Ezra Klein with Malcolm Gladwell: Why We’re Polarized

welcome to New York, thank you, it's surprisingly intimidating to do an event here with you because normally you come and do a book event and people are excited to see you, but you come and do an event here with Malcolm Gladwell, people still come like me . I'm very excited about tonight's moderator. Not true either, but I appreciate the sentiment. But no, we are all here to see and hear you. You did not do it. I'm wrong. Did you say at one point in the book that in fact? I don't like myself or I just want to understand that, I want to, I mean I will stand firm on this point, among other things, everywhere I come from outside of Los Angeles, outside of Irvine, California, where I lived.

DC for many years and I find that both places, Los Angeles and, in particular, DC, are full of New Yorkers telling you how much better New York is, so I have developed and this will go directly to the central themes of the book a very strong identity of opposition to New York because my identity is a proud Californian and the 10th district is in which they have often been threatened, challenged and mocked in other ways, yes, but you could also have been here like God, I was on this submarine , oh my god, you escaped. you're on the subway it's trash everywhere it's a lot which subway you were on that was I've been I've been late for a lot of things well the F train didn't go well for me as someone who was in DC for many years, you know?

Our subway system looks like Paris next to DC, that's right. The DC subway has the advantage of being like the New York subway if the New York subway was clean but didn't go anywhere or very far. in SF, which I admit NYC has much better public transportation than anywhere else I've been in the US. Bart is like it's just a light rail system, not really a useful way to get around around the city, yes, it is very disappointing, wait. these are the buildings, this discussion brings us to something that is relevant to your book, that you taught him, this is a book about identity and I was curious, we are describing right now regional identifications, can you list all the ways in which All of them? all the identities that are relevant are laid out and then ranked in order of importance to Ezra.

Well, it turns out I have a board here and I'm going to write them down. I have a thing there where I talk about this. This is one of the important points that I try to highlight in the book because it explains how or argues that identity is a dimension not only of human life but of politics and it should be taken seriously and there is a lot of evidence on the topic. score in the book identity is a fundamental driver of polarization itself, not politics in politics, so there's a great study that I talked about there where Liliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, shows that if you look at Republicans whose political positions should make them If they are Democrats or Democrats, these political positions should make them Republicans, that fact that their politics cross the line does much less to curb their distaste for the other party than if they have identities on the other side of the line. line, so if you're a Democrat but you're in the South and you're an evangelical Christian and so on you have a bunch of Republican-leaning identities that will do a lot more to make you friendlier to Republicans and then just believe that Republicans are right. in everything I asked you.

I'm setting it up, no, but this I can just say that this is, by the way, something that would happen as totally predicted and, in fact, you state it from the beginning of this book, you see it, you make it very clear, this is a book about Paul. It will not be a book about characters or personalities or human beings, they are not trustworthy, infallible, yes you are and you are doing exactly the same thing, you refuse to talk about yourself, damn it, talking about sorry, my mug identities want your list of your dead. I'm going to write them because I love them.

I'm trying to think about how I would think about what makes an idea more important. So father, it is difficult to classify identities until you challenge them. Father is probably fine right now. I'm thinking about how much I am aware of my son and it hurts me, was it really that hard? Okay, go on, father and husband, so deeply rooted. I'm a Californian and I don't like the pride of being a journalist and I believe. a lot about that, yes, I am the son of an immigrant and that identity is important to me. I am Jewish.

I have a linked world of identities around politics, but I think that's easy to say. I am liberal. What are my other core identities? I don't like Manhattan. Well no, that's my disorder, I hold it very close to my heart, we'll get you and I think there are actually important types of identities and people stick together. I have a set of values ​​that I believe are enemies. Vegans it is. In fact, a very important identity to me has become more and more important in recent years and, for better or worse, I try to have an identity.

I am impartial and try to be generous with people. Disagreeing with those, they are the ones that I try to think about because I want to incorporate them into my work in life, and therefore the ones that I have consciously tried to build into identities, not just things that I think are good in the world. , I try to force myself to see that as something that I am NOT something I believe in, so we have a father here, Californian journalists, immigrants, son, Jewish liberal, oh seven, sorry, oh, we are good, not even an eight good person, can't you?

I don't think they are good, nice people, it's different, what can you do? Can you classify them? So what would happen if you had to do it? You think, first of all, do you think it's useful to classify them? No, no, do you think each of these is an equal if I said you have to get rid of one of these as a descriptor, could you do that? I mean, they are descriptors, yes, some of them I care much less about, others I don't care if the world sees me as vegan and me. I am a little more flexible in that than in other things while, for historical reasons related to my tribe, I would not want to give up the identity of being Jewish.

I wouldn't let you take that for me, yeah, yeah. I guess another way to say this is which of these would you be willing to change which change being a parent? I think one is well established at this point. um, I would be. I think there I can imagine a lot of context in which political identities would change. I might like it a lot, yes, and probably not. A couple of years ago I didn't identify as liberal and I had a reason for that, but I've changed my mind about it in recent years. so it's actually an identity that I have changed in terms of whether I claim it or not, yes, yes, but would you ever convert to Catholicism or I mean, that is, an identity that you would ever consider is so conceivable that it's difficult . for me to imagine Catholic conversion for reasons unrelated to identity, one of the things here that was I'm just saying one of my favorites because I wouldn't talk much more about religion because I think it's super interesting.

I have always wondered what it is that if you are Jewish and you are going to convert, what is the most likely faith? You will become an atheist. Yes, there is an old joke that Jews are blue. There's a joke that a boy comes home from Catholic school and says he likes him. What did you learn today and he says? Well, we learned about the three gods, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that is his son. We are Jews, we believe in one God and he doesn't, because there is a, you know there is good. known conversion paths, so you know, a lot of politically conservative Protestants end up being Catholic, particularly recently, that's kind of a known path, but the path from Jew to Catholic is like, I mean, it happened in the 17th century at the point of one you know.

