 How is the cell phone quality in Paris, by the way? Cell phone is good, but I'm actually a 2G man myself. But you don't have the problems we have in America because when we want to do a phone interview, if it's not a landline, it's like talking to somebody in a tunnel. Right. I don't know. I've never I've never been. I can't remember if I've ever been interviewed over the phone. I think the problem would be the microphone, which is, you know, not terribly high quality. But I was hoping I was hoping you were going to say that in Paris, the phone quality is much better than here in the United States and that we're a third world nation. Everyone wants everything to be better in France. And I've lived here 17 years now. So it's long enough to sort of be over that and just know all the flaws and all the shortcomings and just sort of like roll my eyes at at the French. I mean, I love, you know, I love France and I love the French culture and the French people, but it's not, you know, it's it's high. It's heavily romanticized in the States. OK, the premise of this show, just so you know, because we're rolling. OK, sure. Every place is better than the United States. That's the name of the show. So, you know, I hear that. But I'll say this, too. I remember when this was back when I was much closer to your politics, but I might even even be more I might have been more radical than you are, David, at the time. And it was the first time I ever really traveled abroad as a as an adult, young adult. I went down to Ecuador and I realized that I I'd never felt more American than when I was in Ecuador. And I was ready to sort of condemn the U.S. and and just sort of, you know, boycott bananas because people work on plantations with awful conditions. And then I got down there and realized, well, if we boycott and bananas, no one's going to have any income in terms of the working poor there in certain parts, obviously. So it just sort of scrambled up a lot of the the preconceptions I'd had. And and again, you'd be I don't know. I don't know if you've ever lived abroad. My experience from having lived abroad is that there's a lot of things about America that I just really, really like that are just really decent. Americans are really decent people. There's a there's a really deep deeply rooted sense of decency, I think, in America. I agree with you 100 percent. And what I say to my listeners, and it's the same thing I tell my children, the best way to love this country is to hate it from the very core of your being. I mean that that it can always be better. And there's so much that isn't great, obviously. And the whole the whole nature of the project and experiment has been trying to address those flaws or with people identifying those flaws and then pushing and acting active, being activist and and militating for addressing them. So certainly there's there's it's it's not all a bed of roses, but there's still I don't know. I'm I'm what I call a Whitman populist. I don't know if you if you're familiar with the the Walt Whitman to the original Leaves of Grass edition. I will read Walt Whitman eventually. Let's get to the the meat of the matter. But I will tell you how I'm going to propose to my next wife. OK, how's that? I'm going to drop to a knee. Yeah, and say I hate you slightly less than every other person on the planet. It sounds like a winning strategy. Have you have you met this lucky woman yet? In other words, I hate your missing throat. I hate America slightly less than every other country. You're a missing throat. You hate every you hate everyone, but your future wife just a little bit less. I think you got that. I think hatred anyway, British Prime Minister Theresa May remains in office despite losing big last week in a general election. Sounds like Donald Trump. Yeah, with 650 parliamentary seats up for grabs. Theresa May's Tory Party, which we will now refer to as the Conservatives. They lost 13 seats. The Labour Party gained 30 and now has 262 seats. The Labour Party has 262 seats to the Conservative Party's 318. Prime Minister Theresa May still holds more seats than the Labour Party, but just a former government. That's the parliamentary system, which unlike American democracy, it's not a zero sum game in Great Britain. There's nuance, there's compromise. It's called the parliamentary system. You have to make coalitions. Meanwhile, Russians took to the streets to protest Vladimir Putin's kleptocracy. Good luck taking to the streets in Russia. France has a new middle of the road president and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a look at the current state of America and concluded Europe has to go it alone with or without America and maybe Great Britain. For more on this, we are joined by Druda Grunstein. He's the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, and he joins us from Paris. Did I get all that right? It sounds like it to me, but, you know, I think you're the expert on all this. Yes. Most importantly, you're in Paris today and you sound like you're in the room with me. Yeah, don't don't glorify French internet service providers, please. We are also going to talk about cutter. Because I always assume cutter was the most enlightened country in the Middle East. There they gave us Al Jazeera and they seem to be in the middle of some kind of proto World War One Serbia, Austria, Hungary trigger that's going to create there was ever a real actually applicable reference for the game of thrones. This would be it. It's a bunch of it's a bunch of royal families in in fighting between a bunch of spoiled spoiled rich royal families. What do you want to talk about first? So here's the problem. After Trump took office, I was filled with piss and vinegar ready to fight. And then he got the better of me and Trump fatigue set in and I became crippled for about two weeks and only wanted comedians on my show. Let's laugh. Let's have fun. I can't talk about Trump. And then I got a second wind and then I start really going after Trump. And I realized I didn't get a second wind. I contracted Trump paranoia and it's obsessive now. You're in the reality TV phase of the pathology where you just can't take your eyes off it. I even ordered MSNBC. I call Trump the white bronco of American politics. Nothing's actually it's really boring. There's not a whole lot going on, but you're watching just in case. You got police cars ever catch up to him. Yeah. Rachel Maddow is the AC Cowins. I so I'm sitting there. I prided myself on never turning on my TV. I actually called my cable company and said, I want my MSNBC and I have MSNBC and I I come home and I turn it on. And I'm a fool. I'm a fool for Trump to the exclusion of everything else that's going on in the world. My listeners, I suspect, are in the same boat. That's where you come in. I'm happy to I'm the intervention. You're the intervention. I'm going to the Friars Club in five hours. And I'm going to be talking to Marty Allen. Hello, dare. And he's an intellectual. Marty, I'm Joe. Well, he is an intellectual. He thinks he's anyway. The point I'm making is I want to be able to discuss things other than Trump. Sure. Where do we start? Do we start with Britain, Qatar, Germany, France, Brexit? Where do you want to start? We could start with France. Since I'm here and the first round of the legislative elections were just yesterday. And and in a in a way, in a way, what you have in the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, is almost the anti-Trump in a lot of ways. He he's this he's he Trump is an old maverick who did a hostile takeover of the Republican Party from