“American World Leadership in Crisis”

This episode of Beg to Differ is brought to you by HelloFresh and Better Help. Welcome to beg to Beg to Differ. The Bulwark weekly roundtable to discussion, featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bulwark Work I’m joined by our regulars, Will Saletan, of the Bookings institution in the Wall Street Journal.

Damon Lincoln, who writes the sub stacked newsletter notes from the middle ground, and Linda Chavez of the Nescannon Center. Our special guest this week is Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, Brett Stephens. Thank you. One and all. I’d like to begin with the war in Israel and Gaza.

We are in an unprecedented time, it seems to me, where the kinds of responses to the atrocities that were committed by Hamas against Israel is is a little bit bewildering and deeply sterbing to many people on the left who had considered themselves to be allies with a lot of groups that were suddenly celebrating or at least not condemning what happened. And, of course, now we are several weeks in And the calls for ceasefire are becoming louder and louder with even president Biden, who’s been a very stalwart supporter of and defender of Israel in all of this, but Biden is now saying there needs to be a pause. So, Brett, I’m gonna start with you because interesting column, I understand you’ve been over there. You had an interesting column about Other possible ways for Israel to win this war in Gaza other than simply pounding from the air or doing a massive ground invasion. Can you talk about that?

Well, Monette’s, nice to be back in the United States. I just returned, the day before yesterday. And thank you for for having me on on the show. The idea to which you are referring comes not from me, but from Nufftali Bennett the former prime minister. He calls it his squeeze approach, which is essentially to cut Gaza into two distinct halves and to essentially lay siege to northern Gaza with humanitarian corridors so that civilians can escape and Israel can make sure that, among those civilians, you’re not finding, Hamas terrorists, fleeing alongside of them.

But the central part of his plan was not to go in main force into Gaza itself, not to play Hamas’s game, by having the Israeli troops get bogged down in a maze of back streets and, underground tunnels, but essentially to wait Hamas out to to turn time, which Hamas seen as its friend into an enemy and, to use targeted attacks special operations forces to rescue hostages, go after Hamas leadership, take out nodes, deprive them of fuel that’s required for them to run their underground empire, and eventually kill many of them and let the rest of them get on a ship and go to tunis or Algeria or one of their sponsors much as the PLO. Fled Beirut in, nineteen eighty two when, the Israeli army laid siege to, to that city. Now I wrote that last week and we’ll have to see whether that’s the approach that the Israeli armies adopted.

There are reports today that Israel is attempting to cut Gaza in half. I just saw that. I think on Reuters or Bloomberg, so possible that they are actually following that advice. But something that you said, I wanna probe a little further on this idea of playing Hamas’s game because there is this eerie sense that one gets. That, you know, Hamas planned out so meticulously trying to elicit an overreaction, although I hesitate to even use that word, because what is an overreaction to what Hamas did, but they not only murdered and tortured civilians and kidnapped grandmothers, and so on.

They filmed it all. They reveled in it. It was all done for maximum emotional impact on the Israeli public, so that They could then sacrifice their own Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israelis and claim victimhood and thereby sort of draw Israel into a no win situation. And is that part of playing Hamas’s game?

Well, you know, there’s a wonderful scene in the prequel to silence of the lambs, a movie called Man Hunter which explains how, Hannibal Lecter, you know, the, the character, Anthony Hopkins plays how we got into jail in the first place. And there’s a wonderful dialogue between the the inspector who or the cop who got him in jail and and Lector. It’s a prison dialogue. And, the cop says, you know, you’re brilliant doctor Lector, but I had one advantage over you. And lecter sort of his interest has peaked.

He says, oh, really, what what was the advantage? And the cop says, you’re insane. And and I think Hamas, has a electrolyte quality in which they some of the planning was extraordinarily meticulous and ingenious, and there was a quality of sort of instrumental rationality to what they did. But at the end of the day, it’s an insane organization whose first, whose alpha and omega, if you will, is is to kill Jews and kill as many Jews as possible. And that they’ve ended up being their their weakness.

Now Hamas, I think, believed that even a After committing an atrocity on this scale, the Israelis would ultimately let up relent succumb to international pressure abalm a lot of targets, kill a lot of Palestinians and provide, propaganda points for, for their side. And then let go. That does not seem to be the way in which Israelis are responding this time And, my guess is that Hamas will ultimately find and I wrote this on October seventh that its calculation clever in some sense as it was and and in evil as it was is not gonna play into their hands that this is going to be the end of Hamas as a political and military force in Gaza and probably the West Bank too.

Linda, one of the things that is playing out, I think, according to Hamas’s plans, is that you know, the longer this goes on, the more international sympathy tilts away from Israel and toward Hamas or toward the Palestinians, at least not toward Hamas sterily, although in some cases, on the far left, you do find sympathy for Hamas. So it does seem that Israel no matter what, even if they are determined they are on a clock. I don’t know how that’s gonna play out, but one of the questions that is also arising is If Israel is successful in completely demolishing Hamas as a, as a military and political entity in Gaza, what comes next? What right. What who’s gonna run the place?

Right.

