A conversation with Christophe Difo and Sean Prophet on hierarchy, race, religion and law.

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I am Christophe Difo, and you know, we're going to see how this goes and I'm looking forward to the chat

and I'm Sean Prophet.

And this is our first go round at a sort of a, of a new.

A show format that we're planning to do in the age of coronavirus, where we can talk to each other online and discuss some of these

ideas, particularly having to do with race, culture, and religion that seems, and the law, of course, that's, those are our major topics.

So

I liked that, Sean.

I liked that.

Welcome to the show, everybody.

Okay.

So Christophe, what, what do you think about this whole situation with the firing of the New York?

Us attorney.

Sure.

You know, I it's, I think, I, I think and we were talking a little bit about this earlier.

I mean, this is, I think just another one of the planks of you know, in the sort of edifice of, of, of, of a fascism, but authoritarianism, right?

I mean, this is this is authoritarianism one Oh one.

We don't even have to look.

To the far past to see that, I mean, we can look at Turkey we can look look at Brazil.

We, we can look at all these things and see the Philippines, right?

I mean, this is not new, right?

This is what happened.

Attack the media attack, the, the courts, you know attack elections, you know, accuse your opponents.

Silent opponents.

And get everyone on the get.

And like you, you you've said this before, get everyone on the take.

Right?

So, so that everyone below you is anyone that might be able to confront you, anyone who might be able to hold you to

So that they are now part of your.

System and, and, and, and right.

And, and, and they, and, and now you've made, you've created an incentive where they have little incentive to, to to,

Because now they are on the take also.

Right.

So if they, if it's an indictment of them, if they confront you.

Expand the gravy train to the point where, you know, people's careers, people's political careers and,

. Christophe Difo: Exactly.

And loyalty.

That's the key right there.

Right.

That's the key.

And I mean, and, and Trump makes no, no bones about this, right?

Like, I mean, it's not like, it's pretend, it's not like he's like sneaking around.

I mean, it's happening, like in, it's a slow motion car wreck happening right in front of our eyes.

I mean, everyone knows that this man.

This man is about loyalty.

And so, so getting back to, I think too, that the particular situation here, right?

I mean, you mentioned this earlier that we're talking about a Trump appointee here

Berman is, a Trump appointee who was sent in to kind of clean up the mess that Trump was facing with Preet Bahara, who was his predecessor.

Who was being very aggressive towards enforcing the law and towards a lot of Trump cronies.

And so they brought in Berman and now he's doing his job and he's being accused and removed for being too aggressive at enforcing the law, which is his job.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, this is interesting.

I just thought about this now, but you know, the grit, like one of the, one of the values of having we can art, we can talk a

One of the reasons why there's value there.

And we talk about this a lot in law school, right?

Is, is, is that right?

Because we're talking about the Supreme court.

Rulings that came out this week.

One of them was purely purely procedural.

Right.

And that was the DACA one.

And so they basically in the report and opinion laid out the framework by which to the, the, the the administration could do it.

Right.

So like, we, we ended up, we've bought ourselves some time, but that's all that's happened.

Right.

We just bought ourselves.

I still think that with the DACA ruling I think John Roberts is a, he's no dummy.

And he's putting Trump on notice that, you know, we're not going to rubber stamp you anymore.

And I think that it may be more than procedural.

It's hard to tell, but you know, it's like, What I think is going on is that the, the DACA recipients who are here in this country have, have a

They have jobs, employers have spent money, training them all of those things.

And so the, the Supreme court is understanding that, you know, cause the Supreme court people think they're just this legal body,

And they're looking at it, you know, in the same way that with the, with the other decision about LGBT employment law, right?

The big one.

Not that DACA was small,

Well, it's, it's, it's huge.

And I think that you get to a point where no matter how ideological the court becomes, you know, unless they're, unless they're just total cronies, unless

they were all like Kavanaugh, And Clarence Thomas, basically those three clones as all nine justices, you might start to see some real hardcore rulings.

You know, that would be, that would be fascist, but you know, the rest of them are still sane enough to look at the consequences of such a ruling would have.

Absolutely.

And, and, and, and, you know, and and this is, I think this is really important.

And, and I think that in, in the public imagination Supreme court justices are liberal or conservative and they're, so they're like, sort of, right.

Like they will always rule X on this way.

They're always ruled that way.

But at the end of the day, these are jurists, right.

And they are among the.

The smartest people, they are the smartest people in the law, right.

Whether or not I agree with them.

Right.

I mean like, like I think about Scalia, right.

I re I disagree with almost every word that man wrote, but he was, but he was also brilliant.

And that's just, that's just true.

Right?

So these are not hacks.

Now whether or not you want to make that argument with like Kavanaugh or et cetera.

Like, that's a different question, but like some of the judges that have been on before and like, so what I think is fascinating is that a guy

And, and do you see, which is like, the most respected circuit, maybe, maybe next, like the second circuit.

Right.

So this guy takes his job seriously.

Right.

And, so he is looking at the cultural landscape, et cetera, but but he also doesn't want to come off as a hack.

I mean, this guy, I think, is thinking about his legacy, right.

He's thinking about what he looks like.

And by the way, he's probably taking the fact that he is the chief justice.

He's probably taken that kind of seriously.

Like maybe I should not let this institution fall apart under me, you know,

Right.

Well, and, and, and to your point before that you were saying about you know, whether it's Clarence Thomas or Scalia, or are

Sure.

You know, are extremely good at justifying with good reasoning.

You know, what those texts meant when they were written.

Right.

And You know, a lot of times they're self-serving interpretations, right?

Cause they, they don't, they're not acknowledging the fact that when those texts were written, a lot of the problems that we're facing today didn't exist.

They didn't even, they weren't even conceived of.

So, you know, you can't, it's hard to be an honest textual originalist.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean, I, I think w you know, we, we, we both, we both talked about, we recently talked about the that book, the reactionary mind.

Right.

And, I can see that in these at you know, when I was in law school and reading a lot of cases a lot, all the time, right?

Like these old cases, I didn't, and especially from Scalia, because you read a lot of those in law school you know, I didn't.

Fully sort of grasp the, I didn't understand the sort of reactionary mind, you know, conservative concept, but and for those who were

watching, basically the idea is that, you know, conservatism is essentially an exercise in justifying power, almost retroactively, right?

It's a reactive, it's a reactive sort of philosophy

Specifically the existing hierarchy that.

That holds, you know, like during the founding of the country it was all based on property ownership and being white.

So at that time, that was the top of the hierarchy.

So the law was written entirely.

It excluded women.

It excluded, I mean, Slaves are counted for representation purposes but they couldn't vote.

So, you know, the three-fifths compromise all that stuff.

Right.

But the hierarchy was just built into the constitution, you know, even the idea of a Republic versus a democracy.

Is a, is a justification of hierarchy, right.

