 Welcome to economics and beyond I'm Rob Johnson president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Sarah Kinzior a writer and author and Who has a podcast of her own called gaslit nation? Which is very very exciting. She's the author of two books the first the view from flyover country and the second Which is very recent? Hiding in plain sight the invention of Donald Trump and the erosion of America Sarah, thanks for joining me. Oh, thank you for having me well, I Was very very touched in listening to some of your podcasts particularly in relate and to the new book and You and I share a similar experience. We both have two young children and And You were talking in the podcast about with all of us in such close proximity during this pandemic and lockdown How Frank can you be with your children? And I guess it at the ages minor 8 and 11 and I guess yours are just a touch older than that 9 and 12 or 13 9 and 12 So it is a delicate time and particularly I would say because you're own Offering your own vision is so hard-hitting and in times frightening But I'll tell you My one of my dearest friends who passed away last Christmas Day was the author William Greider and he in 2009 set up a Website of his own and the first thing he said to me was look at this in the first post Was about how he trusted in young people Because they had fresh eyes. They could sense right and wrong But they haven't been acclimated to what is feasible and I would say that in my Owned searching I Am often kind of jarred by young people. I net has this young scholars initiative, which is about 11,000 people Who are very very vital and vibrant and see a need for the change in the world? But one night after my board met Two of my board members both from California John Paul and drum and pike came over for dinner and we were talking about Climate change and Naomi Klein and her husband Abbey Lewis are friends of the family so my daughter Sarah had been quite exposed To the concerns and and they went to the student strike But Sarah became very quiet at dinner. It was very quiet the next morning When I drove her to school In the middle of what turned out to be her second period in fifth grade at 10 years old that next morning I got a Text message with a photograph and she wrote this poem What is everything by Sarah? What is everything? Is it all essence or is it all answers? Is there more? Why am I all covered up? Never seeing past Present or future is it all an illusion? Why is it all collapsing? destroyed All those lives not knowing Will we ever know? When I heard that or read that excuse me. I Was not in mode of proud father. I Was in the mode of the weight That that child's awareness is forcing her to bear It's really a call to action for people like you and I thought it was very very daunting and I've been what I would say Even more careful in how I Share with with my two young children and today in listening to your podcast again It reminded me of that That critical moment. Yeah, I mean it's a It's a very difficult thing to kind of draw that line We're of course, you know, children are going to be aware of what's going on, you know, they're going to recognize The danger that Trump poses simply by observing him They're obviously aware we're in a pandemic when you live in a city like Louis St. Louis like I do You know, they're going to be aware of poverty of racism of all these structural issues And so there's a combination where you you want them to have a sense of history You want them to understand the root causes of the catastrophes that we're facing and also how people face them in the past but without completely demoralizing them without leaving them with a feeling of Futurelessness and that feeling has kind of haunted younger generations, you know, that feeling has been with me For like the last 20 years for basically all of my adult life And it's not one that I want my kids to inherit But I do want them to be aware and you know, one thing that I have noticed is kind of what you pointed to that There's a refreshing kind of candor a willingness to address The severity of the crisis head-on to just simply identify what's happening right before their eyes, which I think adults lack especially adults that have long worked in institutions that want to protect institutions or Salutations or prestigious venues, you know kids don't care They tend to have a much more direct sense of right and wrong and they tend to see through a con artist often quite quicker than adults and so yeah I do have hope for this generation in that sense But I think that what they're facing down, you know This combination of climate change of incredible corruption of the erosion of freedom in our country It is an unprecedented mix of challenges and so it's it's our obligation as adults to protect them and educate them but You know, that's what defines a lot of my life Like I feel like I'm not really fighting for people my age anymore I'm trying to Illuminate the conditions we're in so that they can be changed so that a better future can be there for by the time my own kids Grow up and so it's not so much as you know How do I relay this information to them now because they're quite aware? But how do I work to try to you know change these broken institutions this broken country for the future Do you do you see the pandemic which is Really unmasked a whole lot of things as an ally in in your pursuit does it How would I say we can those who were strident about some false conscious conventional wisdom or is the fear Of this chaotic disorienting time make people want to look back to the familiar rather than forward to a new vision I think good about the pandemic. I mean I see the pandemic as something bringing mass death and also an administration that wants to normalize mask death mass death that wants to Basically strip away the intrinsic horror of it that seeks to devalue human life You know, we've seen this from the moment it emerged when the Trump administration first denied it existed Then they wouldn't provide adequate medical equipment We haven't seen the traditional rituals of mourning in place. The flag doesn't go to have staff You know, there's all sorts of things about this that I find alarming because they're in line with the dehumanization That often accompanies an autocratic regime, which is I think you know what they are trying to build I think the pandemic it does highlight inequalities and Suffering and a lack of access to resources From different populations that was already there and that was of course underplayed by the press and not adequately Addressed by Congress, you know, we see a disproportionate death toll among black Americans among native Americans among impoverished Americans and we're also seeing scapegoating Where both the administration and just various figures in the media