bars</tle><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_65hRV2Qwn" class="css-1fxvzwo" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_ILVvi2tqx" class="css-1wnday1" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC"><rect x="34" width="6" height="36" id="el_qw_T_tngXw"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_p_9Pm85Ac" class="css-fwki7z" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_WxG3R40yd" class="css-t3i5e6" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU"><rect x="22.67" width="6" height="36" id="el_lf9GrROk6j"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_kYNRGDfcw" class="css-t9te0w" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_3c3bzSjOJ" class="css-1r5375t" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw"><rect x="11.33" width="6" height="36" id="el_-iueO8klO0"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_y_fKcpSxn" class="css-qknaag" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_R6bNB6_Ys" class="css-1vd04" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC"><rect width="6" height="36" id="el_dS5TKNZZ5w"></rect></g></g></g></svg></div><div><div class="css-1t7yl1y">0:00<!-- -->/<!-- -->1:00:58</div><div class="css-og85jy">-<!-- -->1:00:58</div></div></div></div></hear><div class="css-uzyn7p"><div class="css-1vxyw"><p class="css-1nng8z9">transcript</p><h2 class="css-9wqu2x">Obama Explas How Ameri Went From ‘Y We Can’ to ‘MAGA’</h2><h4 class="css-qsd3hm">The former print also discs Joe Bin, aliens and three of his favore books.</h4><time dateTime="2021-06-01T09:00:13.000Z" class="css-1e605">2021-06-01T05:00:13-04:00</time></div><dl class="css-p98d0w"><dt class="css-xx7kwh"></dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m Ezra Kle, and this is “The Ezra Kle Show.”</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So preparatn for this episo, I have spent the last few weeks very ep the md of Barack Obama. I read the first volume of his printial memoirs, “A Promised Land.” But I’ve also been listeng to his podst and other terviews he’s given, and readg terviews he’s given.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And spendg a lot of time there, there were a few thgs I noticed that really beme the re of this nversatn and that I’ve actually jt been stgglg wh myself sce. The first is Obama’s many mdns. It’s almost pathologil how much he tri, his memoirs, to grant the pots of his crics and even the really unfair pots of some of his attackers, how much he doubts his own motivatns and righteons.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">There are tim when almost feels self-laceratg, like when you want to take him asi and say, look, you won the princy. You passed the Affordable Care Act. You don’t need to keep wonrg if you should have gotten to polics at all.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But that personal tenncy — or maybe ’s almost better scribed as a personal disciple, I me to thk really ntribut to somethg ep what ma his princy possible. Barack Hse Obama unrstood, his bon at that time, that the odds were not good that majory whe electorat the age of the War on Terror were gog to vote for him. And he didn’t approach that fact rentfully, as a flaw that other people need to fix their polics. He saw fortg their fears as his work to do, the work of his polics.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">He saw, also, avoidg the issu, and sometim even the tths that would awaken their spicns, as jt part of the job. And so you n see the book that he’s not jt tryg to nvce them to vote for him as he is. He’s also tryg to turn himself, through what he says, and then very importantly, what he don’t say to the kd of ndidate and even person they want to vote for.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">That’s an important difference. It’s subtle a way, but ’s important. And ’s a whole style of polics that I thk is really ntted now.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Anyway, so as you n hear this nversatn, for him, me wh a st, both psychic and eventually, some ways, polil. That is the paradox of his book, and of his reer, and to me his princy. He puts everythg to this project of persuasn, of tryg to nvce Ameri to do somethg has never done before. And he so profoundly succeeds and fails.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">His w, simultaneoly prov this polics he believ is possible, which was not obv then. And at the same time, his w and his princy beg rhapg the Republin Party to a much more direct anthis of that polics. It turns to somethg that more powerfully threatens his visn of Ameri.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Obama is this triumph of polil persuasn and promise. And then he also leav behd, certaly a ls persuadable Republin Party and a more actured and polarized polil system. And I’m not sayg that’s his flt. But is part of the whole thg, this really, I thk, difficult way that is shapg our polics now. That, to me, is a qutn his reer and his book sets up.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk a lot of people have more or ls given up on the kds of polics Obama pursued. On the right, of urse, that’s te wh Donald Tmp and everythg that he has ma the Republin Party to. But on the left, a different way, I do thk there’s a move towards a polics more of nontatn, of forcg people to face hard tths and sayg that, if you don’t see where history is gog, and you will not adm where our history has been, then you are the problem, that ’s our job to beat you not acmodate you.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And so when I sat wh Obama this week, I wanted to see how he reflected on both the succs and the failur of his approach to polics, how he held the ntradictns of his own reer together, and where he thought Democrats had somethg to learn om what he did right, and then also, om what he did wrong. And so that’s where we began. As always, my email is Here is Print Barack Obama.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So somethg I noticed aga and aga the book is this very particular approach to persuasn that you have. I thk the normal way most of thk about you’re wng an argument wh someone. And you seem to approach wh this first step of makg yourself a person the other person will feel able to listen to, which means sympathizg wh their argument, sandg off some of the edg of your own. Tell me a b about how you thk about that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">No, that’s tertg. I fet whether was Clarence Darrow, or Abraham Lln, or some apocryphal figure the past who said, look, the bt way to w an argument is to first be able to make the other person’s argument better than they n. And for me, what that meant was that I had to unrstand their world view. And I uldn’t expect them to unrstand me if I wasn’t extendg myself to unrstand theirs.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Now, why that is the way I thk about thgs generally partly is temperament. Partly ’s bgraphil. As I’ve wrten not jt this recent book but past books, if you’re a kid whose parents are om Kansas and Kenya, and you’re born Hawaii, and you live Indonia, you are naturally havg to figure out, well, how did all the piec f together? How do all the perspectiv, cultur, bld spots, bias, how do you rencile them to approximate somethg te?</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I thk that rri over to my adulthood, and to my polics, and how I approach the world generally. It prum that none of have a monopoly on tth. It adms doubt, terms of our own perspectiv.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But if you practice long enough, at least for me, actually allows you then to maybe not always persua others but at least have some solid ground that you n stand on, that you n wh nfince say, you know what? I know what I thk, and I know what I believe. It actually giv me more nvictn rather than ls if I listen to somebody else’s argument.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">One of the thgs that strik me about , though, is that you see the book sometim means not llg out arguments that I thk you thk are really wrong, the same way that you might normally. So a sectn about the Tea Party, you mull over whether the reactn they had to you was racist. And clear you thk , at least partly, was. And then you say quote, “whatever my stcts might tell me, whatever tth the history books might suggt, I knew I wasn’t gog to w over any voters by labelg my opponents racist.” How do you ci when the st of that kd of tth outweighs the value of ?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, now you’re scribg somethg a ltle b different, which is, how do you move large segments of the populatn polilly towards an oute you want, whether ’s universal health re, or let’s do somethg about climate change? Vers how I might persua somebody one on one, right? The premise of persuadg somebody who you n build some tst wh, and have a history wh and relatnship, then there might be tim where you say, you know what? You’re jt full of . And let me tell you why.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And you n be very logil and cisive about how you want to dismantle their arguments. Although I should add, by the way, do not try that at home. Bee that’s not a recipe for wng arguments wh Michelle.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But look, when you’re alg at the macro level, when you’re alg wh 300 ln people wh enormo regnal, and racial, and relig, and cultural differenc, then now you are havg to make some lculatns. So let’s take the example you ed. And I wre extensively about the emergence of the Tea Party. And we uld see that happeng wh Sarah Pal. She was sort of a prototype for the polics that led to the Tea Party, that turn, ultimately led to Donald Tmp, and that we’re still seeg today.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">There were tim where llg out would have given me great satisfactn personally. But wouldn’t have necsarily won the polil day terms of me gettg a bill passed. And I thk every print has to al wh this.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">It may have been more noticeable wh me, part bee, as the first Ain Amerin print, there was a prumptn, not rrect, that there were tim where I was bg my tongue. That’s why the sk that “Key and Peele” did wh the anger translator, Luther, was funny. Bee people assumed, you know Barack’s thkg somethg other than what he’s sayg certa circumstanc.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk that, a lot of tim, one of the ways I would measure would be: is more important for me to tell a basic historil tth, let’s say, about racism Ameri right now? Or is more important for me to get a bill passed that provis a lot of people wh health re that didn’t have before? And there’s a psychic st to not always jt tellg the tth, as I thk I scribe the book, g your prophetic voice as opposed to your aln buildg polil voice. And I thk there were tim where supporters of me would get trated if I wasn’t beg as forthright about certa thgs as I might otherwise be.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And then there are also jt stutnal nstrats that I thk every print has to follow on some of the issu. And was sort of on a se by se basis, where you try to make cisns. Sometim, you’d get sufficiently disappoted. Let’s say for example, wh gun safety issu after Newtown, for example, and Congrs’s plete unwillgns to do anythg about the slghter of children.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">There were tim, where I would jt go off. Bee I felt that eply about how wronghead we were a basic fundamental way. But that was, let’s face , after I had exhsted every other possibily of tryg to get Congrs to move on those issu.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I set up that kd of persuasn and pluralism tensn, bee somethg that really stck me about the book is how much liv paradox, how much ’s fortable wh the ia, that you’re fortable wh the ia that somethg and s oppose are te at the same time. And I thk of a polics of persuasn as beg the central paradox of your princy. So you acplished this massive act of persuasn, wng the princy twice, as a Black man wh the middle name Hse. And now that, retrospect, ’s like, oh yeah, of urse, Barack Obama was print.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah, no. I thk ’s fair to say that wasn’t a given.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It wasn’t as obv at the time.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But at the same time, your princy ma the Republin Party ls persuadable. It opened the door, certa ways, to Donald Tmp. And further closed the door on the kd of pluralistic polics that you try to practice. And I’m cur how you hold both of those out together.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Look, that’s been the history of Ameri. Right? There is aboln and the Civil War. And then there’s backlash and the rise of the KKK. And the Renstctn ends, and Jim Crow aris.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And then you have a civil rights movement, a morn civil rights movement and segregatn. And that, turn, leads to phback and, ultimately, Nixon’s Southern strategy. And what I take fort om is that the tradnal two steps forward, one step back, as long as you’re gettg the two steps, then the one step back is the price of dog bs.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">In my se, let’s say, I get elected. We have a spurt of activy that gets thgs done. Even after we lose Congrs, durg the urse of those eight years, we manage the ernment, rtore some sense of that n work on behalf of people.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">We rega credibily ternatnally, but you’re right. It unleash and helps to precipate a shift the Republin Party that was already there but probably accelerat . And we’re still playg out how this works to this day.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">On the other hand, durg that perd, you’ve got an entire generatn that’s growg up and takg for granted, as you jt scribed, that you’ve got a Black fay the Whe Hoe, takg for granted that that admistratn n be petent, and have tegry, and not be wrought wh sndal. And serv as a marker. It’s planted a flag om which then the next generatn builds.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And by the way, the next generatn n then look back and say, yeah, we do take that for granted. We n do a lot better than that and go even further. And that is, I wouldn’t say, an evable progrsn.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Sometim, the backlash n last a very long time, and you n take three steps back after two steps forward. But do seem to be the nature of thgs that any signifint movement of social progrs, particularly those aspects of social progrs that relate to inty, race, genr, all the stuff that is not jt dollars and cents and transactnal. That, variably, will release some energy on the other si by folks who feel threatened by change.