within. And Macron is is a young maverick who did an outsider end around of the Socialist Party and and succeeded in this gamble that no one gave him any chance of winning. And where Trump is appeals to some of the sort of basis, baser instincts and the worst aspects of American politics and society. Macron is really trying to appeal to the better aspects of French society, the to to optimism, to openness, to values, to to the scent, to the this idea that France can be a model for other countries. Can you help me out here for a second? What is his party? Well, that's the thing. So Macron started came into government recently. He was a political and economic advisor to the previous president, François Hollande, and then became the minister of the of the economy. Kind of like Gordon Brown taking over for Tony Blair. Yeah, but he started, he was a private sector guy. He he he went to the to the high, the the the top French school for government administration, then went into banking, made some money, made some connections, and through that became this economic advisor. He served in government for, I don't know, three, three years, I think, three, four years tops, maybe less as the economic minister and pushed through a labor reform that you would probably have been out on the street protesting against. But for someone who's lived here in France for 15, 16, 17 years is kind of necessary because it's the French labor code is just impossible to navigate. Well, now Hollande identified as a socialist. Hollande campaigned as a classic socialist against international finance. But when he took office, he tried to govern as a sort of third way centrist. And Macron identified before he was running for office. Do we know what his political identity was? Yeah, well, that's the advantage that Macron had. So so when when Hollande sort of switched course and did a bait and switch, it really generated a lot of opposition among the socialist base. Macron essentially left government about a year ago, formed this movement. It wasn't even a party called En Marche or on on on on on the go and and then essentially mounted this outsider campaign and he refused to run in the Socialist Party's primary, which would have obligated him. He would have lost and it would have obligated him to forego his own run. So he ran as an independent, but he clearly identified himself as a centrist reformer. He's looking to essentially cut government spending, cut the government's weight or proportion in the economy, which is well higher than any of the other European and OECD countries. I think it's at 52 percent compared to about 45, 47 percent. What does OECD mean? The organization for economic cooperation and development. It's sort of a club of advanced economies. So Europe, I think Mexico is now a member. Some of the more advanced developing economies. But it's sort of like the gold standard for, I guess, what you would call neoliberal economic management. France is this sort of odd hybrid where it's a country that is very rooted in tradition and very, in some ways, sedentary and with a huge government, a huge public sector in terms of what they call the function, the government administration or the bureaucracy. And that sort of sucks a lot of oxygen out of the out of the economy. And at the same time, there's a very, very heavily regulated labor market so that it becomes very difficult for companies to let go of workers. And so they're very reluctant to hire. And so there's this two tier hiring system of permanent contracts and temporary contracts. And to give you an idea for a young person who has a temporary contract, they have trouble renting an apartment. The banks won't loan to them because they're on a fixed contract. Yes, it's a lot for me to process. So let me hang on for one second. Sure. A temporary contract means you're not given a full time job. It's a full time job, but with a fixed duration. In other words, to be hired here, you have to sign a contract. There's there's I mean, there's some freelancing, but it's it's very also regulated. And so hang on, let me let me understand this. Because this sounds like my fantasy. Right. OK. I hire somebody to come to my home. Yeah, to change some light bulbs, to change a toilet seat. That's different. That's different because they they have already been regulated by the government in terms of how they structured their business. But they have to give you a DV, an estimate. You sign the estimate, then everything gets submitted. I guess what I'm saying is suppose I hire a full time cleaning lady. You have to sign her to a contract. She has a contract. Or there's also like a government institution that takes care of it for you. But it's all it's all to make sure it's on the books. It has to be paid through the government. So I have to pay this institution, right? So I have to pay her minimum wage. I have to pay into some kind of social security, social security and holiday bank holidays and things like that. So there are obviously clear protections for workers. And in that sense, it's great. The problem is that also for for letting go of someone, it's very onerous for businesses. So when business goes bad, for instance, it's very difficult to let people off. Can I fire my cleaning lady? Can I say I can't afford you anymore? Then you have to give like months worth of termination of severance pay. And it becomes very, for a small business, for instance, it can be quite onerous. And so what people do to get around it is they do temporary contracts so that if someone doesn't work out, they don't have to fire them. For instance, firing someone who's just simply incompetent also is very expensive. And so it's a great policy, but there are these, there's always the unintended consequences. And so what Matt Cohen is campaigned on, campaigned on was this idea that we're gonna cut government spending, we're gonna trim the bureaucracy, we're gonna make it a little easier for companies to fire and hire. And then what we're gonna try and do is stimulate the economy through some investment in green technology and high tech and try to compensate for the kinds of industries that are disadvantaged by global competition by investing in the industries that France has a competitive advantage because of its education system, because of the high level of training of French workers and their high level of productivity. So it's this, it's this try, almost like an attempt to do a managed transition into a more high tech economy that can compete. And the advantage he has over Hollande is that he did this very explicitly. At the same time, he was elected in a roundabout way in the sense that he was running up against Marine Le Pen. He managed to reach the second round unexpectedly. So a lot of people who voted for him weren't necessarily voting for his program, they were voting against Marine Le Pen. And what that meant was that in France where the legislative elections followed the presidential elections by a month, there was some uncertainty as to whether he would actually win a parliamentary majority or whether the more established party on the right would actually hold fast and actually win a majority. And what we learned yesterday actually is rather Sunday, I don't know when your podcast runs. But what we learned on Sunday is that he actually is looking like he's gonna win after the first round, it's a two round system, but after the first round it looks very clear that he's gonna win a huge overwhelming majority in parliament, which means that this guy who came out of nowhere who was relatively unpopular as a government minister because