 Think Tech-A-Way. Civil engagement lives here. MG! We have Neil Milner here! Oh, Neil! Thanks for coming down! I thought it was going to be my pleasure, but if that's what you're going to do... I don't know, thanks for having me, Jay. So, welcome to the show, Neil. We're going to edit out the introduction. No, this is it. This is it. So, Community Matters. We're talking about politics. Why not? Neil is a political commentator and a writer, a columnist for Civil Beat, which we admire very much. And he's been doing it since the day when he was teaching it at UH Manoa for about 70, 80 years or something like that. They're on there, yes. Yeah, take her. Follows things on the national and local. Today we're going to talk national. Let's spring with the idea of the war on the press. What that does for the Constitution? What it does for the press? I mean, it's corrosive for the press. And the question, I suppose, is, you know, when you make your first attack, it's like sumpter. It doesn't have that much effect. It's that long grind where you keep attacking. And so, you know, what is happening with the war on the press? Is it having some kind of secondary effect? Well, first of all, let's talk about the term war on the press. In some ways, it overestimates the problem, but in other ways, it underestimates the problem because most of what's going on is not really a direct attack in the sense that we're trying to license or that we're trying to explicitly censor. And here I'm talking about both politicians, particularly Donald Trump, but also the people generally. I think what's the best way to describe it is this. You have a president who is clearly a norm violator when it comes to talking about constitutional issues. And the press is a good example. He's always making these criticisms of the press and these kind of oblique threats about how they should be regulated and so on. There hasn't been a lot of overt move in that direction, but it's around there. At the same time, and of course, kicking up the ante by talking about fake news. We can come back to fake news later. And so that's a more insidious, subtle kind of way that journalists have to worry more about. If you add to that the fact that partly as a result of polarization and as a result of other kinds of things, conservatives and liberals live in two different universes in many ways. And one of the ways is the way they see the press. So the idea that there's a truth or that there's an objectivity has become under fire and not just a philosophical sense, people don't think that the opposition, the news that the opposition pays any attention to is valid. So to me, that's a more descriptive and a much more scary and at the same time realistic threat to the press than worrying about overt licensing or censoring. I'm not saying don't worry about those things, but even the journalist's response to this recent stuff from the Homeland Security was much more about the broader things rather than licensing. Well, I put it in the larger context just to get context. First Amendment and one of the essential mechanisms in the Constitution is an informed public, because otherwise you can't vote properly, you can't make up your mind and be part of a kind of partnership of people who are all engaged in making better government. And if you take away the information, the education for that matter from the electorate, if you separate them from the truth, then you're undermining that particular mechanism in the Constitution. So how important is that? Is it more important now than it was? Is it getting less important? What's happening? Well, the first thing, I think the two parts of that that are important. The first part, which is a little bit depressing, is the psychological part, that we know a lot more now about how people think their political psychology and so on. And we know two things. First of all, most people aren't very well informed. They don't pay much attention to politics. And there's some fairly understandable reasons for that. The second is that it turns out that the people who pay the most attention are in many ways the least objective. Because when you pay attention to politics, you tend to be more committed to a certain kind of political values, and you tend to filter everything through those values. Now, just put that aside. Just say, okay, so we're not nearly as good. It still is an important norm. The idea that there is information out there that we should be able to get that's reliable information, or at least debatable information in a civil sense, in the sense that we can question one another. That kind of norm is starting to disappear. And I worry much more about that one than I do about the psychological one. I mean, I'm not a great optimist about people's ability to engage in politics. They don't do it very much. And whatever the good government thing is, or the patriotism is, it doesn't happen very easily. You can just look at Hawaiian voter turnout as an example. But, Doggone, it is important that there's an ethical consensus on the idea that there is information out there that if you don't look for it, that you others would look for it and talk to you about it, that's reliable or at least debatable. And that, I think, is increasingly missing. I don't know why, but I think of Captain Hornblower. I'll tell you why. One of the many books about Captain Hornblower was where he was carrying a cargo of rice. And the water came in, he sort of cracked the hull somewhere, and the water came in, and it reached a tipping point where the rice began to swell and broke the hull and the ship sank. And it's this tipping point that interests me. I mean, people have learned about tipping point. And I really wonder if I take you, hypothetically, to a place where nobody cares, nobody trusts the press, nobody is educated, everyone is ignorant, everyone is in a bubble, if you will, and the bubble is kind of artificial and not based on any reality. If I take you to that place, can the government survive under the Constitution as we know it? Well, I don't know if we can survive. I don't mean that in the sense that we're going to be nuked or disappear. It