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But one lson I’ve seen a lot of folks on the left take, I thk particularly the aftermath the Tmp years, is that there’s jt some re of this you n’t do through persuasn, that you n’t do through pluralism. And I thk some of the rise of shamg and social prsure, what I thk people ll ncel culture, ends up partly as a reactn to this. But also, jt some of the move towards a polics of, I would say, more nontatn, that there’s not a virtue lettg some thgs lie unsaid, to both the aln. That you really do have to nont the untry.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">You really do have to nont others wh the uglit piec of . So that light n e , and n heal. And I’m cur if you thk they have a pot, or that’s the wrong lson to take.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">No. I don’t thk ’s — well, let’s take, sce we’re on the topic of race, what we saw after Gee Floyd’s murr was a eful b of tth tellg that young people led. And I thk, opened people’s ey to a renewed way of thkg about how plete the procs of reckong has been this untry when to race.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But even after, I thk, a shift perspective around Gee Floyd, we’re still back to the trench of how do we get different district attorneys elected? And how do we actually reform police partments? And now, we’re back the world of polics. And as soon as we get back to the world of polics, ’s a numbers game. And you have to persua, and you have to create alns.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So I don’t thk ’s an eher/or proposn. I thk there are tim, where there’s what we might scribe as a teachable moment. And Gee Floyd’s tragic ath was an example of that, very stark terms.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">In some ways on the enomic ont, part of what happens as a rult of the panmic is there’s a teachable moment about hey, maybe this whole fic hawk thg of the feral ernment jt beg nervo about our bt 30 years om now, while lns of people are sufferg, maybe that’s not a smart way to thk about our enomics. Aga, a teachable moment. So there are tim where, when that’s prented, I thk you try to drive home as much as possible and get a reorientatn of the body polic.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But at some pot, this untry, our mocracy, you still have to bble together majori to get thgs done. And that is particularly te at the feral level, where although renciliatn has now prented a narrow wdow to do some pretty big thgs, the filibter apparently, if do not get reformed, still means that maybe 30 percent of the populatn potentially ntrols the majory of Senate seats. So if you say that that 30 percent of the untry is irrencilably wrong, then ’s gog to be hard to ern.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">There’s a pretty fundamental asymmetry that brgs out. So I thk, at the printial level, you have about a three and a half pot advantage for Republins the electoral llege. At the Senate level, ’s now about five pots, and the Hoe level, ’s about two pots.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So you have this real difference now between the parti, where Democrats need to w right of center voters to w natnal power. But Republins do not need to w left of center voters to w natnal power. And that’s really changed the strategic picture for both of them.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It’s enormo. And this is part of what I wre about the book. It’s one of those thgs that’s the background of folks Washgton and people who follow polics closely. But the average Amerin, unrstandably, isn’t spendg a lot of time thkg about Senate l, and gerrymanrg, and you know —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">How dare you?</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[LAUGHTER]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m sorry, Ezra, but you’re on the nerd si of the spectm on this stuff, as am I. So people don’t unrstand, well, if the Democrats w the princy, or if they’re ntrol of the Senate, why aren’t all the thgs that they promised happeng? Or why are they trimmg their sails on sgle payer plan health re plans, or what have you?</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And the answer is, well, the game is tilted a way that partly aris out of very tentnal sire for Southern stat, for example, to mata power and rce the power of the feral ernment. Some of has to do wh mographic patterns and where populatn’s distributed that ’s not surprisg that the progrsive party, the Democratic party, is more of an urban party. Bee, by necsy, you got more different kds of people, immigrants floodg urban areas and settlg, and havg a different perspective than folks who are more ral, more homogeneo areas. And once you get Wyomg havg the same number of senators as California, you’ve got a problem. That do mean Democratic polics is gog to be different than Republin polics.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Now, look, the good news is I also thk that has ma the Democratic Party more empathetic, more thoughtful, wiser. By necsy we have to thk about a broar array of terts and people. And that’s my visn for how Ameri ultimately works bt and perfects s unn.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">We don’t have the luxury of jt nsigng a group of people to say, you’re not real Amerins. We n’t do that. But do make our job harr, when to jt tryg to get a bill passed or tryg to w an electn.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">One of the ways this has reoriented, even jt sce your princy, is around tn. So for reasons that are plited to expla here, when tnal polarizatn be bigger, the Democratic disadvantage the electoral llege gets a lot worse.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Right.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But you did somethg unual 2008 and 2012. And you bucked a kd of ternatnal trend here, and tnal polarizatn went down. In 2012, you won non-llege wh makg ls than $27,000 a year.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But Donald Tmp then ws them by more than 20 pots 2016. He keeps them 2020. So what advice do you have to Democrats to brg tnal polarizatn back down?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I actually thk Joe Bin’s got good stcts on this. And the current admistratn’s pursug polici that speak to the ncerns and terts of folks who, if you’re 45 and workg a blue llar job, and somebody is lecturg you about beg a puter programmer, that feels abstract. That feels like somethg got sp out of some thk tank, as opposed to how my real life is lived.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I thk, when you start talkg about mimum wag, and when you start talkg about unn power, you are not soft pedalg social issu. I mean, the tertg thg is people knew I was left on issu like race, or genr equaly, and LGBTQ issu, and so forth. But I thk, maybe the reason I was succsful mpaigng downstate Illois, or Iowa, or plac like that is they never felt as if I was nmng them for not havg gotten to the polilly rrect answer quick enough. Or that somehow they were morally spect, bee they had grown up wh and believed more tradnal valu.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I thk Joe has that same pacy, partly bee of his bgraphy and where he om. The challenge I have, and I know you’ve wrten about this, is when I started nng 2007, 2008, was still possible for me to go to a small town, a disproportnately whe nservative town ral Ameri, and get a fair hearg. Bee people jt they hadn’t heard of me.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Now, they might say, what kd of name is that? And they might look at me and have a set of assumptns. But the filter jt wasn’t that thick. Bee rather than gettg all their news om Fox News or Rh Limbgh, they were — the way I’d scribe , the prototypil that I show up a small town Southern Illois, which is closer to the South than is to Chigo, both culturally as well as geographilly. And ually, the lol paper was owned by a mostly nservative, maybe even que nservative ually guy.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">He’d ll me . We’d have a cup of ffee. We’d have a nversatn about tax policy, or tra, or whatever else he red about. Or he might have a small edorial board of two or three wrers.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And at the end of , ually, I uld expect some sort of story the paper sayg, well, we met wh Obama. He seems like an telligent young man. We don’t agree wh him on much. He’s kd of liberal for our taste but had some tertg ias, and that was .</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And so then I uld go to the fish y, or the VFW hall, or all the other venu and jt talk to people and have a nversatn. And they didn’t have any prenceptns about what I believe. They uld jt take me at face value. If I went to those same plac now, or if any Democrat who’s mpaigng go those plac now, almost all news is om eher Fox News, Sclair’s news statns, talk rad, or some Facebook page. And tryg to perate that is really difficult.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And ’s not that the people the muni have changed. It’s that if that’s what you are beg fed day day out, then you’re gog to e to every nversatn wh a certa set of predisposns that are really hard to break through. And that is one of the biggt challeng I thk we face. Bee at the end of the day, I actually have found that, and this still sounds naive, I thk a lot of people would still qutn this. But I’ve seen .</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Most folks actually are persuadable the sense of they kd of want the same thgs. They want a good job. They want to be able to support a fay. They want safe neighborhoods.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And even on historilly difficult issu like race, people aren’t gog around thkg, man, how n we do terrible thgs to people who don’t look like ? That’s not people’s perspective. What they are ncerned about is not beg taken advantage of, or is their way of life and tradns slippg away om them? Or is their stat beg unrmed by chang society?</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And if you have a nversatn wh folks, you n ually assuage those fears. But they have to be able to hear you. And you have to be able to get to the room.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I still uld do that back 2007, 2008. I thk Joe, by virtue of bgraphy and generatnally, I thk he n still reach some of those folks. But starts gettg harr, particularly for newers who are g up.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">We had a nversatn 2015 about polarizatn.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And how had gone up durg your princy, and somethg you said to me is somethg I wrtled a lot wh my own book, which is that, look, people are pretty polarized when you start talkg about natnal polics. But then you talk to them a b more, and they’re soccer ach. They go to church.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">They got a bs. Their iend down the street don’t thk like them or don’t look like them. And I found that persuasive at the time and hopeful at the time. And one of the thgs —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thgs changed.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I began to thk sce is polics has bee that much more natnalized. Our polil inti bee that much stronger. And this ia that the other inti are eper seems ls and ls te. That like, when the polil cue , you really know what si you’re on. Do you thk Amerins have jt bee ls persuadable?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">What you jt intified, part bee of the media astcture I scribed, and the silog of media, part bee of, then, the Tmp princy and the way both sis went to their rpective fortrs, absolutely. I thk ’s real. I thk ’s worse.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m not the origal this. I thk pollg shows . Anecdote shows . Thanksgivg be a lot more difficult. What we’re seeg right now, wh rpect to vacc.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I mean, I thk ’s fair to say that the difference how Gee H. W. Bh, Bill Clton, Gee W. Bh, Obama admistratn would’ve approached the basic issue of a panmic and vacc, there might be differenc terms of efficy, or how well programs were n, et cetera. But ’s hard to image a prev Republin admistratn pletely ignorg science. Right?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thought a lot about if this were send term Mt Romney. How would that have gone?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah, exactly. And so that is a fundamental shift. And I thk people’s inti have bee far more vted as a rult which si are you on polilly? It spills over to everyday life and even small issu, what prevly were not nsired even polil issu.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And so if you’re a soccer ach now, there might be a nversatn about, why are all the refs whe? Sudnly, there’s a long argument. And you’ve got each si immediately tweetg about . And be ght wh all sorts of polil stuff.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And then Fox News might grab the story and n wh the most sensatnal way. And next thg you know, Joe Bin’s beg asked about a soccer game Maryland. And we see that pattern playg self out our daily liv a way that’s unhealthy.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Some people have remarked, and I thk there’s some mer to this, that the cle of other mediatg stutns that provid a sense of place and who we are, whether was the church, or unn, or neighborhood, those ed to be part of a multiple set of buildg blocks to how we thought about ourselv. And the way the natnal nversatn evolv, sudnly, there’s a right answer across all those l, which is part of the reason why you don’t get ticket spltg the days. Beg a morate Republin, and I wre about this “Promised Land,” you uld see happeng even when I first me . What was strikg was the gree to which the nservative Democrat, or the pro-choice Republin, they were gettg wnowed out of each rpective party.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And what’s tertg is how filtered. Rather than the public sayg, we don’t like that. Let’s try somethg else. In some ways, the public’s e to see themselv dividually those terms as well.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, also, the choic get starker for them. Somethg I was thkg about while you were talkg was this ia that I thk about sometim that I ll richet polarizatn. And I’m not assertg symmetry between two sis. I don’t want to —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Good.