he was the one who pushed through this unpopular labor market reform not only ran the table on the presidential election, but is now running the table on the parliamentary election. And it looks like he's gonna have a big mandate to put into practice the program he ran on. So... Is this a vote for stability in a tumultuous world or the French saying, look, we try to socialist, these are dangerous times, we need to just calm down? Yes and no. To the extent that Macron was really the most EU friendly, a very strong vocal supporter of the European Union, yes. Because I think what people are realizing, especially in the new atmosphere with the Trump administration in office, is that Europe needs to really batten down the hatches and that the threats to the EU from within in terms of the populist parties that were making serious electoral gains from without in terms of the refugee crisis and also there's still some aftershocks of the economic crisis that haven't yet been resolved. And then you add the Trump administration, which is very hostile to Europe and to its NATO partners. So there was a real sense that, wait a minute, this whole thing could actually come down. So to that extent, I would agree that the election of Macron is a vote for stability and it really firms up the EU. I was gonna get into that and say that that's really the biggest macro results of this double electoral victory of his. Why don't we hold off on the EU because I want to get to Brexit, England, Germany and Qatar. Just to finish up that one point, to the extent though that Macron has really run, has run on a program of instituting the reforms that people have been advocating for in France for the last 20 years, but no one has actually managed to get them to implement them. So in that sense, there's a risk of some real political divisiveness and conflict. And so there's still, the jury's still out on whether he'll be able to actually push through the reforms he's talking about. And then obviously all of these reforms, and we saw this most recently in Argentina for instance, it takes a while before they actually have an impact and they hurt first. And so there's still a period where things could be pretty volatile. But I'd say for the most part on the macro level, it is a vote for stability. Okay, before we move on to Great Britain, some quick answers to some short questions. Okay. I wanna go top down, bottom up. All right. Top down. How big an economy is France? France is a big medium-sized economy. I think it's, depending on the year with Great Britain and the exchange rate of the pound, I think it's a fifth or sixth global economy. Yeah, that's one of the most amazing things for Americans to understand is that we have a socialist country called France and their economy is doing very well, thank you very much. And they don't speak English. Well, hold on, hold on. France was governed by a socialist president. It's not really a socialist economy. I mean, the government maintains a non-management share in like the electricity company, certain strategic industries, like the nuclear energy company, things like that. But it's not a socialist country. Okay, let me hang on for one second. And one last thing. Relatively, it's the fifth or sixth biggest economy, but I believe it's in the 2.2 trillion range of GDP compared to the US, which is in the 12 trillion range per year. And even China now, which I think is, I haven't checked recently in terms of dollar value, but in purchasing power, purchasing parity, or purchasing power parity, PPP, which is essentially how much money someone can buy based on a relevant income over there is, I think, the second, or might even have surpassed the US in purchasing power parity. Okay, but- So France is still, you know, it's still quite a, it's a small economy, even compared to Germany. Okay, bottom up, when you're an American, France is a joke in America. Yeah, undeservedly. Undeservedly, France has a very innovative sector. High-speed rail is a French innovation, French-Japanese, but France was an early adopter. France is one of the few countries beside, it's the US and Sweden, that can independently build a fighter jet because they have jet technology that other countries no longer have independently. They have a launch capability that they use with the European Space Agency, but one of the few, Russia, China, Japan, US, a couple others that can actually launch heavy payloads into space. So, you know, the caricature that France is a backward traditional country that drinks wine and eats cheese and can't make anything new or can't compete is just that, it's a caricature. Bottom up, this is a question. From the bottom looking up, if you're not a wealthy person in France, and then we'll move to Great Britain, but I want to ask you this question. Because you've been out of the United States for 17 years, I know you come back, but I want you to answer this question for my listeners who are, for the most part, well, bottom up, or bottoms up, they're alcoholics, but they're looking up. They'd feel right at home in France. Okay. If you are not part of the neoliberal game, in other words, you're not into... If you're not one of the globalization's winners, so to speak. You're just a normal human being who wants to read, make love, raise children, work an eight hour day, come home, cook, tend your garden, and you're not interested in competing with your fellow man. You just want to live a quiet life. Okay, which is what supposedly we're supposed to do. Okay. The moral life is to not chase things. The moral life is to tend your garden, as Voltaire said, or Montaigne. I think it was Montaigne. Well, anyway, some French dude. You're better red than I am. Oh, in that case it was Montaigne. I was thinking of the Monty Python, the meaning of life skit with the French waiter. Oh, if you don't know the answer to that question, it's Montaigne. So, Eve Montaigne. Breathless. So, the point I'm making is if you're not chasing the intellectual goodies that you chase, and some would accuse me of chasing, if you just want to live a quiet life, tell me what living in France is like. In other words, eight-hour days you work, you have a vacation, you go to the beach, you take mass transit. All right, let me, let me, because I know, I hear where you're trying to steer this answer. I'm wise to you. So, let me say this. Tooth. Yeah, obviously. You know, you want that answer, sure. France has a single payer healthcare, right? Some social security system. The public education system is for the most part pretty good depending on which school district you live in. And there are protections for workers that I spoke about earlier. There is, there's a real quality of life here. You know, things as simple as like the municipal swimming pool. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's a real, I'm teasing you. I'm just teasing you. No, there's quality of life. Yeah, the quality. Yeah, yeah, there's a quality of life and everybody's happy, but that's the most important thing. No, no, listen, here, here's the, so you have like municipal swimming pools that are usable and clean and well-staffed and things like that. So, now, that's the sort of, that's the bright side of the picture. The less bright side of the picture is that there's structural unemployment of between, roughly 9%, okay, that's built into the system. That's accepted, right? 