seems to me that's a pretty awful world because essentially what you're saying is that there isn't any kind of meaningful way to engage in conversation with people who are different from you. And we talk about the press as, you know, the distress of the press. The distress of the press has been around for a long time. It shows up more in the polls than it did before, but it's incredibly polarized. It's another big difference between liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans. So that's... I despair of living in that kind of society. Tipping point, schmipping point. It's an awful place to have to put your head down and live. And I think that's the other part of democracy that people have to pay attention to. We pay a lot of attention to the procedural parts and the constitutional parts of it. But democracy requires a kind of way of living that is accommodating that it's... I think accommodation is even more important than engagement. Well, yeah, but don't take that out of context. Certainly it's important to be engaged. But I think that they're starting to lack a sort of shared consensus about certain kind of norms that really make it hard for a democracy to operate. Conservative writers actually do a pretty good job on this. David Brooks, who is an anti-Trump... Both of the ones I'm going to mention are anti-Trump conservatives. But they write about the fact that democracy needs something else in addition to the kind of openness and fairness and rule of law and equality and all those kinds of things. Well, let's take David Brooks in the New York Times for a minute. When I grew up and when you grew up in Pennsylvania... Okay, okay. You know, I thought the New York Times was the best thing since sliced bread. I still think that. I'm more impressed with them now because of their courage. Not only in the Nixon period with the papers. What was it? The Pentagon papers. The movie recently, The Post because the Times and The Post is working. But because they stand fast and they maintain their standards all the time. There were two people here in Hawaii when I said, just see that article in The Times and they said in each case these are educated people. I don't read The Times. And the statement is I don't believe anything in The Times. It's the bubble. I'm not going to be there. And that has changed. That is a new thing for me because I always felt everyone agreed The Times was at the time. This is a long conversation for that. And I still think that The Times is good. What you saw, I think from these two people, I don't know who they are, but I'm willing to guess these are not the kind of redneck Trump voters these are regular Republicans who have decided that it's a biased newspaper. I think newspapers tend to be biased in ways that are not ideologically biased. Except your article in The Civil Beings. That's boring. It's a B word and not biased. But I have the same thing with some of my relatives back east to our conservatives. It's just dismissive for you find people doing the same thing with Fox News. But I think it's interesting what's happened to The Times. I think The Times is a really good newspaper. I don't think the bias that many Republicans feel about it is that they're emphasizing things about Trump that the Republicans don't think are important. And that's probably true. You can see that as bias and you can see it as I want to learn about that thing. So even though I disagree that even though I don't think it's so important that Donald Trump probably paid off the porn star, I want to learn about it. But you see what's happened is that it's gone from I don't think it's important to I don't even want to pay attention to it because the newspaper is biased. And you have to remember though the New York Times circulation has gone way up since Trump. I don't I think the post I think the post probably has. But that's to me and it's a reminder of something that I said a little while ago that it's educated intelligent people with a set of political values that are often the least willing to engage in an opposing view. So let me ask you a question. You've been asking that question. We are together Neil. He's at war with the press. It started almost immediately really. It started during the campaign, right? And now we have a dynamic going on in the way people see the press. It's not only television but newspapers, everything. And there's a greater distrust I would say from one bubble across to the other bubble. Do you agree that the reason or one of the big reasons if not the exclusive reason is his war in the press has diminished public confidence in the press? Well it has but I mean he's certainly a visible catalyst and he's certainly the best term the plightest term I can use is a normbuster in doing it. I mean I find the way that he talks really disgusting. Now I am sure it's related to the fact that I would not ever vote for Donald Trump. But I think that there is something else going on here that you have to remember and that is the extent to which we that is American society no longer share common news sources. The network news we used to watch we used to watch John Cameron Swayze you remember Gabriel Heer these guys were giants. Well they were giants. It's easier to be a giant if you don't have competition. People were getting news from the same kind of sources. Better than it was then. And what's changed now is social media certainly changed it. On radio you have large corporations that are like Sinclair that are pretty conservative and bringing out there. So it isn't just it isn't just Trump and Trump's of course war with the press started well before he was president because his view is if the press gives me good publicity I like him. If they don't I have the critique. This goes way back. I mean he's a media guy. So I think it's important to understand the kind of norm breaking threat that Trump is and the way that people in responsible political positions the Paul Ryan's of the world and all those kinds of things let him let him get away with it but it's certainly a bigger problem than that. If you look at where people get news and you look at people's propensity to believe