that there's any threshold beyond which we won't be suckers as a nation. And I think that's a miscalculation. I mean, like, you know, HL Mink and suckers born every minute, but that doesn't mean we're all born suckers and we're all gonna be suckers our entire lives, which is what Trump is counting on. I mean, so to put it a different way, he, I think their blind spot, the Trump blind spot is that no matter what he does, the United States will still be there, so to speak, to be exploited. And I think that's actually an analytical mistake. I think he thinks to the United States as being like a crowded arali. And no matter what you do up there on stage, there's still gonna be their root before you or whatever. So I think, but I think that's an analytical blind spot. And it's those kind of big, blind spots which can some be like, I'm just to make a kind of a public comparison. One of the reasons why Putin invades Ukraine is that he really doesn't think that Ukraine is real. And that's a big analytical blind spot. And you can't like, you can't really talk about rational interests and stuff until you recognize that there was a big analytical blind spot there. And I think with Trump, the reason why your argument doesn't work is that I think he thinks he can just push and push and push and push and nothing will ever break. And I don't believe that's correct. - Yeah, what is the, just to help me visualize this the better, better, what is the kind of scenario you're envisioning in which Trump expects everybody to remain perfect idiots, but we are not. And then we end up resisting and his paradigm is shattered. Can you give me like a scenario where this happened? - I think we're living it right now. I mean, I think June 10th, 2026, I'm sorry you're gonna publish this later, but I think we're living it. I think we're living that scenario right now. I think I don't think Trump is gonna be successful in all of this. The conversation we're having that's far is in a sense theoretical. Like I'm telling you what I'm worried about. Like that's where we started. I think I'm worried about is Trump pushing things too far in the Republic breaking. I think that's more likely than Trump succeeding in creating a kind of immaculate and modulus tyrannical regime from post to post. That's where I'm starting, but I'm not saying that that is gonna work. I don't think it will work. I think it's failed. And I think we see like that, for example, take the Iran War. I think it was his firm belief that he could go from under against wars to on four wars and everybody would go on. And some people did, but not everybody, and not everybody in his own camp. And I think it's also his firm belief that you can just openly steal all the time and nobody will mind. And it's astonishing that some people don't mind, but other people do mind. And the conversation in the US has changed in the direction of corruption and rule of law and so on. And the polling, I mean, with all the appropriate at-risk and qualifications, the polling clearly reflects it. Many more Americans are concerned about rule of law and corruption than they were before Trump came to power. So those are examples where he kind of thinks he can do anything and we'll just swallow it, but not all of us are swallowing it. And then the costs start to melt. And he gets into situations where he thinks that all the matters is red-eric, like for example, in a war. Like he says that the war is basically with Iran, he said, they surrender when I say they surrender. That was essentially what he went for. Like he defined unconditional surrender is when I say they surrender. And the world doesn't, like his rhetorical powers are considerable, but they're not infinite. And a war isn't only red-eric. It's also the unpredictable consequences of war, which he's now living with and in. So I think the scenario that we're in is rather There's a huge amount of opposition to Trump. And the question is whether that opposition takes the form of a wide ranging coalition, which pushes the Democratic Party to be more ambitious, such that when they win, they can do things that will constructively keep the Republic together. That for me is the question. The scenario I think we're in, and people can look, if I'm wrong, people can look back and laugh at this later, but the scenario I think we're in is where the Democrats are going to win a huge victory, despite everything in November. And then the issue is, do they know what to do with that huge victory? Because if they don't, that's when I think we really start to have problems. - Okay, something that helpful to me about your answer was that you made it clear what you imagine is a sort of democratic kind of uprising that results in democratic victories as opposed to something like armed rebellion, which seems-- - Oh, I see. - Yeah. - Seems less likely to me. And I was actually going to ask a much more speculative question than that maybe you'll think is relevant, but maybe isn't. I was just going to ask, I mean, if armed rebellion or something like that is possible, is it just like a matter of time? Like there's only a little bit more time in which something like that could happen, or our developments with tech billionaires and AI and Peter Tiel and Palantir are going to prevent something like that ever happening. - Okay, I want to-- So let me just rehash something about the scenario and then say something about where weapons are. And then I'll try to answer your bigger part of the question. Just to be clear, between now and November, December, January, I see two ways that things are likely to go. One way is that something like a self-conscious coalition forms between center right and far left, which includes labor unions, the protest movement, other organizations and the Democratic Party. And in this