It's not a super happy memory. People did it, we are forced to do it, but no one did it voluntarily. I wasn't interested because I always thought that if you were, you know I can bridge the gap between being a student of the Talmud. and being a Jesuit seems to be the main one and one of the reasons why I think Jewish identity is very important for people who do not maintain the faith. Yes, that is true for me is that identities, as a general rule, are reinforced and activated under threat, so an identity like the Jewish one is very threatened and that is true in general the identities that are left fallow are the ones. that do not arise in daily life those that do not arise very often there are things that I want to say that I do not I do not declare myself a television viewer right where I told you what my diet is, while in reality I will put it differently the people who They become vegans and end up maintaining that identity on the coast because it is an identity that is constantly threatened.

People laugh at vegans right there. The splinter has Bala as a vegetarian movement, but people who are not vegetarians wouldn't run away if they asked me that question five years ago. years I wouldn't even say I'm omnivorous, that's an important identity, yeah, yeah, so identity is often relevant to politics. dimension of the book identity operates under threat, it is strengthened under threat and that is how it tends to be activated not in the only way, but in a strong way, it activates a Jewish identity. The main thing you learn about being Jewish is that Jewish identity has often been threatened, so it operates under a sense of constant historical threat because it was, you know, because the reason I ask these questions.

I think something I've always thought about is that we all have a list like this. I have a version of that. list and also everyone in the audience and I always wonder if the types of our classification are more the classification changes over the course of the day depending on the situation we find ourselves in or is it quite like I was thinking about my mom's classification my mom probably won't change my mom would probably put Christian first Canadian moms third and I guess I don't think she'll stray from life you know what's interesting you just made me realize I put California and I didn't think about the United States, well, it will continue in that too, that was because that is something interesting, because there are actually studies there, that is abnormal, yes, over time, people have come to classify their national identity much more higher than the state. identities, but when you put me on the spot what came to mind was that I was in California, yeah, nothing could because I moved there last year, so I've been thinking more about it, you move and you move.

Back in Northern California, yeah, not where I grow up. Do you distinguish in your mind? Are you saying I'm in Northern California now or that I'm not from Southern California anymore? Know? I'm just saying I'm a Californian. Don't know. However, you feel rooted enough in Northern California for that to be an identity, yes, because it's new, it's a strange identity, you grew up in Irvine, can everyone counter that? Yeah, and now you live in Berkeley, Oakland, Oakland, I mean, Oakland and Irvine County are so far apart. As you can understand in the United States, what do they have in common?

How far away can you be in the United States? But there are big differences. I mean, it's an interesting identity to have as a Californian and because that identity contains two. countries, I mean two very, very different in some aspects, no one knows? I mean, if you ask me what makes up a Nirvana identity, the reputation that Irvine has is basically for being boring, but when I think about it, the main thing I think about is an incredibly immigrant community, so the place where I grew up in school at that I attended I grew up in a very diverse space and particularly because my father is uh, but my father came to this country in the '70s from Brazil, so the way I think if you asked me about Irvine, what I would tell you on a sociological level, How I felt growing up at that level is that I was deeply rooted in the belief that diverse places can be and are great places, and that's why when I hear all this about what is dominant in our political conversation about how these very things are lost essentials and what is there in America if that's not how it was and these others, I grew up in a part of America that was majority-minority racial.

From the moment I could feel it, it was a wonderful place full of amazing people, so it doesn't feel that different from Oakland now in terms of other cultural dimensions. Oakland is very different than Irvine and people in Oakland will probably get mad at me for even comparing them, you know, but what we just went through is a version of the problem that you're focused on that had a stereotypical view. He had a

polarized

view of Irvine, as a kind of Republican. Okay, it wasn't. Even thinking about that, yeah, so I realize we're public roads, yeah, and that's because I don't know your vine, I drive the drive and I spend all my time if I go to Southern California, eighteen to the house, but a Porter ad that's amazing, but I guess you're not from Newport Beach, aren't you, so that's what I think of when I think of everyone.

I'm thinking Newport Beach, but you're talking about inland Irvine County. I guess technically it's a bit. Inland they are very close. I'm worried that we're getting too deep into the geography of Orange County, but what interests me is that you're describing what's fascinating about your book.is that you are describing it in a certain way, the hardening of the identified entity and our identifications with various forms of with various self-descriptors and I continually wonder why they have been encouraged, I mean, I agree with you, they have been hardened, but it is strange for me. becauseIt occurs to me that why wouldn't they be fluid?

But there are the things that you have described, these eight descriptors. First of all, there are eight descriptors that you have to themselves and they have no logical connection. They are all totally different. What I don't understand is why one minute you can't act like a person from Orange County, the next you're only thinking of yourself as a parent, and the next person you're totally thinking in terms of a trying journalist. So I think yeah, I mean, that's pretty much my theory of identity, which is that a big mistake we make is calling singular identity correct identity politics, but no one is singular and things get triggered in different ways. at different times and it's very, I mean.

This is always Obama's line on this, if you go back to his DNC Oh Four speech, he says you know we coach the little leagues in the blue states, we think we don't like federal agents snooping through libraries. of the red states, your whole idea is that we are different when we are not activated by political pundits and pundits who slice and dice us and my response to that is not that you are wrong, you are absolutely right, it is just that as our identities Policies are linked to other identities and become larger, we can talk. about how that happens, they're constantly under threat, there's a very large industry dedicated to activating them, threatening them like going on Twitter for two minutes, it's about activating political identities, at least if you follow that kind of thing and then they become more deeply embedded. . um it's not the only thing that happens and then you step away from Twitter and you're a dad again or a husband or you know you're off and you're a crossfitter, which is a very powerful identity for some people, but when? you're dealing with politics, the more identities come together, the more they become entrenched.

I'll just give an example. There's an Irvine political scientist named Michael Tesla who looked at racialized controversies in the '90s and now, and he also looked at polls. in the OJ Simpson trial or, to be more local, the Bernard Goetz trial for the Subway shootings and then analyze similar racialized controversies today such as those of George Zimmerman or in a different way if 12 Years a Slave won an Oscar and these always divide the country, but in the 90s, those controversies were not related to the party at all. Republicans, Democrats had more or less the same opinions about them.

Today, they overwhelmingly relate to the party. 69% of Democrats, after 12 years of slavery, win an Oscar. 12 percent of Republicans did so by linking identities. together and more conflicts activate them, that identity becomes stronger and the other side becomes more infuriating for you, yes, yes, the two things I want to discuss are the ones you talk about that puzzled me about this phenomenon, which I don't understand why that certain things are not like that. t stronger moderators, so we thought we had touched on our religion before, why isn't it? Would you think if you were a Martian landing in America and you saw how extraordinarily religious this country is, would you intuitively think that religion must be the great moderator of political difference because the most important relationship that religious people have is with God and God does not belong to a party and you would think that identification would flood in, yeah, so why hasn't religion played that role?