9% unemployment in the US for 20 years, there would be a revolution. In France, that's cooked into the system. But we have, I'm gonna fight back. I'm gonna interrupt you. I'm gonna just. No, no, let me, I let you set up your wish list. You have to let me undercut it. All right. Okay, so, for instance, what I'd say is this. When someone, when I first got here, everyone used to say, which is better, the US or France? And what I would say is, if you're an older person who's looking to retire, France is better. If you're a younger person looking to build a career or a business and not necessarily the vision you picked out, but maybe someone who has ambitions to better themselves in life. The US offers way more opportunity for that. So in France, the big thing is no one wants it. Everyone is hostile to this idea of precariousness. They want a social safety net and everything has to be protected. And in the US, there's what French people call precariousness, a lot of the people in America call opportunity, right? So in France, what you just said is true. You'll have a lot of people in the trades, for instance, who'll punch the clock, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, working for someone. Whereas in America, that same person would, after two, three years of getting experience and getting the job under the belt, they'd then go out and maybe open their own private contracting business. The difference is that in America, if someone says to their friend, hey, yeah, I just quit my job because I saved up enough money and I'm starting my own business, everyone's gonna be like, oh, wow, that's exciting, good luck, let me know when you're in business because I've got tons of friends who might need your work, I'll send them your way. That's a typical response in America, right? In France, you tell someone that you quit your job and you're starting your own business, they're gonna look at you like you're crazy. And they're gonna be like, oh, la, la, la, la. Why'd you do that? Did they fire you? No, I quit. Oh, are you serious? It's like unheard of. Let me ask you a question. Now I'm exaggerating to make the point, but that's the cultural mentality is that. And so the portrait you painted exists and you can live a comfortable life in France without putting your shoulder to the grindstone and running in the rat race. But there's a huge amount of unemployment. There's this two-tier job system that I mentioned to you because companies are loath to hire in terms of permanent contracts. So there's young people who are sort of shut out, who are shut out of the real estate market, for instance. So it's a mixed bag like any country is. There's advantages and there are disadvantages and people can choose for themselves what they think is the best mix. What Macron is trying to do though, just to circle it back to that, he's trying to put in place a little bit of what the Scandinavian country is called the flex security model. So there's more flexibility for hiring and firing and there's more security from the state to transition people from one job to the next. Okay. Do you have any friends who, everybody experiences this. Do you have any friends who you haven't seen in 17 years? They have a toddler. And then you see them 17 years later and they bring out this man and you go, who's this? Or a woman. They bring out this woman or man. You go, who's this? That's Billy, huh? No, no, Billy's was two years old. He was barely, well yeah, now he's going off to college. He's going to be a dentist. You've experienced that, right? I mean, I've seen friends, kids grow more than I expected. But I mean, you know, there may be, I have post nasal drip so I'm constantly clearing my throat. Thank you. It's allergies and stuff like that. Can I say TMI? Yes. Okay. So. That's what I love about doing interviews with you, David. By the way, that would be a great name for this show. TMI. TMI. I wonder if there's a podcast called TMI. Let me look that up. I don't know, go for it. TMI. Let me make a note here. TMI. I'm sure somebody. Someone's got it. Yeah. So. A pod savior of the world or something like that. The point I'm making is you've been away from America for 17 years. I know you come back. Yeah. But what's your point? You should do a reverse elects to Tocqueville. You should come to America after 17 years and travel around. This would make a great book or a documentary. Sure. I'm sure you have already thought of this. Where you spend a year rediscovering your America. Right. Because when you describe the bottom of France, I can assure you that my listeners are thinking, are you having kidding me? Hold on, hold on. What I described is not the bottom. What I described is the middle. That's the middle. But it's like a sort of depressed middle. Like wages in France are lower than the US. So like 45, 50,000 a year is considered wealthy. It's considered high end on the income scale. Whereas most people make like 30,000 because a lot is covered by the state. But that's the middle. Those are very fortunate people. The low end is immigrants who are living in unsafe neighborhoods where people are throwing household appliances on the firefighters who come to put out fires. They live in... That sounds like fun. They live in housing projects where the elevators don't work and they've got to walk up 20 flights of stairs. You know, they're buying, they're watching, they're making ends meet. They're retirees who don't have a huge retirement pension. Okay, but hang on for a second. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Don't romanticize it too much. Hang on, but what percentage? Life can be hard here. Like for instance, when I worked, when I was living down south in the village where I lived, which was a tiny village, 2,000 inhabitants. You could live like I paid 250, 300 bucks rent a month. And for about 600, 700 bucks a month, I had fresh goat cheese that was made on a little farm outside the village. The wine all came from the neighboring villages. Bread was fresh made every day. It's a paradise. At the same time, there were young kids who were just like doing ecstasy and going to rave parties in the forest because there was no hope, there was no employment. There were people like guys who worked on job sites that I worked on because I was doing construction work down there who literally were wearing like pieces of rope for their belts for four month jobs that I worked on. And I was like, why don't you buy a belt? They were like, I can't afford a belt. This is also a fashion statement. It just seems to me. I'm just trying to say don't romanticize it. There is hard times here. And you know, it's not like what I described, what you described and what I described is a pretty comfortable sector. Those are people who are working in the state bureaucracy or as functionaries, they're working. They have a permanent job, a permanent contract so they can afford to borrow money to buy a car or buy an apartment or a house, things like that or retirees who have worked well. So yeah, there's better state services. There's more unemployment. There's lower wages. And at the same time, it's a modern, innovative country so it's definitely not an undeveloped country or anything, but I don't think it's fair to romanticize it to the degree you do. It has different problems than the United States that comes from its own particular history and economic policy and government, but it has problems. It's not all roses by any stretch of the imagination. All right, we're gonna move on to Great Britain but let me get to the last word. Okay. I live in Manhattan and I'm pissed off because I have hair transplants and I walk around. You're going for the TMI? No, no, no, no, I'm making a big grand point here. Okay. And I see homeless men with full shocks of hair and I look at them and I think, you