Abs absolutely.

Right.

And right.

And, and, and the, and the, and the sort of, and the electoral college, all at the idea that like the, the, the masses, the mob,

Just lacks a capacity to sort of speak for themselves.

Right.

They cannot be trusted to speak for themselves and sort of right.

Because if you trusted.

The people to actually make decisions, then you wouldn't need to appoint representatives who could overrule the people.

It's just basically what senators , by the way, who were appointed in the beginning, they weren't even elected.

And then electors who are who are essentially appointed based on, you know, who votes in their States for the presidential candidate.

These, these are people who, you know, at many points.

Know, now they're kind of considered to be bound to to, to honor the popular vote in their state, but there's even a Supreme court case about that.

Whether they're going to allow these electors to sort of, I miss that, that a conservative ruling in favor of that would be ruling in favor of hierarchy.

Like these people are special.

They can overrule the masses.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, and, and, and this sort of gets to the nub of the fundamentals are conservatism, and I just want to close the loop on the Supreme court.

And that is right when reading these sort of textualists interpretations.

First of all, the idea that they're not activist judges.

Fucking bullshit.

Like of course our activist judges, they are as active activist as they come.

I mean, right.

The second amendment is like the Scalia's interpretation.

The second amendment is the classic example of that.

I mean, it is as activist as you come it's like, and again, it is always a basically conservative brilliance.

It seems certainly on the court.

Yeah.

The way its ability to, as you say, sort of justify the reactionary, like, like being brilliant at like crafting ways to

Like that's, it.

It's very similar to the whole concept of States' rights, right?

Like, I mean, a state's rights activist, judges, all of those things that the conservatives are.

Absolutely.

You know, like you, you can't talk to them for five minutes without hearing, you know, state's rights and activist judges.

But, but when it comes to, when it comes time, when a state wants to do something that they don't like, then, then they just ignore.

They forget anything about state's rights.

And the same thing drives me, you know, like, like they would never consider they would never admit for a second, but Clarence Thomas was or Scalia were

activist judges, but in fact, They are activists in the sense of, of that they are committed to the premise of, of, of reinforcing the hierarchy.

Exactly.

There is activist as any other liberal judge, like activist as hell.

And this gets into right.

How the, and this is also in the reactionary mind, right?

How conservatives co-opt liberal strategies.

Right.

Saul Alinsky is the Bible now of right-wing activism, you know.

Here we are, I mean, it's just like this ironic circle and I, and bade back to the States, right.

Thing for a second is.

My favorite is that you have, so let's say, you know we are in North Carolina and Raleigh Raleigh, North Carolina decides that like we want, cause you know,

So let's say, they say like, Hey look we want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour here in Raleigh.

Right?

We're like, we can't speak for the rest of North Carolina after all, like we're just a city

in our city.

We're going to do this.

We're going to do this.

Right.

And so what the conservative legislators have done in States like that is that they have preempted those States laws so they write

So now your state's rights argument falls apart right there.

Right?

Cause the state's rights argument is that like, like local people should make their own laws.

Right.

The state, right?

Target, not someone over there in effect, but like, but it all falls apart.

But, but when it comes to a liberal city, Oh no, no, no, no, no.

Don't let them make their rules.

We get to make it's me again.

We don't want,

I have a name for this.

It's called jurisdictional arbitrage.

Right?

Whatever, whatever your, wherever, your power, that's the jurisdiction.

You favor at that.

Exactly.

If you're a power in the city, you favor the city, your power on the state.

Favor the state here in power, federal, you favor the federal.

And if the opposition is in power, then you're against, and they, and they play this game over and over and over and over again at every level

On every level.

And it just like, there's a bottomless pit of bad faith, on the right, and on the left, one of our greatest failing on the

And the early two thousands was this idea that we were playing the same game like that.

We were playing the same game that that's that fair play, right?

We're all playing by the same rules that assumption killed us.

And we now know that we are in a knife fight in a fucking phone booth.

Like that is what we are for democracy, for Liberty.

Yeah.

Right now.

And this situation that's going on.

I mean, it's a serious as a heart attack.

I mean, that, that you know, Berman was someone who had he's he's he's, you know, he's going after Giuliani, you know, he's going after all

these associates of, of Trump, you know, and a lot of harmful information come out of that and how to set it up to the campaign right now.

They don't want that.

They don't want anybody under indictment.

They don't want, you know, harmful information coming out right now, especially, I mean, you've got Bolton's book, which by the

way, I thought it was hilarious that he did not get his you know, that Trump did not get his a preliminary injunction about the book.

I was like, yes, finally, thank God.

You know what I mean,

CNN, everybody had the book already, so it was kinda, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So whatever, like everyone, like everyone, all those people already read the book or out to the, it had their staffers

Right.

You know?

There's also, you know, because he's claiming the book is at the same time, it's all lies, but then it's classified.

How do you do that?

You know,

what is like, is it, or is it not right?

You know,

is interesting.

Cause we just pointed out, you know, we pointed out now about five examples of hypocrisy, you know, the, the, the

Now we're talking about, you know, the ability to classify information, you know, it's a, you know, it just goes on and on and on

and on, on and on and on.

And like, I, how about the email server?

Right?

Like, right.

Like, I think there was a, like, I think like a lot of people in the sort of Trump's circle were like, this was,

And one of these things that would have been a scandal under normal circumstances, but just because

It's just like, okay, well, You know, but but I think it was Ivanka, maybe Ivanka Trump's.

She was using a private email server.

They're all using private....

You know, Trump uses his own cell phone.

He doesn't even use a government protected cell phone.

So his, basically his conversations, everything he does, it's an open book to all of our adversaries.

Well, it's, it's unbelievable.

And, and, and, and again, like but her emails, right?

Like, but her emails, but her emails, like what.

One little thing, you know, like they, they seize on things that aren't even really an issue that there shouldn't be an

She like, you know, how can we make our email more secure?

Right, exactly.

And then it's like, well, okay, Hillary Clinton used this private email server, well, what are we

Nothing, nothing.

Because as soon as it comes in, you know, Ivanka's doing it, Jared's doing it, they're all doing it.

Right.

Even, you know, I think, I think During the impeachment hearings, there was examples of all sorts of people using their own phones.

Yeah.

That's probably what I'm thinking.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about because I remember it being a long time ago, but I remember like this coming up

I mean, come on, we had a whole election based on this idea, you know, we lost an election based on this, you know, and seriously

not to mention, not to mention any of the accusations of, of, of cronyism and nepotism and all of the emoluments.

Things literally just goes on and on, like on and off this most corrupt administration that has ever existed in the United States.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I mean, it has to be, it has to be, and, and, and, and, and the, the, the sort of plain sight.

Of it is what's so appalling and perhaps why it's so, so, you know, I always used to say like, if you want to get away

Because by no one's looking in plain sight, like, I mean, you know, just act like you're doing nothing.