So there is an argument that at other times he did. and there are many people who do not believe in this, but I will say to represent it that many people believe that it is a cause of our political position. I don't think any political scientist believes this in my opinion. knowledge, but many conservative experts believe that our political polarization is a function of the decline of religion in this country and, as a result, our political identities become more Sayle and Andrew Sullivan are supporters of this view, as are many others people. One reason I don't think so is that if you look at other moments of extraordinarily high polarization, like the civil war, you'll find a lot of religion in that debate, but religion was a dispersed enough identity or force that it actually existed.

It kind of amplified the conflict because people felt like they had God on their side in a way that I find chilling on both sides of that and that's why religion has been present in times of high polarization and there have been times of low polarization, but Religion can be a moderator or it can guide the conflict depending on how you understand it and depending on how linked it is to other things. I don't tell the story in the book, but it is in a book called Democracy for Realists about Ireland and what it is like. related, there's someone who's going through and through the island and traveling through the island and he meets I don't know who it was, he says are you a prostitute or a Catholic and the guy says well I'm an atheist and the guy says yeah, okay.

But are you a Protestant atheist? What is one of these ways that religion? I was talking about this in a way with Jewish identity before, it can substitute for things that are not your relationship with God, it can mean much more or much less than a relationship with God, yes, yes, but you don't know. When you were talking about in your religion book, I thought about me, my mom, my parents moved to rural Ontario in 1970, my mom is the only black person for miles around who moved to a very small town. conservative one would think: oh, she is going to have difficulties, you know, being accepted by the town, there is no difficulty, because because they destroyed her, because she is very religious of my mother, the very religious name of the town was like, oh , Joyce is a Christian and you know she's starting to hang up.

I hang out with all these ministers and you know the Christian feminists and they all forget that she's black and that was when I was a kid and I was like, oh, this is the beautiful thing about religion is that that identity overwhelms other identities and it makes people forget a little more. Trivial differences, but it's strange how that doesn't work that way and once you let it all go, turn it on it really warps very often. I do not do it. I meditate a lot. I do not claim Buddhists as an identity. I don't consider myself a Buddhist, but as someone who reads a lot about Buddhism, it always seems very, I think I'm using the same word again, that the massacres, genocide, and displacement of Rohingya are being committed by Buddhists. something about seeing an ethical, philosophical and spiritual framework that you understood to be peaceful and restrictive and that it isn't or doesn't have to be, you just recognize how powerful some of these forces are mm-hmm the other thing that I'm baffled why not employment is more moderated, so we know that in recent times people's jobs seem to have been eliminated.

I think there is some evidence that this kind of psychological importance is greater and certainly greater practical importance. in people's lives we work longer hours we spend more time educating ourselves to prepare for jobs in the workplace, so you would think that identities in the workplace would be so strong that they would overwhelm much of this polarization politics if I were a doctor and I went to medical school for Do you know what the reason for my political identity is, what is it? something I didn't spend money on or put eight years of training into, why would I care about that once you probably care less?

I mean, I think there's a couple of interesting things in that one is that let me make the argument or prove the argument because I'm not sure I believe it, which is moderator. I think embedded in some of what you're saying is that our politically

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identities have reached incredible levels. a flashpoint of conflict that I think a lot of us are almost certainly if you're here interested in a book called Why Are You Polarized?, you feel like they have one of the things that I notice in the book is that if you look at social media The divisions in this country right now, if you look at things like political violence, are much lower than in other times.

I mean, look at the 1960s, look at the number of political assassinations, urban riots at Kent State, we are very angry with our politics and I think the big problem with polarization is the way it makes the political system stop working. for reasons of institutional design, but we don't do it despite the height of that conflict, if you experience it on Twitter or on cable news, most people are quite. They've proven it, most people are not. paying a lot of attention and that could be because these other identities are much more important to them. I did a focus group of undecided voters in Pennsylvania and mainly what they said about politics.

Did they disengage because they were too angry like they had views but they didn't want to get involved in it because they had to worry about work and they had to worry about their kids and other things so a lot of the time? People here, politics is a core hobby, it doesn't necessarily compete with our work, but it's a bit like crossfitter, or you know, there are people who actually practice politics every day and organize their neighbors to build a bridge or you know. , organize the anti-Trump resistance to ensure that so-and-so is elected to the house, but many people are following the policy.

People follow a sport. They are tweeting at people they don't like. doing it from the comfort of their own homes when it's convenient has unpleasant emotional ramifications, but beyond that, it's really not that strong and they're not acting in a committed and consistent way when you say that's a third thing I want to talk about. About that is when you say that now many people follow politics as if it were a sport and there is a chapter in the book where you do this regulatory thing in a very fascinating way and so it applies to the politically committed and completely interested. politics takes on a lot of the psychological dimensions of a game addiction, but the strange thing about being a sports fan and I'm a rabid sports fan is that I'm a polarized rabid sports fan in the sense that I have teams that I support and, but it doesn't make me hostile towards people that are a community, if you were, if I'm a crazy Toronto Raptors fan and you're a crazy Golden State Warriors fan.

In fact, I don't hate you. I would love to talk to you for hours. I would appreciate the fact that we share this set of things that we are both passionate about and I would love to hear your arguments for it and by the way, most 90% of sports fans are exactly like that I have had countless conversations with other crazy fans of sports over the years and we revel in each other's differences. It seems totally different from politics in that sense. I don't know, a political conversation can literally drive me crazy with someone. who disagrees with me, but that never happens in sports, so I have a hard time imagining you disagreeing with someone in a way that actually makes you unpleasant.

Which I know you well enough that you seem almost pathologically reluctant to get into conflict with people, so I remember that and Do you remember when you were on my podcast not long ago? I asked you to convince me to be a sports fan, so you convinced me of what's at stake. I don't know enough about sports fans to be honest to argue between this. one where another, all I will say is that I have enough experience in Brazilian football and read a book by Bill Bryson about football hooligans to suggest that sometimes sports fandom can become darker and more competitive.