I mean, you know, we got Isis out of our success in in battling. Others in Iraq and elsewhere. So who knows what’s gonna come next? I I do have to say one of the things that’s been a bit of a surprise to me being old enough to have, you know, lived through the sixty seven war, the seventy three war, and see American reaction. This time, there seems to be a much better organized more widespread opposition to Israel than I have ever seen before in any of the kinds of conflicts.

And although I think it’s been very gratifying the way in which president Biden and indeed the leaders of of most of, I would say, the civilized world anyway, have come to to Israel’s defense and have talked about their right of being able to defend themselves

and their duty.

And their duty. Right. The duty to defend themselves. That’s an, even better, formulation. But It isn’t going to last forever, and we’re already seeing Tony Blinking and the president and others talking, you know, we’re not talking about cease fires, but we are talking about pauses.

And, of course, those pictures that are coming out of Gaza are horrifying of of, you know, children being carried through the streets who’ve been killed in in these bombings. But I think Israel has tried to make it clear. I mean, you know, the so called, you know, refugee camp, that has been hit Jamilah. That is hardly a camp as we normally think refugee camps, you know, with tents and and temporary buildings. It it was, you know, just like the rest of of Gaza and Casa City.

They’re, you know, buildings, many story buildings, and it’s decades old now. So it’s not, you know, It’s far from temporary, and people were warned to leave. And some didn’t. Some did. One wonders, what the difference was.

Is it really just people who had no means to leave? I mean, when you look at the pictures of the bombing and the craters, It’s mostly young men that you see. Women seem to be missing from Palestinian society. They’re the women that you see are all empty jobs. You know, it it’s a a very stark picture.

It’s a very, very Well,

that doesn’t make them missing exactly.

No. It doesn’t make them as missing in the pictures. I mean, just look at the pictures. I mean, you can go through most of the pictures. There are very few women that you see.

And the point is The fact that they are young men, are these all innocent civilians or are they also Hamas fighters? I don’t know. Now it’s it’s possible that the Hamas fighters keep their families with them, and and of course their families are innocent. Certainly, the children are innocent. But this idea that these are, people who have no choice.

They were warned and and, you know, took what, three weeks. To begin, the bombing of some of these areas, and they didn’t leave. So that doesn’t seem to matter to those who are pro Palestinian, and and it is shocking to me how widespread these demonstrations are. I mean, I’m not surprised that they’re occurring in places like, Lebanon and Yemen and, you know, throughout the Arab world, But what is surprising is that they are taking place in American cities. And it’s not all Palestinian Americans or Arab Americans, who are in these protests.

It’s a lot of of young people, a lot of college students. We’ve seen them across campuses. And that is incredibly worrisome. And it is hard for me to believe that should this go on for months that you are not going to see major erosion in support in the United States and certainly in Europe, which you know, or is always, you know, very tenuous in their, support for these kinds of efforts. Will Saletan One of

the things that, has been brewited is that there would be some kind of international force that would move into Gaza after the fighting and, restore order and run the place at least for a while. And others have scoffed at this notion, saying that, you know, any of the nations that have been suggested are either compromised or have their own very good political reasons based on their own domestic populations, for example, Turkey or Egypt or Saudi Arabia, which actually Saudi never deploys its troops to do anything. So but the idea is that anybody who came in after a war with Israel would be seen as working for the Israelis. And therefore, the domestic populations of those countries just wouldn’t stand for it. Have you heard anything?

Do you

have any views on this?

I’ve heard a few things. I was privileged to participate in a very high level briefing on these matters. Just a few days ago, it was under Chatham House rules so I can’t name any names, but suffice it to say that people of vast experience, both in diplomacy military affairs and also extended journalistic coverage of the region, and if the conflict in particular were present And, you know, as you might expect, all of the possibilities for forces other than Israel coming in after Israel does what it believes it must do were subject to criticism, but and skepticism. But the one that evoked the most interest, to my surprise, was the turkey option. Some Turkey experts suggested, that the domestic politics in Turkey might not be as averse to Turkish participation as is commonly assumed, and that may be because Erdogan has been so stinging in his criticism of Israel and his condemnation of Israel’s response to the massacre.

And in effect, so supportive of Hamas that He and the his forces might not be seen as lackeys of Israel if they came in. And not to mention the fact that in the same way that Putin would like to reconstitute the Russian empire. Erdogan would like to do his best to reconstitute the Ottoman Empire. And having troops on the ground in an area where the that Turkey controlled as recently as nineteen eighteen would be a talking point for him. And certainly would bolster, Turkey’s international role.

So I don’t know what to think of that option, but I was struck by the fact that extremely experienced analysts of the region didn’t dismiss it out of hand. It may turn out to be ridiculous. But that’s that’s my report from the front of commentary anyway.

Interesting. Alright, Damon. When we were last together two weeks ago, we were talking about the very, very terrible press malfeasance in its coverage of that supposed Israeli air strike on a hospital, which turned out to be nothing of the kind. And the credulity with which major news organizations repeated information that was propaganda that was supplied by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas. So now in the next two weeks, we’ve seen that all these reports that come out of Gaza about casualties and so forth contain the proviso that this is the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry.