and ordinary citizens are viewing other populations as diseased because of their ethnic background being one where where folks have been more likely to get it or just because they're for example Chinese American and there's been this weaponization of the coronavirus Against people from China or just simply of Asian descent. And so I mean, you know, I feel like I'm living in a horror movie I've predicted a lot of the things that came to pass in the Trump administration because they're basically following the Dictators playbook, you know, you see things like the purging of agencies the packing of courts the use of propaganda They're all fairly standard. I did not see a Pandemic coming but the minute it came it's like no autocrat wastes a crisis They always can bend it to serve their needs whether those needs are financial or the consolidation of power And so I do think it's working to that effect and it's also to some extent mitigated mass protests and other You know Organizational activities where people get together face-to-face to try to solve a social or political problem There of course were there were mass protests last night in Minnesota And so, you know that I think that coronavirus is not going to completely stop this But I you know, I worry about their health You know, I worry about the health of anybody that's out in the world trying to navigate a very Unpredictable Mysterious virus like that. We don't fully understand the effects of it We don't fully understand how it spreads or what it does over the long term You've raised many things in this Conversation already I I'm very concerned what I might call about the quality of representation in the United States and for that matter in other countries we've had a Money politics that I often refer to as commodifying social design and Narrow or narrower representation Well in the context of this pandemic With an election on the horizon I'm concerned about the process of allowing an election to actually take place into people to We might call vote at all or not just vote who they Prefer, right? There's a lot of work Reuben William Barber works very closely with people I know on Stopping voter suppression, but it feels like With the pandemic the scale of this What I'll call refraction or or anesthetizing democratic reaction could could Further what I'll call deeply damaged people's trust in the United States of America Yeah, I think that's true. I mean we've handled this crisis abysmally, you know The United States the United Kingdom Brazil Russia You see the same tendencies and the leadership of all of these nations. These are either autocracies or aspiring autocracies that have Administrations seeking to personally profit off of the crisis and that have you know, no concern for how it's affecting Average citizens of any of these countries or about that being known and you see flagrant violations from people in government Whether it's a Jared Kushner here or Dominic Cummings in the UK and so forth I am worried about the election because I never thought that this is going to be a free and fair election Like when Trump got in in 2016 I immediately thought it's going to be very difficult to get him out because he's going to abuse Executive power to try to rig every apparatus of accountability in his favor and he's backed by a political party That's completely acquiescent. That's complicit. That is in fact the mastermind behind this, you know, it's not Trump It's it's these people like McConnell that know how to navigate a bureaucracy. It's his backers Abroad, you know, these various oligarchs and mafiosas and so forth. And so of course, he doesn't want to leave power Because if he if Trump leaves office, then he loses his money his political power and his immunity from prosecution So he's going to do everything he can To remain there and it's not for the good of American citizens and that could mean using the same tactics That they used in 2016 which is a mixture of domestic voter suppression for an interference Insecure machines But then with coronavirus we have to reconsider the way that we vote and making sure that people are safe And I've been saying since March that they need to switch To vote by mail in all states, you know, this has already worked very well for states like Oregon for a long time And Trump of course is trying to claim that this is, you know, a rampant way of Ensuring voter fraud, but that that's complete lie. They see this as threatening That's also why they want to shut down the postal service And I've been frustrated by the uncertainty that we have now where so many people just don't know Well, how am I going to vote? Like how do I register to vote? Where am I going to go? How do I know that my vote will be counted that this will be a transparent election and The problem is the more questions That everybody has about how this process works. The more that uncertainty is going to be exploited by Trump and by the republican party Because they'll come out like if they lose and say, oh, well, this was illegitimate People couldn't vote because of coronavirus etc etc utterly ignoring that they were the ones who who tried to prevent people by vote from voting by Putting forth a simple system of vote by mail So it raises a lot of questions But at the heart it's just abuse of power It's the fact that they have no desire to serve the american people or to have a government that was chosen By the american people were just, you know extras in this play that revolves around trump and the criminals in its in his midst Yeah, we uh at inet Uh today published a piece by a gentleman named philip al-velda which is a very very uh detailed quantitative study Of the wisconsin in-person primary vote on april seventh And the rise in cases and deaths that followed that It strongly suggests that uh, how would I say that we should Not have in-person voting It does not uh Have any it doesn't say anything about what I said I in relative terms. Yeah, you want to have By mail voting But I'm I'm a bit afraid That this kind of evidence this is part of why philip wanted to raise it up the flagpole now Will be used to postpone or cancel or whatever elections in the name of public health But not in the name of democratic health Yeah, I think they're absolutely going to try to do that. We've already seen Jared kritchner basically Discussing the election in that way being like, you know, maybe we'll have it. Maybe we won't and using public health as the pretext And it's a very difficult thing because there is a genuine public health crisis You know, usually when the trump administration tries to pass some sort of repressive policy They invent a crisis. They say that there is a migrant horde, you know, clamoring at the border of Mexico So we have to have a national emergency declared whereas that's not actually happening