false statements then you get to see what broader problem there is. Yeah and one of the things I've noticed and this is relevant to our next half after the break is that sometimes his agency heads or people he appoints are actually singing his song so you have a sort of multiplication of effort and you can lay down your agenda so to speak through others and they take it as far as they go. Well you're supposed to be if you're a cabinet level official. That's the thing that always has annoyed me about people who oppose Trump and that is somehow they expect the cabinet officials not to mention to be some kind of martyrs to the cause. First of all they may actually believe in this stuff and even if they don't believe in this stuff look if you get a group of cabinet officials 35 minutes after during the first cabinet meeting where they swear allegiance to this guy publicly in the way that we would swear allegiance to what howdy-doody I can't even think of an example you get a sense of what the dynamic is like and so I'm not surprised that they're loyal I'm certainly not surprised that Scott Pruitt is loyal I'm surprised at how what's the word I'm looking for enthusiastic he is in taking apart the environment but you can't expect people working for the guy to behave differently. I wrote a column a long time ago about what was his name the first press secretary and I said Sean I said look if you're working for a bad boss you're going to behave badly especially in that position because what else you're going to do but the flip side of that is that if your cabinet all the people who are loyal and faithful to you are saying the same thing the public gets the idea they don't understand the finesse here the public gets the idea that all these people are agreeing it must be true and after the break I would like to talk to you about Sinclair Sinclair Broadcasting Group and I would also like to talk to you about the Department of Homeland Security that's collecting data on you and me I'm very sure yeah well we will be in that yeah that's what we are now you have to be a good journalist that just says you have to write so you and I both make that okay I'm honored we'll be right back after this break this show on Tuesdays at one called out of the comfort zone I sang this song to you because I think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool and I want you to come watch my show where I bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier, happier build better relationships and make your life a success so come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on Tuesdays at one see you there the community matters with Neil Milner and if I didn't mention before we're talking about the journalist list at the Department of Homeland Security we're going to get to that in a minute and I guess the tagline to sort of work to is what can we expect next so first let's talk about Sinclair Broadcasting Group this is very disconcerting because as you mentioned earlier people especially the people in the hinterland do not trust the national media more they trust the local media has a uniform agenda through the methodology of Sinclair let me add one other thing is that before the Federal Communications Commission stopped mergers like this but now there's a new chair appointed by President Trump who is probably going to force the approval of an acquisition by Sinclair of Tribune Broadcasting Group netting out something like 400 local TV radio stations in the hinterland of the United States and they're all apparently free to broadcast on an agenda basis out of Maryland one message to everywhere and people trust that does this concern you oh yeah it concerns me from a lot of different ways it isn't simply that they're doing one message although that's one problem I'll get back to it it's also that the message has to do with a very explicit statement about fake news and bias that has all kinds of cold words in there that says distrust anybody who doesn't think the way we do the other problem with this is because it's centralized is that for a variety of reasons local news has become diminished over the years it's become diminished because newspapers have disappeared it's become diminished because local media, particularly TV radio news isn't very big anymore local TV spends a smaller percentage of its time on local issues than on national issues and it's a chicken versus the egg thing because people care less about local things and more about national things and to me that's really warped because I think your life is much more local than national anyway so you do have that kind of problem plus this concentration of ownership the old argument used to be that you don't give much control to each to any particular owner because you want to have diversity and you don't want to have a monopoly of information we're certainly moving away from this and Sinclair is doing so in a much more overt sort of way so you're going to find Sinclair Station spending less time on local news than they did before we found a video online where they took like 50 or more newscasters and they synchronized the message and they were all using precisely the same words at precisely the same times over the course of the broadcasting week and our people in the audience they don't realize that but in fact they're getting a national message it's like a media version of the handmaid's tale right I mean really this is really kind of Orwellian that you're going to do it but essentially there isn't any kind of easy legal control of that anymore not this administration well that's right this is building taking advantage of all kinds of other things that allow this really troublesome thing about this this is happening at the same time as we get the grind of the regular attacks on the press from Washington it's happening at the same time as Zuckerberg and the Russians are all trying to affect public opinion on that large scale basis a demographic basis with group psychology that you mentioned sure all these things are are having an effect on group psychology and if all those messages are similar wow you know where's the constitution now when a few