So they always put that in, but then they also just repeat the numbers. I just don’t know how to find the real information about, for example, how many civilians have been killed in Gaza? How many people have been killed in Gaza. I don’t know. I mean, there’s now a figure that’s, you know, goes up every day.

It’s now around eight or nine thousand people. But based on what we saw of, well, what we’ve seen over, you know, more than two decades with Hamasis that they lie, so What are we to do with this?

I don’t know other than continuing to be skeptical. I mean, obviously, are dying. The image is coming out of Gaza, make it look like a kind of pulverized wreck of a city as you would expect after it weeks of bombardment. I mean, what is there to say beyond war as hell? People die in war.

Hamasas began this war by attacking Israel in the vicious way that it did. Hamas as we discussed, as Brett mentioned, and and we’ve we’ve all made points this week and others that Hamas fights by hiding within and behind civilians, but within civilian populations. So if Israel gets Intel saying that one of the major planners of the October seventh attack is in a building in a specific place right next to a refugee camp, which as Linda says, is not really like a tent encampment or anything, but is basically a neighborhood in which refugees live. Israel faces the this choice. Are we going to take out this person who we need to take out as part of our operation to remove Hamas at the risk of killing civilians nearby.

Well, what can they do? They can announce again and say, move south, evacuate the northern areas of Gaza because there is a war underway and we are bombing and we are killing. We’re blowing things up, and you will probably die if you stay there. And Israel does this. And then if the people don’t leave either because they willfully don’t want to and dream of being martyrs or, the Gaza hamas officials block the message or even stand there with weapons pointed at them as people come down out of their apartment buildings to evacuate, and they realize, oh, If I try to leave, they’ll shoot me in the back.

And so they go back in and hope for the best. We don’t know what’s going on on the ground. And so I think the most that we can hope for is that Israel abides by the law of laws of Inbello conflict, which is the part of just war theory that that it regulates what is considered acceptable, civilian casualties, considerations or proportionality. So, obviously, Israel can’t say, well, you murdered four hundred Israelis. So we will drop an atomic bomb on Gaza and Calamillion Palestinians.

That would be disproportionate. That wouldn’t happen. And Israel isn’t doing that and won’t do that or anything remotely like it. And then they have to engage in discrimination, which means trying to only kill the Hamas leaders and trying to warn as best they can, the civilians, and then they have to act. And The result is horrible.

War is terrible. It pulls up the heartstrings. It’s an offense against. Human itarian sensibilities, but it is sometimes necessary. It is sometimes just, and that I believe this is one of those cases.

And so the question of how many are dying, we just don’t know, and we can’t know for any time. I mean, when this health ministry releases numbers, like, seven hundred and thirty seven people were killed a half hour ago when is real bombed this block. We can know that that’s not accurate because the most efficient health ministry and the most advanced democracy in the world could not compile those statistics that quickly. It takes weeks. You have to it’s grisly work.

You to find bodies. You have to find body parts and figure out how, you know, which ones constitute individual people and then check it against ID records and people’s addresses. It’s it I mean, again, grizzly Bulwark. It’s ugly stuff, but that’s how you get accurate information. And even aside from the the very important role that kind of, anti Israeli propaganda plays in Hamas tactics, it’s simply impossible that they have accurate information on these things in the midst of the chaos and and bloodshed going on.

So I would just urge everyone be skeptical. Say your prayers for the people suffering and dying and and being injured and in great pain, emotional, and physical, and let Israel do its work as quickly. And efficiently as it can, so this can end. If if Israel had not taken out that senior Hamas commander because it was near a refugee camp this week, those people would probably, most of them would still be alive today, but the war would go on longer because they would have to get him some other place. And a war that goes on longer in the end is gonna end up with a higher death toll.

So, that’s, I guess, the way I am forced to look at it.

Brett, one word about war being grisly and and awful, which, of course, it is, and we all know that. So we’ve had a series of wars between, small wars between the Israelis and, Hamas in Gaza. And there is something incredibly misleading about the way the pictures presented. And I’m not now even addressing false pictures, the pictures of a line of babies or or young children, in shrouds, that was not from Gaza was from the Syrian Civil War that is circulating in various other things. I’m not even talking about the false things.

I’m talking about the images of rubble from his air Israeli air strikes. I have to tell you that after the first time was it twenty fourteen, I think, were you know, there were all of these images of Gaza in rubble. And then, like, a couple of years later, I remember seeing a program about life in Gaza was stunned to see that life in Gaza was normal. I mean, yeah, there were a few buildings that had been, but, I mean, basically, the whole place was still standing, and my image of it been that it was rubble. Can you comment on any of this?

Yeah. I mean, I’ve been to Gaza many times. The common depictions of it are almost uniformly false. There are nice areas of Gaza, for example. It is far from being the most densely crowded urban environment in the world.