have a full shock of hair and you're living on the streets. And I walk up to them because I wanna feel better about myself. I'm France and the homeless guy with a full shock of hair is America. And I get in the face of these homeless guys with their full hair of hair and I say, my worst day, my nightmare is your wet dream. And then I walk away, I do this, I'm kidding, but the point I'm making is, the point I'm making is I have a feeling that if you spent more time in America, you would conclude that a French person homeless, hang on, hang on, hang on. No, no, they're a guy sleeping under the bridge within a mile from me. Okay, hang on. I could walk 500 yards from my apartment and they're a guy sleeping under the bridge. I guarantee you. The second thing is I lived in, I lived in the equivalent of Trump country down South. It's like the French equivalent of Mississippi, all right? So I've seen, there were places, there were houses, I knew people who didn't have indoor plumbing down there, okay? I knew guys who were like 65, 70 years old who were still mixing cement for minimum wage and they couldn't read. So come on, it's not, it's there's- I guarantee you. There's an under, there's like a, there's bad stuff here. It's not like, it's not like ever, it's not like some socialist utopia or anything. Okay, I'm gonna challenge you. I'm gonna challenge you, okay? Then we'll get to growing soon too. I know, I'm gonna, here's my challenge for next time. If you wanna come back next week. I'm surprised you invite me back. You're reading, you don't get listeners who complain about me, I'm not too neoliberal. I'm not running in an echo chamber here with my listeners. Okay, good. Your heart is in the right place. Your brain is a little tilting, little tilting to the right, but I think it's gotten top heavy from all the book learning you're doing. I think you're too, I think what happens is you've loaded yourself up with so much information, eventually you kind of tilt to the neoliberal right, but your heart's in the right place. I think you, I've given up, you know what? I'll tell you, you know what my problem is, David? It's that I no longer believe necessarily that there are policy solutions on the right or the left. I don't trust government. I don't trust the private sector. I don't necessarily think we can, I think there are certain problems that we might not be able to solve and that for that reason, I have trouble saying yes, I agree with this politician or no, I disagree with that politician and I see the global system as well and how pieces fit in. And so that's where I can say, well, in the global system, that's not gonna be too effective. So I can say this will work better than this or what have you, but ultimately I think that when we solve one problem we replace it with a couple of others that's normal. And then fundamentally, I think we mentioned this the last time, there's this balance when it comes to government. Do you want liberty or do you want equality? And the more you want equality, which I think is what you want, right? The more you want redistribution to achieve equality, the less you're gonna have freedom of action. That sounds pretty CPAC to me, my friend. That's what they say at CPAC. But I don't say, I'm not a libertarian and I don't say it should all be on liberty because the government plays a vital role in terms of regulating the market, in terms of taking care of things that the market doesn't take care of, like the commons, like protecting the environment, things like that. I'm not saying the marketplace and private sector and freedom of action is the only solution. I'm just saying that for me, I see both sides of the argument. I value liberty and I value equality and being humane to people. So that's why it seems like, but by no means am I CPAC or am I calling for that we ignore the needs of the least fortunate and the most vulnerable. That would be inhumane. I think we tend to, when we're in an ivory tower, we tend to have this mannequian view of the world where we use words to frame debate as opposed to reality. In other words, in America, we frame the debate liberty versus freedom and you can't have both. Liberty versus equality. I'm sorry, liberty versus equality. But that's also the French Revolution is sort of a tug of war between those two poles. Which is decided by the intellectuals that that's the tug of war. The same way the gross domestic product is a yardstick that is made up. You took me to task for this in the past because I talked about some of my background. But I'm not in the ivory tower. I mean, I dropped out of college. It was a prestigious university, but I dropped out. I don't have a college degree. I spent years working as an undigreed social worker first on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, then with juvenile gang members in Watsonville, South of Santa Cruz in California. I managed low-income housing in Texas. It's not to say that I'm some saint or anything, but, and then I lived in this village down south where I saw a totally different slice of life. Again, you took me to task. I'm not taking a task. No, I mentioned it before and you took me to task like I was trying to paint myself as a saint, but I'm not. I'm just trying to say I don't, I'm not detached from reality. I mean, I see when I can't walk by someone who's sleeping under a bridge and not see them. Okay, hang on for one second. So I recognize what you're saying. Hang on, hang on. A lot of this stuff is abstract and that there's real suffering and there's real inequality and there's real human costs to a lot of this stuff and that the whole sort of rhetoric of third way is detached from that. I recognize that, I agree with that. I'm not one of those people by any means. Hang on for one second. I'm honored that you do this show. I would never take you to task. You know so much more than I am. I mean, world politics review is as good, if not better than foreign affairs, which, you know, it's amazing, but you started this thing. So I would not compare. I'm sorry, what? We're in a collegial way. I would not compare ourselves with anyone. Everyone does a good job at what they're doing. And, but you are. I appreciate that. That's an enormous compliment. Right. I would never take you to task. You know so much more than I do. I have to do a show here. So I would never be rude to you. I just tease you about having neoliberal tendencies. And I'm jealous that you've spent 17 years living in France. And the only thing I have over you is that your heart hasn't withered. No. You still have a shred of decency left. No, the only thing I know that I can claim to know more than you do is what's going on in America, because you haven't been here for 17 years. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And I'm not going to do a show where everybody agrees with everybody, because that's boring. And I need my listeners to pay attention and wake up. And it's more interesting if there's a little conflict. But I would never say that you're out of touch or anything like that. Well, with what's going on in the States, I'm dependent on the news media and indirect and people who I know who are there. But I'm not in touch with what's happening on the ground in America. But I would just, again, say, it's everything that so many from a lot of what I've been reading in the States about the States, it seems like a lot of America has sort of self-segregated into these opposing camps that don't really know a whole lot about each other. And that's why I feel like that's one thing, even if it's outdated at this point, because I left so long ago, that was one thing that in the way my life happened to unfold. And it wasn't due to any sort of virtue on my part. It was just opportunities and life choices that I made. I was not cloistered in one side or the other. I was very privileged growing up. I have a lot of educational advantages and capital. And at the same time, I worked in circumstances and in environments where I was exposed to all different kinds of people and backgrounds and all different kinds of America. And I think that that is something that unfortunately, that's precious. It would be great if more and more people had that, because what I've found is that, in general, when people engage with each other on a level that is not politics first, then their political differences are manageable. So if people engage by working together on something or a joint interest, whether it's a sporting athletic activity or a craft or something like that, then all the other conversations that can be so polarizing are a lot easier. And you actually have a real full-fledged human being in front of you that you're interested in hearing their point of view. And I think the problem is that because there's this widespread divide in the different Americas, that the only point of engagement is on these political differences. And that's where things become very volatile. And the same thing is true here in France when it comes to the National Front, for instance. So it's nothing that's unique to the US. But I think that that's the most alarming development, I would say, in terms of society and culture and politics. Well, let me tell you a little bit about me before we get to Great Britain. Two things. I'm not sure I'm going to have time for that. I know, I know. But hang on, two things. One is, next week, if you'll come back, I want you to find the French person who is in the worst shape imaginable. OK, you go out on the streets. I will wander the streets of Manhattan and I will find. What is this, the misery Olympics? The misery Olympics. I there's a guy who I've seen a block and a half away from me. He's an eyeball. That's all he is. Just an eyeball. All right, David, I have a guy. I have two people within 100 yards living on the sidewalk. I have a guy in my apartment. I have a guy. This is awful. This I hope you edit this out. I have a guy who has an eyeball and he's near sighted. This is awful. There is misery everywhere. That's that's an awful part of the reality of human society. But I don't know of any human society that's eliminated it. I guarantee you, Judah. That when I'm competing, I can't believe this. No, I think for who had more miserable people living on the street in front of their house. I have a guy who is just an eyeball and he's near sighted. And I guarantee you, if you spoke to him, I'll hook you up to him via Skype on next week's show and know what he would say to you. He would give his cornea to live in Paris in France. Yeah, right. Well, we are though on the street here or. All right, let's we're yeah, we only we have 10 minutes. Is that fair to say the 10 minutes? OK, 10 minutes for Great Britain, which is about what it, you know, well, why don't we do this? I want to do a service to my listeners. Sure. OK, they can get Great Britain elsewhere. OK, tell me about Cutter. OK, well, I'm going to mispronounce it and say Qatar. I made a decision today. I'm just going to mispronounce country names and politicians names because I don't speak Arabic. So rather than try to say it correctly, I'll just say it as I would pronounce it in English. So I'm just getting that out of the way to begin with. OK, the big story with Qatar Cutter is as we understand it here in the United States is they are a small little country in the Persian Gulf. They gave us Al Jazeera. I saw the Emir on 60 Minutes. He's very progressive. Women do very well in Cutter. They are oil rich and they are now in between. They're in between Iraq and a hard place. They're in between Iran. Should it resist, huh? Yeah. And Saudi Arabia. What's going on? And supposedly Trump orchestrated this conflict. What is going on? I wouldn't say Trump orchestrated it. So so basically you have this isn't a new. These aren't new tensions. These are longstanding tensions that have to do with intergulf rivalries. Some of them have to do with rivalries among royal families. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, sort of considers itself the big, the big, the big guy, the big man on the block in the Persian Gulf to reduce it to to simple terms and kind of assumes leadership based on its size, based also on the fact that it's the guardian of the holy sites of Islam. And with the United Arab Emirates alongside it has has all has long seen Qatar sort of this upstart because Qatar used its gas money starting about 10 years ago, maybe even a little further back to kind of engage in this maverick foreign policy where they were funding different groups across the Middle East, investing in real estate, for instance, in Paris and in London buying soccer clubs. So forging ties, soft power ties, hosting military bases, the US military central command has its advanced headquarters in Qatar. And so started doing started doing this maverick foreign policy that not only sort of offended the Saudis sense of regional leadership, but also was in direct opposition to their own policy goals, because in particular, Qatar was financing Muslim Brotherhood parties and organizations. Al Jazeera was broadcasting very critical news and analysis on Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia's brand of of Islam that they fund. And so this sort of this put Qatar at odds with in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which is very hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood. And so what happened more recently is that there have been these longstanding questions about financing of these groups. And then also Qatar had a more open approach to Iran, which Oman also does, which is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. So there's a range of of postures within the Persian Gulf in terms of openness and closeness to Iran. Qatar tried to develop channels of communication, which are valuable, for instance, when it comes time to reducing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. So but also annoyed Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which is fighting, which are both fighting a number of proxy wars against Iran across the region. And so basically you have I hate to bring it back to our friend Donald Trump, but he sort of wanders into this hornet's nest, the sort of the naive ignorant guy, but who thinks he knows everything. And the Saudis really played him very adeptly because they flattered him. They gave him a wish list of military hardware that they were going to buy and investments they were going to make. And because either Trump didn't pay attention during the briefings he got from his security team, his national security team, or because he didn't retain it. He basically just absorbed the Saudi line hook line and sinker on Iran and also apparently on Qatar. And so when he left, the the the conjecture is that the Saudis felt very empowered to bring these sort of lingering tensions to a head. And it's sort of the catalyst was what the Qataris claim was a hack of their new service that that credited or accredited certain comments to the Qatari Amir that were critical of the Saudis and that's talked to bragged about their close ties with Iran. And so that was sort of the catalyst. But again, these tensions were there under the surface. This just brought