Right.

Just act like you're just doing what you would anyway.

Everyone is doing and you can get away with it.

And that's almost what this administration has been.

Right?

Like Nixon was no, they go out of their way to hide it to, you know, cover ups out of the dock.

And maybe there are coverups going on.

I'm sure there are to some extent,

You recall when when Trump got on TV and literally just admitted flat out that there was a quid pro quo, right.

He just said, and then, you know, later on they're like walking back saying, no, that didn't happen, but it's just, they literally, every,

Exactly.

Even when Trump said, Hey, if you let everybody vote, Republicans would never win again.

I mean, Right.

It's just like, say the quiet part out loud, you know,

you're not supposed to say that part out loud.

Right.

I mean, you're not supposed to say that part out loud.

Yeah.

So it's hard to say.

I don't know.

I don't know like where this ends, right?

Like how, how do the Democrats ever get back control of anything?

Because, you know, we can't, you know, we can't have a decent trial.

The judges are corrupted.

You can't, you know, you can't impeach somebody at the Senate's corrupt, you can't, you know, like the no

Yeah, and that's right.

And that's right.

And that's what I think terrifying.

And, and I, you know, and I think this is what goes under the radar with some of the the both hashtag both sides folks would obviously drive me up the wall.

But this idea that like, Oh, they're are all a bunch of bums, right?

Like they're Democrats, Republicans are all a bunch of bums, so but really, like, and maybe they are.

But that's the laziest.

That is the laziest interpretation right now.

It's the easiest thing in the world to say.

And it means that you don't have to engage with any issue.

You don't have to actually look at what's happening.

You don't have to, you know, you don't have to even read the news.

You don't have to keep up on anything.

It's just exactly at any point in history, if you want to say all, both sides of the same.

Both sides are at fault.

You know, that that just gets you off the hook.

It puts you sort of above it all.

It gives you less of an incentive to vote less of an incentive to, to be engaged and less of an incentive to even examine your own ethics.

Right.

Because you're, you're kind of separating yourself from the fray.

And I think that's the rub.

The last piece that you just said there, I mean, like all of what you said is true, but I think what you just said at the

One's own ethics, how one operates in the world, how one benefits from privilege, how one you know, hurts other people without

thinking and without caring, like these are the things that people, and this is, this is like, this is a both sides problem actually.

But it's way worse on the right.

And, and that is that folks are unwilling to ask themselves those hard questions, right?

Like, we've talked about this a lot in terms of, you know, living an examined life whatever you want to call it, but you're developing a philosophy of life.

Right.

Like investigating oneself, I think is something that people would much rather not have to do.

And and, and, and just saying they're all, a bunch of bums is probably one of the easiest ways to get yourself off the hook.

Right.

Yeah.

And, and, and what you're saying is like, to your point a committed conservative, right?

Even, okay.

Forget, you know, traditional versus Trump conservatives.

Okay.

Whoever you are, whatever flavor you are, if you've committed yourself to this premise, that the, that the powerful should rule that, you know, that

it's okay to take bribes, whatever the thing is, you know that, that, that you're, you're not really serving the public that you're serving yourself.

And your cronies, you know, in government if you've taken that position, at least you're honest about it, right?

You're not going to sit there and say, you're honest with yourself.

You know, a lot of these guys know what the game is.

They understand that, you know, that they've, they've signed onto a, a power proposition rather than a

And then you've got the liberals who think that, you know, there actually should be public service.

There should be justice that there should be equality that the powerful should have to account for themselves and all those things.

Right.

So both of those, both of those people are pretty committed to their premises and they thought them through.

But then you've got this giant area in the middle of, you know,

most people,

the, the independents or the people who just don't follow politics and those are the people who, you know, that's why this argument

be in either camp and, and, and through their inaction, they actually help the conservatives because it's, it's much easier to break the system.

It's much easier to corrupt the system than it is to establish accountability.

Accountability requires controlling thousands of moving parts.

It requires, you know, making sure that you know, that nobody is corrupted and that, you know, that that system is only as strong as the weakest link.

Right?

If you've got, you know, one person in the chain who was corrupted.

They can start protecting other people in the chain who are corrupted, just goes on and on and on.

So in order for liberals to win and have a government based on public service and accountability, they have to win every day with everyone.

Whereas conservatives just monkey wrench one at a time, one office at a time.

So you know, I just, I, I think that it's "both sides" always favors the oppressor and never justice.

Hundred percent.

And, and, and, and, and that is so critical, right.

Because right.

And, it is the silence.

Right.

They break the silence is like benefits the oppressor.

That's another one of those sort of cliches that flies around, right?

Like silence is complicity, right?

Like all these sorts of things.

And I'm glad to see people starting to get off the bench with this George Floyd, and the sort of ensuing

Even people who are.

You know, a relatively liberal right.

Lean liberal but are just basically most of the time checked out because it's a lot easier to just be checked out.

You don't have to wrestle with...

they're conflict averse.

Right.

They don't want, they don't want this, this, this battle, you know, they don't like, you know, everybody gets upset when they start seeing violence

Well,

I love all.

Oh my God.

Right?

Oh, the wing or the, the wing, the, the, the left and the right of the wings on the same bird.

Right?

Like all that, like all that stuff.

I mean, it's just like, it, it's just, again, the justification for that.

For inaction for just for like, Oh no, you know, all lives matter.

Right.

Right, right.

I mean, it's all that in that same ilk of, let's not address the issue, let's just ignore it.

And again, and again, it's steeped in privilege because, right.

Because by virtue of being in the middle of that sort of bell curve, right.

It almost necessarily means that you don't have to worry about it.

Right.

You're not.

At the margins.

Right?

And so this was, yeah, this is really what we have to start getting people to be concerned about is the rule of law.

And it's a great segue from what we were talking about because the whole reason everybody is in the street, you know, has been for several weeks

With police who are supposed to be upholding the rule of law and they did not follow their own rules and there, and they did not follow the laws of the land.

So you saw this nine minute horror film, you know, snuff film, basically of the cops snuffing out this man's life, you know,

But the real problem is so much more widespread.

You know, it's just, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but this whole thing is, it is, it is the breakdown of, you know, again with cops of the

that could prevent this, you know, have been long, long ago quashed by the police unions who really should, they should only be negotiating on behalf

Instead, they become a legal, basically a sort of quasi-legal advocate for police who are accused of wrongdoing and getting them reinstated.

Absolutely.

So it's a culture, it's a whole culture of it, you know?

And so we're seeing it, whether it's, whether it's it's at the Supreme court level or whether it's at, at the level of, of, of New York, what'd you say?

What did you what's what's his actual title?

What's Berman's title?

He was an assistant U S attorney for for Manhattan.

So the attorney for a firm had had.

Head, federal attorney in the borough of Manhattan.