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Get flack on that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah, well. I would jump on you a send. Don’t worry.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But there’s a dynamic here. You were sayg a uple of mut ago that you thought people knew you were pretty left on social issu, on LGBTQ issu, on a bunch of issu. But they thought you rpected them.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But you, also, bee ’s eher what you believed, or also bee, and the Democratic Party broadly, thought folks who are movable. You were rtraed on a lot of the issu. You ran 2008, and you were opposed to gay marriage. I’m not sayg that wasn’t te to you, but publicly, that was the posn.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">You talk the book about how Axelrod and Plouffe were very reful about avoidg issu that would exacerbate racial nflict. And you guys foced a lot on enomics. But then as people feel that stuff not workg as the other — they see the worst of the outsi g at them. There’s a dynamic that happens.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I see among Democrats too, where ’s like, well, you know what? Then here’s what I really believe. And here’s what I really believe about you. And the parti bee a ltle more each day ls rtraed, bee the benefs of rtrat seem lower. Like, if they’re still gog to say I’m a socialist, then, well, maybe I am a socialist.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">They’re still gog to say I want to raise tax on middle class people, then, maybe I do, actually.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">As you said though, is — first of all, and you already offered this veat. But I want to reemphasize ’s not symmetril. Bee Joe Manch’s still a Democrat our party.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I thk a lot of people look and say, the guy’s got to n Wt Virgia, a state that Joe Bin lost by 30 percent. And we unrstand that his polics are not gog to be the same as Nancy Pelosi’s. So jt by virtue of the fact that we have to earn vot om a lot of different plac means —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Meetg center right voters.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And meetg center right voters means that, look, the challenge we have is that the other si jt did not functn that way. And that’s not bee there aren’t people the Republin Party who thought that way. You mentned Mt Romney earlier. Well, Mt Romney was the ernor of Massachetts. And when he was, he ma all kds of sensible promis.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">He didn’t approach thgs the way I would approach thgs. But there was some sense of, listen, what the other si thks matters. He’s the ernor of a Democratic state. I’ve got to regnize that I’m probably more nservative than most people this state, which means I have to make some acmodatns. But as soon as he started nng for the princy, sudnly, he’s got to pretend that he’s this hard right gun totg varmt killg guy.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Severely nservative.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Severely nservative. Well, why is that? It’s bee a dynamic has been created. And that dynamic, part, has to do wh public officials beg lazy and jt sayg, look, this is the easit way for to get our folks riled up is to suggt that Obama is a Mlim socialist who’s gog to take away your guns.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But some of is a media astcture that persuad a large portn of that base that they had somethg to fear and fed on that fear and rentment, that polics of fear rentment, a way that, ironilly, end up beg a strajacket for the Republin officials themselv. And some of them got gobbled up by the monster that had been created and sudnly found themselv retirg. And they uldn’t functn, bee they weren’t angry or rentful enough for the base they had stoked.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk ’s fair to say, the book, you’re cril of the media at pots. How much do you feel the media reflects polics? And how much do you feel shap polics?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, look, there are certa bad habs that the media cultivated and had to, then, reexame durg the Tmp era. The classic beg the what nstut objectivy? as I joke about. Print Obama, today, was savagely attacked by the Republins for suggtg that the earth is round. Republins suggted that there’s some hidn documents showg the earth is, fact, flat.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">In rponse, Obama said, well — and then go on. But ’s prented as if he said, they said, and that’s reportg. And you’d have some vague rner of the prs room engaged fact checkg after the fact. But that’s not what appeared on the nightly news.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And tght somebody like a Mch McConnell that there is no downsi for misstatg facts, makg stuff up, engagg out and out obstctn, reversg posns that you held jt a few mut ago. Bee now, ’s polilly expedient to do so. That never reached the public a way where the public uld make a judgment about who’s actg rponsibly and who isn’t.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And that, I thk, was not driven by the polics of the moment. I mean, I thk that the media was plic creatg that dynamic a way that is difficult. Bee as we disvered durg the Tmp admistratn, if an admistratn is jt misstatg facts all the time, starts lookg like, gosh, the media’s anti-Tmp. And this be more evince of a left wg nspiracy, and liberal el tryg to gang up on the guy.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. There’s the objectivy crique, which is there. And I actually thk many ways, the media got better at.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But there’s another one laced through. And ’s tertg, bee I thk you both benefed om and then bee wary of , which is that, I will say, the media, one of our central bias is towards excg ndidat. You were an excg ndidate 2008, but later on, that’s also somethg that Donald Tmp activat —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Y.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">In a different way. You have a big set piece at the Whe Hoe Corrponnts Dner, where “The Washgton Post” v Donald Tmp after a year of birtherism to s at their table.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">That’s how my book ends.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I don’t want to spoil the endg. People may not know that happened.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But even a broar sense, excg ndidat are ually, one, they shape perceptns of parti. But two, on the right, they tend to be que extreme. They fely tend to be both directns, eher more liberal or more nservative. But part of the dynamic, I thk, you’re talkg about — and then the media is prsured by social media, where —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah, very much so now.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">You look out there, and you look around, like who’s up there on Facebook and on Redd. And nflict sells.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And that’s a way which I thk the perceptns of the parti are changg for people. Bee whoever is chair of the Hoe Ways and Means Commtee —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Who’s nsired the voice of the party?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Exactly. Who be the voice? How do you reflect on that?</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">You me up. Social media is great for you. It seems to me you’ve got some different views on now. How do you thk about that tra off between excement and then some of the other quali that are a ltle b more nuanced that you worry people are losg sight of?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. Look, I thk is entirely fair, and you’re right. Even durg my mpaign, I got wary of . What my polil advisor, David nsultant lled — David Axelrod lled the —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I like David nsultant though.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah, David nsultant, right. Generic. What Axelrod lled the Obama in. You got the posters. And you got the crowds and very much foced on me as this et burstg onto the scene.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But I have to tell you that there’s a difference between the issue of excement, charisma, vers rewardg people for sayg the most outrageo thgs. I don’t thk anybody would acce me of havg trafficked jt poppg off and creatg ntroversy jt for the sake of . The excement I brought was tryg to tell a story about Ameri, where we might all start workg together and overe some of our tragic past, and move forward, and build a broar sense of muny. And turns out that those virtu actually did exce people.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So I don’t agree that that’s the only way that you n get people to read newspapers or click on a se. It requir more imagatn and maybe more effort. And requir some rtrat to not feed the outrage, flammatory approach to polics. And I thk that folks didn’t do .</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And look, as I note towards the end of the book, the birther thg, which was jt a taste of thgs to e, started the right wg media esystem. But a whole bunch of mastream folks, who later got very exercised about Donald Tmp, they booked him all the time. Bee he boosted ratgs. But that wasn’t somethg that was pelled.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">It was nvenient for them to do. Bee was a lot easier to book Donald Tmp to let him claim that I wasn’t born this untry than was to how do I actually create an tertg story that people will want to watch about e equaly. That’s a harr thg to e up wh.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Let me get at that piece of too. So I vered the Affordable Care Act pretty closely. I thk ’s fair to say, and I’ve thought a lot about s polil afterlife. It survived the Republin attempts to gut . It did bee popular.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thought was gog to happen a ltle b quicker, but didn’t —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, that’s sentially what I want to get at here, which is that, at the same time, the thg that is strikg to me is didn’t nvert many voters over to the Democratic si, cludg Republin voters. Sarah Kliff did great piece on this at Vox at one pot, cludg Republin voters who relied on who would have lost if the folks they were votg for got their way. Do you thk, given how tense polil inti are now, that policy n persua people to vote differently? Or is partisanship now almost immune to the material nsequenc of ernance?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk, over time, do. I thk ’s not as immediate. And look, I thk ’s important to remember that, when we me to office, the enomy was a eefall. We had to scramble and do a bunch of stuff, some of which was hered, some of which we iated to stabilize the fancial system.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">People hated . I scribe the book, ’s hard to unrsre how much the bank bailouts jt angered everyone, cludg me. And then you have this long, slow revery. And although the enomy revers technilly quickly, ’s another five years before we’re really back to people feelg like OK, the enomy is movg and workg for me.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And the tth is that if Donald Tmp don’t get elected, let’s say, a Joe Bin or the person who was nng, Hillary Clton, had immediately succeed me, and the enomy sudnly has three percent unemployment, I thk we would have nsolidated the sense that, oh, actually, the polici that Obama put place worked. The fact that Tmp terpts, sentially, the ntuatn of our polici but still benefs om the enomic stabily and growth that we had iated means people aren’t sure. Well, gosh, unemployment’s three and a half percent unr Donald Tmp.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Now, I would argue, and I thk a lot of enomists that you know and I know would suggt that, mostly, that had nothg to do wh Donald Tmp’s polici. And mostly had to do wh we had put the enomy on a footg, where he sentially jt ntued the longt peacetime revery Amerin history and staed job growth Amerin history. But if you’re the average voter, you’re thkg, well, looks like Republin polici are workg for me to some gree, which probably explas why Tmp was able to make some roads, most, overstated but real roads among non-whe voters feelg like, you know what? I’m workg and makg cent money, and thgs feel pretty good.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So that clouds what I thk would have been a more impactful shift polil views towards Democrats as a rult of my princy. And I thk that what we’re seeg now is Joe Bin and the admistratn are sentially fishg the job, and I thk ’ll be an tertg tt. 90 percent of the folks who are there were there my admistratn. They are ntug and buildg on the polici we talked about, whether ’s the Affordable Care Act, or our climate change agenda, and the Paris Peace Acrds, and figurg out how do we improve the ladrs to mobily through thgs like muny lleg.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And if, as I thk they will be, they’re succsful over the next four years, I thk that will have an impact. Do overri the inty polics that has e to domate Twter and the media, and that has seeped to how people thk about polics? Probably not pletely, but at the margs, look, if you’re changg five percent of the electorate, that mak a difference.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Most importantly, I thk do have an impact for young people as they are formg their ias about polics and who they are. And I was both a maniftatn of the more progrsive views that young people brought to polics 2008, and 2009, 2010. And I thk my princy helped to solidify a huge tilt the directn of progrsive polics among young people that is now ntug to their 30s. As lennials and even the Gen Z-ers are startg to marry and have fai, that their polil inty has been shaped and changed pretty signifint ways.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">One thg that you’re more optimistic than me on the book is that better polil munitn n really change the way people receive policy. And I thk more about how uld you do policy sign, so the policy self uld speak more clearly?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I actually thk we agree on that. You hear the book arguments that we would have about — there’d be a bunch of bad reportg around the enomy. And I’d get on gmpy, and I’d ll my advisors. I’d say, I need to do more prs nferenc. Or I need to give another speech.