situation, the Democratic Party is pulled towards more radical and ambitious positions, which involve a program which looks like, and in fact, it is the beginning of radical policy. That's one scenario that I think could happen. Another scenario that could happen is that the Democrats win in November, but they just win because Trump is unpopular. They haven't built up for themselves a practical coalition or a specific agenda of what they're going to do. And in that scenario, the Democrats don't haven't given themselves a mandate, so to speak, and don't do very much. And they crashed and burned very quickly as a result. And then we're back to the situation of having a very unpopular president. And then an opposition, which is discredited itself. Those are sort of my two scenarios in the short term. Armored rebellion is not coming into that story. So I can point, I'll tell you where I'm most worried about armed conflict. It's not an American armed uprising. It's rather the pressure that Trump is putting on the institutions inside the federal government where people do bear arms. So I think what they're doing with the armed services is incredibly, it's so, it's so dangerous in so many ways. But trying to turn the Army Navy Air Force Marines into a kind of personal bodyguard of Mr. Trump and the ideological servant of the white supremacism of Mr. Hegseth, trying to do that is not just dangerous because it makes our armed forces less functional, which it does. It's not just dangerous because it's preparing them to try to intervene in the United States, which is, of course, the goal, but it's also dangerous because it creates artificially huge tensions inside the armed forces. And that is where I see the most likely possible American on American armed conflict is within the armed forces or armed forces and other parts of the government. That's what I worry about. It's that the pressure which is coming down from the White House becomes unbearable in some way. That's the scenario that I fear. And again, I think it goes back to a kind of analytical blind spot of Trump and the people right around them, which is they think that everybody is infinitely malleable and infinitely manipulable. And that's not quite right. Like the world isn't quite a television show and you can't quite run it like that. And if you put too much pressure on the armed forces on the FBI, on the CIA, if you put too much pressure on these services, unpredictable things may start to happen. And it's that. I mean, and this is, it's almost exciting, maybe, a lesson of history, but it is a lesson of history, which is that a lot of times when regimes break down, it's because the various parts of the regime, which are allowed to bear arms, end up being in conflict with each other. And again, I say this not because I wanted to happen. I don't want it to happen. But when you ask about armed conflict, that's a scenario which I think is much more likely than some kind of like grassroots frontal rebellion. And then as for like, do the tech billionaires control us so much of there could be armed rebellion? No, I don't think so. But I mean, the reasons why I don't think there are armed rebellion don't have to do with that. So maybe you could follow up and explain to me what balance here in T.O. and all this have to do with it from your perspective. I wish that I had an enlightened perspective on this topic. But it really just comes from like late night conversations with my friends where we're very worried about surveillance, the possibility of drone policemen in the future of our bank accounts being frozen in the near future. Things like that that the tech billionaires in Suntavit, trillionaires, could possibly wield against us. The power that comes from whatever is going on in these huge data centers that are being built. I recognize that this is close to, I mean, illicit conspiratorial thinking on my behalf. But when I had the opportunity to co-cook as somebody who's much better educated than I am, especially on topics about topics like this, I'd do like to ask. I don't think that's illicit or even conspiratorial since it's pretty much what they say about themselves. And it's also something which is happening around the world. I mean, what you're describing is very much like how China operates. And this is one of the many ironies of the Trump people, I mean, the power on what they claim to be, you know, insofar as they had any kind of foreign policy, which they don't, in fact. But insofar as they claim to have one, it was that we oppose China. But basically China has the system domestically, which they would like to have, you know, where everybody is catalogued and everybody is rated. And all of your behaviors are tracked and quantified. So that we know how reliable or unreliable you are. That exists in the world, you know, that's what the Chinese do. And there's no doubt that it could be done with even greater precision and that some of our Silicon Valley folks would like to do this. I'm going to point this back towards our earlier conversation about the existence of the United States. Because for me, that would be one reason why I wouldn't want like my state to be part of the United States. If that's how the US is going to be run, then maybe I would like to have a state where I'm not tracked and traced and where there aren't grown police. And again, that's possible, right? So I'm Canada now and not that Canada is perfect, but the relationship, the digital technology and surveillance and so on is quite different here as it is in the European Union. And so if you're an American, you're looking out at some future of not very distant, like some possible future of, you know, to draw, draw on police and algorithmic assessments of all of your behavior and the federal government keeping quantitative