Right?

So he's been prevented from doing his job, you know, by the justice department who also by the way, is in charge of all the regulations that,

Right?

Exactly.

It's all actually lands at the justice department with William Barr and then ultimately with president Trump, because Trump is essentially

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, and, and you know, and, you know, I'm, I'm just sort of I'm baffled or I would be if I, if I didn't know what, all the things

that we've talked about and all the things that we both write about and talk about online it, you know, just about human nature, right?

You know, I remember as a young person as a young person in high school, you know, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around a lot of things, but not in

Right?

How does an entire country turn a blind eye?

And how does entire country get enveloped by fascism?

Like how does that happen?

Like, it seems so baffling to me, but I do, but it now it's obvious to me.

Right.

Because people are conflict averse.

So just like you were saying earlier,

It's the core.

Conflict aversion is the core of how fascism takes over a country.

That's the nub of it, right?

That's the nub of it, because if enough people are not willing to stand up and say, no, I'm not okay with this or not willing to essentially be corrupted.

Right.

We keep talking about corruption because all about corrupting one person then corrupting another person and then another, and that's how it spreads.

And next thing you know, it only takes one fascist to corrupt an entire neighborhood.

Right.

It only takes one fucking fascist to do the entire neighborhood because then.

Everyone's like, yeah, well, I don't want to say X, Y, and Z, because of that person over there, the fascist over there, he's going to tell on me.

Right.

So that I, then I start, right.

I start now telling on people too.

Right.

And then next thing you know, you've got an entire neighborhood and then an entire nation, right.

Sort of enveloped in this cloud of suspicion and paranoia and, and, and, and again, it's all, it's all about like, well, I don't want my family to get hurt.

You know, I don't want to lose my job.

I don't want to, I don't want to go to the Gulag either.

Like I get it.

I don't want to go to the Gulag either, but this is why it's important to nip fascism in the bud before we even get to that place.

Right.

Because, and this is also is that it would be one thing.

If everybody was really concerned about their families and families were together on this, but they're not.

Families are many times really split on the, on these issues, you know, and you have, Trumpism has, has driven a stake, you know, into American families.

I mean, there are so many people who, you know, they just can't can't even have Thanksgiving dinner or, you know, I mean, even

pre COVID, they couldn't have Thanksgiving dinner, the toxic nature of, you know, you get one fascist at the table, right.

And now all of a sudden.

You know, everybody's having to figure out, do I confront this guy?

Do I walk away?

What do I do here?

You know, do I, you know, is this a, and they often choose a family harmony over ethics.

That, and that is so important.

That's so important.

It's so, so important.

And this is why when I, when, when people ask me, you know, especially in the wake of all this stuff.

Right.

And we can totally, we should talk about some re talk about race a little bit more deeply later, but yeah.

You know, people have asked me as for, I have a lot, most people I know are white.

Right.

I mean, I grew up in that environment.

Right.

So you know, so, and they're generally progressives, right?

I certainly don't have a lot of conservatives in my life.

And so people ask me like, Oh, you know, you know, what can I do?

I mean, like, you know you know, and, and, an, how can I be an activist and read White Fragility, right?

Read the books, write, read how to be an anti racist.

I think that's important, but I think the biggest thing.

And maybe, and maybe this is like covered in the book, but it is that confronting being willing to stand up and confront your family members.

Like, I think that is like, right.

And it doesn't mean you have to have a, I have a knock-down drag-out fight, but it does mean that like it's being like, no, actually I am

Like, no!

The thing of the problem with, with, with families is that a lot of these people on the right.

They actually believe that they're ethical.

They actually believe they have, they have a whole series of justifications as to why they want to have, you know, ethnic nationalism, for example,

Horribly unscientific things.

But if you believed all of those things, then they might have an ethical stance.

Right?

I mean, I, I still, like, I could argue all of those all the way on down the line, but still when you can figure that there's, there's some point they could

And they were, you know, that they were, they had a right.

Just to hold that opinion.

Right.

And you should not dismiss them, but, but in, in, in point of fact justice does not, is not subject to those those arguments, right?

I mean, you know, you can't, if somebody is openly advocating for injustice, you know, they have to, then

And, you know, scientific racism, the, the, the idea that, you know, eugenics even, you know, going back to so if

And a lot of people aren't that sophisticated.

They will, they will just, you know, openly you know, say and do racist things.

You know, they, they, they, you know, the whole idea of, you know, "he shouldn't have resisted."

"if you don't commit a crime, you don't have to worry about being shot" and all of those associated justifications, they don't

sure.

But if anybody who is a, like the more thoughtful a person was, the more intellectual person was the more, when they start to go to the right

So now if you talk to that person, You're not even agreeing on the basic facts of humanity.

Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Multicultural societies don't work and we shouldn't encourage them.

We should separate them.

Right.

It ends up becoming more refined, right?

The further you go to the right.

But like, but the, but the problem is that it necessarily, right.

It always rests on the basic idea of a hierarchy.

Always always, always, always, always, always, right.

Like, no matter how you try and spin it and justify it, right.

Well, one of the, one of the new favorites I heard because right, the genetic inferiority argument is, has been largely rejected and disposed

the argument, but like what, like, but, and unless you're just a flat-out racist, but like, if you don't think of yourself as that, that way.

So now the argument becomes like, well, black culture is, is, is the problem, right?

So it's not that black people necessarily like black, right.

Because right.

Cause then you can point to someone like, I don't know, Colin Powell or that other guy, he looks like a, I don't know.

He's like, geez, a Colonel something.

And he looks like he looks like a black cop and like every single movie, every single black cop in every movie.

And you've got like the haircut.

Anyway, I remember what his name is.

I'll remember it for next time anyway, but these are the point of those guys, the guys that are just like, you know who just basically

Like those are the black people we want, but black culture right.

Is lazy.

It's X, Y, and Z.

And, but again, but it always comes down to the same thing, this hierarchy, right?

That right.

That there needs to be people at the bottom who deserve to be there.

And by the way, the police job is to make sure they are there.

They stay there.

Right.

That's part of the police's job.

Right.

And that is always when it comes down to it and it's always intellectually dishonest, but it's just a question of whether, you know, it's a sophisticated

sort of intellectual dishonesty or that just like you say, just like unsophisticated, just like just blabbering, just racist ass things, you know?

Right.

And, and, and so, and here's other point that I realized one day when I was talking to one of these people

They haven't invented anything by themselves.

You know, they did, you know, blah, blah, blah, this horrible, horrible shit.

Right?

Absolutely.

It's, it's demonstrably false.

But they believe it.

I'm going okay.

Just for the sake of the argument.

Let's let's just say that they're, that they're that there is something inferior about people of color.

Okay.

If that were true, wouldn't it argue for spending more resources and giving more help?

To those people, right?

Because we have somebody who's, you know, who's, who's handicapped or somebody who's, who's mentally challenged, right.