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And they actually were pretty clear to me. They’re all like, look, as long as unemployment still at ne percent, don’t matter how many speech you give. It’s not gog to change thgs.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">On the other hand, I ed an example, which I thk rerc your pot, and a pot I know you ma your book, which was when people ask me what would I do differently, a lot of tim, I’ll give broad generalizatns. Bee I don’t want to get too ep the weeds. But you’ll appreciate this, beg a policy nerd, the Makg Work Pay tax cut that was part of our stimul, where Larry Summers talks me to the ia that we should spread out the tax cut people’s weekly paychecks the drip, drip, drip fashn. Bee the social science shows that they’re more likely to spend .</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But if they get a big lump sum, then they might jt pay down bt. And we need more stimul. And I thought, well, that mak sense. But of urse, as a rult, nobody thought I’d cut tax.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Everybody was nfint that I had raised their tax, even Democrats thought I had, to pay for all the other stuff I was dog like health re. And that’s an example of a policy sign where we were too stubborn I thk ially around, yeah, we’ll jt get the policy right, and the polics will take re of self. And I should have done a eper dive to FDR regnizg that you know what? You’ve got to sell the sizzle as well as the steak. Bee that creat the polil aln to ntue . The New Deal had all kds of polici that actually didn’t work as well as they should have. We get polil phras like pork barrel and logrollg. A lot of that out of the mismanagement of the feral programs, but you know what? People saw , and they felt . And they associated their liv gettg better or some ncrete help wh those polici, and that’s important.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And I thk a fair crique of , when I look back, is the fact that I was, sometim, too stubborn about, no, we’re gog to jt play straight. And let’s not worry about how the policy sells. If works, then that’s what we should do.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Are there other sign ias that you would advise people to take serly? I thk a lot about, and I realize some of the technil reasons has happened, but how the Affordable Care Act took four years to beg liverg the bulk of health surance benefs.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It’s a good example. And so, look, I thk that there’s no doubt that the team that is now the Bin admistratn and thkg about, whether ’s the Covid stimul package, or how do you build off the Affordable Care Act, they’re mdful of the lsons. And they’re sayg to themselv, all right. We’ve got to sell this.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">So on health re particular: how do we make this simple and stupid? So that ’s easily explaed. It’s easily unrstood. The expansn of Mediid, for example, was probably the part of the Affordable Care Act that had the biggt impact, quickly, easy to admister, didn’t have a lot of movg parts. Bee was buildg off an existg program.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And look, there are tim where is important, fact, to go ahead and plant some seeds, even if don’t yield quick polil benefs. I e the example our stimul of the $90 billn we vted the green enomy. Polilly, that wasn’t a wner for .</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">We knew that we were gog to get some Solyndras, for example, the famo example that the Republins beat over the head wh, where we’d given a loan to a solar pany that go belly up. But the tth is that the reason now we’re seeg such enormo breakthroughs terms of everythg om electric rs, to solar efficiency, to wd power — all those thgs that we n now build on pursu of future climate policy — a lot of that relied on those programs we started that didn’t have a lot of polil benef.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Part of what I try to make clear the book is, and sometim my iends the Democratic Party who cricize on the left misapprehend this ia that we had some iologil aversn to phg the envelope on policy. That’s not the se. We had jt polil nstrats we had to al wh, and we had an emergency we had to al wh. But one thg I was pretty clear about early on, and I showed that wh the Affordable Care Act, was, given we were a hole enomilly anyway, there was no pot tryg to go small bore.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">Bill Clton was able, his send term, to polilly go small. Bee the enomy was hummg and people were feelg good. We were alg wh what, at that pot, was the worst recsn sce the Great Deprsn. Polilly, we were gog to get clobbered the midterms. It really didn’t matter what we did.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And so we jt tried to do as much as we uld wh the polil nstrats that we had. And I thk that the environment now is such, partly bee Republins spent $2 trilln of their own stimul, and shockgly, weren’t ncerned when they were power about fics, partly bee of the urgency of Covid and the panmic and people regnizg they jt need immediate relief and help now, I thk we’re now an environment, where if we jt get some big piec place buildg on what we did before, people will notice. And will have a polil impact.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">It don’t overri all the ep, subterranean polil dynamics of our culture, race obvly, beg at the top of that list, but changg genr rol, and those who still are engaged anized relign feelg attacked by an atheist culture. And those are thgs that are ep. They’ve always been here.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">They’re not gog away anytime soon. But I gus what I am still nfint about is: if we n get some stuff done that works, and we give people the benef of the doubt, and we ntue to reach out, as opposed to yell, that we get better out rather than worse out. And ’s not gog to solve all our problems.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I hard you say the other day that you’d like to know what those UFO objects are too.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Absolutely.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">If me out that they were alien, if we got unniable proof of that, how would that change your polics, or your theory about where humany should be gog?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">That is an tertg qutn.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thank you.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, first of all, pends on if we — have we ma ntact wh them?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">No, jt dron. They jt —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">We jt know that —</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">We jt know they’re om afar.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">The prob have been sent.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But we have no way of reachg out to them.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">We n’t get touch. We jt know we’re not alone, and somethg’s been here.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It’s tertg. It wouldn’t change my polics at all. Bee my entire polics is premised on the fact that we are the ty anisms on this ltle speck floatg the middle of space. The analogy I always ed to e when we were gog through tough polil tim, and I’d try to cheer my staff up, then I’d tell them a statistic that John Holdren, my science advisor, told me, which was that there are more stars the known universe than there are gras of sand on the pla Earth.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Your staff mt have loved that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, sometim cheered them up. Sometim they’d jt roll their ey and say, oh, there he go aga. But the pot is, I gus, that my polics has always been premised on the notn that the differenc we have on this pla are real. They’re profound, and they e enormo tragedy as well as joy. But we’re jt a bunch of humans wh doubts and nfn.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">We do the bt we n. And the bt thg we n do is treat each other better, bee we’re all we got. And I would hope that the knowledge that there were aliens out there would solidify people’s sense that what we have mon is a ltle more important.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">But no doubt, there would be immediate arguments about, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to fend ourselv. And new religns would pop up, and who knows what kd of arguments we’d get to. We’re good at manufacturg arguments for each other.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Here’s another long view qutn. What are we dog now, humany, that we’ll be judged for most harshly 100 years?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, if we don’t get a handle on climate change, then if there’s anybody around to judge , they’ll judge pretty harshly on . Bee the data’s here. We know . One thg that I thk maybe the panmic has done is to start gettg people to thk sle.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">You n actually put a dollar figure to what would take to transn to a clean enomy. It’s the trillns of dollars a year globally. But when you thk about how much was spent and how much was lost one year, as a rult of the panmic, sudnly, makg vtments, obvly, public health systems immediately says, oh, that’s a pretty good vtment. Siarly, maybe opens up people’s imagatns to say, we n actually afford to make this transn. There are some sacrific volved, but we n do .</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And then fally, what are three books you’d remend to the dience?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Three books, a book I jt read, “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, ’s about tre and the relatnship of humans to tre. And ’s not somethg I would have immediately thought of, but a iend gave to me. And I started readg , and changed how I thought about the earth. And changed how I see thgs, and that’s always, for me, a mark of a book worth readg.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">“Memorial Drive” by Natasha Trethewey, ’s a memoir, jt a tragic story. Her mother’s former hband, or her former stepfather, murrs her mother. And ’s a medatn on race, and class, and grief, upliftg surprisgly, at the end of but jt wrenchg.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">And then this one is easier to remember. I actually ught up on some past readgs of Mark Twa. There’s somethg about Twa that I wanted to revis, bee he speaks a ltle b of — he’s that most sential of Amerin wrers. And there’s his satiric eye and his actual outrage that sometim gets buried unr the edy I thought was eful to revis.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Print Barack Obama, thank you very much.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">barack obama</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Great to talk to you. Thank you, Ezra.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">“The Ezra Kle Show” is a productn of New York Tim Opn. It is produced by Jeff Geld, Roge Karma, and Annie Galv, fact checkg by Michelle Harris, origal mic by Isaac Jon, and mixg by Jeff Geld.</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd></dl></div></div></div></div><div style="posn:absolute;width:0;height:0;visibily:hidn;display:none"></div><hear class="css-1vwfk9f" data-breakpot=""><div style="width:100%" data-ttid="flt-layout"><div style="background-image:url()" class="css-197zlhc e1llfg0"><div class="css-1hmsypo e1llfg2"><div class="css-131hid3 e1llfg3"><div class="css-1uhi299 e1llfg1"></div><div class="css-1tloyb6"><div class="css-ah35qo ehra6vc0"><a href=" class="css-2ne0py"><span class="css-1f76qa2"><img alt="The Ezra Kle Show logo" src="><span>The Ezra Kle Show</span></span></a></div></div><div class="css-1r0dpua e1llfg4"><div class="css-wfiq9c edye5kn0"><div><h1 class="css-15oz550 edye5kn2">Obama Explas How Ameri Went From ‘Y We Can’ to ‘MAGA’</h1><h2 class="css-syyj5g edye5kn3">The former print also discs Joe Bin, aliens and three of his favore books.</h2></div><span class="css-xpptmx edye5kn4"></span><button type="button" class="css-w62hzm" aria-haspopup="te" aria-label="Show Aud Transcript"><div class="css-1vd84sn"><svg xmlns=" width="24" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 20" fill="#F8F8F8"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M0 0H24V20H0V0ZM3 7H21V9H3V7ZM21 11H3V13H21V11ZM3 15H21V17H3V15ZM11 3H3V5H11V3Z" fill="#F8F8F8"></path></svg><span class="css-16bt4xd">Transcript</span></div></button></div><div class="css-1g7y0i5 e1drnplw0"><button tabx="100" class="css-1rtlxy" type="button" aria-label="close"><svg width="60" height="60" viewBox="0 0 60 60" fill="none"><circle cx="30" cy="30" r="30" fill="whe" fill-opacy="0.9"></circle><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M38.4844 20.1006L39.8986 21.5148L21.5138 39.8996L20.0996 38.4854L38.4844 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M21.5156 20.1006L20.1014 21.5148L38.4862 39.8996L39.9004 38.4854L21.5156 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path></svg></button><div class="css-rdbib0 e1drnplw1"></div><div class="css-18ow4sz e1drnplw2"><div aria-labelledby="modal-tle" role="regn"><hear class="css-1bzlfz"><div class="css-mln36k" id="modal-tle">transcript</div><button type="button" class="css-1igvuto"><div class="css-f40pzg"></div><span>Back to The Ezra Kle Show</span></button><div class="css-f6lhej" data-ttid="transcript-playback-ntrols"><div class="css-1ialerq"><button tabx="99" type="button" class="css-1t9gw" aria-label="play"><svg xmlns=" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M8 13.7683V6L14.5 9.88415L8 13.7683Z" fill="var(--lor-ntent-sendary,#363636)"></path><circle cx="10" cy="10" r="9.25" stroke="var(--lor-stroke-primary,#121212)" stroke-width="1.5"></circle></svg></button><div class="css-1701swk"><svg xmlns=" viewBox="0 0 40 36" id="el_0kpS9qL_S"><tle>bars

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* IS EZRA KLEIN GAY