I love the fact that you talk about sports. The first point of reference is a book written by my first intellectual. For my first words with Brazil. I thought that if. The second was. The second is Mel Bryson because to me this is actually Waialae. Maybe not, no, there is a book written by a very prominent electoral couple. years ago I will, no, I won't make excuses, actually, it's a funny thing about the book, although like this, the third most common thing I've been asked is that someone read the book like you played nose tackle in high school, I know.

I was going to mention it, but good sir, now you tell me it's a sport, it seems very different from sticking to it. Look, I don't think all identities become conflicting, they can, but there's a big difference between seeing someone as an outgroup and just seeing them as another group, even part of your group, as you say there, and this is going to your point about the fluidity of identities, um, I don't know what it would be. like you said your Toronto Raptors fan that's great for basketball look I know sports if someone came up and said the Toronto RaptorsThey suck and you suck, you probably got mad at them, but I think one of the things you're saying is that you're talking to people like a sports fan like, in fact, that's how you claimed identity a couple minutes ago.

You weren't saying I'm a rabid Toronto Raptors fan which I'm sure is true, you said I'm a rabid sports fan and I've been Actually, because I enjoy sports journalism, but not real sports. Having read a lot of sports journalism and read some of your work on this, you really enjoy game analysis, so you have an identity that's quite inclusive. I think there is a problem in politics. that it's profoundly zero and that the stakes are high and the higher it is, the harder it is to see each other is just what I have, I know I'll take care of this myself.

I have a deep dislike for people I'm actually totally fine talking to. I'm a liberal, I'll talk to rabid conservatives all day I enjoy it, I learn a lot about people I don't like and I've met a lot of them over the years in DC, these people who really understand that politics is a sport fascinating, and the people who really follow it because there is a There are a lot of journalists who report on campaigns, and in the middle of a very close, very tough, very close election, you're in a bar covering something in Iowa and they say, Isn't it so awesome?

And I always think to myself. You're a sociopath because the only reason we're there is because the stakes are high about who wins and who loses, so I think things are warped by a feeling of competition within the group and outside the group. where, as you know, and similarly in religion, as someone who is culturally Jewish and interesting, I love to talk. I have very good friends who are priests, it's wonderful, I love talking to people about religion, but it's not a threat to the things I believe in. To be true, one of the arguments I make throughout the book is that things really matter how they are structured, and ultimately in politics there is this huge question of who wins and wields power, so things They have started positively and there is no particular reason to do so.

Your point is that the fact that you are conservative, not actually but hypothetically, and that I am liberal, cannot make us a very productive team when it comes to thinking about how to solve a problem because we both have different ideas, that is why I love reading Tyler. Cowen or Ross Douthat or people who have a different view on this and I do, but because a lot of this ultimately collapses into who has the power to pass a bill, things could be positive, some are they come back to zero and then when it collapses down to who's going to win the election it becomes even more contentious mm-hmm can you talk a little bit about the idea of ​​ranking that you touched on a little bit earlier, but I think it's worth going into a little bit of depth because it helps to frame many things?

This is the macro-story of the book, which is polarization, it does not refer to disagreement, extremism, bitterness, it refers to opinions, affiliations, identities, etc., grouped around two poles, that is, that is the complete definition , is nothing more than that and an argument, which is not an argument. The truth about the world is that what has happened in the last 50 or 60 years are disagreements that before were not classified by political party, are now classified by political party. I always think it's a fascinating fact about American politics, that the Civil Rights Act was a completely bipartisan bill that had a higher share of Republican votes in Congress than Democrats, but was passed and signed by the Democratic president. .

Medicare also had a very high number of Republican votes, which just means that at the time, obviously, the Civil Rights Act was incredibly controversial and divisive. A brutal struggle in American life is an essential conflict in American history that just isn't there. classified by party classified by race who classified by values ​​even by ideology not by party um for the last 50 years we have classified ideologically by what they used being conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans in Congress certainly there are no such things now there is no Democrat more conservative than any serving Republican, of which there used to be many like that, we've sorted a lot more, so we've sorted by ideology.

Sorted by race, the parties are not that different in terms of racial composition. The Democratic Party is now about 50 percent nonwhite. Ninety percent of the Republican Party is white. We've sorted by religion again, they used to be pretty similar. The Democratic Party, the largest religious party. group in the Democratic Party now, like the religiously unaffiliated public parties, overwhelmingly Christian, we have sorted by geographic density. If we go back to the 20th century, the density of the area you live in does not predict party affiliation. Now there is no city that is dense. in the country that votes Republican and the overwhelmingly rural areas vote Republican and this comes down to a lot of psychological culture things.

I talked about Whole Foods and Cracker Barrels, which are House Democrats, make up 78% of all Whole Foods locations, but only 27% of Cracker. Barrel locations, so we've sorted these disagreements, all these discs or demographic dimensions, they all pre-existed this sorting process that we had, all of this was here, it just didn't line up by match and now it does and how it does as the two parties become more ideologically and demographically distinct, triggering much of this threat to identity, creating a rational fear of the other party. I'll just offer one more example. I think it's amazing the 1976 Republican party platform, it contains a discussion of abortion and it says that in our party there are people who believe that abortion should be available on demand at any time and people believe that it should never be available and we respect that difference of opinion.

A couple of years later, that topic obviously starts to classify very differently by party, but Joe Biden, it's funny. I mean, this is all in living memory. Joe Biden was a pro-life Democrat, he voted and said they were difficult votes, but he voted for something that was like against Roe from the beginning. He now he came and said that it is absolutely necessary to protect Roe. I'm similar, if you go back to '96, Bill Clinton's immigration platform reads like Donald Trump now, I mean, it reads completely different than today's Democratic Party, so there were always these divisions and disagreements that they just didn't classify by party and Then the other party was much less threatening to you, not because of some strange psychological identity we have, although those things are real and an accident, but because it was actually less scary, there were people who believed the same thing you believed even in the other party. part and that lowered the stakes, a political conflict, yeah, your box of magazines wrote a really interesting article, I think yesterday, about um joe rogan Joe Rogan coming out to Bernie Sanders and how this was deeply disconcerting and worrying for many Democrats because in some ways he's unclassified right, he's very messy, he's someone who is in many ways and in other ways doesn't sound like a woke Democrat at all and I'm sorry, did you?