in reality You know, they invent prior massacres. They invented the bowling green massacre. They, you know, they deal in alternative facts But this is an actual public health crisis one, of course They at first tried to deny existed But yes, I think that they may use it um to try to postpone the election And I think that I mean Ideally it would be the democrats and the republicans and, you know, independence or anyone else coming together to make sure that the You know integrity of the election system remains intact I do think the onus falls on the democrats for obvious reasons, you know The reason being the republicans don't care about election integrity other than violating it They need to be very proactive The worst thing would be if they suddenly in october or september are greeted with Members of the trump administration saying hey, you know, we're just looking out for the public We think it's too risky to vote We're gonna have to postpone the election and then it would be postponed again and again until there, you know There is no Election they need to assume that they're going to do something like that and get a system in place now You know one that is proactive and not reactive and you know I think voting by mail is is the safest way to go But they need to make sure that that is in fact A system that can't be tampered with they should be dealing with experts and if there is going to be in-person voting since You know often these matters are You know decided by the states that I think they need to be more creative They need to maybe have it be more than one day or stagger out the times, you know or limit The number of people that could be in a place in a given time or you know Add more polling locations to spread them out or what have you but the worst thing though Like as I said, it's for this to be decided months from now in a move that looks insincere or You know reactive to the republicans instead of Sincerely advocating for the you know the guaranteed right to vote of all americans Well, let me ask you a question. I I think your characterization of the republicans is right, but Both sides Running for office democrat republican incumbents and challengers Need to raise an awful lot of money In light of having to pay commercial rates for media exposure create activists teams And in various other costs We don't have public financing of elections and so that Healthy democratic thrusts that you describe of the democrats holding the republicans feet to the flames Is not one side effect of that that they'll just chase the donors over to trump side Yeah, I mean they do chase the donors I think that's one of the greatest weaknesses and flaws of the democratic party is that they are in fact beholden to the donors And there's this tension between you know older members of congress who are particularly beholden To these donors in this apparatus And you know others who want to inform it a reform it I mean and honestly it doesn't completely break down Along age lines, but I think you know younger people tend to have less wealth or at a disadvantage You know somebody in their 30s or 40s wants to run for office It means they're going to have to make enormous moral compromises to even get in the game They're going to have to you know, accept financial help for people They may despise and then be beholden to them and I think that that hurts the range of people who might want to participate In government and be part of government. And so it's a deeply flawed I mean that isn't even because it's a deeply corrupt system And I think one of the things that needs to be done to just reform this entire disaster is repealing Citizens united is getting dark money out of politics. You know, I live in Missouri which has more dark money Than any other state in the country We were earlier to it the problem emerged well before Citizens united and we don't have a representative government at all Even when the voters, um, you know vote for various propositions like for Racing the minimum wage or for something we had called clean Missouri Which is supposed to get rid of cherrymandering And you know dark money through in in campaigns and things like that Then the republican legislature will just vote it down They override the people's will flagrantly because they know that they're untouchable And I think we're seeing a system like that now At a national level and it's it's very difficult to combat and I think that The democrats not tackling this head-on and not tackling a lot of our problems head-on Whether they're ones particular to the trump administration and its criminality or ones that predate it By decades that were just never fully rectified or addressed. We see that now I mean, I do think we have weak leadership and it's unfortunate It's the worst time in american history to have leadership that is so timid and so seemingly afraid of You know rocking a boat that's already sinking That's that's a great line. I was in uh, detroit in 2016 uh On election day And a friend of mine, uh, invited me to a party Election night seven people that I had gone to high school with But before I went to the party I went and saw a gentleman His name was ulysses who used to be a security guard in the medical office building where my father worked And when I saw the ulysses I said well, what's going on? With the election here and it was a rainy day in detroit, but I said what's going on He said oh mr. Johnson It's like you went to a restaurant where there's nothing on the menu anyone wants to eat People are just going to go to work and stay home. They're not going to come out Not at all And that proved to be quite a prescient statement Detroit has a population that's just under 800 000 people. That's not voters registered voters. That's the population Turnout relative to 2012 was down 112 000 And despite that the city of detroit Of the hundred largest cities in america had the lowest percentage vote for donald trump 2.9 percent Voted for trump So if they'd had the turnout if the democrats had been more inspiring It would have been uh, how do I say a different result with regard to those electoral votes in that particular state And I think there may be analogies elsewhere, but the interesting thing to me was among White suburban affluent people all these people I went to the party with had a jd Or an mba or an md or a cpa all advanced degrees And of the seven people I was with six voted for trump And I said what do you guys think you're getting they knew I that I hadn't And and they said well rob you went and left and went to the east coast and you and your family have prospered We're here our children are here And whether it's welfare reform or criminal justice reform or privatization of prisons Or nafta The democratic party has not served us and on the day after trump Was nominated at his