bars</tle><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_65hRV2Qwn" class="css-1fxvzwo" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC_ILVvi2tqx" class="css-1wnday1" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_oZ84Hna1GC"><rect x="34" width="6" height="36" id="el_qw_T_tngXw"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_p_9Pm85Ac" class="css-fwki7z" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU_WxG3R40yd" class="css-t3i5e6" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_mYVjkduhMU"><rect x="22.67" width="6" height="36" id="el_lf9GrROk6j"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_kYNRGDfcw" class="css-t9te0w" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw_3c3bzSjOJ" class="css-1r5375t" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_o-EuxhgoAw"><rect x="11.33" width="6" height="36" id="el_-iueO8klO0"></rect></g></g></g><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_y_fKcpSxn" class="css-qknaag" data-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="0"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC_R6bNB6_Ys" class="css-1vd04" ata-animator-group="te" data-animator-type="2"><g id="el_F7mSMPhqpC"><rect width="6" height="36" id="el_dS5TKNZZ5w"></rect></g></g></g></svg></div><div><div class="css-1t7yl1y">0:00<!-- -->/<!-- -->1:02:35</div><div class="css-og85jy">-<!-- -->1:02:35</div></div></div></div></hear><div class="css-uzyn7p"><div class="css-1vxyw"><p class="css-1nng8z9">transcript</p><h2 class="css-9wqu2x">Shame, Safety and Movg Beyond Cancel Culture</h2><h4 class="css-qsd3hm">When is ncellatn eful? And what other tools are available when isn’t?</h4><time dateTime="2021-04-27T09:00:05.000Z" class="css-1e605">2021-04-27T05:00:05-04:00</time></div><dl class="css-p98d0w"><dt class="css-xx7kwh"></dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m Ezra Kle, and this is “The Ezra Kle Show.” [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I always found myself an unfortable place the ncel culture bate. I thk fights over the boundari of acceptable speech aren’t jt legimate, but they’re actually need and overdue, and I thk the way they play out onle leads to excs, disproportnate punishments, oftentim the wrong people beg targeted for the wrong thgs, and then, over time, a crappy speech environment and a lot of polil backlash for everyone. So here I want to get beyond the ncel culture is real or fake, is good or bad bate. There’s somethg real that people are referrg to when they talk about ncel culture, and ’s both good and bad. There are good parts, and there are bad parts. And so the eper qutn is, what do we actually want to achieve here, and how do we go about achievg ? For me, and I’m the only person I n answer for, ’s a world which we speak about each other more rpectfully, which we listen to each other more openly, and that be a foundatn, and this part is important. It be a foundatn for a fairer and more clive polics where more people get to shape how they are spoken about, and social shame livered through social media, is gog to be part of that. It will be, and should be. Too few people have cid the boundari of unacceptable speech for too long, and part of what we’re gog through now is an important renegotiatn of that. That renegotiatn will jt have to take place through social means, cludg shame. There’s no other way to do . It is not somethg you n jt do wh a piece of legislatn, but I do worry that onle disurse is so tuned to shamg that we’ve lost sight of some of s drawbacks. Shamg people, mak them fensive. It mak them to enemi rather than helpg them bee alli, and then we thk too ltle about other virtu and skills which velop to be good polil or even jt human munitors. And then what’s worse is a lot of this is centivized or shaped by the self-terted enomics of technology platforms and how they’re shaped and what go viral, of employers who are tryg to protect their own bs or their own reputatn. We’ve often turned what is systemic and social and enomic to jt a qutn of dividuals or iology. So there’s a lot to talk about here, but I’m joed for by, I thk, the perfect two guts, Will Wilkson and Natalie Wynn. Will is the former vice print for rearch at the Niskanen Center. He actually got nceled. He was fired om his job bee a right-wg onle mob grabbed a clearly satiril tweet of his and phed Niskanen to fire him. If you thk, by the way, that ncel culture or onle ncellatn is somehow a left-wg phenomenon, yeah, Will Wilkson is proof that that is not te. He wr regularly for for Tim Opn and now has a great newsletter, Mol Cizen, and a podst of the same name. Natalie Wynn is my favore YouTuber where she mak the remarkable vios. It b social theory and polics unr the moniker ContraPots. You’ll hear reference a vio she ma on ncellatn and J.K. Rowlg here, and I really do remend lookg them up. Both of them have had experience on both sis of this issue, and they’ve e out of on the other end wh, my view, unually plex, nuanced views of how this plays out and what all means. So this is a great nversatn, one I wanted to have for a long time, and I’m glad we did. As always, my email, Here’s Will Wilkson and Natalie Wynn. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to start a b the experienc both of you have had wh the thg that gets lled ncel culture. And Will, I’ll wh you. Dcribe what beg ncelled was like for you, not necsarily exactly what happened, but how did feel.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It was a shock. There was an immediacy to what happened. I had tweeted. The tweet created ntroversy. I tweeted my bad tweet a mute before I went to bed. And then first thg the morng, I wake up too jt like a world of sh. I’m jt gettg piled on by all sorts of opportunistic right-wgers who were takg my very funny joke out of ntext and claimg that I was really llg for the hangg the vice print of the Uned Stat, jt the most ridiculo bad fah, but was g such a kerfuffle that I was immediately lled to a meetg at work, and then my job was over. It had a guillote kd of qualy to that ial aspect bee I jt woke up, experienced this terror, and then got my head chopped off, and then the rt of the day was jt shock. I was lerally, I thk, shock bee I was jt like, what the hell jt happened?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I know the folks well who work at Niskanen, which was the thk tank you were at. I don’t believe they misunrstood that your tweet was a joke. So what happened there? Why do you thk you got fired?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk generalizg om my dividual se, and I thk this is ditive of one of the issu that has bee prevalent, is that anybody that works at your stutn, if they say somethg that’s a ltle b ntroversial or that is taken out of ntext, n e a huge, very temporary storm of ntroversy onle that draws attentn to the stutn. Your boss might start gettg hundreds of emails. They might start gettg phone lls om people they don’t know, and jt lat to this pot where they feel like they have this really urgent PR crisis on their hands, and they have to do somethg quickly to manage . And I thk that that’s often a misperceptn and that managers panic bee this is somethg that hasn’t happened before. It wasn’t the se that your employee would go to a rtrant and tell a racy joke, and then all of a sudn the phone at your office is undated wh 250 voicemails, right? That didn’t ed to happen. So people, I don’t thk, are acclimated to this climate where anybody who’s associated wh your anizatn n create this ltle crisis suatn, but I thk the are actually like tempts teacups, and they do jt blow over. And one way, social media has the memory of a goldfish. In another way, never fets anythg and n dredge thgs om many years ago, but the thgs jt pass, and they don’t really actually have that much of a, I don’t thk, effect on the reputatn of the stutns for long. It’s jt that the technology that we’ve had is enough to create an experience that managers don’t know how to handle, and they flip out.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">So your experience wh this, Natalie, has been ls enomic but still pretty big terms of the sle of . So what was , and how did feel for you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk we e the word ncelg for a bunch of related suatns, but n really happen a lot of different ways. It sounds like, wh Will’s example, was kd of the classic like Jte Sac moment. One bad tweet an stant mob that leads to profsnal nsequenc. For me, I would say was more of a build up over a few years. And I gus the distctive thg about me beg nceled is that was largely sort of ternal to one muny, specifilly the trans muny. So for me, this began almost the moment that I me out as trans onle. I was already a YouTuber, and I thk that people wh that muny immediately swched to seeg me not jt as a person wh opns onle but as a kd of mast for trans people, a symbolic reprentatn of them. And as time went on and my channel grew and I got more succsful, ’s like if you go to a very lower class high school and then you go to Harvard law. There’s a sort of sense om the other people your former muny or your muny that you mt have soldiers sold to the vil some way. Anythg that I did that was perceived or uld be terpreted as heterodox or offensive or jt not a good reprentatn of the muny was seen as this kd of betrayal, and the cints were happeng. It was ually the rult of a tweet. Twter is pecially bad, but this kd of happened every uple of months for a few years until really reached this kd of cril mass where I gus September 2019, I tweeted a uple of ntroversial tak about how I didn’t like people askg what my pronouns are, and then I ma a vio where I had Buck Angel, a very ntroversial person on the trans muny do a voiceover le one of my vios. And that, I mean, I was effectively exiled om any kd of onle trans space. There were mands that all of my lleagu publicly disown me, threats were beg sent to iends of iends bee of their associatn wh me. It was really out of ntrol and put me to a month of prsn where I felt the way that an exile is supposed to feel, and I end up g that energy to create a vio about the experience. But if your qutn is, how do feel to be nceled, I mean, feels credibly isolatg, alienatg, you feel credibly angry bee you feel that you’ve been liberately misunrstood. There’s a reason that public huiatn and exile have been ed as punishment. In most societi, really sort of triggers a lot of the worst social emotns that we’re pable of feelg.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to hold on that pot for a mute bee somethg else sometim hear on the left is oh, well, this person who got a reputatnally attacked or even fired, they’re rich, or they’re important, or they haven’t lost all of the money they’ve ma over the years. So why feel bad for them? Who r about this punishment? They’re fe, but somethg you’re gettg at here is we’re pretty well tuned to feel social shame. And so, I mean, you didn’t lose your livelihood, but sounds like ’s still had que an effect on your life.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It did, and I thk pecially so bee, as a trans person, you sort of pend on the muny like that. It’s not like beg exiled om your, I don’t know, after school club or somethg. This is your social world to some extent. It’s the only people who are sort of pable of fully unrstandg you. I mean, ’s like beg kicked out of Athens. It’s a pretty ser punishment, and the alarmg thg about is this is not a jtice system. Twter is not a jtice system. This is mob le. In my vio, I n pare to the Reign of Terror terms of how functns, possibly worse than that bee wh the Reign of Terror, at least you had, what was , the mtee on public safety to have kangaroo trials, whereas ncelg, I mean, ’s much more simple and primive than that. It’s jt the voice of the mob.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Have eher of you had offle or at least off social media teractns wh the people who were g at you those perds?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk one my first ncellgs, I did have another YouTube who had sort of cricized me. We did a live stream to talk thgs over, and she was still very angry at me the live stream. But the months that followed our nversatn, she kd of began to rent and sort of felt bad about , I thk. I don’t know. I gus the fact that I’m jt a person kd of sunk over time, and she uldn’t go back to see me as a brand that she’s mad at.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. That gets to somethg I always wonr about here, Will, which is, how much do you thk the thg that gets lled ncel culture is actually a culture or an iology vers jt an emergent phenomenon of how particular social platforms and media centiv are stctured and stcture our behavrs?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I thk that is mostly what is. I don’t thk anythg about our culture has signifintly changed. People have always said thgs that are stupid. People have always gotten fired for dog dumb thgs at work for a billn different reasons. People get fired bee their boss thks that they drs sloppy. It’s jt that people didn’t get fired before bee they said somethg on a social media platform bee social media platforms didn’t exist, but the technology really do enable new kds of behavr. Twter particular, if one person jumps to your mentns and says, hey, buddy, e the revolutn, you’re first agast the wall, which I get om Tmpist typ every time I wre about gun ntrol or immigratn, you’re like, OK. Yeah. OK, big shot. Super sred, right? But if you get this torrent of many thoands of people attackg you onle but also tattlg on you to your profsnal ntacts, tryg to make your life miserable, right, any one person dog any of those thgs has no effect, but the technology enabl this kd of llective actn. I mean, I ll spible spontaneo orr. It allows this upswell of malic llective actn to torment people. Nobody thought through the dynamics before they signed the platforms, and nobody tried to set this kd of mob psychology to motn, but ’s jt implic the stcture of the platforms and the centiv that the creators of the platforms have to maximize engagement. So ’s jt somethg that has jt bubbled up, but now ’s a realy, but our norms still haven’t ught up. They haven’t adjted, so we don’t know what to do about .</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah I do thk one of the strange thgs about this kd of polil actn is people don’t realize what they’re dog. I thk you had quoted, Natalie, the le om Jon Ronson that the snowflake don’t take rponsibily for the avalanche. I’m paraphrasg that om memory, but there’s somethg that where you’re on Twter, somethg’s trendg or everybody’s talkg about somethg, and you’re jt jumpg wh a joke. You’re jt participatg the day’s onle nversatn, and don’t mean a lot to you. And Will, to what you were sayg, and the dividual might not even mean a lot to the person you’re makg fun of or you’re attackg or you’re cricizg, but is the emergent sle helped along by algorhms that ends up makg meangful.