I'm sure you read this, we published a couple of articles and people. He got really mad at me on Twitter for defending Bernie Sanders on this point, yes, but yes, the number of articles from him about this. I think I've read them all, so I'm fascinated. This broader point is that the notion of a Joe Rogan being simultaneously you know, hostile towards Tran, I don't know what the best thing is, yeah, I wouldn't even go to that, not hostile, wait only for people who don't know, just Joe Rogan he's the most popular podcaster in the country, he's not Malcolm Gladwell and he and he's a comedian who did Fear Factor, he's said a lot of things that are pretty horrible, things that are transphobic, things that are racist and at the same time he has a lot of progressive views, in particular, I mean, he's a he's a comedian, I mean, he's like a politically incorrect comedian, that's the best way to understand it, who is never the last, he probably leans left in most topics, yeah, yeah, so what you're saying is that twenty years ago a figure like Joe Rogan wouldn't have been anything special. in the sense of holding what now seemed to be the notion that someone could hold unconventional positions unconventional would be fine we would be fine we would be much happier with that than we are now that's your argument that's it so I want Let's say that this is such an interesting point that today there is nothing special about it, it is the political elite, like the people who are very involved in politics and, if you classify them very carefully, who are more notable than him, but the leaders of the parties, and in particular the vocal wings on social media, are incredibly sorted, but even today most Democrats and most Republicans, especially in politics, are not ranked, they are not there, they are simply they are not in the future, they don't always know what they are supposed to believe on each topic or they don't agree on what they are supposed to believe on many topics, this is part of what I think the article you read, if it is Matt's article argues that you can't, there is no political majority in this country made up of liberals, that is a small political minority if you want to win elections you have to win over people, it doesn't literally have to be Joe Rogan, but There will be many people who will disagree with you on key things, we are much more organized than before. but when the reason I'm pushing is important, I think, particularly for people who were very interested in politics, recognizing that the thing about being very involved in politics is that you're still much stranger than the average person, including the average voter, yes, Jordan Peterson.

He's also messed up the same way I almost hit people. I know a lot of people have strong reactions against him, but if you pay close attention to what he says, half of what he says is more than acceptable to liberal people and the other half is kind of like no, it just turns out we had something strange about him: he's Canadian and if you understand him as a Canadian, it's totally different, you know, because I'm always fascinated by this because Thinking about Canadians that he's Canadian always seems very interesting to me because I think it's like the clenched fist of a human being, he has a very combative behavior, he is very strict, while the majority of Canadians in the community have nothing or a little, they are something like that. relax a little reluctant conflict polite here we go, so no, here's my here, you went through a whole thing on my podcast about your Canadian identity and how there was some kind of march at your school, but he thought it was cool because kids are so cute and yes, no, no, yes, yes, there is something I want to say, I keep in mind that I am from a small town in Canada, which is super quiet.

Canada, I mean, is quiet. I come from like the most relaxed, but here is Jordan Pearson's Lo and this is an interesting point because it has to do with this Jordan Peterson. The reason it matters that he is Canadian is that much of what threatens liberals about Jordan Peterson is the extent to which his language reflects the language of the angry white man. Republicans in America, but he's not an angry white male audience in America, he's an angry Canadian and if you're an angry Canadian, he's not on the rise, he's not empowering Canada, he's a small minority, he's in a land like a super cold awakening. liberals, it's like this guy who says: he wait a minute, I'm not happy with that and when you realize that the man is a professor at the University of Toronto, he is the only one I would dare say that he is the sole member. from the University of Toronto Faculty, which is a short distance from the center of the political spectrum, everyone else is like we say, the left, everyone else is far away, here, to the right, so in your world it's like this lonely and beleaguered voice, who is it who do you know? one is taken seriously no one has been listening he is completely out of the mainstream and when you understand that that is what he is it is much easier to understand him.

I have weaker opinions about Jordan Peterson, other people seem to me that he basically strikes me as like a highly symbolically masculine self-help author who has extremely strong and compatibly expressed opinions on social issues and every time you talk to a fan of his about him , you end up in this back and forth, you're like, well It was crazy to say that Jordan, the Justin Trudeau, has a killer fairness doctrine because, you know, he supported a women's march, they say yes, but that's not the real Peterson, what he really wants to do is clean your room and I just I really don't care what he would say about Peterson or Rogan about a lot of them, sort of dark web intellectual world and then what he would say is that, inActually, I think it's generally true for American politics in general that one thing is to see what I think is really important is that we are looking at, I think we are looking at the axis, the main axis of the change of political conflict, which is , as you know him, peterson brogan, sam harris, a bunch of these guys like we don't care just- healthcare payer, they're okay with that, so a lot of things would traditionally codify the left-right divide in the United States United, they are leftist and there is a coalition for them in Bernie Sanders, etc., um, what they are very polarized about is what you could call this social justice divide what unites them is a distaste for political correctness for the warriors of social justice a feeling that you can't say the things you wanted to say I mean, again, this Brogan thing is perfectly understood by Joe.

Rogan likes Bernie Sanders, says he'll probably vote for him in the primaries. I think he likes Bernie Sanders because you know that Bernie Sanders is authentic and leftist on economics and so on, and also it's not particularly on a guttural level that he woke up that he now has. a more wolfish political agenda, but that is not what Bernie Sanders is in politics to do and there is a loosening of restrictions like the left-right economic divide seen with Donald Trump, who ran for office saying he is Time for Republicans to stop fighting. on taxes on Medicare and Medicaid and start fighting for immigration or continue or deepen your fight on immigration Tucker Carlson Fox News is again trying to realign what their party is about by saying it's time to compromise on things like taxes so we can actually stop the Browning program. of the United States, so I think one of the things that you see with a lot of these people to the extent that Peterson has a policy is a policy about demographic change and the kinds of claims that new groups are making about language and how people are talked about, etc., and I think that is increasingly the axis of the conflict.