That’s just I mean, I think Manhattan is more crowded. Certainly, major cities, elsewhere are more crowded. I’ve been to provincial Egyptian towns just of a few hundred miles away, Mensura in, the Nile River Delta, which are poor. You know, these pictures give you a sense that a huge, huge parts of, of, Gaza have been devastated. But if you go to the e even today, the, website of my newspaper or the Wall Street Journal, you’ll see that the images at the moment you kind of zoom out the destruction, which seems so vast with when the photographer is up close is actually a very small section of an otherwise intact neighborhood in Gaza City or Jabali or some of the other some of the outlying areas.

So nothing like this compares to what Winston Churchill did to Hamburg in nineteen forty three. Where Franklin Roosevelt did to Tokyo and Dresden in nineteen forty five or what Putin did in Grozy and then later in, Mariupol in your two thousand and then

Or alepo, more even more recently.

Or alepo. And and that raises the second question, which is why is it Why is it that when Israel is taking action to defend itself, there is such an instinct among, much of the mainstream press to pretend that the damage is vastly greater than than, in fact, it is. And I think I know the answer to that question.

Alright. We will get to that. But first, let’s take a minute and talk about stress. We all deal with it in different ways. If you’re like me, the news itself can be very disturbing.

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Therapy helps us to figure out how our own minds may be holding us back. Ruminating about our worries and flicks or the many balls we’re trying to keep in the air doesn’t help. It just contributes to our stress. And self medicating with booze or drugs is a dead end. Therapy can help unwind your worries and let you be a calmer, happier version of yourself.

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Visit betterhelp dot com slash beg to differ today to get ten percent off your first month. That’s betterhelp, h e l p dot com slash beg to differ. Alright, Will Saletan. Did you wanna mention something about how Americans are responding to all of this?

Sure. Do, Mona, while we’ve been talking, Winnipeg University issued a really comprehensive survey. And the results I wouldn’t characterize as terribly encouraging. One of the headlines is that eighty four percent of the American people are expressing a high level of concern that the United States is going to get dragged into a Middle East war. And, certainly, the deployment of two aircraft carriers to the region has, I would suspect accentuated.

Those fears. How do Americans feel about Israel’s response so far? Well, You know, fifty percent are approve Israel’s response, which is not a very high figure in my opinion. Thirty five percent disapprove the rest are unsure among Democrats, the level of approval is thirty three percent of disapproval forty nine percent. Among eighteen to twenty nine year olds, the level of approval is thirty two percent.

And of disapproval, fifty two percent. And finally, what about the proposal to send aid to Israel. There again, the American people are in favor, but only narrowly. So fifty one percent say, okay. Forty one percent Disproof.

That’s about where Democrats are. Forty nine forty three, but what’s so conspicuous here is that young Americans are in a hell, no, don’t send it. Mode. Only twenty nine percent of them think we should send aid, sixty five percent say we shouldn’t. And while fifty nine percent of white Americans say that we should send aid, only forty percent African Americans and thirty eight percent of Hispanics.

This is not good news for the Democratic party. You know, because these numbers split the party down the middle, and there is some speculation that disaffection among young Americans and also Muslim Americans, will be enough to cost Joe Biden at least the state of Michigan next year, unless their sentiments become more moderate over the next twelve months. So that’s the report from the polling project.

Right. Right. Okay. Let’s turn to the, new speaker of the house. Because this is someone who until quite recently was opposed to aid to Ukraine, which is another aspect of America’s world role that is very much in doubt at the moment and certainly with the election looming completely in doubt.

Bill, you were saying Democrats are divided. The Republicans are torn down the middle on whether we should be aiding Ukraine with, I think, the wind at the back of those who oppose it. And so we have a new speaker who, is an interesting choice and He is not opposed to aid for Israel, and yet his proposal is that, yes, we should give Israel aid, but it should be counterbalanced by cutting spending on the IRS. And his view is that this will help to pay for the aid to Israel. Damon, the, congressional budget office said on Wednesday that cutting for point three billion from the IRS.

According to the Biden administration, this money was gonna go toward catching tax cheats in the upper brackets, millionaires, and billionaires, mostly. So the CBO says cutting fourteen point three billion from the IRS would increase the deficit by almost twelve point five billion over the next ten years. So, at least according to the CBO, this so called pay for this offset would actually make the whole thing more expensive.

Yeah. I have to say I have no sympathy at all for the Republican very deep emotionally felt attachment to the woes of millionaires and billionaires who wanna cheat on their taxes.

That’s not Can I interrupt you for one quick and then just

say Sure?

What is wrong with Democrats. When I was younger, Democrats were so great at saying Republicans only care about the rich. And you never hear that now, but here they are giving you a a on a silver platter and argument to use against them, and Democrats are not picking it up.

Well, I mean, there is hesitation. I think that that somehow, you know, average Americans who are not really people who are gonna get audited from this, from the extra funding that, Biden helped push through. They think they’ll be safer from being audited when really this is about people who, owe far more intact. And, can get away with it, more easily. Like, they’re the ones who need to be audited.