convention. He came to the detroit economics club and he scolded Top management in the auto industry for not preserving jobs And you know his kind of bumper sticker was the system is rigged And that diagnosis Rang true with an awful lot of people. I think you and I would agree with that Oh, yeah But his prescription once he was in office Was in contradiction to the diagnosis. He exacerbates the problems But I do think the democrats contributed to those problems that allowed him To become inspiring for people who traditionally would not vote for that man Oh, I think that's true and you know trump is good at that He's good at honing in on human pain and exploiting it for his own advantage He's good at recognizing weaknesses and flaws and he did that throughout the campaign and it very much is regional You know when I would go somewhere like from st. Louis when I would go to dc or new york or something I felt like catniss in the hunger games like coming out from district 12 to see the capital I mean it was a a completely different world After the 2008 Recession and across the board. It doesn't matter what your uh, you know political persuasion is people were suffering People were losing opportunities. People were losing their sense of the future. You know, there's the sense that You know the good jobs the mechanisms of survival were being hoarded by a small elite You know mostly conglomerated in wealthy cities on the coast and that absolutely no one really cared What happened to us here unless there was some kind of disaster that they could exploit, you know for ratings or What not a tornado a riot Or if there is an election and then they would suddenly show up in iowa and in neighboring states clamoring for our votes, but there is a sense of Dehumanization and you know those who voted for trump from here. I mean, I think it's a variety of people It's not a monolith. Some of them were intensely attracted to him because he's a bigot because he's a xenophobia He's a racist And he you know doesn't deny that he stokes that kind of sentiment on purpose There were others who I think were not paying as much attention to the election They were generally kind of disgusted with the whole thing, you know, they just kind of like the guy, uh, you know You were talking to um where they just kind of looked at both of them at hillary and at trump and said like I don't want to be part of this and I've met people who who did ultimately vote for trump because they thought that he Would have some kind of um, you know strong man approach to the economy that would emphasize The midwest that would emphasize the industrial midwest and that would at least recognize that our conditions hadn't improved Because one of the things um that was hard to deal with during the obama years were the the speech is honestly from obama You know where he would describe america And how we had gotten past our, you know terrible financial crisis and we were you know blooming and flourishing yet again And I would listen to that and think man like I want to listen I want to live in that country like I want to live in that america That he's describing that bears no resemblance to the reality of me or anyone. I know and this isn't all on obama I mean he was handed financial collapse in two wars, uh by the bush administration And I think you know during his first term He he did a lot to keep it from getting worse than it actually was and he did make some moves to fix it And he was of course, uh blocked by the republicans, uh throughout his entire presidency, uh whenever he tried to do anything But I think the lack of recognition especially from someone who projected such empathy Generally speaking as obama did it was selective empathy and it wasn't hitting here when we would hear about how rosy things are People would internalize that as I you know, he must think i'm a failure Or those those people must think that we're all failures out here and trump honed in on that resentment And on that hurt uh and exploited it like a vulture and it did contribute uh to his win Yeah, I think that plus the fact that rock was a black man Made a whole lot of people Uh, which am I call vulnerable? To reacting to the hostility even though hillary clinton Obviously is caucasian Uh It it's sort of just set a stage. I think it made it much harder for barack obama to To lead and to govern in some respects Uh, especially as that as you said the kind of what i'll call the seduce and abandon of speaking hopeful Acting like everything was going well when lots of people were suffering that contradiction Uh what you might call fed the diseases of despair but I I think uh I I let's let's talk a little bit. You're you live in st. Louis. I'm from detroit racism Otherness Which is not just related to race but gender and other things Has been almost the seed corn Of how trump holds his coalition together You have a man who Said the system was rigged. He mowed down 15 republicans before he beat hillary clinton And then He can't really appeal to broad-based economic prosperity So resorting to what people call identity politics demonizing polarizing. I remember Charlottesville is a horrific episode But like I said, you're you're from st. Louis. I'm from detroit When economies Hollow out or become desperate. There's very fundamental research that says As economic insecurity goes up Racial animosity goes up in lockstep People are displaced from focusing on the economic structural conditions And they start blaming others And then the reason I raise this now is when the black man is the president And They I think many people somehow mistakenly felt like well, obama will take care of the black people or take care of The gay people or the movement because that's how he gets their votes, but he's left us hanging out to dry He left us to despair Yeah, I think that that oh sorry gone I was just gonna say that this mixture between identity politics and Economic despair is a very toxic cocktail Yeah, absolutely, and it's one that you see any Aspiring dictate or try to exploit, you know You see the same things with molosevic or hitler or anybody who finds their minority scapegoat And then they pin the problems of the world on them and you know, they use that and I think This is especially effective on, you know, older white people, especially white men Baby boomers, um, you know who had experienced Easier times to some degree, but also I think consciously or subconsciously fell in a position Of privilege and what trump was doing was encouraging them to embrace that encouraging them to think of themselves as superior And to think of themselves as, you know, having been robbed, you know Having been taken advantage of and had their, you know, rights or opportunities stripped away And the thing is is, you know, they were but so were black folks of that