I think that people do go to the politics of YouTube and I think that the politics of YouTube is really very important because there are many young people who understand its politics. It's not a policy about economics, it's not about what Washington was like when you were there, I think at the Washington Post and when I was there at the Washington Post, where you could really tell where someone was by whether they signed it or not. . Grover Norquist is anti-fiscal compromise is now about how you feel about the collision over what we can and can't say and how we do and don't refer to people and whether America is a country founded on white supremacy and defined about institutional racism or not and what do you think about the cages at the border and so on.

I think we are in an era, among other things, of a realignment about what the central axis of political conflict is and Trump and Carlson express it in a more Republican way. Peterson, maybe in a more Canadian way, but this is something that we're looking at and I think it's important, but it goes back to the notion of classification in a world in which we are more, in which we are less classified, in which we are. surrounded by people who don't fit into very clear templates for all their opinions, don't align according to a political label, am I right that it's easier for us to coexist peacefully with the Rogens and the Petersons as Peterson once was? long before he became famous when I was doing my development book and black I went to see him he actually quoted my David and Goliath book and I forgot why and I went to see him and I passed that and he lives.

I always remember that he lives. don't do it if you know Toronto Toronto the university is here and north of the university it's fancy old money Toronto is Forest Hills Rosedale it's like Booga and then south of the university it's like hipster Toronto just east of the university east of Spadina and Bathurst is like the really tight little houses of working class immigrants, it's where you are when you're not hip enough to be south of the University and now you're rich and white enough to be north of the university, just on the way east towards the university is, oh, sorry, this is Wesley East is gay.

I think I invite you to draw this, complicating where Jordan Peterson is. Is he in Rich Waspy? No. Is he into hipster? No, he's in the East. As a gentrified gay. No. He is in the west. of Spadina in a narrow little house like oh when you go there like oh poor guy, he's like excluded from all areas of privilege, fulminating against the system that oppresses him makes a lot of sense, but it was the most interesting. I spent about four hours there. It was like the most fascinating four hours I spent maybe in my entire life it was he was incredible I was like oh my God this guy is the one who waits the most which one is Rogan or Peterson well actually Rogen did it too Peterson Peterson like in person he is hypnotizing you, it is most interesting.

I mean, I couldn't recommend an afternoon with Jordan Peterson more, but you're in. I have to say that the lively night has taken a turn. I didn't expect the living room from him if you don't take anything. far from my book, it should be that they should have dinner with Jordan, yeah, no, I was going to say that his living room B is why he's back and forth, you understand? I think he's fine, but he doesn't have your traumatic geography like, oh, okay, God is. You would say you are coming to my house. I have your address, it's like you live.

I don't mean that Tirana was clearly organized geographically, but I think I found this in your book anyway. The most fascinating part for me was where. you described this fact about how everything starts to look, there is an expectation that everything is starting to live a certain way and an expectation that everything should align a certain way and when we encounter those who break the mold in some way, I'm having more and more trouble with it and I found that part of your book heartbreaking that was very emotional for me. I don't think my book should be read.

Its something sad. Is not a. It's not a happy one. book and it's not an easy book, it's about how a system works and what worried me as you were discussing that is that the book is, in many ways, about systems that collapse multidimensionality down to unitary dimensionality, we are multidimensional like you. We are saying before that we have many identities, we have many ways of being in the world and almost all of us are deeply politically messy because of the way it works, where you need a huge space of issues and a huge space of questions and, finally, collapses. to yes or no, yes or no on the bill, this woman or that guy on the vote, who should be president, the Republican or the Democrat, eventually it all falls apart down to these Nerys, yeah, and you're going to lose an amount tremendous in that, and it is not like that.

Just there I want to say, I think about this on Twitter all the time, that Twitter is a place that takes complexity and reduces it to simplicity and we lose an enormous amount of ourselves in the sense that there is no one I can think of who like me more or as much on Twitter or even like me a lot on Twitter as much as I do in person Twitter is a place where it turns us into the worst versions of ourselves because we lose our nuances or complications, we lose a lot of signal and I mean, it's not The reason I really like podcasts, it's a place where I can take people out of that and have much more expressive, much more complicated and nuanced discussions, but I think it's important, it's the case, that politics is becoming collapsing, is the case. that at the same time that these things do not define us they are also part of us and that is why the question that I want to say in some profound way, the question in all these systems is simply what are we designing, what are we designing for ourselves to make one of things.

Questions that people keep asking me about the book because it's a little dark about human rationality when it comes to politics. It speaks volumes to how even very smart people tend to delude themselves more when it comes to politics. This question is like I don't believe humans are rational and the answer is that sometimes I think they are, sometimes I think they are not, but you have to structure systems the same way markets channel self-interest. and they can channel, for better or worse, our ability to think. Reason can be channeled into thinking our way to where our group needs us to be or thinking our way toward the truth or thinking about things that are just interesting and I think journalism is a good example, I think when I got into journalism , which is still kind of a '90s hangover from that newer audience is the highest good and at least opinion journalism that consisted of thinking it was interesting.

I think it was often quite bad, but it encouraged people to come up with a very interesting version and Now I think there's a push to think about the group and that can be good or bad, but it's just a way of structuring a system and I think that it's really important to have a realistic understanding of it and what it does to us, yes. I was thinking along those lines: I'm your friend and my enteric Cowan has Disney always asked one question: what is your least predictable opinion or what do you think other people ask teal what do I think is false?

Yes Yes. Now I'll have to ask you to answer this question in a moment, but I wanted to say that it makes me wonder if we shouldn't start with our teal question, our teal answer. the question even is what was it was again what is what do you believe what do you think is true that most people believe is false yes that tends to be now what we bury about ourselves and I wonder if it should be what we foreground to usefully complicate our image of each other and the second thing is that I think maybe it was Tyler who made the observation that when most people answered the teal question, the answer was something like this.

It's not a fact that most people believe it's false now that they can answer the question. They are unable to find anything about themselves that challenges conventional wisdom. What is your answer to the teal question I answered earlier? The main one I gave, but you can tell me if you think this is a trap. I do not think it is. It's just that our entire system of animal agriculture is deeply immoral and participating in it is immoral and people shouldn't do it, they're not. that's like if you got some applause if you didn't get applause I'd say you really made it you got some applause it's just saying that most people believe it's fake it's something that literally everyone believes is fake like not to be an idiot, but you're probably wrong, like literally everyone is saying that's not true, make it interactive.