Although, I will also add in my own kind of centrist skepticism. There is something a little funny about the CBO hitting this proposal about I mean, when you talk about, like, it’ll increase the deficit. Well, against what baseline? Well, the baseline of the CBO estimate on the increased funding that we got just recently over the next ten years. And so, so you’re, you’re saying that, like, you know, if we just sort of repeal everything that, Biden and the Democrats pushed through for the extra IRS people to do the audits, then you know, you could just say, well, it’ll be a wash, based on the the baseline of before they they approved it.

I don’t even know. Like, it there there is something a little bit kind of hall of mirrors about all of this. But the thing that I do think Democrats as you indicated Mona should be hitting republicans very hard on is that the thing that, first of all, you care about this much and something that you think is so important. It should be used as a kind of bit of leverage over whether our country will continue to supply aid and weapons to Ukraine, and its struggle with Russia is Basically, allowing millionaires and billionaires to get away with paying less tax than that they really should be paying. I mean, it it really shows the priorities of of the Republican Party, and I really find it ex extremely distasteful.

And I think Democrats should be able to kind of tee it up in a way that they can make that case very clearly. Yet, there seems to be hesitation. I don’t exactly understand stand it other than, you know, a kind of skittishness that Democrats are are very good, with. I mean, that is one way in which Republicans and Democrats differ. Republicans are always willing to kind of push the overton window further and further in the direction of what they wanna get accomplished and sort of say, yeah.

Well, we’ll see if, you know, if it actually hurts us down the line. Yeah. It might make things more complicated, but if we gin up hatred of the Democrats just enough before, you know, in the week or two before the election, then they’ll still vote for us in end anyway because they hate the other guy more. Whereas Democrats, I think, because they, first of all, want to get good things done, And they also actually, like, want to get the largest majority support from the populace, from voters as they can, I think sometimes maybe overthink these things and kind of scare themselves, like, scare their themselves by their own shadow? So I guess that’s how I see it.

Thank you, Brett. This is a moment when you would think in the before times, both parties would have had a sense of the moment. They would have had a sense that this is a real challenge for America’s world leadership. For the kind of globe that we want to lead and be part of and live in, and that, you know, petty squabbles about funding the IRS really don’t belong in this moment and and and this debate, but we are proving ourselves by this be a very small minded people, maybe not capable of world leadership. What do you think?

You know, this was a concern of mine a decade ago when I wrote a book called America and retreat, and it was subtitled with the new isolationism and the coming global disorder. At the time, most of my focus was really on a kind of a democratic provincialism and quasi isolationism, which I saw in some of the come home America themes, not just of McGovern, but of Obama’s second term in office. But the Republicans have gotten on the on that bandwagon with with a vengeance and what, speaker Johnson did. I think is is yet another illustration of it. The inability of Republicans now to understand just what a catastrophe it would be for America our allies and our interests, for Russia to prevail in Ukraine.

Just just kind of staggered belief. It’s extraordinary. That this wing of the Republican Party is now ascended. And at the same time, not entirely, surprising because there was always that streak of kind of isolationism at the root of a lot of Republican thinking, the idea that foreign and domestic policy are a zero sum game in which if you invest in one, you detract from from the other. When Trump was elected and seem to sort of sound the right pro Israel notes.

Some of my Jewish conservative friends said, well, you can you see that, you know, his his views on on other foreign policy topics don’t impact what matters most, which is his pro Israel perspective. And and my my repost my consistent repose at the time was was to say, look, you know, if you’re gonna be a kind of neo isolationist or quasi isolationist when it comes to NATO or when it comes to East Asia. Ultimately, it’s gonna come around to Israel as well because the principle is the same, and there’s not always gonna be an Israel Carva. And I think that what we’re seeing here in this absurd effort to trade the IRS funding question for aid, to Israel is how the Republican Party is really moving powerfully in that direction. Do you hear it also in some of the rhetoric of people like, Vivek Ramaswamy who I think it weighs a mouthpiece for, Trump it’s coming out in much of what Tucker Crosson’s saying.

It’s it’s there. So we’re back to the nineteen thirties. We’re back to not just the America first of Donald Trump, but the America first of, the father coughlins of the world on the eve of, of, December seventh nineteen forty one.

Linda, in addition to all that, this new speaker of the house who looks like, well, what would you say? Like, the principal of a local high school, you know, kind of horn rim glasses, whatever, very mild looking fellow. So first of all, Tom Emmor was voted down because his cardinal sin was that he voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in twenty twenty, which is now in the trumpified Maga party. That is a a death sentence. So he was he was eliminated.

And now they’ve got this Johnson guy who is a bit weird Linda. I mean, he not only did he not certified the twenty twenty election, but he’s a lawyer, and he drafted this, brief that argued that the entire election was unconstitutional in should be thrown out because some states changed their voting rules to accommodate the COVID nineteen virus. I mean, restrictions, which is, you know, so preposterous, but that was very influential in getting a lot of even dumber Republicans to, to support, not certifying the election.

But, by the way, he was only trying to decertify and stay that by one.

That by one. Yes. I know. It’s funny about that.

The Republicans states to change their rules. That that was fine.