ratings of you, that would seem to be a reason why you'd say, "Hey, like maybe I could belong to something where we didn't do that." Or to put it a different way and a more positive way, what you're talking about is a strong case for government. Because, you know, like I understand that the more, like one of the things that these scenarios is coming from the government and of course they can, but the only way to stop it is also the government, right? The only way not to have big companies deciding where your data is held and how it's used is for there to be a government which treats us as a terrain of regulation and intervention, which we don't really have in the US, at least under Mr. Trump. But I would put it in not so much in terms of preventing armed, I don't know what I think about that. I think I would put it more in terms of trying to prevent politics as such, you know, that if you're in a world where you can't do anything without considering how it will be perceived and recorded, that means that there's a kind of evil super ego or like negative super ego in your mind all the time, which makes it hard for you to be political. And this is, I mean, for me, this is where the East European dissidents come in because a lot of their thinking preemptively was about this stuff, like they were worried in the 70s and 80s precisely about that. this kind of scenario. And their prescription was that one has to have one's own set of values and like not internalized the way that you think you're going to be rated and judged all at the time. So, you know, an interesting way in which sometimes stuff which seems out of date can turn out to be very much up to date. I could return to a moment for a moment when I said I alluded to illicit conspiratorial thinking. And I think my use of the term illicit was a bit tongue in cheek just because I mean the mention of conspiracy theories was once a major faux pas in an academic discussion which I kind of think of this as a bit of an academic to some. And I'm wondering just more broadly how you think of quote unquote conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking in today's conversations because I don't think discussing Jeffrey Epstein is off the table or I mean the DNC conspires, Trump conspires. Conspiracy theories seem to be a very important I mean aspect or a topic to discuss today. So, I'm going to make let me just step back and make a structural point. The more wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, the more we are going to engage in conspiracy theorizing because we're going to have the feeling correctly that decisions are being made by a few people to whom we do not have access and whose actions we cannot see. And so, and the more democratic broadly speaking, the society is, if I democratic, I don't just mean that there's voting but I mean that there's a social welfare state and rich people are also taxed and there's redistribution. The less likely we are to engage in it, not that we won't. I mean, but we'll feel less pressured towards that kind of explanation. And so, I just wanted to make that sociological point that it's not surprising given that, you know, for the last 50 years, basically the middle classes and below have gained nothing in the United States and all of the all the increases in wealth have been been upilized by the very top, not just the 1% but something much smaller than that. It's not surprising given that we are inclined to think in that way. And second point, some of the conspiracy thinking is going to be correct. So, you know, why do we invade Iran? Was that the result of, or why do we attack Iran? Was that the result of deep planning and public discussion and like some kind of consideration of US interests? You know, no, like one person, the president had some emotions and, you know, another person, the prime minister of Israel had a few slides that he showed and, you know, like, they're probably, and other people around the president could see how they can make money. You know, it probably isn't any more complicated than that. And that is a conspiracy in a they leak, of course, which is why I can say this stuff I just said with some confidence, but it is a conspiracy in sense that it's a few people making decisions that affect lots of other people. Or, you know, why did why did Russian-Bade Ukraine like was that about some consideration of the interests of the Russian nation or the interests of the Russian state? No, there was a guy had a few hundred billion dollars. He had kind of kooky views about the past. And, you know, he had a few people around him who tended to support what he thought about the past and feed him archival documents. And, you know, and that, like, you really wasn't a result of some kind of broader process. Nobody knew, like the number of people even knew that Russia was going to invade Ukraine before they invade Ukraine, 2022, it's very limited. And so things happen, which are the result of the decisions we made by a few people. The problems come in where, you know, where we tend, Consumptu conspiracies are happening, right? That doesn't mean that every, every, that, every conspiracy theory we'd like is true. And that's where that's where things get problematic, is that, you know, the overlap between the conspiracy theories and the actual conspiracies, like an advent diagram, there is an overlap, but there's a lot over here, you know, in the conspiracy theory, over or whatever, which is not over here in the actual conspiracy. Like, there's some actual conspiracies that we're not even theorizing about, probably going on right now. But the problem is that like conspiracy theorizing, I don't like, as a historian, there's nothing wrong with like imagining that people get into a room and make decisions. Like, that happens. That's part of