I'll just say the strange thing about the teal question is that it's worded as true or false instead of acceptable or unacceptable. I'd say you were Most people's answer would be simply: I really believe what you said is true, but there's no way I'm giving up. Is that bad? So, I'm aware that that's where it could be a trap. In fact, I think a lot of people believe that statement is true, but not enough to act on it, yes, Mike Mike, that's why I add that it's immoral at the end because I think a lot of people believe it's true but unimportant , oh I see, oh I see, so I added a crit like yes like jab at the end my adjustment my teal answer would be uh I think all prisons should be closed tomorrow for all criminals I think that's a good answer, right?

Didn't I hear you answer this once you believe in ghosts? I'm crazy about the Tim Ferriss show, yeah I believe in ghosts so that's good, maybe that's better and I hate that question. I don't understand why it is like this. I gave the reason why not. I don't do that anymore. I'm really puzzled. Wise people would believe that to be false. I just don't understand why you don't believe in ghosts. handle all manifestations of human existence, I mean, I agree with this. I have a very deep belief that I actually have a very deep belief that some subset of paranormal events are true and we're just not sure which ones oh. that's interesting, I'm sure there's some signal and all that noise and I feel like I've read here and I'm convinced, but I don't know which noise is which noise is which one is you know well, I believe in ghosts because my aunt and my man, they lived on an old plantation in Jamaica and they were so old, there were slaves there once, the upstairs room, the upstairs room was haunted and they said it had a my arm.

Tell me why I was sleeping there she said well you know it's the haunted room just keep in mind there's a guitar in the corner and sometimes the ghost likes to play the guitar I was like nine years old and I was like okay and in the middle of the night, sure enough, the guitar starts playing, so I mean, what did I leave out to conclude that it's a ghost? Ghost like through the guitar. Good for a ghost. He plays the guitar in a you know, curly way. Well, yeah, okay. It was night. Don't know. Generally, we never lose good and bad guitar, but that's why we arepolarized, we only have time for more questions.

I wanted to talk a little bit about UM, but and this is what someone actually answers. This is what you're talking about as a question along these lines: local politics, you do this. I remember this is the section of the book where we talk about local politics. you point out and it is so hilariously true that we obsess over our national political representation even though we have almost no chance to influence it. but most people can't tell you who their council member is and it's actually someone you have a real chance with, yes it's deeply irrational that we don't know who our council member is, we do know who our senator is. and you say it would be really healthy if we could somehow reverse that, what does that look like?

Do you think we should all be? Because, you know, should we all show up to those council meetings that last seven hours and I mean, no, I've been to those, aren't they great, it seems like there's an informational ecosystem being built that gives them a lot of that information, so I mean, it's very easy here because you guys, could you have the New York Times? The York Times is an incredible newspaper and it is not only an incredible newspaper on national and international issues, but it is also an incredible local newspaper. They do a wonderful job, so it's as easy as making sure that what you check every day once a day is home. page of the local section of the New York Times and you are just following that story and I mean New York in general, among the many reasons why I hate it and the place and that is that there is so much coverage of local New York politics that There are three New York mayors who have been involved in the 2020 race this year and three prosecutors from the Southern District of New York who have a reasonable impeachment role, so there is plenty of room to follow local New York politics and It's really easy in other places, it's harder, but in most places it's actually the case that you can connect to local news sources.

I mean, to me in San Francisco it means like reading the San Francisco Chronicle. I subscribe to the LA Times because they do a lot of good, like in California in general. coverage, but it has become something that you have to do and this is an important point that I am making there. It has become something that most people in most places have to work to do again, it is easier, I think specifically here, but when I grew up in Orange County we got the LA Times. I'm sure if I grew up there now, we would. just be an online subscription to the New York Times mm-hmm right, people are gravitating towards these national resources.

I wish I would like to read the box. I would listen to revisionist history as you would. There is so much capacity to have national news. Now, you actually have to consciously build news sources and news habits that give you local information and a lot of times it means subscribing because they have different business models and that's something you can do, but you have to be intentional and something that I stand by in the The book is seeing that identities are something that other people are manipulating in you. The next logical step is to be intentional about which identities you want to activate, strengthen, reinforce, etc. and you can do that by building your informational role and you talked about how a generation ago when you asked people where they were from, they were much more likely to name the immediate place they came from, yeah, and now they're much more likely. that they mention some bigger yes, so you used to say you would, years ago you would say you were from the town you grew up in Irvine and now you say you're Californian or even more American, so there's a lot of great information on this , but state and regional identities are supposed to be the most powerful in American politics, that's why everything is based on states and districts, we don't represent people, senators represent states, house members represent districts, One of my favorite studies in the book comes from there being too many political scientists named.

Hopkins and everyone is called Daniel or Dave and there are several of them named Hopkins, but it is a good book called The Rise in the United States and one of the studies he does analyzes the literature over time in the United States using Google Ngram and codes how many times people say I'm an American or I'm an American and versus I'm a Virginian, a New Yorker, a Californian and a Rhode Islander, etc. and for much of American history, state identities are more common. in writing and only after the 60's I'm American, I surpass and never look back on our state identities and that's super fascinating, plus the other one I'll mention is that when you ask people to say why they're proud of identities and They have done it in national and state when people talk about national in reality they tend to choose things that are somewhat political.

I'm proud to be an American because I believe in freedom because I believe in equality because I believe in and when you ask They tell them why they're proud of where they come from regionally, they tend to use geographic things. I'm a I'm proud to be California because we have cool beaches and it's sunny unlike here and so and so like even that has regressed in terms of understanding that as an identity that has values ​​instead of geographical characteristics, yeah, yeah, that's really interesting when what happens when you go is true even at the level of if I say I'm really proud to be from Queens when I was never treated even beyond the state identity What am I?

Am? Am? Am I appealing to two characteristics or am I being the values ​​of death? I don't know, it's a great question, yes, but what if? I don't know what the values ​​of Queens are specifically, you know, I'm just speaking generally, although if I'm talking about my city, yeah, I mean, I can imagine a time in the 18th century where if I said where you're from, If you'd said the city, you wouldn't have said you were a Virginian, you would have said you were up there. Yeah, you know Richmond and whatever it is in particular, you know.