That was fine. Exactly. And, In addition, he repeated some of the really stupider and crazier things like the hugo Chavez conspiracy theory about dominion voting systems, and so on and so forth. So and he may also believe that the Earth is only six thousand years old, I don’t know. I mean, maybe that’s not relevant.

Brett just said we’re back to the nineteen thirties. We may actually be back to the nineteen twenties with

the scopes monkey job. Alright. Now, you know, it’s really amazing to me what has happened to the Republican Party. It really has become the stupid part Yep. And, you know, there was a time when, Republicans were sort of laughed at for you know, for their views and and, you know, and then all of a sudden you you had intellectuals, Republican intellectuals coming to for and and during the Reagan era, I think there became a certain respectability.

But now we see that kind of reversion.

Daniel Patrick Mornahan said that the Republicans were suddenly the party of ideas.

Right. That’s exactly right. So, you know, we’ve seen that shift, and we’re certainly seeing it with Mike Johnson. I mean, he also has a very objectionable ball views on, homosexuals. You know, he believes and in being able to convert, I guess, particularly gay men, and his his wife has been, I think, quite involved in some of that.

And It is so called conversion therapy. Conversion therapy. Right. Yes. Then, you know, he’s got some very objectionable views on immigration.

Yeah. He believes in the great replacement theory, etcetera. So, you know, he’s not a good guy, but it’s not just in the house. It’s it’s not just the sort of house crazies, the little crazy caucus they’ve got going there. It’s also in the Senate.

I mean, look at Tommy Tuberville, and what he’s doing. We are involved. Our allies are involved in wars, and they need our help. And we have our own military officers who can’t get their promotions. I mean, you just had the disgrace full, you know, example of the the Marine commandant who ended up in the hospital.

I had cardiac arrest, a parent cardiac, And that was because he was doing he, you know, he complained about having to do two jobs at once because Tuberville has put, this hold. So you’re seeing it in both sides of of Congress, both in the Senate and the House. The difference of course is in the Senate without noting, you know, Tuberville, who, by the way, the Senate is now considering trying to figure out a way to get around what what Tuberville is doing and even the Republicans, there was a long hours long, tirade against Tuperville on the part of people like Joanie Ernst and, and other senators. Lindsey Graham. Ron DeSantis, Dan Sullivan, who is a colonel in, the Marine reserves.

And others who, you know, who object to what he’s doing, they’re they’re they’re not serious. They’re not these are not people who are fit to govern. And it’s it’s truly frightening, because we, you know, we are coming up on an election and I don’t always believe the polls, but if the election were held today and the two people running were Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Trump might very well win. And it is worrisome. It’s almost as if, you know, we as a country are no longer capable of electing people who are serious and, will govern.

And it’s a very, very dangerous period that we’re living through right now, particularly with the wars going on. And by the way, that it isn’t just our helping our allies. We are being attacked. Our forces are being attacked, as well. And, you know, there is a reason why we’ve moved these striker groups into the Mediterranean and and into the region around the Middle East because, you know, we we may end up having to protect ourselves, not just help our allies, protect themselves.

Damon, you wanted to get in on this.

Yeah. Just to make the observation that it seems clear to me that ever, especially since October seventh, that, and the reactions of everybody to it that we basically have three blocks in our in our system right now. And the reason why it feels so unstable is that we only have two parties. And and, you know, dividing, two by three is a little awkward when it comes to math. And so what we have is a far left that is, you know, marinating in anti Semitism, anti Americanism, all the the stuff that we’ve seen from the far left since, at least, the late sixties.

Has kind of metastasized to some extent, although it’s limited within the the electorate as a whole in this country. Thank goodness. So it’s more easily isolatable. And then on the right, we have kind of trumpist isolationism. And then in the middle, we have kind of liberal centrism of the center left and center right.

And at the moment, that lives in the ocratic party. And I know this can be a little disorienting, but the fact is that Joe Biden is the kind of stanchiation of this liberal centrism now, which means that the Democratic party is its home now And what we have to hope and work for over the next year is that and what’s going on in Israel and the reaction of the far left to it can advance this is that that far left essentially gets

lopped off of

the Democratic party. We want those people in effect to probably stay home to some extent and be replaced by decent minded Republicans on the center right who held their nose and voted for Trump out of inertia and out of other considerations, maybe because they believed passionately and abortion, being restricted and so wanted to see those judges be appointed whatever the case. We have to hope that an equal number of those people come on in to the Democratic party and prop up buttressed strengthen that liberal center and then win that way. That is really, I think, the agenda that that we face right now The Republican Party is much more unified at this point in favor of the isolationist strand than the Democratic party is. It’s smaller in the Democratic party, and so it can be isolated and kept out of power more easily, but that means Democrats need a little extra help So the Bulwark and its staff and Brett and anyone else over there on the center right, you gotta come on in and and vote Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Because that’s really the only hope we have.

Well, I I do agree, but it’s also it’s a fact of life that it is harder to mobilize people, you know, who are moderate in their outlook and tend to be, sort of equable and and Not so passionate about politics. It’s hard, you know, to to gin them up, to to show up. But we’ll see. I mean, in twenty twenty two, arguably, There was a vote for political sanity where the election deniers were defeated, in case after case, and especially in the all important Secret Podcast state races, and a number of key states, they were rejected. The crazier nominees of the Republican Party were rejected people like Doug Mosriano and in Pennsylvania and so forth.