history. What's wrong is when we're sure about a pattern of it, right? So for example, if I think it's always the Jews who are doing the conspiring, okay, there's something wrong with that, right? And aside from its naked anti-Semitism, the problem is that if there are conspiracies in the world, even at the level of conspiracies, they're going to be made by different groups of people in different clusters. And the conspiracy exists in the world are not going to line up with my prejudices about what the conspiracy should be, right? And so another problem with conspiracy theory, aside from the fact that like most of our conspiracy theories won't be true, is that once we accept that stuff is taking place in a dark and visible place, that dark and visible place can start to overlap with the dark and visible places in our mind. And we can get locked into certain ways of seeing the world and not brought out of them. Your sociological point about us having good reason to have to formulate conspiracy theories when wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, does that mean that we, that it's more likely that these conspiracies are in fact happening when the people with have, when people have wealth concentrated in their hands and should we then be thinking more about people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, conspiring and thinking about what they might be doing to further their self-interest. Or how, I guess I'm asking, how do you entertain conspiracy theories today in today's environment? I mean, I guess it's, I don't, I think we're still in a position where we can combine evidence and historical historically informed pattern recognition to make decent guesses about what is in fact going on. So I guess I would try to break free from, you know, the frame that the frame of conspiracy theorizing because like when we talk about conspiracy theorizing, we're talking about the possibility of real conspiracies, but we're also talking about habits of mind. And I worry about habits of mind, right? So when I say that wealth concentration drives us towards conspiracy theorizing, I, I'm noticing as you say, I think a kind of sociological reality, but it's not that we have a license to believe in what our conspiracy we want to, right? Like, so I would put it in this way a different way. I would say that the politics of small numbers is different than the politics of big numbers. So if a small number of people hold more wealth in power, the form of analysis you use to try to predict outcomes is different than if a large number of people. And so you're, it's legitimate to put more emphasis on, on issues like psychology or mood or biography or personal relationships or the ability of an individual to make money when it's the politics of small numbers. When it's a politics of big numbers, those kinds of factors are less relevant because they tend to cancel each other out, right? Because he's making money on this, but she's making money on that. And he feels this way, but she feels this way. But when it's a smaller number of people, you're more likely to get some kind of alignment of emotions and the ability to make money. And so I would just put it that way that like the politics of small numbers and the politics of big numbers are different. Another effect that's worth drawing attention to is that is patron client relationships. So if, and this is an old argument about how democracy has failed and my oligarchy is bad, I go back to the Greeks, that if you allow the money to be concentrated into a few hands, what happens is that those very wealthy people form their own pyramids of patron client relationships. And those pyramids are basically bits of the society which have been knocked out of the public. They don't really, they no longer, you know, oil is maybe the wrong word, but they're no unparticipating the politics of the public. They're loyal to this extremely rich person. And at the extreme, you know, there aren't more to that person. We're not there yet. That is one way this can go. Is that the very wealthy people start to recreate their own little states around themselves, including armies. We're not there yet, although eventually you do get there. But the patron client relationships that I can form, if I have $250 billion, those patron client relationships, because they're vertical and only vertical clash with the kind of horizontal politics that's necessary to equal democracy or or republican. And that's not a conspiracy. Like it's just a fact, right? And it also applies to, you know, the kind of institutions that are on the edge of civil society and capitalism, like law firms or universities or whatever, that those things can be pulled into the tractor beam of patron client relationships, and then no longer be interacting with the rest of society in the same way. Well, this has been a really interesting portion of conversation for me, just because I don't often get to get to hear with scholars think about conspiracy theories. But I'd like to shift back to something you said a little bit earlier and you said Putin does not think Ukraine is real and when I hear that statement I think how could Putin who I think of just as an ignorant American as this super competent mastermind not think that Ukraine is real and it just makes me wonder how competent is he if he does not think Ukraine is real and what do you mean by he does not think Ukraine is real? So just to make a connection with what we've just been talking about when you get to the politics of small numbers and the politics of tyranny then personality starts to matter more so and and certain kinds of analytical black spots start to matter more so I'm going to answer your questions but I just want to kind of set this up structurally if we're looking at the Trump invasion to