generation So was anybody in america not any tiny group of elites after the 2008 collapse people really did lose their jobs Their their ability to pay their bills Their benefits, um their sense of, you know, hope and dream for the future They really did lose that but it was just white people pretty much, um that we're going to vote for trump And that's because he made it acceptable for them to embrace, uh, you know, this toxic form of white identity To weaponize it and to kind of publicly Reveal in it and I think, uh, the more the media encouraged this the more they treated it like entertainment or a joke or even bought into many aspects of The white supremacy that he was peddling, you know, because the media is a, uh, you know, racist business Of its own the worst that it got and you know, the bottom line is that no one has been looked out for no one's life With the exception of trump and his crime cohort has materially improved since he came into office and in terms of civil rights Um, it's been a you know, a terrible time. It's been a time of rising hate crimes of courts being rigged You know in favor of those who seek to discriminate against others of voting rights and other rights being attacked and Um, it is it is very frustrating and uh, but I think part of this is the refusal earlier To address a lot of the pain and suffering americans were experiencing head-on I think that the obama administration was unwilling to do that because they saw it as an admission of failure Like as if they were saying we have failed you whereas in reality, you know, the the problem was very complex It was structural it predated the obama administration And even the bush administration a lot of this is an extension of the reagan era And the kind of fruition of those policies coming to pass Uh, but they still I think that an admission of it goes a long way And I think hillary clinton realized that during the course of her campaign, um, where she suddenly was embracing policies more along the line Of bernie sanders um policies that are labeled progressive or even radical but are really more similar To new deal policies into what a lot of these baby boomers and whatnot actually grew up with and experienced In their own life and that you know, I had a small taste of that kind of america as a kid But I certainly haven't experienced it. Um as an adult on my own you know one of the uh scholars that work very closely with uh With inet is named peter teman. He's a professor emeritus at mit and I was an undergraduate student there And he wrote a book a couple of years. I guess in 2016 seven probably 2017 released Called the vanishing middle class in the book Has a basic premise That as time has gone on and with globalization and technology The value In the economy in the financial sense Is be increasingly created by knowledge intensive services And that requires a certain kind of pathway through education to assimilate those skills and and to uh, how would I say Become credentialized or accepted As able to work in that sector But what peter identified Was that the poison of racism And the way in which public school systems are structured Isolated or cordoned off And segregated Led to a system where the rungs in that Ladder of progress were not there And what he found most disheartening In studying this in deep dive in data and and so forth Was that I think the way he put it is about 30 of the population is in high-value added services about 70 percent Is in the low margin services And not being well paid kind of gig economy were But only about nine percentage points of that 70 Were african-americans But so many of the caucasians Voted against repairing the public schools In order to which am I call separate themselves from those others That the entire system was disintegrating And that the Vanishing middle class Without the rungs in the ladder for black white hispanic asian Unless you were wealthy and privileged at the at the starting line Led to the deterioration Of our country and of our political system And I don't think I don't think that diagnosis It's tragic. It's a social construct. It's not essential or necessary, but it feels like it's where we are Yeah, I mean, I think that that's It's true and it's gotten much worse Over the last couple decades and I think that Credentialism is part of that, you know jobs that once required just a high school degree now require a ba Jobs that required a ba now require an ma or you know, even a phd or a degree Above that and that puts people either in an enormous amount of debt or they just simply remove themselves from the process They think well, I can never afford this. I can never do this This is a world that I can't enter and that's hard enough on individual But I think it's hardest on parents when they're kind of looking at like what possibilities Does my child have in life and how can I get them there? And then they look at the average cost of like college tuition and they're like my god I mean, there's absolutely no way in hell and I don't want to saddle my kid with a lifetime of debt And then you also see uh increasingly it's you know private school kids Having an advantage in college and public schools, you know trying their best I think while they're being underfunded to prepare kids For college, you know, even if it's like even if the kid's not interested because they just know that the absence of that degree Will be such a black mark for them If they go out into the job market and so I think it's a it's a system that's designed to reward You know a lee or upper middle class at the least families and their children Who understand that the system even exists, you know, who feel this sort of Um desire to you know prepare and groom for it to stack their resumes from early childhood And I think all this might be going out the window now because of coronavirus I mean it was gonna implode anyway because what you really have is a generation of people my age Like in their 30s and 40s who have a lot of debt from college Who now have children and they're thinking well Jesus, you know, I can't even pay off my own debt How am I going to pay off my kids debt and college didn't really get me a great job? So is it really worth it? So I think that was always kind of coming But I don't think uh, if we're going to have to do things Virtually if we're going to have virtual classrooms and virtual school these lines between elite institutions and You know public regular institutions will blur because everyone will be trapped in their bedroom from the pandemic watching The same lecture and no one's going to want to shell out a lot of money And I mean, I am worried. I'm worried about the system of higher education because they think there's value in learning You know, there's value in study. There's value in reading and having teachers That can