people can give these repeated message if I get five messages from five different sources that seem to be different I'm really going to get convinced about that Repetitio Mattei Studiorum if I repeat it over and over again I'm going to start believing it and I think that's what's happening so when you take it together all these vectors you know the cumulative effect is very threatening well and you also have to remember what we're like when we deal with processing of information if anything we've learned that basically people want Nobel Prize for this kind of research simply this is that the power of narrative the power of a story is the way people tend to think and tend to react that the most powerful way you can influence a person is to tell them a story and that has a profound effect on how we process narrative the other thing that's important here is that we don't have a good filter a good immediate filter for truth versus falsity and in fact some recent research shows we're more inclined to accept false stuff on the internet than true stuff on the internet so you have all of these things working together and that's another thing I think people have to understand about disadministration in Trump we think politically in fact almost all of the ways that people tend to think politically they're deep psychology which they're not even always aware of their partisanship their values that process is pretty stable and pretty well established and so you're not finding out anything dramatically new about the way people think about the way they accept information how you influence them but what you have is a much more overt attempt to do it now and so you have two kind of scary things at the same time one is our ability to process which as I say is not is far from good and at the same time you have a much more overt notion of not seeing an objective truth and having a much more propagandistic way and you have very sophisticated mechanisms that are able to reach millions of people well you have some sophisticated mechanisms and I mean in Cambridge analytics the ones you get through to be I mean they gave whoever bought their stuff a pretty good sell job about what they could do but they clearly could do a lot of stuff but at the same time there's nothing sophisticated about talk show hosts I mean you know like they say they're media people like you no I mean Rush Limbaugh is saying he knows how to influence people he knows how to talk to them so but that's and that's a good example of the problem of the story so and all of what we've been saying here really is a context for trying to toward the reactions about this homeland security thing both what you said about Zuckerberg what we've been talking about here because that it creates a kind of I guess we should say something about this before I go on into my spiel about the effect of it so you want to talk a second about what what got you interested in the thing that really excited me was the announcement by a woman named Kirsten Kirsten Nielsen thank you who is the recently appointed new director of homeland security if you see her photograph she does not look like a director of homeland security no no it's kind of refreshing yes that's right apparently from her or her staff comes this idea I always feel as I said before that these appointees are loyal to the guy who appointed them and maybe this idea came from outside homeland security but she came up with this idea about creating a database of all the journalists and the people who affect who influence the newsgiving in this country in fact in the world I think it goes beyond this country including bloggers anyone who expresses an opinion to an audience so to speak and I'm sure that includes all the people we know in this community who are involved in news and the problem that goes beyond even the list is that the list includes a database field called sentiments now that's a euphemism really because sentiments is what's your opinion on things on this on that and the other thing I bet you there's 27 fields about your sentiments on this issue on that issue and so when they can paint you whatever corner they want they have to build a search engine to look for those things I mean that's part of the specs so when this happens then you think of the Olympic stadium there in Berlin back in 1936 and 7 you say to yourself this is how you really scare the pants off the press and you have the ability to target individuals who speak against you, scary well the press has been the group of reporters that kind of a report organization responded and said look what you have to understand about this for now is that it's not an overt attempt to license us it's not an overt attempt to censor us but there's all kinds of things to worry about here and just to fill in a little bit what they want is a database including names, addresses publications and kind of viewpoints they figure about 300,000 people in the country and so the request for a proposal the request for who can do this and you have to have an easy password associated thing to be able to search them and the argument that the Homeland Security makes and by the way this comes from the cybersecurity part of Homeland Security doesn't come from the press office so and I'm not sure this has probably been floating around for a while and Nielsen probably knew and there's a good chance that some people had this kind of idea in the Obama administration so what you'd be able to do is search now the journalists say there are two things to worry about here one of which is what are they going to use that for in regard to us are they going to use that to make it harder for us to get access are they going to be snooping on us the other thing is that this organization that this sub bureaucracy that is putting this together or having someone put it together for them is the organization in charge with vetting and so this information could be used to vet journalists from other countries from coming into the United States those are the more immediate kind of concerns and so the guy from Homeland Security responds by saying you guys are all conspiracy theorists he sends a tweet he