attack Iran or the Putin decision to invade Ukraine part of it is that is the structure where the decision is being made without inputs coming in from other places without you know without without without a public discussion without a journalist discussion without a discussion in parliament without without even a broad ranging governmental review in both in both cases right and so the politics of small numbers it means that an individual can make these kinds of decisions and and we are justified in asking okay if the individual can do it what is it about them which leads them to make these weird decisions and so that's leading me to the second point which is that individuals have mixed talent sets so we're going to start with Trump which is the more familiar case it's undeniable that Trump is talented I think like it's undeniable that he has certain kinds of talents he has a he has a certain kind of charisma he has a certain way of dealing with media he he he has a set of talents and one can be impressed by him and I mean I think too often one can just be bold over by him but the fact that he has one set of talents doesn't mean he has other sorts of talents so he's not he's not patient he's not good at listening to people he's not good at imagining second and third or second and third order effects of his actions because he's always thinking I can just move on from one entertainment to the next and so that's just an example of how of a mixed talent set and so that's just helping me I hope to move over to Putin who is extremely cynical and you know hard-headed but what I have found and this is a conclusion that I came to when I was paying a lot of attention to these guys and writing a book called Rotan's Freedom reading Putin very carefully and reading the people around him very carefully what's interesting is that these people appear to be infinitely cynical they always turn out to have some kind of naive soft spot like to the point where I think that like there's a almost a necessary dialectical relationship that the more the more hardened and cynical and skeptical and nihilistic they seem to be the more likely there is there's some kind of weird metaphysical soft spot in there somewhere and that's I guess how I'd present Putin that he has a mixed talent set he's capable of being very good at judging humans and manipulating humans and he's very good for example, manipulating Trump but he's not aware of his own soft spots he doesn't see that he has any soft spots but his big soft spot it turns out and he developed this in the last 15 years he hasn't always thought this but his big soft spot is his notion that Russia has this history that lasted for a thousand years which has totally absurd and that in that history Russian Ukraine have always been together and that Ukraine therefore has never really existed as any kind of autonomous thing and into far as it seems to that's just the conspiratorial work of Russia's enemies who have put false ideas in our heads and so on so that's that's how I would put it but like these the people who seem to be incredibly nihilist they often have some kind of soft spot and for Putin it's precisely Ukraine so the way he talks about Ukraine is very different than the way he talks about other things he presents it as a true like a metaphysical truth that Ukraine and Russia have always been together and and it's probably actually believes this and so then you get into this into a basic problem with what I've been trying to analytically call the you know the politics of small numbers that people end up making strategic decisions on the basis of these wild things that they actually deeply believe them in some way and that leads to these consequences we're stay don't expect and I wish to add to this point that I think particularly when a world like ours were powers more and more concentrated in fewer hands it can help to make the jump from let's say positive to social science and or you know analytic philosophy sometimes over into the world of art or of tragic drama or you know novels forms of intellectual activity which try to capture the contradictions in us or the flaws that we have or these these things I'm calling soft spots because I think about like that part of us is is is necessary to understand this part of us I don't think we could explain you know our general subject of the sentendateering just by talking about rational choice and interests and you know and I don't think you can explain a Trump or a Putin that way you know there and I think how like I think poetry and tragedy and novels and like the forays that we make from the more literature and artistic side to try to get after art internal contradictions like I think those things turn out to be analytically very helpful it's interesting to me that Putin's soft spot is this almost naive nationalism and nostalgia for a Russia that never was because Trump doesn't strike me as nationalistic at all despite of course the like the huge parades and this big arch he wants to put in DC I'm wondering how you would characterize his his biggest soft spots yeah one way that I would put that is that the like I think we're we're in a world in which oligarchical fascism is a thing and it's not it's not the same as the fascism of the 20s and 30s precisely because it's oligarchical you know the fascists of the 20s and 30s in general there are a few exceptions but in general they were not in it for the money you know all the things one can say about against them they were not in it for the money whereas quite a few of our guys are in it for the money in an obvious way they're in it for the money and successfully but I think between Russia and the US the balance between oligarchical fascism is different I think Putin as you say unlike Trump actually does believe in some world