Education.

We give them special treatment, you know unless we're fascist and then you just put 'em in the oven.

Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

That's what, that's, what it comes down to is you can, you can, you can take the same set of facts, you know if, if you

could, if you could allow that there was a disparity between, you know, between races, which isn't even a scientific concept.

If you're a liberal or Democrat who believes in justice, you would have to argue for more resources, not less and better treatment, not worse.

Right.

Right.

And this, and this gets to the ethics argument.

Right.

Because I'm like, wait, it look like, right.

Let's assume, let's assume that like, again, we're assuming for them, for the sake of argument that people

Right.

Cultural, whatever.

So like, you know, if that's the argument then like, it is obviously don't give them, give people more resources.

Right?

Cause you don't like affirmative action.

Right.

You don't like welfare, even though welfare goes to much more white people than black people, but whatever, like, right.

Like you don't like any of these programs.

Right.

Cause you think they all go to black people.

And so my question, to that conservative is, what is your argument?

So like what do you think we should do then?

Like, is it that people should just like, just--

die in the terms of like deny them resources, deny them healthcare.

And the answer is yes, right?

The answer is yes.

And that's, and that, and that's fascism-- the ovens are just like an extrapolation from that same concept.

Right.

Get rid of them.

Neglect is the same as the oven.

Really?

Exactly, exactly.

Widespread neglect for millions of people.

Don't have healthcare, millions people don't go to the doctor when they should.

And all those things that neglect kills them just as certainly as if you all rounded them up, it just takes longer.

It just takes longer.

It just takes longer.

Right?

I mean it right.

I mean, and again, this gets to, the intellectual dishonesty that, that you have to engage in, if you are going to try and maintain these positions

Right.

We need to talk about libertarianism, but like when this really first became evident to me, I mean, it started out in 2010 with the tea party.

Okay.

But really the 2012 Debates the 2012 debates, right?

When one of the moderators asks, ask, you know, what should happen?

You know, what, what should happen when you know, somebody doesn't have a health care, should we just let them die?

And you hear, you hear multiple people in the audience calling out "Yes, let them die."

Right?

I have that recording.

It used to be the open on the open to my old show.

Right.

And that is, this is when fascism really, really came to America is the moment when at a public debate people were openly willing to declare

And that's, and that's a really scary moment.

And so, so that, that was only eight years ago.

But now we're to the point where, you know, you start talking to these the, the white supremacists and they

And what they mean when they say that they literally mean, you know, having, having people live in separate countries, like, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Ethnic cleansing, you know, in a, in a, in a way.

I mean, how else do you accomplish it?

When you have a, when you have a multicultural society like ours, it's already multi.

It's not like it's not going to become multi.

It already is multicultural.

So how do you go to a white nationalist society?

You have to deport or kill, those are the only two options.

, Christophe Difo: Absolutely.

And I think that's an important fact, right?

Because every time any large group of people gets moved, that means it is an atrocity, right?

The trail of tears is the most obvious example, but like it like in modern history, but, but, but also, you know, during the, during

during world war II the Bataan death March, was another one where like a large group of American and allied prisoners were moved.

And I mean the percentage of death on that walk.

Is astonishing, daunting.

And again, these are the, and that's in PR in wartime.

But again if you are talking about like ethnic nationalism and like deporting every person of color in America, I mean, like, how do you think that looks and

And, and, and right.

And these people want that resistance in a lot of ways.

Right?

Because then that justifies that justifies a lot of that crap, crap.

Killings, whatever it is.

And so it's just, yeah, it's ultimately, there's no way to get around the fact that if you don't take care of everyone, if you don't expand your,

Like who are we as Americans and, and the, the white nationalist say it's whites Christians, you know, whatever, I'm sure liberals say it's all of us

and liberalism says we must consider all Americans to be part of our family we are one family, you know, and that means that you know, that, that some of

And that's what brings you into affirmative action and all those things, because we live together where we don't have these marginalized people who are living in

Disaster.

How do you accomplish that?

And, and the, the, the right wing answer is, get rid of it.

Get rid of the problem.

And, the liberal answer is include everyone.

And there's just, there's almost no way, like every discussion that takes place between right.

And left ultimately is, is, is referencing that divide.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, and I I'd like to Sort of, go back kind of a little bit to what we were talking about before.

We've been talking a lot about like fascist and right-wing nationalists and all that kind of stuff, but I want to keep hitting, I want to hit on this

because it's easy then for people watching this or people that we talk to online, you and I all the time to say like, well, I'm not a Nazi, right.

I'm not a fascist.

Right.

And I I'm, I'm on the right, but I'm not X, Y, and Z.

And again, I think it's really important.

I think that to, to highlight that, you know, like straight up fascism, as we think about it is just an extrapolation of.

It is just like a little bit more of an extreme version of the right in this country right now.

And certainly there are that the actual right and white nationalists and the paramilitary guys and all that kind of stuff right now.

But.

Even the people who call themselves, right?

Like sort of traditional conservatives, like, right.

Like if you, if you take their reasoning to its logical conclusion, the answer is still the same.

Right?

The answer is still is that in 2012, the person at that debate said it out loud.

But, but, but that was always true right.

The answer to no health care for, for, for everyone means people die unnecessarily while other people live in privilege.

Like that is so again, again, I just want to hit that point that like, even that sort of quote, moderate Republicans, or the, the,

You're essentially saying like, no, no, no, you don't get this just because you're, you're not us.

That is the, that is the nub of the argument.

All the entire right.

And again, this ghost that you're talking about,

There's a lie.

And that is that you don't hear it so much anymore because you know, people are just are either Trumpers or they're not, you know, but they'll be used to be

Oh yeah.

That is the biggest lie in the world.

Because if you want a tax cut.

If you are saying, if you're somebody who says, I want to pay less taxes, what you're saying is that you somehow, the money that

And a good portion of that money was spent to help people.

Right.

So everybody wants to pay less taxes.

I get it.

You know, they think, okay, that's my money.

You're taking my money, you know?

But what they also don't realize is that most of the tax cuts that have happened have gone to the very wealthy.

Right.

Will class tax rates have stayed very, very close in somewhere between a 15 and 30% rate for forever.

I mean, they don't move, you know, and, and whereas you're super wealthy, you know, a lot of your income isn't, you know, you don't pay payroll taxes.

No, there's no social security from somebody who's, who's a stock trader, so they're only paying capital gains

So it's either 15 or 20% that they're paying in their, in and their income.

Whereas the middle-class is paying somewhere around 30 ish, you know, so

with a lot less money, right?

So the tax cutters cannot be socially liberal.

They may be social liberal on saying things.

I think you should be able to smoke pot.

I think...

...always a classic example.

If you want an abortion to have an abortion

Have an abortion, get gay married, you know?