says you know like the black helicopter people you have nothing to worry about we're just collecting data here there's no deep state it's not deep it reaches this way but in this day and age think about what's happened recently first of all the whole thing with Cambridge analytics and with Zuckerberg has pointed out something that was visible in the main site they're in the data gathering business they have a business model that allows people to package a whole lot of data big data and in fact big data is as much a creation in politics of liberals as it is of conservatives now Cambridge analytics may have violated the agreement because I guess the agreement went something like this Facebook says you can't use it for this okay and that was it and then guess what okay it turned out not to be the case but this whole question of privacy and the whole question of the implications of gathering data I mean a lot of this is if you would just say we're going to gather a lot of data about journalists because we want to follow what's going on we're Homeland Security and it's a way to increase intelligence but in this day and age why would you believe that about any kind of government bureaucracy and there are federal laws that exist about what government can collect in terms of dossiers so that's why this thing is that's why this thing is particularly what would be interesting to me it's a thought experiment we can't do it is if you had a liberal as president and it was Homeland Security under that administration that said we want to do this how liberals would react to this I don't know the cynic in me says it all depends on what side you're on but I worry about this kind and I also worry about the fact that my assumption always is that there's no data that's protected I run my life that way I write short emails if I ever insult you it's going to be in person I'm not going to you only have no record people are changing the way they do oh no that's right I worry about the potential of hacking I worry about all kinds of other things here that's why you can't simply say here we're just gathering data he's not going to get away with that politically that's way too dismissive and I think he probably knows that reporters who tried to follow up got nothing else other than that a copy of that tweet that he sent out but that's why it's a significant and serious issue it's funny how Brave New World in 1984 playing out in front of our eyes and you talk about the change in administration so they could have a very pure if not angelic reason for setting this up but the next administration whatever it is it may decide we need to use this data for some other purpose we think educated people are bad and we have to send them to camps whatever it is when we were talking before about distrust is if it's a bad thing part of the dynamics of a democracy is always to be distrustful and skeptical you always remember your political leaders are human accountability means I'm watching you I don't trust you enough to be and that's part of the democratic process so that's certainly an issue that you have to consider here but I think under this situation under the fraught circumstances that we're now in in this country it's a particularly frightening two remaining questions for you one you suggested you would answer later and that is what is the effect of all this what is the effect of the war on the press and Sinclair and Homeland Security and the attack on the press in general what is the effect of that on our lives individually as members of the press and the country within the democratic framework well to me to me I see it as a sense of despair there's clearly some things happening where you distrust information where the notion of truth and objectivity and science begins to disappear that what's happened for example is that scientific questions have become politicized and so public health questions and even climate change is a good example people instead of looking towards science for their cues on how to react look toward politics to it and so you you tend to view it the same way you view a candidate you don't want to pay any attention to the other side and so that's part of the problem that has happened here I think that it's I don't you're better off asking reporters it doesn't strike me that the New York Times or the big papers are any more chilled in the sense of how they do it but I think the atmosphere in which they work is a very very difficult atmosphere if I attack Amazon because Bezos happens to and is making money on it it's very troubling no it is troubling to me it's disgusting and I know that for sure and I know that no good can come out of it but I don't know how other people are reacting my guess is that people react attack on Bezos considering what polarization is like the same way they react to almost every major issue right now and every not just policy but everything that Trump does conservatives and republicans like it democrats hate it and that's just the reflection of everything from his you know from his approval rating which is relatively low but it's like 80% among republicans approve and 20% and that's really unprecedented and so I think that part of why I despair about this is that you have some people who are intensely worried about this and other people who are really happy that journalists are taking all this crap they deserve it they're unbiased and I want to remind you that this is not you know this is not your unemployed steel worker in Pennsylvania you guys with PhDs or as I say old white guys like me who of course are very likely to be republicans and certainly feel that way that's the dynamic that really worries me but you haven't talked about how this is going to affect the midterms because in fact you know there'll be more of this oh yeah sure well you never know I mean I always think about elections even in 2018 in terms of what's stable rather than what's different you've got all this noise going on and all of these kinds of crazy things that are happening surprising things like Paul Ryan quitting and now a record number of republicans like a reality show I never watched reality well the