guide you through it. I'm not against that but I feel like it's become, you know, a very sleazy business One that that exploits people's vulnerabilities. Um, you know, and that often can crush them into a lifetime of debt So if it gets uh radically reformed, I think that's a good thing, but um, I think at any rate Big change is is coming our way. You know, we're in a holding pattern now because of the summer But when when the fall starts and either college is open or don't or public schools Any schools open or don't I think there's going to be a lot of re-evaluation about what is this worth? What are we trying to accomplish? Who gets to participate? How do they get to participate? And so forth Yeah, I think I think you're right on the money there Just right on the button because I talk to lots of people particularly young people who are postdocs or assistant professors They can see the stress Uh, under which major universities are are now encumbered they see Administrative leaders deans and what have you who are all making a million dollars a year resorting to Well outside marketing for funding but but also adjunct professors and all kinds of ways not to fortify and secure the career of a of a tenured professor which makes Those professors much more tentative much more obedient to elites And it reminds me wendy brown at berkeley. He's a brilliant scholar and a book called undoing the demos And it's it's about what she called neoliberalism's stealth revolution And as I listen to you and I'm and I'm reading I see What what you might call the tyranny of meritocracy to take the phrase from michael sandel's forthcoming book I see the conformity There's a wonderful book on the staleness of elite education called excellent sheep Wendy's book talks about how the arts Are being commodified we've talked about how politics is being commodified How education is being Kind of shoved up against the wall commodified and and credentialism Is a it's a treated commodity And you mentioned early on in this conversation How at times the press isn't working for the public good. They're working for their advertisers And the taboos that they abide by All of which kind of contradicts the basis for health and faith And what I'll call wide open democratic discourse which Uh, we might call are the underpinnings Of a healthy responsive society Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, careerism and conformity they spring from this fear of being left out of what is a very, very narrow Very credentialized system that gives you access to wealth and just access to baseline Stability, I think that people, you know, once they get in this way in media and policy and in any kind of job They are terrified of being booted out because once you lose your job in America, you know, you lose your health insurance You lose your pathway forward the longer you're unemployed the less likely it is They are going to find any kind of steady work in the future And so people play that game and I think that the system also Just encourages people who are already willing to conform, you know, they don't like it if you're unconventional They definitely don't like it if you challenge power and even with a, uh, you know, proto-autocratic very unconventional You know president and administration at the moment, there's still reluctance to challenge it overtly There's reluctance to call a crime a crime and a lie a lie And it's a similar thing to the kind of reluctance during the obama administration To admit that people are suffering that people are hurting to just call things like you see them People want to pretend that they're doing fine themselves because they want to believe that this institution You know the system that they've invested so much of their life and their money and their faith in that it's real But I think it's illusory, you know, it crumbles around us all the time whether through overt corruption of our political system or something like the pandemic which puts all of these these flaws and these failures in plain sight, you know, where you can't deny that they exist But yeah, you know, it's it's been sad for me Like I live in a place like st. Louis where, you know, in my mind I'm surrounded by people who are interesting who are creative Who have ideas that could be, you know, beneficial towards society and they're just absolutely locked out Because they didn't get a college degree or they didn't, you know Go to the right college and they certainly don't live in the right city And, you know, this often affects people disproportionately if you're not white If you're not a man And especially if you don't have money and all of that leads to terrible conditions in terms of Who actually gets these influential powerful jobs? You know, that's why we have like Jared Kushner in the White House He kind of exemplifies this whole racket, you know, you buy your way into Harvard or your dad does and you know You marry the president's daughter and then you use your Power in office to just commit crimes and absolutely no one will help you Accountable because they're too afraid of the system of power that brought you to prominence in the first place Yeah, I know Jesse Isinger at pro-publica Has just put out a paper on the implications of The what you might call the nature of the bailouts which both parties went along with but which uh Kushner and a team have Had a lot of influence over and what you're seeing is all of the big strong private equity firms Blackstone and Carlisle group and all these their prices are going up Assets and existing wealth is being uh How to say fortified and protected And at the same time all kinds of small business is Going out of business is collapsing in all an unemployment rate is skyrocketing It's as if the bailout is to protect the donors In the existing power structure And I think only if Access to voting in election becomes more broad-based Can people respond to this? uh dreadful experience Yeah, I think that's sorry gone. No, that's it. Go go go. No, I mean, I think you're you're absolutely right that They're using this to consolidate their power And I think what the pandemic shows is that we have a class It's like beyond the 1 percent, you know, we have an oligarchy class that can just coast above any kind of You know catastrophic event because of the sheer hoarding of wealth that they've managed to accomplish Like this isn't affecting them in any way. Uh, it's not reflected in the stock market The stock market's not if not reflecting the economy and there's no one looking out You know for small business owners either, uh, you know, this isn't like a pro capitalist system, it's a pro oligarchy Pro plutocracy one thing that worries me is that in you know, this appears to be an indicator that the election is not going to be free And fair because in a normal sort of