...live with three different women, you know, whatever you want,

whatever you want, don't take any of my money.

And again, like, you know, and, or my favorites, taxation is theft, which just like, is just.

That's one of the ones, man, that just gets me, that just gets,

it gets the hell out of me too.

And that gets you back to the libertarians who say, well, I never signed a social contract.

You know, it's like you drive on the road, you drive on the road, don't you?

And they're like, well, I pay gas taxes.

What would, I guess the only way to make this clear to libertarians is to turn everything into a user fee, right?

Right.

You know and that, and then maybe they would understand how that would work, but it's, it's, again, it's just more, it's more intellectual dishonesty

that comes up with this idea that, you know, somehow you can live in a civilization and have all of its protections and not have to pay for it.

Exactly, exactly.

And, and, and, and, and, you know, and it's always very, very telling that the libertarian, you know, who is libertarian, right?

The libertarian is a white young to middle age, man.

That is well off, relatively well off.

Right?

Not wanting for much.

Right.

You know, that's always a libertarian because the libertarian thinks that he doesn't need.

And I say he, because he's almost always a "he"and he thinks he doesn't he doesn't need social services at all.

And so since he doesn't need them, no one else should need them.

And and again, it's always this intellectual dishonesty packaged in.

"Oh, but don't worry.

I think everyone should be able to smoke pot.

So I'm actually not a bad guy," right.

Right.

Well, the very, the, the.

Underlying premise of that argument that you just absolutely cannot get away from is a misunderstanding of the concept of privilege, right?

Because the, the, the, the white libertarian right has, has, has grown up with privilege.

They've grown up bathed in public services that just kind of magically appear that they can rely on the police to protect them.

And they'll all, Oh, well, I can't count on the police.

You know, that takes, takes them half an hour to get to my house.

And meanwhile, I've already been robbed.

Well, how often have you been robbed?

How often do you think it's the black people in the black neighborhoods who are getting robbed and where there's

They can't get it, the white people can get it, but they don't need it.

Yeah.

That's so true.

That's so true.

But so there's no way to separate the, this, this concept.

And that is why a lot of white people react so strongly and violently to the concept of privilege, because the way it collapses the entire libertarian

Once you recognize that that comes from a place of privilege and that your independence comes at a cost.

You don't like seeing people sleeping on the street in their own filth, well then pay taxes.

Right?

Exactly.

That's just part of it.

That's just part of it.

Right.

And like, and, and, and the idea that a civilization can function without, I mean, taxes without a government

And you know, I'm one of my favorites.

I know it's not really fair, but but it's one of my favorite ones.

Like, Oh, you want to be liberated, go to Somalia, go to Somalia.

You know, that's what happens when there's no government, right.

Fiefdoms centrally appear and private armies.

Right.

I mean that, that, that, that like mercenary army that's what happens.

Right.

So, so, so like it's like it's every dystopia.

Like every dystopic movie out there, right?

Every like end of the world scenario, movie, like that's what happens when there's no one overarching sort of power that can overpower everyone else.

Once you give up on a, a government with a military under civilian control, right?

That's the key to ever having, having a government that controls the police force and the military separately.

Very separately, you can't have the military enforcing on internal enforcement, right?

You don't want to have that, but it all requires that accountable control of the power.

And that leads us right back to our discussion about the police forces.

Again,

Yes, now we can get back to the police forces, which I think is an important one.

So, what do you think about defund the police as a slogan?

Wow.

Wow.

I think, you know, I've had the, you know, this is a great topic.

And we, and we've talked a little bit about it already, but I, but I offline, but but you know, I, my initial reaction to it.

So I was at a at a the only demonstration that I went to was here in Jersey city.

I live in Jersey city, New Jersey and You know, my wife and I, and several of our friends, we went down there, everyone's wearing masks.

It was great, great demonstration.

But one of the things that the woman was saying, and she was 18 years old up there, like she was one of the

She's going to, I think, Morehouse in the fall or no Howard in the fall.

Brilliant woman.

Anyway, she's up there.

She's talking.

She's like, did she like "defund the police"?

And she was like, really in, you know, and, and, and so like, my initial reaction was just sort of like, man, like, you know, so is that smart, right?

Like, is that is that, is that practical?

And and, but the more I thought about it you know, and I think you made this argument really well, and that is that, you know,

Radical.

Radical.

Just want anarchy.

We just want the streets, just a blaze, you know,

Actually especially want black and Latino thugs walking around your neighborhood and raping your Lily white daughters.

Right?

Like that is like the image that's that they're trying to evoke.

Right?

That's classic classic tactic.

Right?

This was like Jim, like thousands of black men were lynched on this exact premise right in the South and across this country.

So, so, so if they're going to do that anyway, why not just say what we mean?

And then we're going to have to have a public opinion war, no matter what, right.

Like, so yeah.

So I think a couple of things and that is that I have literally had to wade through probably five dozen of my white

friends o, friends of friends, you know, taking issue with this idea that we shouldn't be saying "defund the police" it's a problem.

And, you know, and, and coming up with alternative slogans that they think are better.

Sure, sure.

Reform or reframe or rebrand or whatever you want to call it they, they have some other thing that is short of defunding the police.

Right.

And what I came to is I was thinking about the trajectory of the black lives matter slogan, which when it first came, you

You know, white people you know, black people were for it.

Obviously a white people were like, didn't, they didn't quite know what to do with it.

And then they came all lives matter.

Blue lives matter, all these reasons, retorts to it.

Let's start it out with the survey.

The public opinion survey on black lives matter five years ago was like 10 or 15 points underwater.

Right.

Most Americans thought it didn't like the slogan didn't agree with it thought it was divisive and all these kinds of things.

It's now like, plus 25 or plus 30 and the entire country, you look at the protests.

Mostly white faces are out there.

You know, absolutely not saying, I mean, every black person is out there, but there's a lot of white people out there.

So you have this situation where now it's being painted on the streets of every American city, black lives matter in letters that you can see from space.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

And that's what happened to a slogan that started out 10 or 15 points underwater because it became clear that that was the essential truth of the

And you know, all of that.

So, so when you hear defund the police, it's like, yes, we have to explain it.

But what I'm saying to my white friends about this, I'm going look, guys, you know, this was invented by the black lives matter movement.

They came up with the slogan.

They started using it.

And now all of a sudden, everyone is saying it, right.

And now you're gonna come along and say, Oh, we should have focus group.

Oh, we should be, should have figured this out.

Let's get a marketing guy here to figure out what the best slogan is.

And it's like, no, this is the slogan.

This is the one that it resonates.

And it resonates because it pisses off the right wing.

All right, exactly.

If you're going to already deal with this trope that you're talking about, about the thuggish person of color,

And it's going to be already used against us, but from top to bottom of the right wing you know, a snarl-ocracy, you know,

And already saying all those things.

Right?