only one I ever liked was Ice Truckers that's me that's great but anyway some distance haulers drive on these roads in Alaska in winter it's great but I'm making out I don't even know if it's still on but I think that the midterms issues like the press issues like those sorts of things really don't have much resonance people don't pay when it comes to election time if people pay very much attention and all it doesn't seem to be the 2016 campaign Trump has really done it to himself this time he can't possibly recover from this and you were only off by 100% everything you thought was going to do including of course the pussy tape and you should learn something about politics there at least in that is that people have a fairly stable I cannot even imagine what do you know and I don't think the Russian investigation is going to be definitive by that time you're a lawyer, you know that the first thing you look at is how long we'll have a crisis over Mueller well we might, that's right but these things so the 2018 election I think is going to depend a lot on the usual sorts of things that you can see right now last question I'm concerned about this I told you I'm concerned there's a lot of people concerned what can we do about it I mean if we care a lot if we believe that our lives and fortunes are at risk somehow and who's to say when they come for us but when they do come for us it will be a bit bad time so how do we prevent that what action do we take we meaning all of us I think whether it helps you or hurts you to think about this idea of coming for us is really a personal decision this is that if I go to that place it's going to create so much apathy and so much despair that I would rather think about it in the sense of saying look at all this crap that's going on that I hate let's not worry about those far things what can I do now and you know what I really don't have a good answer I don't have a good answer I mean I can give you the stack answer which is to say get more involved in things that bother you and that's easy one of the things that I say and you and I were talking about something like this before is that if you don't like the way the world is going pick out a part of the world your world in which you can have some effect and that tends to be the place where you live there's some really interesting literature about how all through the United States there are pockets of people doing neighborhood work I don't mean just charity work working together on projects that tends to be diverse people are diverse, different kind of political things different kind of political beliefs those beliefs aren't so important if you're trying to figure out how to get graffiti off a wall that's another way to do it you don't want to let what you call the world in the big picture determine what your life is going to be about so that's another kind of thing the trouble with advocating for more political involvement is that it's good to advocate for it but it's very hard to get people motivated there's just a real quick thing I talked on the radio yesterday about this recent study in public opinion quarterly so these guys took a real close look at the 2016 election interest in the election voter turnout watching cable news the amount of expressed interest you have watching the debates and they said look 2016 that it was a campaign like we've never seen before here's the data it turns out it wasn't very different people's interest didn't change they didn't watch the debates they didn't come anywhere close to the number of people watching debates to watch the rating debates voter turnout was okay and the only difference was early in the campaign in the primaries there was a higher than average interest otherwise and so one of the things they said it should remind you all that first of all the media tends to have a trope about change and excitement that is misleading that's kind of the nature of what you do if you're in the media what the second thing is it should remind all of us how hard it is to change people's engagement in politics now we're watching this wonderful courageous example of the young kids including people who went through this awful trauma of going to bat but the idea that they can sustain that in any kind of meaningful way or that that will affect the rest of us politically it's the thing so I would be I learned my lesson about confident punditry when I was going around telling everybody how Trump was going to lose and why so I'm a lot more careful but I think it's nuts if anybody says to you we've got a form of this kind of good government bladder that says participate more in politics well okay it's like saying to a husband and wife you should communicate more it's probably right it's a good idea but it doesn't do any good to say it it has to be a much more sustained thing over time if I ask you this question again in six months I think I'll probably I might be wrong but notice I didn't say anything about the outcome of the election in 2018 because I'm really still up in the air but I would be the only difference here's what the difference might be I may be wrong about well I'm not predicting that the students won't have that great amount of effect I'm just saying people should not be so optimistic about it and they should not let these kids carry your water for you by labeling them as courageous that may be a difference but I don't think other than that I'd be likely to say anything that different but it's only been a short period of time before I was really wrong well maybe you'd be wrong again that's right here's what if you have me back you put me up in one of those charity things where you're hanging on a chair over the water that dumb thing and so if I'm wrong I'm wrong you know you can throw that at me so we're out of time Neil Neil Milner professor of political science and political commentator and writes for Civil Beat Neil Milner who we've all known for years and years who has commented on so many things in our world Neil Milner an expert who is sometimes wrong thanks Jay it's like doing these with you it's like doing it over beers except there's never any beer next time Neil