them to the surface. And and so what then happened is to the surprise of everyone. Trump, instead of tamping down tensions, which is what James Mattis, his Secretary of Defense and Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State, tried to do. Trump pours fuel on the fire and says, yeah, the Qataris are funding terrorism. When I went to Riyadh and talked about having to stop funding terrorism, everyone pointed at Qatar. So he just sort of bought this line hook line and sinker. And and that has instead of sort of walking the tensions back, had the the the the result of the effect of escalating them. So the Saudis and the Emiratis, they closed the land borders. They refused access to their airspace. So in some ways, Qatar was semi blockaded. I mean, they still have the use of other ports and other access ways. And the Iranians are sending in food and supplies and the Turks are sending in food and supplies. So it's it's basically added fuel to the fire, not only within the Gulf, but also within the broader region. And and what it has done is to to really contrast and bring it to very stark contrast, the way in which Trump's call for for for unity in the fight against the Islamic State is just is ignorant and overlooks all of the underlying tensions in the coalition that has functioned for better or worse in Syria and Iraq. But that, you know, is is is just riddled with internal factions and in fighting and people financing opposing groups and and competing groups and things like that. So that's sort of where the issue stands. Now, the common the the conventional wisdom is that the Qataris will compromise and offer some concessions to their neighbors and that things will sort of go back to normal. But the truth is that the the the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC, which is the regional organization, and more broadly, just the Gulf and regional cooperation in general on a lot of these pressing issues is going to be weakened and undermined. And it would take a good amount of American diplomacy and diplomacy by other countries as well to to re to to short things up. And that's going to that, sadly, is in very short short supply right now, given that a lot of the key offices in the State Department have been unfilled and that Trump is repeatedly undermining his cabinet his cabinet level officers. So it's it's it's not necessarily it's it's a situation that will probably remain under control but just shows the degree to which this is all very complex stuff. And Trump doesn't seem to have any desire or capability to get get himself up to speed on it. Two quick questions before you go. Before we start, you were explained to me that Qatar is a primarily Sunni nation. From what I mean, at the same time. I think the the the population, the the the proportion, like I don't have the percentages off hand. But Qatari citizens are a small are not an overwhelming proportion of residents because they bring in foreign workers. So but yes, it's a it's a Sunni Sunni monarchy. It's not like Bahrain, which is a Sunni monarchy in a Shiite majority country. It's a Sunni. It's a Sunni Sunni monarchy. It's a Sunni monarchy in a Sunni majority country and a Sunni. But it's a tiny country. I mean, it's a peninsula state with us. I don't have the figures off hand, but it's not tens of millions of people there. I mean, that's it's it's a small country. We're trained to see things in black and white. And we've often divided the Middle East into Sunnis versus Shiite. Although the Alawites and Syria are an ad mixture. The question I'm asking you is religion doesn't really play a part in this, does it? If Iran is coming to the aid of Iran is a Shiite nation. Right. Well, religion plays a part to the extent. And again, I'd like to caveat all this. I'm not an area expert. My expertise on this comes from editing area experts on it. But from what I understand, two things, particular to this particular dispute, it's not religious in the sense of it's not sectarian in the sense of Shiite versus Sunni. It's religious to the extent that the Qataris promote a different kind of Islam than the Saudis and a different relationship between Islam and politics and then the Saudis and Emiratis do. The Qataris supported Islamic parties, Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, that the Saudis helped overthrow with the general LCC, who is now the president of Egypt. The Emiratis are fiercely anti-Muslim Brotherhood. And so, for instance, in Libya, they were supporting different militias on the ground in Syria. They're funding different militias on the ground in Egypt. They were on opposing sides. So that so it's religious to that extent, but it's not the Sunni Shiite. Now, with regard to the Sunni Shiite divide, and again, this is from reading regional experts rather than being one myself. From what I understand, this is a latent tension that can be brought to the surface or smoothed out depending on the broader context and the needs of the rulers in place. And so in that sense, it's similar to the kinds of tensions that came out in Yugoslavia after the breakup in the ex-Yugoslavia. So there were neighbors who lived together for years and years. And then when the Yugoslav the entity known as Yugoslavia fell, suddenly it became ethno-sectarian. So but but at the same time, these were neighbors whose kids grew up together. They went to the same schools. They might have been some tensions now and then, but it wasn't a defining characteristic of the sociocultural interactions. The same thing can be said in terms of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East in the sense that you look at Lebanon, Syria, even Iraq. These are very cosmopolitan countries with huge blends, demographic blends, right? And they can go through years and years of peaceful coexistence and then certain things will happen and raise tensions and they become very difficult to put back into the box. And so I think, you know, even between Saudi Arabia and Iran, their their relations are cyclical. There there have been times when they've been warmer and times when they've been less warm. Now they're very they're very hostile to each other. There have been other times where they haven't been. So in these periods of time, those sectarian differences really start driving a lot of other stuff. But they're not fatalistic. It doesn't mean that Sunnis and Shiites can never live together or will never be able to from what I understand from the most from the most of the regional experts that I've read. So it's not something that necessarily is is a given. It's not something that's fatalistic. These aren't populations or societies that cannot coexist. They have in the past, historically, and they for all we know, they might in the future, they're going through a period right now of intense tension and crisis and proxy wars. And that obviously is very hard to put back into the box once once it once it comes out. Well, you've been very generous with your time. And I just have an observation to make. And I'd like you to respond to this and then you're free to go. You have you have freedom. I've I've earned or good freedom for good behavior, but not equality. OK, you're much smarter than I am. So it's not you don't have equality, but you do have your freedom. It's I'm about to give it to you. We had Azar Uzman on the show last week. He's a brilliant stand up comic actor, playwright and lawyer. But don't hold that against him. Right. And he is a Muslim American, a practicing Muslim and very brave and very funny and very smart. And we were talking about Islam and religion and