So, so it is, it is best strategy wise for us to embrace it because it will be used against us anyway.

Exactly, exactly.

And, and, you know, and I think, well, you also brought up a really great point the other day and I sort of piggyback on a post I, or

I think it was in response to someone's it's like someone, a white, progressive white person who was concerned, you know, had these concerns.

And, without directly accusing her of whitesplaining, because I don't think that's where she was coming from.

So you're like, all right.

So the black lives matter people were in their office, wherever the hell their office is, you know?

And they're like, you know, do you think they didn't think about that?

Do you really think they were like, you know, I'm not, again, they probably didn't, you know, focus group it.

Like, and like, and have marketing people in.

Maybe they did, but whatever.

But the point is a bunch of people that had been running a, like what has turned out to be a wildly successful organization.

The most political successful political organization of the last.

10 years.

Exactly easily.

So it's just like, all right.

So we're sitting around the table and you know, there was probably a lot of ideas, probably they probably brainstormed

And, and so for, for now, for white folks to come to the hand and be like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't know what you're talking about.

Here is here.

Let me, let me bring in my marketing folks.

They're going to tell you what you should be saying.

It's smacks of whitesplaining like one Oh one, right?

It is.

And again, it gets back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show.

And that is the.

Concern trolling.

Okay.

Concern, trolling used tone, policing, whatever you want to call it.

That has been used forever to shut down social justice movements and it's also been used to shut down secularism.

Right?

Anytime you criticize religion, people go, Oh, you can't say that you're alienating potential allies.

There's so many religions.

Oh, that one.

Oh, that one drives me freaking nuts.

This is the same thing, right?

Cause basically what white people are saying is you don't want to say, defund the police because you're alienating people who are on your side.

Right, right.

The conflict aversion tone, policing and concern trolling are all part of the same you know, central force of so-called moderates

Absolutely.

So this is it,

Revenge of the white moderate, right?

Aha.

This is like right out of letters from Birmingham jail, right?

Like right.

The white moderate, who says, I agree with your with your aims, but not your, but not your tactics.

Right.

And it comes down to this whole idea of not wanting to be uncomfortable.

Right.

And we talked about this earlier, like Kaepernick, he was under, talk about being underwater, right.

Talk about being underwater.

And now, and by the way, I love this guy because he had stayed in perfect football shape for this entire time.

So that at any time he could be called into the NFL, just like that he could play right now.

Right.

I love that about him.

I loved that about him and this guy, this guy is now.

But we talked about this.

He's going to be looked back on as a civil rights icon.

Right.

And people don't understand that.

That's what people thought about MLK also White America hated him.

Right?

So now, now all the conservatives have jumped on the bandwagon and saying, Oh, MLK, we support

You know, the guy was murdered.

Okay.

He was shot by a white supremacist, you know?

And, and so you have that, that Kaepernick had to be willing to lose his career, to be vilified.

To the point of, of of losing the thing that was the most.

Well, it actually wasn't the most valuable to them because if it had been, he wouldn't be, you know, wouldn't have done it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Wouldn't have kneeled he wouldn't have kneeled if it was that valuable to him.

So, the reason why he deserves to be a civil rights icon is because he clearly put social justice above his career.

And that's absolutely stellar.

That is stellar.

Those are real heroes, right?

Like we talk about heroes in our lives with like, and all this kind of stuff.

But like, you know, that, like we talk about sacrifice and like the right, especially of course loves to talk about the military.

And and, and, and by the way, like, I like.

For all of you out there.

I am, I am not anti-military I'm not a pacifist.

Right.

You know, in fact, you know, like I, the use of force is important.

I respect the military and what they do.

And in fact, I'm actually a student of military and military history.

So I care about it a lot.

Especially the Vietnam war.

But the, but the, but like, but you know, but those folks, right.

The folks that go out there and fight like good for them, that's important.

But you know, they're not sacrificing their careers.

Right.

They're not, they're not sacrificing their social, their social standing.

Right.

So like, right.

And that is in some ways, even more difficult.

The warrior class in society has always been held in a place of honor.

Right.

So, and they should, and they should.

And, you know, I think also without the warrior class in society, You know law enforcement, right?

There is no rule of law, right?

And you can even look at the military in a properly constituted world, if it was under the governance of the United nations and, and, and properly

handled the militaries would also be law enforcement because you're enforcing international law, you're enforcing human rights and things like that.

Right.

So ultimately, if we had a unitary government for the world, then all military action would be police action.

Exactly.

Exactly.

It would be accountable.

You can't be a pacifist and support the rule of law because without a force to back the rule of law, I mean,

You cannot have rule of law without, without the force to back it up.

It just has to be a...

exactly.

Exactly.

I mean, like, I like to think otherwise it's a completely misunderstand, I think human nature and, and, and, and, and it under misunderstand human

nature in groups, I'd be like, I need, like you just like, and this is the whole green part of what the green party and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

Like, and, and the, and the, and sort of the hippie the site type stuff, right?

Like, like, would this love everybody, et cetera, like that sort of approach, right.

The let's go to burning man or whatever.

Right.

And they live in a commune.

Right.

Like the, like the problem with that is exactly this is that like, I think Obama will all his faults, he, I think he understood this

Right.

Because you know, because he realized, he realized that, look, you need to, like, you can't just allow the

Like, you know, we'd like our, we have interests.

Right.

And and again, like, You know, and a properly constituted military that is driven by justice, right.

That is, that is that is what we ought to be striving for and, and, and working toward.

And I think he understood that in a way that certainly not the neo-cons and, you know, And there are like, you know, sort of colonialism...

he had Obama inherited or see inherited, you know, situations of conflict that he didn't create.

And so now as a president of United States, he's, he's required to do things that maintain, you know, balance of power, whatever, whatever

you're talking about in the world, you know, you've got gotta, either deal with it now are you dealing with a much worse problem later?

And that's, I think the calculus he was having to make in those drone strikes and everything else like that.

Because back to your point about burning man, I mean, so burning man is this is a sort of idealistic, you know, hippie dippy

They're having a good time.

They're bartering, there's no money.

But what look at what burning man is burning man is protected by you know, a nation that's the strongest it's the strongest military in the world, you know,

state police, you know, who were there, who are actually, you know, going around and actually, you know, actively patrolling the site, that could not exist.

You could not have this idealistic, communal experience without the force to back it up much as a lot of people there, you

know, hated the fact that cops were there, you know, imagine what would have happened if there was no force available.

Exactly.

I mean, Jesus, I mean, you know, you know you know, the, you know, there, there was a Woodstock 2, like there was too, like in the

There was like another Woodstock.

And I mean with, with, with very few and there was two of them and then the second one devolved into absolute chaos.

Right.

And presumably there were police there, but to some extent, but that just puts things in perspective.

Like, you know, you can't.

Just...