It would be crazy not to be terribly worried because the polls on Biden are so bad. I mean, people just don’t want to vote for an eighty two year old guy. And so he cannot catch a break in the polling. And I I agree. He’s our best hope, but, wow.

It’s very, very worrying.

I haven’t gotten in on this.

Oh, sorry, Bill. Yeah. Go ahead.

I’ll keep it brief. This will be a segue to Brett. Yo, I just want to say that all of the evidence that I can muster suggests that, you know, the America first isolationist, quote, unquote, faction of the Republican Party is not a splinter group. It is the majority. It has taken over the party.

And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the poll from today that I’ve been citing on the issue of aid to Ukraine. The tally among Republicans is thirty three percent in favor sixty three percent opposed. Thirty three sixty three. So while I was listening to the proceedings with one ear, I just did a check through polls that have been released in the past few weeks on that question. They all put Republican support for additional aid to Ukraine in the mid thirties.

That is the reality. And I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this as a country. But the fact of the matter is that we have one political party that simply does not believe in America’s role in the world as it has been defined since the late nineteen forties. This is a really big deal. And I think we’re going to need to come to grips with it politically.

And sometime in the next year, this is going to have to be argued out. And, god willing the people who understand that without the United States doing what it’s doing around the world, the world would be a much more chaotic and dangerous place. God willing, those people will step up and assert their views. But, I am not confident that it’s gonna turn out to be a majority.

Thank you. Let’s take a minute and talk about stress. We all deal with it in different ways. If you’re like me, the news itself can be very disturbing. Some of us get headaches, others get stomach ups said or insomnia, and then add to that problems with relationships or habits that you know are bad for you, but you have trouble stopping.

Therapy can help so much. It’s not just for people with serious trauma or mental illness. It can help you figure out how your own mind is holding you back. Sometimes we think we’re protecting ourselves by thinking certain ways only to discover that our defensiveness is actually adding to our stress. Therapy can show you how to get out of your own way.

If you’re thinking of starting therapy, better help is a great option. It’s incredibly convenient because it’s entirely online, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and get started. If that therapist isn’t a good fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So make your brain your friend with better help.

Visit betterhelp dot com slash vague to differ today to get ten percent off your first month. That’s Betterhelp H E LP dot com slash beg to differ. Brett, on February twenty fourth twenty twenty two, a lot of people said that Putin had just made the worst mistake of his dictatorship by invading Ukraine, and Putin apparently had a different view and thought I can wait them out. Times on my side. They will lose, the appetite to help Ukraine, and I will not.

Lose my appetite to swallow it. See, is he he’s turning out to be possibly correct?

Well, too soon to tell. I’m not prepared to write off Either the Ukrainians or Western support for Ukraine, there is still a broad majority in Congress that wants to help Ukraine, the Democrats because they’re following the leadership of Joe Biden who, I should add to Damon’s point. I will, you know, drop some acid and vote for him come next November. Because because weird weird things keep happening in my, voting life. And there are still Republicans who understand what the stakes are.

What what is worrisome to me is those Republicans, skew older. They, to Bill’s point, no longer represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. They’re a kind of an endangered species, and you have a party that has become not just nativist, but childish. And that’s I think one of the great tragedies of American politics today. I’ve always said that even if you’re a liberal, you should hope that your conservative opposition is a serious opposition morally and politically speaking.

There is always gonna be a conservative party in any political system, but there’s a question as to whether it’ll be serious or unserious. And the tragedy of American politics is we no longer have serious conservatism. In part because of Trump, but in part also because of so many Republicans who sold their principles and sold their souls for a taste of power, under Trump. And so here here we are, holding on by our fingernails, thanks to an eight year old president who still believes in America’s indispensable role in the world.

Yes. May he live to be a hundred and twenty as we say in the Jewish tradition? Alright. With that, let us turn to the highlight or low light of the week. Will Saletan.

Let’s start with you.

Oh, regrettably, This one for me is a no brainer, low light. I had a great time in my four years as an undergraduate. At Cornell University in the nineteen sixties, but I was brought up short by the following. A fellow by the name of Duron Borders is, or should I say was, or maybe again, the DEA director at Cornell. And here’s what he had to say after the Hamas massacre.

And I quote, remember against all odds, Palestinians are fighting for life, dignity, and freedom, alongside others doing the same against settler colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy of which the United States is the model. And I close quote, he has been put on leave. Stay tuned.

Right. Damon Lincoln.

Well, connected up with my, my last intervention about, a kind of moderate centrist liberalism that’s now, alive, and, at least somewhat flourishing in the Democratic party and certainly more than the Republican. I’d like to give a plug to a a book that, came out a few weeks ago by a friend and scholar. I admire find a lot named Arulean Krayutu. His last name is spelled c r a I u t u. The book is titled, why not moderation, letters to young radicals.