beyond the visible world in which what is truth what is true is will and in which there's a mystical past and that mystical past contains the essence of the nation and all and by taking violent action in the present we really can return to that mystical past I think Putin actually believes stuff like that and in that sense he's more of a fascist than Trump I think for Trump you know he says fascist things and he does fascist things and he certainly has people around him who were fascists in my view but for him the balance is different like it's much more about like I need to make more money in fairness to Trump Putin already has you know 200 300 billion dollars and so whereas Trump is gonna gonna die a kind of petty billionaire by that scale right so maybe if Trump had 300 billion dollars he would also have wild fantasies but but anyway in the world we're in that's a difference the balance between oligarchy and the fascism is different in Russia and Russia and the US and I agree that it's for Trump it's much more about using using white supremacy appealing appealing to people's sense of people's sense that they've been overlooked appealing to people's the pleasure that people take and seeing other people hurt appealing to all of that in order to create a secure happy place for himself right I think that's I think that's really the way the dynamic works and so and so and so it's different and I want to point out that there's a there's a kind of weakness to this because Trump not that I'm saying will be better if we had more fascism I'm just I'm just trying to point out that there's a there's a weakness in this oligarchical fascism balanced in the US which is that Trump is happy to have people hurt and he's happy to have us be happy that people are hurt but he's not willing to do some of the things that Putin is willing to do right so Putin has been willing to watch easily a million of his people you're probably well over get killed and maimed in a war that Russia's gonna lose whereas Trump is willing to watch you know five people or ten or fifteen or twenty you know maybe a hundred but he's there's no way that Trump has the wherewithal to say we're gonna have a full-scale invasion of another country and hundreds of thousands of you are going to die but that's going to be worth it he just he doesn't believe in anything enough to demand that other people but you know believe in some cause like that and that's a weakness in the sense that his ability to control his own political future by starting foreign wars is I think limited because his ability to fight foreign wars is very limited um because you know he he's he's willing to cause pain but he can't stomach that much pain and he can't imagine he can't really imagine that other people would whereas a Putin I think really does think that other people are going to care about Russian glory. Trump doesn't care about American glory. I don't think he can really imagine that other people can care about American glory. And so I think in his case, the oligarchy or his desire to be a rich oligarch is the dominant factor and it actually constrains his ability to use the more militaristic stuff. You know, I think I may not have answered your question because I was so interested in my distinction between, so like, help me out if I didn't. I think you did. You did well enough, but at any rate, I'm, I'm, I'd like to move on to something else. Just something that I noticed from speaking with you is you take, you pause to say, okay, I want to make this structural point or highlight this in the analysis. And from both reading and speaking to you, something else that you do that I notice a lot is you, you come up with these very like, pithy, useful phrases or words, like soft spots in our conversation or politics of small numbers or in your writing more recently, super power suicide, baby, in a bulldozer or like the military dictatorship budget that we, we just talked about. And I have the sense that you do this very purposefully and I'm wondering just as a, as a speaker and a writer and a thinker, I mean, why you use this as a tool so much and to what effect do you use it? So I'm going to, I'm going to start by returning to the point about tragedy and poetry and, you know, literary genres. I still read a lot. I mean, I, I try to read, not just outside my field, but just in wildly different areas and genres. I read a lot of poetry. I've been reading a lot of retragity, I've been reading the Roman Stoics lately and these are, these are all areas like towards which like, I have some kind of pretext or excuse or someone is pushing me there. So in the case of the Roman Stoics, in cases of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Nebuktetes, the impulse actually came from Ukraine where it turns out that the Roman Stoics are undergoing a renaissance for I think understandable reasons, but that, that impulse then led me to read them and then of course when I read them, I get my own things, I get my own things out of them. And part, I just so I just want to say that part of it is that that when I'm talking, whatever we're talking about, I'm talking about it, I'm trying to, I'm not just, I'm not trying to, it's just a matter of fact, like I'm talking at it as a person who isn't just reading about, you know, Trump and the political science of regime change or whatever, I think it's, in order to survive, I have to read like this, but I also think that you crystallize not just the language, but also the concept better if you're kind of out there in the language in a more adventurous way. So that's the first point that, if it's happening the way you describe it, and you know, in a very, in a very nice way, although there is a bit of a sting in the question, I understand, it's because I'm doing that. And like I