how religion is coopted by leaders to use issues for their own gain. In other words, you have a problem. Now you need the people behind you to support your stance. So you bring religion into it. It's one tool, among others, for manipulation. OK, looking at very well said in cutter. Is it safe to say right now this is not a religious issue? I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, it's religious, like I said, in the sense that it's competing agendas for for how to project different brands of Islam in the region. But it's whether political Islam or religious Islam. But would you say that right now it's when you really scratch the surface, it's about something other than religion? Oh, there's certainly other aspects. Yeah, I mean, there's there's like I said, there's that sort of there's the competition and rivalry for for leadership. There's the the the. There's the question of leadership, but more fundamentally political question, you know, of who who has other who has more influence in other capitals. Right. And so that is being expressed in some ways through religion, because in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, there was these openings in Egypt for the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been repressed and in Libya. And so Qatar was financing those groups. And that was something that the Saudis were very hostile to because the Muslim Brotherhood is could be a competitor to the Saudi monarchy. Right. So the Saudis are really adamant about a monarchy separate from the clergy. And the the Qataris were trying to fund movements that want to integrate political Islam into government. And so that's a very divergent point of view. So it's religious to that extent, but it's not it's not the Thirty Years War or anything like that. And the Muslim Brotherhood is out of Egypt and they tend to be Sunni. Isn't this where Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had their roots? The the number the current leader of Al-Qaeda, I want to say Zawari, but it could be the ophthalmologist. Exactly. He was in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. I believe he was imprisoned and tortured. Yeah. And and that led him to then adopt a more radical version. The Muslim Brotherhood had sort of moderated and agreed to work within politics. The you know, a similar model would be Turkey in terms of their governing party, which is a moderate Islamist party that wanted to reintroduce a certain element of religious conservatism into the social mores of the country, but generally governed as as, you know, with economic governments and policy that wasn't determined by religion. We're going to, but the Saudis were very hostile to that and essentially backed up Al-Sisi when he when he overthrew Morsi and and bloodily and brutally repressed the Muslim Brotherhood. You get the last word. Here's my conclusion from this conversation. And this was great because we didn't discuss Trump. Here's my very, very obliquely. Yeah. Al-Zawari, the current head of Al-Qaeda, ophthalmologist, the head of Syria, Assad, ophthalmologist. I don't know if they were dentists. I'd see something to what you get where you're getting. But ophthalmologist is and doesn't strike me as ran Paul. Ran Paul, Senator Ran Paul is an ophthalmologist. I think, honestly, there, I have to object. I mean, I'm going to object. I think it's unfair, regardless of your political differences with Ran Paul to generalize and put him in the same category as Bashar al-Assad and Al-Zawari. Al-Zawari. Al-Zawari. Yeah, you know why? Because Al-Zawari and Assad are not defending Trump the way Ran Paul is. To my knowledge, Ran Paul has not been accused of brutally murdering innocent people. He's defending Donald Trump. David. I'm urging you. I mean, as an intervention, come back to the light. I'm telling you, come back to the light. If you lived in America, politics, it's not chemical warfare. And Paul has not dropped barrel bombs. You I'm not saying I agree with him. Actually, some of the things I bet you would agree with him on in terms of foreign policies. But he's very heavily in favor of a foreign policy of restraint. But he has a racist past. And when you I'm not defending him in any way, but I would not put him in the same category as a war crime as war criminals and terrorists. I'm saying all ophthalmologists are war criminals. That's what I'm saying. Beware of ophthalmologists. If there were dentists, I consider I consider the argument. Ophthalmologists, they're a good bunch. I I they make us look distinguished. We get to, you know, have the spectacles. That's you see your problem is you trust ophthalmologists so you can't see what's actually going on. You get the last word. What would you like my listeners to do? You have a podcast. Tell me about your podcast. Yes, we do. We have a podcast called Trend Lines. It goes live every Friday. And we have an opening segment where I talk with our senior editor, Freddie Deknital, about one of or a couple of the top stories in international affairs that week. And then the second segment is usually in depth look at a topic that generally isn't a top headline or in the spotlight. So you get a little bit of the headline news and then look at a quieter story with an expert who's usually written an article for us that week on the topic. So it's it's a great overview of of interesting topics from week to week. It's I'm not as good a host as you are, though, David, I have to say. Well, you've got I've been trying to take notes as I as I do your show. I'm doing your show. It's it's research when I do your show how to be a podcast host. I owe all my skills to my anti ophthalmology stance that I was raised. Never we had we lived next door to an ophthalmologist and he set fire to our apartment growing up. Ophthalmologists cannot be trusted. And you're you're part of the purpose. Huh? Did it purposely? He or accidentally. Yeah, I'll tell you something, we have to go. But I we don't have time. I'll tell you, stay on the line for one quick second. This was our best our best session. I just wish I had hit the record button. I really do. You know, because I don't have an ophthalmologist, I can't see where the record button is. But it's all part of the conspiracy. You didn't hit it. No, I'm kidding. Of course, I had it. God, I was going to because I'm coming in New York on July 3rd. I was going to schedule a stop outside your apartment. Oh, good. Wait. Come into the studio. Oh, yeah, great. I will. Yeah, I'll be there from the 3rd through the 16th. OK, and we came up with a new show, a new show title. TMI, maybe we'll look that up. OK. Judah Grenstein is the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review. He joined us from Paris. Can you stand the line? I can. Very briefly. It's been a great pleasure, as always, talking with you, David. It's always a lot of fun. And I'm very glad that that you feel that I can be of any interest to your to your listeners. I am honored to have you on the show and I am amazed by your breadth of knowledge. All I can do is interrupt you. It's the depth. It's very shallow. I have a great breadth of breadth of knowledge, but it's not inch deep. All I'm capable of doing is interrupting you. And I'm like a snake coiled in the grass, waiting for you to say something where I'm going, Oh, I know something about that. I'll interrupt him here. That's it's kind of like trying to live with somebody you love who is just waiting for you to you know what the difference is, David, between a wasp and a Jew. What? A wasp leaves without saying goodbye and a Jew says goodbye without leaving.