This is a a book from Cambridge University press. It’s slim, not too demanding, and it is a really good read for anyone who really wants to to think through how to negotiate this kind of middle position between radicals on the right and left has the title or subtitle indicates this is kind of a a classic structure for a book where He’s engaging not with one interlocutor who he disagrees with, but with two. One, a young leftist and the other, a young, a devotee of right wing populism. And allows allows each of these figures to kind of make their case for why their approach to politics is the best one, and then create to the author, responds in the defense of moderation, prudence, and other kind of classical virtues that can help keep us sane and on on a path toward reasonable politics. So, again, I highly recommend the book.

I think it can really help our listeners to, you know, remind themselves how and why they ended up listening to this podcast and like it so very much.

Thank you for that. To me, that book sounds sexy. I love it. Alright.

That’s why we’re here.

Alright. Linda Chavez.

Yes. Those are the kinds of things that we take to bed with us every night.

Exactly.

So, my low light, of the week, has to do with one of my least favorite senators. He’s actually the man whose actions drove me out the Republican Party even before January six, and that’s Josh Holly. Josh Holly was at a hearing this week in which He was, grilling Alejandro majorcus. I was the head of DHS, and he had put up on the wall several, blow ups of some social networking comments that’d be made by a a DHS staff or I don’t think the person was actually high up in the DHS, but they were very ugly and very awful Ron DeSantis Semitic. In addition to being anti Israel basically cheering on the, Hamas killers of October seventh And so Holly decided to ask my orcus about it.

Well, my orcus, you know, is he apparently the woman who penned these, social commentaries was, put on leave on administrative leave. But this is a personnel item, and my orcus rightly said is of the agency, I can’t comment further. I can simply say she’s been put on leave. And Holly wouldn’t let it go with that and he basically called my orcas despicable. He suggested that maybe He was sympathetic to these anti Semitic views, and it was really an awful spectacle.

And what my orcus then did was to remind Holly or maybe educate Holly about who he was. I mean, we think of him and we talk about him as as, having been Cuban born, but the fact is, he is the son of a Holocaust survivor. His mother’s paternal family was mostly white out in the Holocaust and at least under Jewish law since his mother is Jewish, presumably Alejandra Maorgas is also Jewish. And so I thought that the highlight was my orcus response to Holly but Holly’s attack was I think what was despicable. That day, there’s a good piece about it in the hill and I will link to that.

You can actually see the whole interchange because it’s there.

Thank you, Linda. Brett Stevens.

Well, So there is news in the Wall Street Journal that there is a volcano, not far from Vesuvius, not far from Naples that is showing signs of seismic and perhaps volcanic activity It’s it’s a volcano called Campi Figre. It is not just any volcano. It is a super volcano and area around it has experienced more than two thousand five hundred tremors earthquakes in the past three months indicating the possibility of a major eruption. We have just spent the hour counting our woes in the Middle East, counting our woes in America. Another krakatoa is the last thing the world needs.

So, here’s just hoping. Here’s just hoping that, mother nature at least, stays her hand here and let’s, try to sort out and deal with our problems without yet another catastrophe in the world.

Oh, indeed. I assume that most of us on this call have been to Pompeii, and, even two thousand years afterwards, it is still moving to see the images of women cuddling children, their bodies, were covered with ash. And so they’re able to recreate from the, from the ashes, what they looked like as the catastrophe hit. And it it’s moving even now, as I say, two thousand years later, just amazing. So let’s hope.

Alright. I also have a low light, and, I think, Damon, you’re the only highlight this week, but I want to cite Rick’s Scott, Senator from Florida. Who has a piece this week? Time to unite behind Donald Trump. So, yes, obviously, the first thing you think is, wow.

He must really loathe Ron DeSantis, but Get past that and look at the the justification for why he is already supporting Donald Trump who has not yet achieved the status nominee, but, of course, seems very likely. But we should just bear in mind. Here’s what he writes. An open border with terrorists criminals and drugs pouring into our country, a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that stranded thousands of Americans and our allies, behind enemy lines, left billions of dollars worth of US military equipment in the hands of terrorists, and blah blah blah. He goes on.

And, you know, our cities are are crumbling. There’s crime. He accuses him of, appeasing, Xi Jinping, and, eroding democracy in stability around the world, and now Israel is under attack, and this is Biden’s fault too. Now, why do I cite this tendentious and ridiculous statement because this is going to be what we hear during the general election campaign of Trump is nominated, And Democrats better be ready with responses and try to shore up the areas of weakness. I mean, immigration is clearly a weakness.

Crime is a weakness. I don’t know that there’s much they can do about wages, though it sure would be nice if wages were to rise, between now and November of twenty twenty four. But, this is the kind of thing we’re gonna be hearing. That none of the troubles that are currently besetting the world would have happened if Trump had been president. And, so just hope we’re ready for that line of argument.

And with that, I want to thank our guest, Brett Stevens, and of course, our regular panel, as well as our producer, Jim Zwift, and our sound engineer, Jonathan Last. And of course, I want to thank all of our listeners and our sponsors. And we will return next week as every week.