would kind of urge people to do that, like to read, to read in ways which seem to be not directly related to the present moment, because some of the stuff in the present moment, I think you can only grasp by taking certain kinds of distance. Second thing is that I, we're, we're in a moment where we're overwhelmed both by data and by choices among data, you know, like the word or I should say information, where there's, you know, you can, you could have any amount of information about any topic. And then what information you get about any topic is often guided by inhuman algorithmic judgments about what you want to hear on that topic. And so we're like, we're we're, we're, we're waiting, we're constantly waiting, you know, into this landscape, like we think if you step into the landscape and the landscape just keeps getting bigger and bigger, right? Like, it's not so much a rabbit hole, it's more like, it's more like this opening fractal landscape, which just keeps opening in front of us. And it's, but all of the things in this landscape don't necessarily hold together and make any sense. And so I'm conscious of the need to try to conceptualize. And so like I'll buy your premise that far. I do think it's important to try to conceptualize, to put names on things. And so politics of small numbers and soft spot, like I just, those are things other people had said a million times. But for me, I just said those things in this conversation because like they were, I thought they helped to bring stuff together that we were talking about. So that's the other thing. I think that we do, like we, we want for concepts. And I think it's helpful when people who are having public political discussions try to bring concepts in because I think the ratio of concepts to information is, is way off. And then I think concepts also help us, whether we agree or disagree, to focus on what we're trying to talk about. So super power suicide. I was having a conversation with someone I respect immensely and Maurice Lauder at the Council on Foreign Relations. And she said, you know, she was very well prepared and she'd like, you know, she was, we were talking about what I want to talk about. And I realized, well, what I really want to talk about is super power suicide. Like that's what's actually, why don't we start from the firm because then people will have a sense of the thesis, you know, and then we can, and then they can react to the thesis. So there's, you know, there's that too. And I, it's also, it's a way of not being reactive, right? Like I, one of the things which I think has gone wrong, you know, in the New York Times and in other media is that the other side is, I mean, sorry, I'm talking about sides, but like the, that Trump constantly is framing everything, right? Like going back to the discussion of mixed talent sets, that is one of his talents. Like he, he's good at framing stuff. He's good at setting things up and then making everybody else operate within the frame. And we're still doing it to a large extent. Whereas I think, okay, it's not like resistance, including intellectual resistance. He isn't just about, it's not even about being inside the frame. It's about having a different frame, which is, which maybe pushes the other frame aside, but also, which is more honest and captures more reality, right? So I feel like that, like in terms of intellectual resistance, that's one of the things that we ought to be trying to do rather than just constantly, like counter-punching from from below, but it's, you know, he gets to draw the boxing ring. I mean, as he's literally doing, you know, he gets to draw the area of combat and then we all have to kind of function within the area of combat. But I think like it can, we should be trying to generate our own frameworks and our own zones of discussion, like just as that matter of everyday politics, given that, you know, given how effective the other side has been in framing things in a way that makes it impossible to talk about them. We should be working on ways of framing things that makes it possible to talk about them. I appreciate the connection to Trump's framing just because when you think about it, I mean, crooked Hillary or sleepy Joe or my favorite low energy, Jeb Bush, they really do just set the tone and it's kind of hard to escape it. It kind of locks you into this way of viewing things. And while that is obviously to kind of nefarious self-serving intent and I don't think that's at all what you're trying to do, but your phrases are very powerful in that way. In just these last couple of minutes, I wanted to ask about one or two of the other ones that you didn't mention. So what is the idea of the super loser? And it kind of connects maybe to some individuals we've been discussing, but I want to say another thing about the framing and then I'll answer, it's okay to be funny. Like, I'm not saying all my friends are funny, but some of them may be a little bit funny. And I think it's okay to be funny, like, or maybe more than okay, maybe necessary, that like, there's a, the Easter penis in me has the strong, has the strong intuition that like, there's a relationship between tyranny and comedy and like, democracy's not really very funny, but authoritarianism is funny and then you get down to a totalitarian ism and then it's not funny again. And like, while you're in the zone where it's funny, like, you should probably, it's okay to be funny while you're in that zone because you can be, but also because it's a kind of tool because it can, it can shake people up a little bit, right? So like, my children would definitely say, I'm not a good judge of what's funny. But like, baby and a bulldozer, like, that's an image which just came to me and I've been carrying it around for a long time and I don't think I wrote