The classic example was Altamont where they put the, they put the hell's angels in charge of security

I don't remember how he got here, but yeah, but I mean, but I guess the rule of law question, I think

And I think that's a theme that is sort of like, sort of sort of through everything we've talked about here.

And that being, we could be talking about it being actively undermined in the undermined by the current

Sort of, undermined we've also talked about and in terms of, and, and now in terms of police brutality, right, we're also now seeing the George

Floyd incident and of course, in the, ensuing protests and the reaction of the, the violent reaction of the police to those protests, right.

We are seeing that kind of breakdown in the rule of law.

I think it's really important.

We talked about the police unions, right?

Because they stand in the way of that.

Right.

And this is, gets back to the funding, the police question, which is like, this is why you have to kind of start from scratch, right.

Because like, that's the only way to get around.

The police union is, you know, you look at Camden, Camden, Camden, New Jersey is a great, like one of the shining example of this.

Well, right.

And so what, what, what essentially, they're the people who unconditionally support cops, the blue lives matter folks.

You know, what they're telling us is that we have two choices.

We can either accept their protection with all of its corruption and flaws and protecting bad cops, or we go without, you know, although they're

the, the third option, which is in the middle, which is you have accountable cops under political control, who are not, who are not shooting people.

You know, who are conflict deescalating who are referring people to social workers or drug treatment rather than arresting

them, you know, who are you know, not going to shoot somebody in the back, who's running away, you know, all these things.

That's the third option.

And that's what defund the police means.

I think that's what absolutely, because what you're defending is the bureaucracy that has protected the cops.

You're giving the power back to the city council, the mayor to be able to actually, keep these police forces in check.

Absolutely.

We're talking about accountability and we keep talking about this, right.

We talked about, but like basic accountability.

Right.

And, and, and and, and in one of my favorites is that conservatives rail against unions, you know, like how corrupt

But like this union is, it's a caricature of a bad union, right?

Like, we're talking about like some Jimmy Hoffa type shit, right.

Like, right.

Like, right.

You know, like yeah.

This is the quintessential thuggish union.

And of course they just did this entire pass.

And again, it's because they're in there, they're in the right, that there is a union that works for them.

We talked about the earlier on, we talked about the hypocrisy, right, right, right.

Like you hate unions unless the unions are actually like, you know Brown shirts that keep their, keep their, their, their boots on people's necks.

And this is another point to why defund the police is so important because you can actually get into a situation where

if you are the mayor or the city council, and you try to challenge the police union, they may be able to put up legal roadblocks.

You know because of agreements and contracts that were signed, you have to honor this contract, you know, you can't you can't change the contract.

You can't, you know, we have the final say on police misconduct, right.

And so exactly by defunding the police, you create a new department of public safety.

The police union is no longer in charge of that.

So you take the police department, you bring its budget down to maybe 10%, you know, you have them writing.

I don't know, you have them writing you know, doing homicide investigations and, you know, whatever things that you want cops to do.

When you leave you, you, you, you take that money transferred over into the public safety department where a lot of these

calls that really shouldn't be handled with violence are able to be handled by a social worker or a mental health professional.

Or a, you know, something, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not an expert in these subjects, but I think...

but your point is a good one, right.

Because and, and I there's, there's a really great police chief.

That's almost like an oxymoron, but there's a really great police chief down in Dallas.

It turns out and black guy, interestingly not that the myths, neither here nor there, but he is And, you know, and he, I heard him talk about

police officers go and he was talking about, you know, how the pro one of the problems is, is that as, and this goes back to the taxes issue too, as

So homeless people on the street is the most obvious example.

One of the more obvious examples, right?

Because a lot of these people have mental illnesses and I mean, actually most of them people don't, but like the only people that you, the

Like these are people with these people overwhelmingly with psychological disorders.

Right.

So, but the point is.

That like, if you start actually funding those things and let police actually do what police are supposed to do, maybe you start getting

And I think you can then shrink departments, right?

And you can need, you can have detectives, right.

Who go out and literally solve crimes.

Right.

Maybe get more of those people.

So actually more crimes actually get solved because they don't usually.

Right.

Also like police officers are, are trained, you know, like if you are trained in violence, which is, they are right, like, right.

Like, right.

That is their, that is their solution to conflict.

That's how they are training.

Right.

Is violence.

And to them every, like every, if you're a hammer nail analogy, right?

Like every situation looks like.

It looks like a situation that should be resolved with violence.

And so we shouldn't be so surprised that this is the outcome when we train these people to do that and then put them into

Right.

Well, and there's also a cost issue and this is we're getting close, I think we were an hour now, but I just want

And I think there's been a couple of other conservative States that actually found that it was cheaper to give homeless people homes than it was to

ambulances running and taking them to the hospital, the medical, bills, the drug problems that got worse, you know, all of these things that happen with,

They're they're extremely expensive.

So if you take some of this money from policing, which is reactive, right.

And you shift it to proactive programs that actually, you know, but then you run smack dab into what you're talking.

When you always talk about the just world fallacy, and that's what prevents, you know what cause when people think that, "well, you're

always going to have the destitute, you're always going to have the poor, they're poor and destitute because they couldn't compete."

And that's the way the world should be.

So if you believe that, then you, then, then you're, then you're only too willing to put your money into reactive programs.

But if you believe that the world should be a flatter hierarchy, that there should be some sort of social justice

that everybody has the right to basic food and shelter, then you're willing to put more money into you know, into, into that.

And I, I think so.

You know, and it's just so funny how the most, the biggest flashpoints of right left in the past, you know, a couple of decades

have really been things like healthcare and policing, and that is, they distill down these issues of who gets what in society.

Exactly right.

That's exactly right.

I mean, it ends up becoming these issues of distribution.

Right.

And you know, and, and it's called Liberty to be able to, to hoard everything for yourself.

Right.

It just cause, cause it says it's called Liberty or whatever.

And and not having to invest in your community is called Liberty.

Although conservatives are obviously a very, very good in they're very small communities, right?

They're actually usually more giving within their little tribe.

Right.

But outside of that tribe...

it's about expanding the tribe.

It's about, again, it's about, we have to embrace all of our citizens within the nation as part of our family.

And that's the difference between conservatives and liberals?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And, this gets back to down right down to human nature.

Right.

But like, we, we, we, you know, traditionally, you, you have, Small hunter-gatherer bands, right?

Everyone that wasn't in your band literally was not considered a human being.

Right.

Like it was right, like, right.

Like that is how we grew up.

Right.

That is how our brains developed.

We developed in that environment.

And so the key and I've been, and I believe this to my heart is to, is to expand that tribe.

So that, like you said, really, so, and that means recognizing commonalities.

Right.

And, and, and, and, and.

Privileged.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And, and, and, and you know, and religion's a big part of this too, but that's not, that's where I'd topic for another day.

Yeah.

Well, thanks so much, Christophe.