circumstance You would have the republican party being very concerned that small businesses or even, you know relatively small to medium Corporations are being hit so hard by this pandemic that you have a hundred thousand people dead that you have your own base Potentially getting sick and dying and not having access to medical care not having access to the equipment needed They're utterly Unconcerned um, and they've been like that the whole time They've had a number of extremely unpopular positions put forward and people have reacted with condemnation And they just you know roll along their merry way So i'm worried um about you know voter turnout and whatnot, but i'm also worried that the republicans have acted like They've got this presidential election on lock basically from the moment that trump stepped into the white house You know the leverage of the public has diminished So dramatically over the the past four years, but really over like the past 20 years where you see massive protests against things No reaction from government little coverage and media or skewed coverage It's it's a very frustrating thing well, sir, i was Inspired to ask you to to come on this program with me when i read about your background because You you have a great vitality as a speaker and very you know heartfelt Uh expression of right and wrong And i i'd learned that from your podcast But i'd learned in the course of exploring that You actually did a phd in anthropology and you focused on I believe it was autocracy and particularly uzbekistan. Can you can you share with me? What how did you get on that path? How did you get curious in that realm? um Guys a long story well after i graduated college i worked in journalism i worked at the new york daily news And i was there during 9 11 So i was reading a lot of articles about the war in afghanistan And i got very interested in the surrounding central asian countries, which i didn't really think Had been adequately covered countries like uzbekistan You know to make a long story quite short I went on to indiana university and got an ma in central eurasian studies So i could learn to speak uzbek and russian with the hope of doing journalism abroad and kind of filling in those gaps While i was there i began working as a research assistant for an anthropologist I got interested in anthropology because honestly there's more opportunity to write about places like Uzbekistan you know in that field than there certainly are in a regular American newspaper and this is of course media was already being gutted and these opportunities were vanishing anyway And so then yeah, I applied to To a number of schools. I got a full ride at washington university in st. Louis moved here in 2006 finished my degree in 2012 and i focused on uzbekistan But what i ended up doing because westerners got basically banned from uzbekistan right around the time that i was Planning to go because the uzbek government had fired On protesters and killed about 800 people in what's known as the andijan massacre And they didn't want anybody there writing about it I of course went on to write about the massacre anyway Thus reaffirming that i would never be allowed in uzbekistan and then focusing on the diaspora that had been created by that Massacre when so many people had to leave the country and they began So many uzbek people and began setting up blogs and all these ways of interaction and talking about politics That were never allowed in uzbekistan And so i was very interested in how the internet was being used by dissidents and how the internet was being used by authoritarian regimes for surveillance and for control And how all these facets of the internet that were at this time new things like anonymous comments How they could be exploited and all of this proved very advantageous in understanding the 2016 election Here where i was seeing tactics used that were so reminiscent of what The uzbek government or russian government or azerbaijani government would use against their own citizens, you know, they often refer to Steve bannon as having pioneered the strategy of, you know, flooding the zone With with nonsense or there's another word they're using Propaganda conspiracies and so forth, but this is a very old strategy and in terms of the internet It really was pioneering much more effectively by dictatorships from the former soviet union I remember listening to the podcast they called the big steel And it was all about russia the clip toocracy and then these these techniques There's a young scholar named emma brian who's been a fellow in a Someone we've funded for research And was got very involved in the diagnosis of cambridge analytica and it almost felt to me like science fiction Oh, she was on our show. She she came on gaslet nation and we interviewed her about it. Yeah It was a it's a very horrifying interview very illuminating, but i mean what she's discovered Is appalling so yeah I was reminded of her as I listened to one of your podcasts because she had experienced What i'll call rather formidable threats to her life and i remember you talking about similar kind of Challenges to that were presented to you and But but emma she's done some really great work for inet and I'll i'll send you some of the things that she did for us for just for your records It's So you you studied this It's almost like You started with this becker stand and all of a sudden you've got a window into the world Yeah It's just amazing because the united states now has these Founding documents and so forth, but Nothing whether it's the courts Or the legislature or the media none of them act like Which are might call that romantic vision in all of our principles and founding documents and This you I guess what i'm saying is after you studied a bit. Did you start to smell? Incipient autocracy at home Well, yeah, I mean I certainly saw parallels in terms of corruption in terms of You know, I guess what we call purchased meritocracy where the sons and daughters of elites Were the only ones who could get certain opportunities And you know, one of the things that was most chilling about Uzbekistan is of course, it's a democracy On paper, you know all the rights that citizens are routinely denied freedom of assembly freedom of speech A free market are all guaranteed to them, you know through their Constitution and they're supposed to have a functional justice system and it's all a lie and you know, some of the Folks that I knew in Uzbekistan were doing what was considered a very subversive kind of Plot which is basically trying to get Uzbek officials to follow the own their own laws the laws of their own Constitutions there is a group of Uzbek lawyers who would represent clients and they would just be like Yes in the constitution it says that you cannot demand bribes of people on the street You