about it. I think I just talked about it at some point and you must have kindly watched it on on Sub-Sat or somewhere, but like, that image just came to me and it just, like, it captures, and I've spent a fair amount of time, you know, with Europeans and others who are trying to react to Trump. And the idea of Trump as a baby and a bulldozer captures something that any notion, that any any framework that begins with state interests or national interests or whatever, isn't going to capture, right? That like, he didn't, the baby didn't build a bulldozer. He couldn't have built a bulldozer. The bulldozer was already there, but the baby can kind of get back there and move some of the controls at least for a while, you know? And that is like, that is where we are, right? And the the baby is impatient, the baby has moods, you know, but you've got to respect not the baby per se, but you got to respect the bulldozer. And so long as the baby is running the bulldozer, you can be like China and you can wait for the bulldozer to go to a ditch. You can be like the Europeans and you can humor the baby. But like that image, I think, it captures something. And it is in like, so you asked about where this stuff comes from and how Calcula Am. But like mostly it just comes to me. And then I think, okay, is that going to be useful for other people or not? Does that capture something about the world that isn't being captured or not? I think baby in a bulldozer does. I think super loser does as well, because we are witnessing a precipitous decline in American power, which again, kind of echoes a precipitous decline in Russian power. And they are based on bad choices by individuals who on the one hand had the skill sets. I'm going back to the area of a mixed talent set who had the skill sets to get themselves in power. But the very same skill sets allowed them to get themselves in power were often perilous for the power of the state, which they now controlled. So Trump in 15 months or whatever it's been, 1617, has managed to destroy more American power. I mean, there is no comparison. You have to go to the Civil War, I mean, take a year where more American power was destroyed than under Trump. It's no one counts on us anymore. Our cultural stuff power is gone. I just did a trivial example, but it's something that kind of hit me. I was in Prague the other day for a book festival. And what I lived in each and Europe in the '90s, I was always kind of annoyed. People were always wearing American stuff, right? Real American stuff, fake American stuff, all across Eastern Europe. I was just this fashion. And I thought, OK, people just don't do this. You've got your own stuff. I was kind of trying to be more local than the locals or whatever. This is really a story about me being a snog probably. But I didn't like it. I thought, OK, where are your runs? Don't-- American flies. Don't fake NFL jerseys. Don't do it. Just do something. And then it's an interesting example of not really wanting what you wish for or being careful of what you wish for, because now they don't do it anymore. That's all gone, right? Like it kept going for years and years. It went on decades. Decades. But now it's gone. Now it's gone. And why is it gone? Because Trump, right? Like the conditions of the absolute obliteration of American positive cultural influence have now been met. And they've been met by Trump and Iran. But now it's gone. Now they all think we're just morons. And I said to say, I mean, that's the first approximation. I wish I didn't use that kind of language. But that's kind of where we are now. So like reputation, predictability, but also what people think of us as a people, and then lack of alliances, financial instability, the choice to undo science, the choice to back the wrong technologies, the choice not to have immigrants that you need in order to advance science and technology. All of this stuff combines into just a calamitous work as a power destruction. And so that's why I mean by super loser, that you have to start from position of superpower, that you have to have very specific loser talents in order to crash it. And so again, we're doing in fast motion a bit what the Russians did in slower motion. The Russian decision to invade Ukraine in 2014 was calamitous for them. And it's unrolling in a slower pace, but it's going to lead to Russia-- it has effectively led to Russia being a kind of satellite or client of China. They didn't have to do this. They chose to do it. They could have been a much greater power if they had stayed between China and the West and been a balancing power. But instead, they chose to line up on one side, alienate the West, invade Ukraine. And so the result under Putin has been, although people see Putin as a strong man, Russia is much less powerful than it could have been. And likewise with Trump, it's all in a way hidden or disguised or veiled at least for his followers by the fact that he presents as like some kind of strong man. But what he's done is he's made the power of the United States much, much, much smaller. So that's why I mean by super loser. Like you started the superpower level, but because of your specific negative skill set, you can collapse the level of power very, very, very quickly. Well, Tim, you're an absolutely gripping speaker and writer and scholar. Thanks so much for this hour. It's been really enjoyable for me. Well, thanks. I put your dog to sleep, which I'm going to take as a good thing. I mean, I'm going to take it that it means that my cadences were very relaxing. And like the deeper philosophical echoes were like, you know, appreciate it by your dogs more sensitive hearing and everything was very, you know, copacetic. As a move anyway, thanks for having me. It's been great talking to you. And I'm glad we could do this.