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It’s fely te what you say that a lot of tim people jt want to pipe up and have their say. This thg starts trendg, or they see other people that they follow plag about a particular article or about the particular horrible thg that somebody did, and they jt chip their two cents jt to feel like they’re volved, and sometim that sl up to somethg that’s really trmatic for the person who’s on the receivg end of . But I thk, over time, the way thgs have evolved is that people actually do unrstand this dynamic pretty well, and I only get this om people on the right. I my own se, I uld feel the dynamic. I uld feel that there are people on Twter who are lookg for opengs that they n strike through. Somebody saw the openg my tweet, threw the harpoon to , the horn went off, [HORN SOUND],, lled all the troops, and then people started swarmg, but then there’s another layer. There’s the reporters for Brebart and the Feralist and Fox News who are lookg for the ntroversi bee the fact that be a ntroversy onle is what mak a story. So the people who are creatg the ntroversy know that they’re makg a story. So there’s a kd of symbsis there, and then my own se got picked up as a story The Washgton Examer and the Feralist and Fox News, and then the top level of is if mak all the way up to ble news broadst on Fox.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I had a le my recent piece on this that Fox News isn’t anti-ncel culture. They jt want to ntrol the ncel culture, which I thk is very much the right way to unrstand their prime time, but I want to start zoomg out on this bee I thk a lot of what we end up talkg about here is the purpose and utily of social shame. So Natalie, I ask this of you, what’s the se for and agast your view g social shame as a tool for social change?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, the for, the reason that people ially sort of were attracted to this, like the #MeToo movement, for example, I would say that ed social shamg often as a last rort agast someone like Harvey Weste, who has ed his posn of power to abe women for s. In suatns like that, n be very good. It n attract a problem to an jtice or to someone who is abg power. The word acuntabily has kd of lost all meang, but I thk acuntabily is really jt the left-wg word for punishment, but n be ed to punish people who seem immune to every other means of punishg and who, I suppose by most timatns, serve , but the negative is that, aga, this is punishment admistered whout any kd of legal system. It’s pure mob jtice. And I thk if you look at the history of mob jtice, ’s pretty clear that that often n lead to wch trials and thgs like that where you basilly have social rentments. People are beg spegoated. You have anger sort of directed almost arbrarily at objects on whom all this kd of built up rage is unleashed. And oftentim, the choice of target don’t make any sense.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">But takg serly the qutn of mob jtice, on the other si, ’s very hard to know what the lever is through which you might change speech norms, right? Nobody que has ntrol of that. You n’t really pass an act through Congrs. It’s not a state legislature qutn, but ’s really important to people how we’re referred to, what is reasonable to speak about. I mean, that was ntrolled an choate way, maybe not by the mob but by a pretty hegemonic polil nsens for a long time Ameri that begs to break down, and people are sort of grabbg the power they have to change . So I thk one unterargument one might make here is, well, isn’t that better than the alternative? Isn’t better than the stat quo rollg on?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I jt don’t thk ’s nstctive to talk about the overall phenomenon. In every se, you jt want to know how important is the norm that’s beg fend here, and is this person beg jtly acced of vlatg ? And maybe they have vlated this norm. Is the rponse proportnal and fair to the level of this actn? And those are the qutns we ought to be askg every sgle time, not sweepg every sgle stance of llective norm enforcement unr the umbrella of somethg malic bee ’s not. It’s really important, as you were sayg, for lots and lots of groups who are vulnerable who’ve been tradnally margalized to be able to assert their right to be talked about a certa way bee that has real material nsequenc. And so I don’t ever want to say that people shouldn’t be able to e the power that they have, and I thk this has been a good thg about some of social media. It creat leverage. The way n sort of spontaneoly summon a mob that n exert real prsure creat the kd of leverage that smaller groups didn’t ever have before or ls powerful groups didn’t have before. And so sudnly they have a mechanism that they n e that actually has a certa kd of efficy the real world, and I thk part of the plat about ncel culture is that people who are on the bs end of that jt don’t like . They don’t like the vulnerable and margalized groups havg accs to a technology that amplifi their llective force, and so they pla about , and they create a moral panic about . The overall dynamic that’s implic the technology and the way that nnects wh our kd of tribal psychology and the moral sensibily that leads to ntribute our ltle two cents to the llective actn problem, we all thk we’re always ntributg to the provisn of some sort of public good, but they uld be public bad. I thk a lot of people who are tryg to enforce important norms that are valuable, they overreact. They don’t thk about how the llective rponse is gog to lead to somethg that is way out of proportn wh the serns of the transgrsn that they’re addrsg. People don’t necsarily tend that. Most people thk that to get what they serve, and a lot of tim people agree about what people serve, but they end up over liverg bee of the nature of the technology. And so we have to renceive the norms volved whether is good to participate.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">What do you thk of that, Natalie?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk ’s not jt about liverg too much vigilante acuntabily. I feel like ’s also often a bad choice of target for who to foc on. There’s a se that to md of a YouTuber who a uple months ago I gus accintally liked an Instagram post om a Tmp supporter at the Capol stormg, and this is a person who is gay, has always been a leftist, has obvly no sympathy for Tmpism. She immediately, oh my gosh, I have no ia how I liked that. I wasn’t tryg to like this post. I’m so sorry, but the anger at her didn’t stop after this explanatn me out. It beme sort of this relentls drive until she had to make this like grovelg apology vio basilly apologizg for her whole history of credibly mor microaggrsn culmatg this horrible attack on margalized people that was her accintal like of an Instagram post. And I thk ’s often well-meang alli of a e, like you’re sayg, Will, is te that is motivated by some kd of benevolent or altistic sire. They want to do the work. They want to say somethg. They don’t want to be one of the whe people who is enablg vlence by remag silent the face of jtice. I thk sort of om this sire that people have where they want to distance themselv om whe supremacy, for example. And so one way to do that is to be a very loud pchfork waver when a mob emerg targetg some racist person. But oftentim, that mob targets someone who, you know, ’s somethg relatively arbrary, and you n e more damage to a person wh ls power than a person wh more power. So n feel more productive to attack ls powerful people. Although, fact, I would argue that’s not really productive.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk that’s a great pot, but so here’s now where I want to lay my rds on the table more this nversatn, but what you were sayg a mute ago, Will, I agree that havg bat about ncel culture as one amorpho thg is pretty els, but I also don’t thk we need to only go to the dividual stance. What I sort of want to set up here is this ia of social shame as a polil tool, and I thk ’s a eful polil tool, eful when ed ntext I like that I nsir proportnate and not one I don’t. But what I do believe is that we are ovesg as a polil tool, that we are unr-velopg other kds of polil virtu, and I thk that mak stmentally ls eful than we thk is. And so I want to ask you somethg about this your se. What I have seen happen over and over aga wh people who are on the receivg end of this is maybe they’re wed, maybe they’re not. What they are is angry. My sense of is that you are a lot angrier. I mean, you didn’t like Tmpist folks before exactly on an iologil level, but there’s, I thk, a rrect level of fury there your work now, and don’t seem to me that we have a good theory of actually persuasn around this. What happens after you shame? What happens after you attack, how to turn people to your si? Now, I don’t thk those people are tryg to turn you to their si. I thk they were jt tryg to get your slp, but I do thk this is one of the lims of , that social shame n be good for redrawg boundari the sense that n w people, but ’s pretty bad for turng them to alli, and kd of puts them to folks who are layg wa till you make a mistake. And so one of my qutns this is, how do we put more thgs the toolk? How do we not leave folks who don’t feel like they have a lot of power over the social stcture so reliant on shamg dynamics that they end up creatg more enemi than they create terms of iends? Do that feel fair to you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I mean, you’re gog to get somethg which I thk about a lot a more general ntext. It’s about kd of the a possible nature of a severely polarized public. It seems like persuasn is jt impossible. It don’t really matter what I say to somebody who’s a dyed the wool advote of the January 6th surrectn, right? There’s not a lot you n say. So the fact that people are so ristant to any kd of feedback om people who aren’t a member of their tribe kd of shifts people to focg on their own group like those are the only people you n talk to, and sometim that leads to weird dynamics where then you end up wh posnal arms rac to see who’s the most virtuo member of your own group, but I thk that’s partly a nsequence of the fact that ’s jt pletely futile to talk to the other si.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. You’re right on that. I chose my example about that. Let me try to sharpen this once. A lot of the bat around how we talk about each other onle, people talk about terms of nyg or seeg other’s humany. I don’t thk we n persua people, but I do thk that there are better and worse ways to get people to be sympathetic to the ia that you are a person wh stggl and that your stggl are meangful. One of my ncerns is that we somehow have to balance those agast each other, the utily of shamg wh also the utily not of persuasn but of the sense that I am a person who should be allowed to live and let live. And I worry that we are worse at that other piece of now and that while that would not lead to like an end to polil nflict, ’s an important part of tryg to move people around. A lot of the thgs people want to get done polil life are not that you need to give somethg up, but you jt need to unrstand that I am here enough to let my claims be heard, too and that the are bad tactics for that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk that’s part a product of polarizatn, that people have gotten worse at g any kd of method beyond shamg bee if you get ed to a suatn where not only is persuasn kd of futile but liberatn and argumentatn self sentially be futile, then you sort of get the ia that every polil argument is a battle a total war, right, which is, I thk, when you have liberals or leftists vers Tmp supporters, more or ls is a total war. But then that kd of technique, that approach to polil disagreement gets applied to the ternal nflicts as well until that you’re sayg — lerally, you basilly have people sayg someone who disagre wh a very mor pot of whatever polil movement you’re a part of, that person is the enemy, and that person needs to be shamed and exiled and held acuntable bee people have sort of lost the pacy or the sense that ’s ever worth to engage a way that’s not jt bative.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I agree wh that pletely. When I thk about myself, I’ve been wrg a lot lately on my Substack about my own changg views about thgs like racism and sexism. I’m a whe guy who grew up Iowa, the son of a p a very nservative place, and I grew up wh pretty standard nservative views, and I had all of the psychologil equipment that you need to filter out all of the evince that the are problems that I ought to be takg serly. And I’m actually a ltle b ashamed of how long took for that rmatn to perate, but what you need for to perate isn’t people shamg you exactly. You need people who you already tst to actually jt expla thgs to you. So when I’m talkg about the thgs, I see myself as very specifilly not tryg to talk to liberals or nservativ but basilly tryg to talk to younger whe guys who me om siar plac who I know I get credibily om jt bee of my superficial inty. So that’s why persuasn is hard bee people won’t tst you if you’re not enough like them, but I know that there are lots of people the same posn that I am, and I know that jt beg like, don’t be a racist, Bobby, isn’t gog to work. You have to very refully expla some facts about history like why may not be clear to you how the experience that somebody else is havg is so much different om yours and that they’re not makg a mistake when they’re tellg you that is. And so I thk that do take a certa kd of generosy and tolerance, and you have to let people, pecially younger people, or not even pecially younger people, might be the se that your dad is a ltle b benighted about some of the issu, and you want to be able to talk about , right? You won’t be able to make any progrs if you n’t talk about , but he’s not gog to want to talk about if the send he slips up and screws up the right way to talk about trans people or somethg like that that you’re jt like, dad. You’re bad. No. You jt have to very gently expla why that’s not the way people talk about thgs. You have to jt want to help, and a lot of tim I jt don’t thk that we want to help enough, that we want to posture, we want to get cred for beg virtuo members of our tribe. And I mean, I feel that all the time. I mean, I do want to be seen as a virtuo member of my tribe. I totally do, but that’s not the bt motivatn most of the time.