know, they would say this Uzbek policemen and so forth and you know, yeah I was always aware of course, you know, you can't not be growing up in america that our laws Were not always practiced on paper and there is you know, a long hundreds year struggle of trying to have The ideals of the founding fathers that they themselves did not hold up in practice to have those ideals Actually enforced and have them include all citizens and not just a narrow few But my study of it did coincide with the us kind of going off the cliff because of the great recession because of massive technological change and hyper partisanship and you know, all these the sea changes that were going on And it coincided with me having children and I think when you have kids It does change your worldview because things that you were not directly engaging with like the public school system or You know, what the cost of child birth is or child care or any of that is nowadays you might not know that But as soon as you are financially taking care of a dependent and you're trying to envision that person's future You become much more attuned to uh inequalities and um, you know systemic rigging of the system around you It's not just affecting you it's affecting the person you love the most and so all of that was kind of Going on my mind at once and the other thing is you know, once you study An authoritarian state or once you go to one, you know, it'll haunt you You will never want your own country to turn that way and it's not like there's ever been a completely free democracy You know every democracy is flawed But there's a real difference obviously between a democracy and an autocracy and I could see how america Could fall and I could see us moving um in that direction and then with trump It was like a violent acceleration of of what I feared would be coming And I hoped that people would stop it I hoped officials would at least take advantage of the fact that this is someone who's committed criminal acts and you know Hold him accountable and prevent him from um, you know Abusing executive power in the way he has but they haven't you know, they they've caved every time They've let him get away with it every time And that's something that that worries me too because I do think we are heading In the direction of russia in the direction of these other mafia states Yeah It's funny last night I don't have a biological brother, but my next door neighbor through my childhood Now lives in southern china. He works with power generation company and he's about to retire And I said well, what does it feel like with the pandemic and everything? And and he he said to me uh, well, I'm so stoked about living life in a free country again And then he's kind of dot dot dot. Is that what I'm coming back to? And uh, so I think I think these are these are very daunting very daunting challenges I guess as we come down to the how we say the home stretch here In our conversation If if you Were asked On behalf of your children in mind What reforms to implement in the united states to put us back on track What would what would be the top five on your list? Oh gosh, well climate change, you know actions to to slow climate change and you know Fend off that kind of massive catastrophe as much as possible dark money and politics Corruption and elite criminal impunity the fact that people With enough money and power and privilege can essentially do whatever they want and have decided to infiltrate our government Those people all need to be brought to justice, you know Those people all need to be taken to task and right now they're treated as untouchable and they're doing an enormous amount of damage So I put that as a foremost Priority, you know, I think we need something akin to like a truth and reconciliation Commission combined with like nurenberg trials to really clean out The raw and then you know on top of that I think uh reforms to education to access to a quality education everywhere to not have it built on your tax bracket You know my kids go to public school in st. Louis And you know, I love their teachers and I think that you know, they're getting a pretty good Education, but it's always a struggle to just get basic resources basic funding that you know, a few zip codes over They have no problem getting and that inequality that starts young and it'll last You know for a long time unless you're able to overcome obstacles that were not your fault So I guess those would be like the big five Okay, well, I heard you say in one of your podcasts that a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down from a mary poppins Song and that I appreciate your five-part spoon full of sugar to help us gain direction one of my favorite books Is called the life of poetry by a woman named muriel ruchiser. It was written in the 1950s. I believe and At the beginning of 1949 And at the beginning of the book she's talking about why sometimes in dangerous times people are a little bit afraid of poetry because it stirs the imagination and they want to settle down But she makes a declaration And she says if we are free We are free to choose a tradition And we find in the past as well as the present our poets of outrage like melville and our poets of possibility like whitman And I sense Both of those dimensions with a More than a spoonful of courage Characterize the path that you've chosen I'm fond of music and musical lyrics and as I listened to you today It reminded me of a lennard cohen song called anthem Where I just go with the verse that was ringing in my mind The birds they sing at the break of day start again. I heard them say don't dwell on what has passed away Or what is yet to be? Yeah, the wars they will be fought again the holy dove She will be caught again bought and sold and bought again. The dove is never free So ring the bells that still can ring Forget a perfect offering There's a crack a crack in everything That's how the light gets in sarah You shed light On the things that matter for our recovering our balance our integrity And how would I say our path towards a prosperous Future and I think of that in terms of delivering to all of our children What we need to do to get to where we got to go So I want to thank you for being with me And I would like in a few months To call on you again And we can explore where things are Perhaps around election time From a slightly different vantage point That would be great. Thank you so much for having me on Thank you and uh How would I say someday I gotta meet your children because I know Yeah, we'll do that because I know I know for sure That your children are getting a great education because I got one today. Oh, well, thank you so much. I appreciate it Thanks. Talk again soon. Bye. Bye And check out more from the institute for new economic thinking at inet economics.org