I always do this in Canadians. I always say I'm from Canada because I just assumed that no one in America, if I say I'm from, you know, Waterloo, everyone will think I'm from Iowa or you're from Waterloo. I'm from I'm from. Does that have meaning to you? No, I just didn't. I know there was a well in Waterloo Canada. I'm fascinated. Do you remember when you had a blackberry. What do you think was done? Waterloo University of Waterloo I didn't have a black baby, just go, yeah we had our brief moment in the sun. We are almost done.

I wanted to point out that there was one big glaring exception to this principle that I observed when I was on my book tour, which is when you're doing, you know, at some times when you're doing these events, they pass the microphone. around and to the people and you know you say over here and per person you ask a question and you are always forced, as a person on stage, to move mm-hmm, pick someone on the left, so I'm in the middle of course . it's silly okay like why does it matter and it's because in the short time that people have been in the audience they've assumed an identity based on where they are, that's actually a big point that feels so haunted yeah , if you don't ask.

Anyone on the left says: What is happening to them? Any problem with the left? I'll say it when everyone reads the book, that's a very relevant point to the chapter on Henry. He shoots well, yes, that's true, that's what we'll do. We'll leave that I think this is I think our time is up, we won't do it until we have a couple of questions. We didn't ask many questions. Well, you asked. I asked one. I massaged him a little. How about this? Any level of polarization you can imagine would make it impossible for us to continue as one country absolutely.

I mean, we almost had it. That was the Civil War. I don't mean so simplistically. I mean, I think it's actually important to say polarization. It's not new, it's not the first time we've had it, you can have a lot more than this and it can be a lot more dangerous. I will give you my terrifying thought, please make a slight corrective in the Civil War, what do I do? I don't know much about it, the little readings that go on and on, but what is that? The little readings that I have done about it, although I am always surprised at the extent to which it arises in someone who you know that the families confronted each other because they could not find them.

You know you found yourself fighting for the north against your cousins ​​who were in the south or there was a I remember reading about the Battle of Chancellorsville and the north is on the Reb of Rappahannock's north side and the south-south army are on the south of the Rappahannock and they're holed up there for weeks and weeks and weeks and nothing happens and they start a trade where the southerners would send tobacco across the river to the north and the north would send I forget what something is to the southern boys and then they'd sing songs on both sides and and as you realize, on that level they were polarized, they were like, do you mean like that?

There were these types of people fighting for the South, we're not slave owners, they were people who were this. I think it goes to what we were talking about before and I think it's actually an important point to say polarization. it's in a fractal phenomenon, it's not something that if you keep looking at it at smaller and smaller scales it exhibits the same characteristics, it's internally contradictory, it changes, you know you're polarized from north to south, but then, as you say, if you met, you know The people in both armies were going crazy, they weren't polarized, so political polarization can increase in very, very dangerous ways, even when countries are polarized on key things, but no, I'm fighting, I don't think the level of polarization.

This also goes to the question: the kind of polarization we're seeing now is not like the kind of polarization we saw in the civil war, which seemed to me like there was a civil war on some level, it was about incapacity. of the political system to handle the inherent contradiction and the founding of America that we don't have, we've resolved that inherent contradiction, now we're in a different kind of problem, I mean, I don't think so. We are going to have a civil war over slavery. I agree that we are not going to be politically polarized because of that, I hope not, but I think that the place where political polarization becomes very dangerous or one of the places where it can become very dangerous is that. creates, organizes around conflicts that can prevent the political system itself from resolving our political system does not work well omits polarization because majorities cannot govern polarization makes it very difficult to achieve the bipartisanship necessary to govern, so this is a terrifying example What I'm going to say is that if you imagine the fractures of the United States in the mid-20th century, like in 1968, imagine that level of violence, if you imagine those murders, if you imagine those are very fundamental questions that are asked, but the Can you imagine in this political system where everyone is organized by party.

I'm not saying that's a tear. I'm not saying we get into a civil war, but I am saying that's where I imagine things start to look really bad, yeah, and you know, it's not like countries don't. It doesn't last forever, I mean at some point something happened so I think we should be worried. It's a distinctive thing about America that it's able to make huge strides in civil rights in the '60s because race had kept America from becoming polarized. per point and doing something like civil rights would repolarize it, it took that depolarized period for the civil rights act to be passed and I think it's an interesting contradiction, it was depolarization that allowed it and in doing so, spending that depolarization on the Civil Rights Act. the cost was polarization, it was a price worth paying and I think it is something we can manage, but polarization plus a political system that does not work in the midst of polarization is a very dangerous structure and that is why no other system that works like ours is a hundred years old. history of constitutional continuity or more we are the only ones who have made that work it is because our system collapses in its polarization and one of the bodies probably made it work it is that we were not polarized for a long time, which is scary to think for our future what what what and a lesson that we really have to summarize, but that suggests that this was a thought that I had when reading your book that there is a natural end point to this cycle that you What we are describing is that all demographic trends point to a rising majority of the Democratic Party so maybe what happened maybe our way out is you know the Republicans are much older.

Immigration trends are toward Democrats. Texas will be democratic very soon. when that point no when you get a when you get a we can't restore the Democratic Party within a generation I think the most optimistic story to tell is that California's history California looked a lot like the national complex We had Pete's Proposition 187 a generation agoWilson, they were very similar arguments and not exactly similar people, but there were some alike, but demographic change swamped that and now you can't have a political party in California that is anti-immigrant. that way that dozen at least nod their head towards diversity and inclusion, the positive path is California, the negative path is disenfranchisement, which is a political party that has a lot of power and that feels itself losing, begins to change the system, you have things like the Supreme Court.

Judicial decision on public sector unions. You know you've seen in North Carolina, specifically, that many Republicans have lost gubernatorial power by trying to change the Constitution to keep the power anyway, demographic change just solves some of these problems and makes this system reflect their majorities more than now, that is a good result and that the majorities change the system so that the political minority that has political power changes the system so that the majorities cannot take political power, it is the terrifying crisis of legitimacy, yes , the first of those two possibilities. The most elegant way I've heard of describing it comes from Charlemagne to God, you know, the host of The Breakfast Club who described the Trump administration as the white man's Hail Mary.

Hit it on that note, Ezra, thank you very much. I have written a fascinating book. Thank you all for coming.