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I like that pot about wantg to help, and one of the thgs that gets at, and I thk that whole answer gets at, is we have a weak language for the thgs that are beneath persuasn on the sle of polil nversatn out. And particular, I thk a lot of change happens first through what I would ll humanisatn which leads, Will, as you were sayg, to tolerance, to generosy. I still thk the most remarkable turnaround polil opn of my lifetime was around gay marriage which went om, ‘04, Republins are puttg gay marriage ballot iativ to the stat to try to w the ‘04 by turng up Christian nservativ. And not that long after, the entire valence of that issue flips, right? I remember verg the bat Congrs about whether or not there’d be a nstutnal amendment agast gay marriage jt a uple of years later. That is unthkable. And don’t happen, as I unrstand — I mean, happens partially through nontatn and partially through persuasn, but first happens through humanisatn, right? And like there’s a lot of work done the culture around that. It out of Hollywood and other plac, a lot of work done ep nvassg around that. And aga, that’s not to take away om more aggrsive polil tactics, too, but that there is a polil value jt gettg people to see you as a person wh a valid experience and real pots. And Natalie, there’s somethg I thk you do wonrfully your vios which often — I thk about the one on J.K. Rowlg particular here — often jt tryg to expla people to each other. Don’t seem to be so much tryg to nvce them to move to one si or the other but jt expla them to each other so that they seem valid to each other. What do you thk the value is of that? Why did you velop that style?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, I thk YouTube as a platform is extremely valuable as a rource for humanizg people. There’s this dynamic that people have scribed now as a para-social relatnship where you have this kd of one-sid, almost like an illn of a iendship wh a person whose ntent you nsume. I thk ’s pecially strong on YouTube bee there’s somethg so timate about watchg someone’s vios for hours. It’s like they’re talkg directly to you. You kd of have the illn that you’re havg a nversatn wh someone. And sce I am trans myself, I’m this posn where if people the dience kd of get to know me, ’s kd of the equivalent of them havg a trans iend terms of the humanizg effect of that. Gay marriage is often the back of my head as an example where was like, that really worked. That really happened. It n be done. So when feels like really — we’re a kd of hopels state right now wh trans issu where you have Republins troducg anti-trans legislatn jt bee ’s so popular. I’m hopg that that’s startg to change, and YouTube is eful for that. I thk that people tend to believe thgs for emotnal reasons a lot of the time, and I thk that if you n sort of show a person that you are a human beg, that has a bigger effect that any logil argument you n make. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Somethg that I e back to aga and aga this bate is the sendary bate over safe spac where the right is superficially agast safe spac but is nstantly askg for them, and the left is superficially for safe spac but is nstantly stroyg them, and safety strik me as both one of the most important and mised words here bee I do thk a certa amount of safety is necsary for the nversatns, for attu change, for humanisatn. And also, ’s very hard to fd, and has self bee a polarized ncept. Do we jt need to rcue to some gree or re-image the ia of safe spac?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I mean, safe spac are good, but I thk part of what we need to rcue is an ia of ntext. Unlike Natalie, I n’t be anybody’s iend. I n’t be anybody’s Black iend. I’m a middle-aged whe guy, which is the most over-reprented person and most privileged set of people our culture, but that giv me a kd of thory. That’s the nature of the privilege, and pecially wh somewhat younger whe guys. And so that’s what I see my role as is those are the people who are gog to listen to me. I see Jordan Peterson, some ways, as the exemplar here. Why is this like dorky psychology profsor om Ontar a substute dad for lns of whe guys? It’s bee they need somebody to help expla thgs to them, and I thk that that is a pletely — I mean, ’s jt a human need. It’s jt a basic thg, and people are gog to listen to people that they tst, and who we tst is based on our inty. But that means if I’m gog to talk to slightly benighted younger whe guys or olr whe guys, I’m gog to have to talk to them terms that they unrstand, but that means that I’m gog to have to say thgs to them a way that a progrsive room I’d get trouble for. If I’m gog to actually be able to make progrs wh other whe dus, that space has to be safe for , and part of that means is that progrsive people unrstand what’s gog on there and don’t tervene to cricize how you’re talkg to the people that you’re actually tryg to pull their directn bee won’t help, the same way ’s not gog to help if I go tell Black Liv Matter activists, you know, your tactics are backfirg. Here’s how you really ought to talk about race. That’s not nstctive, but ’s not nstctive the other way, eher. And so you have to kd of unrstand how persuasn, how tst is based inty this a-ratnal way that is jt a basic human thg, give people some slack when they’re talkg to their own mographic their own space. Otherwise, jt mak those nversatns impossible.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">The young whe men you want to nvce, do you have to listen to them, too?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Of urse.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m askg is for a reason. I feel like there’s often this nversatn about how to persua, but part of persuadg people is they need to feel like they’re beg given the chance the nversatn, too, which is often a virtue we’re not that good at.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. There’s kd of two sis to humanisatn. One is that if you’re tryg to persua someone, helps if you n get them to see you as a human beg, but another is that helps if you n talk to the person you’re tryg to persua, regnizg their humany. So that’s somethg that I try to do, for example, wh the vio on J.K. Rowlg. I’m not lerally tryg to persua her, but I’m tryg to persua people who agree wh her or people who read what she said and found somethg pellg about. It was very, very clear wh the J.K. Rowlg’s wrgs about trans people that this is all kd of g om a place of pa for her, and her negative reactn om trans people is almost a cry for help. The say that she published lled “TERF Wars,” she talked about her past wh beg sexually abed by men, and she talked about all the difficult experienc that she had never sort of gotten out before. And ’s like, is this even about trans people, or is this about J.K. Rowlg never really havg had a chance to exprs , and then people have bee this spegoat? I uld have jt mocked her, right, ma fun of this say and how stupid was, but that to me is the height of unter productivy bee ’s not regnizg that the person that you’re talkg to is, their own kd of way, a sufferg human beg, and people are more cled to listen if they feel that they’re beg heard. So I ma a vio a few years ago lled “Are Traps Gay,” which is like an old 4chan meme that referenc attractn to trans and their attractn to cross-drsers, and ’s a kd of a jokey-soundg topic, but ’s a ser issue. Safety for trans women is that when, specifilly straight men, view trans women as a kd of like lure to homosexualy. It triggers this tense fensivens about their masculy, about their sexualy, and then trans women end up beg the victims of that fensivens, but simply lecturg people, oh, ’s transphobic to say the word trap. It’s transphobic to not be attracted to trans — That lerally is exactly the most unterproductive possible way you uld approach that nversatn. So a lot of trans people got super mad at me for llg the vio “Are Traps Gay,” but I’m like, look, this vios is not for you. It’s for the people who are scerely askg that qutn and jokg about . The fact that they’re jokg about to me tells me that they’re thkg about . People joke about thgs they have anxieti about.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">This is one of the thgs I fd very difficult wh jt onle disurse generally. I see wh the metaphor of takg somebody asi. One thg you want to do around somebody who has done somethg wrong, and maybe there’s a really bad reactn, but then you want somebody to take them asi a quieter place and be like, hey, look, let’s talk through what jt happened here and what there is to learn about . That’s will happen, ially, to a kid a school, or that’s what happens when your iend do somethg stupid, but ’s very hard to take people asi onle bee we’re always — even when we’re dog , right, that J.K. Rowlg vio, which is some ways specifilly addrsed, is also there for everyone else. And so there’s this really difficult tensn between performative and persuasive munitn where ’s like, when you’re performg for a very, very wi dience, you need to make sure ’s fallg wh all the different dienc’ OK or at least well enough for at least well enough wh on who n hurt you. But when you’re tryg to persua somebody who’s maybe not your normal dience, you need to adopt very different tonaly. You need to approach a different way, and then that n get people mad at you. I’m not sure there’s an answer to this. It might jt speak to some of the difficulti of the platforms the ter, but seems like a problem, and maybe one of the virtu we need to velop a ltle b more onle is simply regnizg that this is a mo of disurse we want to enurage not disurage.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Yeah. I like that metaphor of takg someone asi, and that’s exactly what you’re sort of tryg to do. I thk my vios, they are kd of a sort of public performance of the act of takg someone asi which, of urse, is gog to e some tensn among the progrsive base who feels like, why are you dog this? Why are you makg the jok? Why are you not immediately g out of the gate wh the anger and shamg and rage? Why are you seemg to view people’s opns as acceptable for a moment. And ’s like, well, bee I’m meetg people where they’re at. If I e out of the gate wh anger and shame and jt rtrictivens, who’s that for? Maybe ’ll exce the base like a stump speech do, but that’s not really the pot of makg a vio, my opn. So I like YouTube, if you uldn’t tell. I thk ’s a good platform for that. I thk that Twter is the worst platform for all of the kds of thgs, and so I thk that the way the platforms are signed mak a big difference when to what kds of nversatn you’re even able to have.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I want to pick up on that ia about Twter, Will, bee you and I both spend some time there. And I thk is simply te that Twter is the most fluential polil platform, certaly among polil el, and is the worst for havg a nversatn. And I go back and forth on what to do about this. Sometim I stop tweetg. Sometim I feel like that’s ridiculo. You have to be where the fluence is, but jt seems like a bad thg for a disurse. It’s almost a pretty wily acknowledged fact that the central, polil munitn platform like the one that prints e most aggrsively and journalists e most tensely is the one that has the most toxic and dysfunctnal nversatnal dynamics.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Part of the problem wh Twter is that, for the most part, jt puts the entire world to a sgle room that has no walls. So you n’t take somebody asi on Twter. Whatever you’re sayg to them, you’re sayg ont of lns and lns of people. A few tim when I’ve been mobbed on Twter, I have locked my acunt so that only people who follow me n read my tweets. And my experience changed fundamentally. It was lightful bee I follow jt tons of amics that I’m terted, polil scientists, other journalists, and I had wonrful exchang when I had blocked the rt of the world, right? It’s like I put up a wall, and my follows are people wh whom I have some kd of affy. They’re not all the same kd of person, but they’re people that I don’t fd obnox and learn thgs om, and jt even that ltle change fundamentally chang the experience. And I thk that’s part of the fear about ncellatn, pecially on Twter, is that everybody is watchg everybody. And so that jt mak you feel surveilled. It’s like this real world stantiatn of the super ego, and you jt feel kd of opprsed by . And the prence of that loomg social nscns over you that is divid and acrimon generat a certa kd of performative behavr, and do — when you start puttg those terms, jt rais the qutn, why are you there at all? But if you are a journalist, really is the bt way to keep up wh everythg that everybody else is dog. It’s dispensable at one level, but at another level, ’s jt totally dystopian, and I thk one of the reasons why people have this sense of paranoia and panic is that this thg is signed almost — if you were tryg to sign somethg to generate nstant social anxiety, would look a lot like that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I watch Jack Dorsey sometim when he giv his speech and ttimoni. One of the thgs about him to me is that I thk he is sort of agony over this a way the others aren’t. The CEO of YouTube, Mark Zuckerberg, when I watch them, they do not seem very upset about their platforms. There are problems. They’re gettg flak. They’re tryg to al wh , and Jack Dorsey always seems to me like he’s really upset about the cricisms, and he knows they’re partially right, and he don’t really know what to do wh them bee they’re baked to the fundamental stcture of the thg he created. But your scriptn that, Will, I thk is pretty important, people want to say, well, ’s dystopic. It n’t be dispensable, but is. It’s both, certaly the polil realm. You’re jt missg a lot of what is actually drivg polics if you’re not there, but then we’re drivg polics to a ltle b of a different or worse place. Has gog through what you’ve gone through that space changed how you try to operate , changed how you look at , or led you to try to velop virtu or approach to you didn’t have before?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">It has fely ma me more keenly gnizant of the danger that is herent , that you n tell a cuttg joke and your life for a ltle while. That’s jt a bizarre thg about this piece of technology. So I’m much more aware of that. At the same time, when I was the vice print for rearch at the Niskanen Center, I was much more rtraed bee I was reprentg my stutn. And so I’ve had a sense of liberatn where now that I don’t answer to anybody but myself, I’m immune to that set of nsequenc. Nobody n get me fired if I n’t be fired. It’s actually created a sort of boldns and a sense of liberatn that I’m sure isn’t nstctive, but I’ve dulged bee feels good to be ee. We all feel domated by employment bee we have to do thgs on other people’s terms, and so ’s jt an credible relief at one level to jt not have to answer to anybody, but is nice to make money om havg a job. So there are fely tra-offs.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">How about you, Natalie?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, ’s changed the way I e Twter. That’s for sure. I mean, I’ve tried to give up but found that is, as you say, somewhat dispensable. You’re so out of the loop if you’re not on that’s ’s difficult to qu. If this is your job, particular, if you need to know what people are sayg and you need to keep tabs on polics, you kd of need to be lookg at Twter, but I try not to tweet opns. I try to keep fairly light bee I know that, like Will said, ’s sry. Once you realize that you are one tweet away om g your life for a while at any given moment, that’s sry. You’re always holdg the nuclear s. It’s kd of terrifyg. So yeah, fely has changed the way I e Twter, and ’s also maybe changed the way I thk about some of the ncepts volved like acuntabily, mob jtice, what means to hold someone acuntable. The are kd of qutns that I feel like have been raised for me by watchg shame mobs do thgs that I thk are not good.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I wanted to add that one of the thgs that ’s fely affected my own behavr is I am much more wary of dog anythg that is like participatg one of the surg of angry energy bee I feel the urge, what I was talkg about before, of jt wantg to be a reliable partner the provisn of a llective good, right? I want to pch . But one, I know that my ntributn has no perceptible effect on anythg. And two, I know that if everybody is thkg I have to pch my two cents, that somebody is gog to get like screwed over. And so I’ve basilly stopped pilg on that kd of way unls I thk ’s really, really, really mered. I’ve jt much more judic about whether or not to participate those thgs. About dispensabily of the platform, right, I haven’t been able to really get off of bee the first thg I did once I lost my job is palize on the sympathy by startg a Substack, which worked. I mean, I got a bunch of subscriptns, like enough to be kd of a job, but Substack is jt pletely parasic on Twter. Like, the reason I was able to get several hundred subscribers right away is bee I have a pretty good Twter followg. And the only way I get people to my Substack and then to subscribe is by promotg thgs on Twter. I wouldn’t have had this optn whout the platform that got me fired. There’s somethg tratg about that bee, at one level, I was like, I should get the hell off of this thg. It’s st me nothg but grief, but ’s been the only way that I was able to jt get back on my feet almost immediately.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’ve also experienced that kd of — there’s a kd of weird benef that wh beg the target of one of the mobs which is that I gus every actn has an oppose reactn, and also will generate a lot of sympathy for you once people see what’s happened. I had the biggt jump Patreon support ever after I upload the vio about ncellg bee people felt bad for me. So there’s a kd of advantage that that I see a lot of. I mean, some people make entire reers of beg nceled. That’s their thg. I gus that’s probably an creasg number of people, and I sort of have to keep an eye on myself bee this be one of the ma thgs that I end up talkg about, and ’s like, well, I don’t want to jt be a ncelled person, but there’s such an appete for talkg about self bee s own topic.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Y, and here we are. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">[MUSIC PLAYING]</p><p class="css-8hvvyd">One of my worri all this is that if you’re a young activist, young polil person g up and you primarily spend your time followg polics on social media, you jt really see a lot of this one play n over and over and over and over aga, but do have a real effect I jt worry ’s over-velopg one kd of polil actn, and we’re unr-velopg others. So if you were talkg to someone who’s 19 or 20 and wants to be effective polics and wants to be persuasive or eful , what would you tell them to do? I don’t mean here terms of lecturg. I mean here terms of beg a polil munitor, and I’ll start wh you, Natalie.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, I thk you have to create some kd of muny that’s not on Twter and where ’s possible to engage actual liberatn about topics bee, obvly, that nnot happen on Twter bee if you misspeak slightly, that gets quote tweeted. It be a sndal. So we need to create a kd of safe space, basilly, for liberatn bee I thk that — we were talkg earlier about people wantg to believe certa thgs bee they want to check every box the progrsive package, for example. I thk that’s a very superficial reason to support any kd of claim, and the superficialy seems a ltle b dangero to me bee people who only sort of superficially unrstand their own polil beliefs are gog to be more sceptible to abandong those beliefs at the first sign of ntradictn or the first opposn qutng, right? It worri me, for example, if people believe trans women are women bee that’s the slogan on Twter that the smart and nice people say. If you’re jt sayg for that reason, that’s very superficial. It’s very weak, and ’s not the rult of havg gone through a procs of actually havg thought through this. So that worri me a ltle b. I feel like produc superficial alli. It produc a lot of people who sort of performative say one thg and then behd closed doors they’re like, do we really believe this? You know what I mean? A lot of whisperg around. I mean, I thk anyone I know who’s volved mentary and journalism and polics will behd the scen DMs or whatever, private nversatn, adm like, oh, yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t agree wh, but I’m too aaid to say so. Well, that’s bad for a uple of reasons. One is that ’s bad that people are sort of feelg the need to sort of lie about their beliefs. And the other bad thg is that if people have the bad beliefs, whatever we ci those are, there’s kd of no real mechanism effect for to rrect them bee if they feel too aaid to exprs their bad take the first place, then there’s no nversatn that’s ever had about . So I gus, to me, that that’s what I would tell young people is that this is not the kd of ratnal liberatn that, supposedly, the history of liberalism has said is necsary to mocracy, and that if we’re gog to sort of be functnal polil cizens, we need to have alternative spac where a different kd of disurse n go on.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">You like YouTube, but I thk, obvly, YouTube ments aren’t a place for this. Is there a place where you thk the liberatn happens well onle?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I thk the platforms is that work as a kd of fom tend to be better, so Redd beg the biggt example. I’ve noticed that when some is beg ncelled on Twter, there’s no way to h the brak on that bee ’s jt quote tweetg and quote tweetg and mors beg quote tweeted, and there’s no way to kd of stop that momentum. Whereas on a fom se like Redd, someone will post to a subredd claimg, oh, person X did terrible bad thg Y. And then beneath that, though, people n say, well, hold on a mute, n you show the evince for this? They brg that up, and ’s like, well, that don’t exactly look like what you were sayg. There’s a way to pump the brak, right? There’s a way to kd of slow down the snowballg of the rage the mob bee there’s an opportuny to have a very visible discsn a way that on Twter, that tends to get lost.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">And Will, how about you? What would your advice be?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">The first thg I would tell somebody is to thk hard about what your parative advantage is. If you want to persua, pick your targets. Who your life is open to , and talk to them a sympathetic way that’s gog to brg them your directn. But mostly, I would tell people not to foc on persuasn, per se. I mean, I thk this is part of the problem of the platforms is giv people the illn of every man a pund, but I don’t thk that’s actually very nstctive. So you should thk about where your effort is bt spent, and I thk, for most people, that’s not tryg to persua other people. It’s actually volunteerg. It’s gettg out to the world and dog work that jt materially helps other people’s prospects, and that might be helpg wh polil mpaigns, maybe workg for a chary that helps a group of people that you re about, but you’re more likely to actually make a posive difference as an agent the world who is havg an effect on the world. You’re gog to do more by jt steppg away om your laptop and puttg some time at the soup kchen.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’ll add one thg to that, which go back to our earlier nversatn about polarizatn and persuasn. One reason I always tell people to get volved lolly is that bee of natnal polarizatn, if you’re volved primarily natnal polics, the gigantic differenc you have wh the other si will always be the most salient to you, and will really, really overwhelm the differenc you have wh your own si. Get volved lol polics where people are more likely, given the geographic polarizatn that you’ve wrten about a ton, Will, where people are more likely to share a lot more wh you iologilly and other ntexts. And all of a sudn, the differenc you have wh people not like you are gog to bee a lot more salient, and you learn a lot about the mute ways which you may disagree wh other liberals or nservativ or see thgs a ltle b differently. It’s plitg, or how people who you thk see thgs like you don’t. People brg a lot of very particularistic experience to lol polics, and I always tell people to try to do more lol polics. All right. Let’s wrap this up. We always end wh book remendatns. So I’ll ask you both jt for one so you don’t have to do for too long, but ’s related to this topic, topics of disurse of liberatn, of shamg, whatever might be. And Will, why don’t I start wh you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Well, one of the books that’s been really helpful to me is a book by a logician, Raymond Smullyan It’s not a new book. It’s lled “The Tao Is Silent,” and ’s this really clever Jewish New York logician, who was a big al the 1970s, dog his explanatn of Taoism, and ’s a lightful book bee ’s an credibly logil person scribg how somethg that n’t be ptured logic, how that n help you. And ’s circuo and tratg, and somehow he gets to somethg that I really have taken a lot of nsolatn .</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I’m not sure I’ve ever been more sold by a book remendatn on the show than that one. I’m gog to download that immediately. Natalie, how about you?</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">I would remend a book lled “Conflict Is Not Abe,” and the subtle is overstatg harm, muny rponsibily, and the duty of repair by Sarah Schulman. I got the d book of when I was at the height of beg nceled over the Buck Angel cint, and I remember jt walkg around Baltimore listeng earbuds wh a hoodie over my face so I uldn’t be regnized, and my blood prsure jt lowered as I listened to this book bee ’s basilly about the way that all kds of suatns, rangg om ternatnal polics to romantic relatnships, this sort of exaggeratn of harm and wrongdog is ed as a pretext for bullyg, for celty, for abivens, and really helps me kd of put to perspective all the rage that was g at me. Why the people so mad at me? Where is this g om? To thk about that sort of helps me not feel so angry about , to unrstand that people are sort of g om this posn of hurt. They’re lashg out for reasons that are sort of not entirely my flt, and enabl me to kd of have a ltle more emotnal sympathy for the people who were g me so much anguish, and that lsens the anguish bee I was able to sort of I gus — I don’t know, even the people dog the unselg also are humans. So humanize everyone, cludg most people, and that this book kd of helped me do that.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">In a way, that’s a nice follow up to Will’s bee that’s actually a very Taoist approach to take on and a very non-dualistic way of absorbg . Will Wilkson, Natalie Wynn. Thank you very much.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">natalie wynn</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thank you.</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">will wilkson</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">Thanks, Ezra. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd><dt class="css-xx7kwh">ezra kle</dt><dd class="css-4gvq6l"><p class="css-8hvvyd">“The Ezra Kle Show” is a productn of New York Tim Opn. It is produced by Roge Karma and Jeff Geld, fact-checked by Michelle Harris, origal mic by Isaac Jon, and mixg by Jeff Geld. [MUSIC PLAYING]</p></dd></dl></div></div></div></div><div style="posn:absolute;width:0;height:0;visibily:hidn;display:none"></div><hear class="css-1vwfk9f" data-breakpot=""><div style="width:100%" data-ttid="flt-layout"><div style="background-image:url()" class="css-197zlhc e1llfg0"><div class="css-1hmsypo e1llfg2"><div class="css-131hid3 e1llfg3"><div class="css-1uhi299 e1llfg1"></div><div class="css-1tloyb6"><div class="css-ah35qo ehra6vc0"><a href=" class="css-2ne0py"><span class="css-1f76qa2"><img alt="The Ezra Kle Show logo" src="><span>The Ezra Kle Show</span></span></a></div></div><div class="css-1r0dpua e1llfg4"><div class="css-wfiq9c edye5kn0"><div><h1 class="css-15oz550 edye5kn2">Shame, Safety and Movg Beyond Cancel Culture</h1><h2 class="css-syyj5g edye5kn3">When is ncellatn eful? And what other tools are available when isn’t?</h2></div><span class="css-xpptmx edye5kn4"></span><button type="button" class="css-w62hzm" aria-haspopup="te" aria-label="Show Aud Transcript"><div class="css-1vd84sn"><svg xmlns=" width="24" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 20" fill="#F8F8F8"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M0 0H24V20H0V0ZM3 7H21V9H3V7ZM21 11H3V13H21V11ZM3 15H21V17H3V15ZM11 3H3V5H11V3Z" fill="#F8F8F8"></path></svg><span class="css-16bt4xd">Transcript</span></div></button></div><div class="css-1g7y0i5 e1drnplw0"><button tabx="100" class="css-1rtlxy" type="button" aria-label="close"><svg width="60" height="60" viewBox="0 0 60 60" fill="none"><circle cx="30" cy="30" r="30" fill="whe" fill-opacy="0.9"></circle><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M38.4844 20.1006L39.8986 21.5148L21.5138 39.8996L20.0996 38.4854L38.4844 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M21.5156 20.1006L20.1014 21.5148L38.4862 39.8996L39.9004 38.4854L21.5156 20.1006Z" fill="black"></path></svg></button><div class="css-rdbib0 e1drnplw1"></div><div class="css-18ow4sz e1drnplw2"><div aria-labelledby="modal-tle" role="regn"><hear class="css-1bzlfz"><div class="css-mln36k" id="modal-tle">transcript</div><button type="button" class="css-1igvuto"><div class="css-f40pzg"></div><span>Back to The Ezra Kle Show</span></button><div class="css-f6lhej" data-ttid="transcript-playback-ntrols"><div class="css-1ialerq"><button tabx="99" type="button" class="css-1t9gw" aria-label="play"><svg xmlns=" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M8 13.7683V6L14.5 9.88415L8 13.7683Z" fill="var(--lor-ntent-sendary,#363636)"></path><circle cx="10" cy="10" r="9.25" stroke="var(--lor-stroke-primary,#121212)" stroke-width="1.5"></circle></svg></button><div class="css-1701swk"><svg xmlns=" viewBox="0 0 40 36" id="el_0kpS9qL_S"><tle>bars .