Communication and Political Responsibility

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I'm your host Tim Miller. I have a exciting guest fors a pre taped june show. I'm going to the Bayou tomorrow. So we're taping this on Thursday afternoons so Donald Trump I don't know decides to invade Cotte Voix or something between now and then we'll get to that Monday show. In the meantime , he's a contributing editor of Vanity Fair. He's a sterling brown endowed chair in the English Department at Howard. He's an author with a bunch of works, including We were eight years empower at American tragedy about the Obama presidency and it's Tom Housey Coats. Hey man . Hey, hey, thanks for having me. Welcome back. You wrote a bunch of other books. You wrote so many books for me to list them all. I hate when people do that. I hate, you know, you ain't got to list any of the books, honestly. Well, I just picked out one because it's relevant today. As we're taping , the festivities at the opening of the Obama library are ending. We've had some speeches from the former president, first lady , and others. I'm going to play a clip for in a minute. I assume you do have Obama legacy takes. And you wrote the book. It's been a minute now. And so there's been more time to kind of stew in the aftermath. I'm just wondering what hops to mind today on the opening of the library. Does he watch this show? The president does, I have to yes, I have to tailor my remarks. I have no evidence that he does, which is unfortunate because I've been trying to get him on trying to get him on. And I don't know why he won't do it, but I do think he has some friends who listen. So if you're hearing this now, I would love to have them on and have a growing respect for him every year . Chana might be going the other direction. I don't know. No, I bet he does listen. This is his sort of podcast actually. Which is why it's upsetting it's not on. I agree with you . Now this is a sweet spot, man. Do I have what was the question again? Updated legacy talks and he's opening the library. Oh , yeah, no, I mean thing on him is pretty much, you know, what it was at the time and it was that only like Barack Obama could have been the first black president or only somebody like him could have been the first black president. And what I mean by that is someone who had the kind of historical background wherein they had been in intimate spaces with a white parent , white grandparents who had treated him as equal, who are not racist themselves. And I guess he would say extended white family also . Raised in Hawaii, which is not to say that Hawaii is like, you know, a non racist paradise, but certainly a place, you know, I've been to Hawaii and the black white dynamic is not the major thing going on there. You know, as it would have been in Chicago, you know, had he been raised there. And so what I've thought is that that just gave him a very, very different perspective. You know, and allowed him to see the best and, you know, the largest, you know, voting population in this country. I think he communicated that and I think they're really was no other way that you were going to see a black president . Unfortunately, I think the downside of that I don't think he could have imagined the past ten years . I don't think that that was really possible for him . I mean, he could imagine , you know, a Trump winning and then Trump winning again too. You know, I mean, maybe by twenty four, he could imagine it happening again, but I certainly think the first time , you know, he just he just how does that lack of imagination, like what did not having that ability to imagine that? Because I guess that was me too. How did that leave his presidency like poorer or reflect on his presidency . I think he did not see the vulnerability of it. It's so much harder to build things than it is to destroy things . And you know, Trump excels at destroying. Dodge was easy. That's easy. You know, you went to presidents, you bring somebody in it, you know what I mean to destroy Obama came. They didn't save any money. No, it didn't. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. It's not easy to save. It's not easy to save money, but I never took that as the intent. You know what I mean? I never took that as the true intent of those to begin with, but Obamacare is hard. Whatever you think of it, that was hard. You know what I mean? Pulling together a consensus to help and build something that's going to be enduring . That's really, really hard. And I think I just don't think there was an appreciation of how easily, you know, things can be rolled back . And so if you had that appreciation , like what types of things would you have done differently do you think? Like I guess the reason why this strikes me is because when I was working on a profile of him at the end of the presidency like he said you know in the and I'm sorry to keep mentioning this if he does listen to this show I, know he's probably taught to be saying this over and over. But he said, he said, look, Trump can't win. He said the American people he said they go for like they are generally , you know, a people who, you know, prefer an optimism, you know, in their candidates, you know, Nixon aside, you know, and so I just don't he just didn't see it as a possibility . Maybe for instance, you know, and this argument is made before instead of Married Galland, you get a Katanji Brown Jackson nomination, right? And you force it through, you force it through. I don't think he would even say this. Like in retrospect , he would spend political capital making sure it gets through rather than assuming that the norms will prevail. Or Tim. Tim, even if you don't get it through, even if you don't, it becomes a r allying cry. That's true. You know what I mean? People who, you know, maybe are not, you know, as activated, become aggravated by this thing, you know? And I just think his way was I find the candidate or can I find the nominee who the people that hate my guts will accept ? And I just I don't know that he ever just understood the extent to which you know, he was loathed by the opposition party, you know, um and how active and how powerful, you know, that that hatred was, you know ? Well, I was gonna skip this clip, but since you mentioned that this is the type of thing that Obama would be into, this podcast , I feel compelled to prove you right playing something that he said earlier today the Library. Let's play the clip where he talks about how great Mitt Romney is . And a belief that qualities of character , honesty, integrity kindness , compassion , a sense of duty and honor . Those things matter in our public dealings , just as they do in our private lives . These are not these are the values and traditions I believe in . And they are not Republican or Democratic values . They're American values we can all share regardless of party . Values every president here today , as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in, no less than I did . It is our greatest inheritance. You can see why I'm loving them more and more every minute. All right, what you would ? I mean, I you know, I think I want to like what shall I give Shah. I think like one has to be sympathetic first of all to the work of elect oral politics, right? And to the position of a president. And so and like this is what I know was kind of alluding to earlier. Like his politics can't be my politics and be who he is. It just can't. You know, he can't get up there and say what I think. And I don't have an expectation either by the way. You know, like just so on some level, I guess I understand the politics of saying things that way . I am compelled to also say in my role , did the past and I'm speaking, you know, very conservatively here, did the past ten years of the Republic an Party not happen . Is that not what Republican values are? Like I mean, was J six that? Nominated him three times . Yeah, I mean, I mean, three times. I mean, so at what point is this a statement about who people are and what people are? And you also have to say that like Mitt Romney tried to go work for Donald Trump Like that's not that's not all that's not all of who Mitt Romney is, right? Like I get it. I get it. That's not all, you know, he's done other things that, you know, are worthy. And so, you know, I don't want to but that's also, you know, what I mean, part of the story, you know? And so it's not so much a slam or mit, right as it is to reflect the complication of it. I guess to me like you were asking, what is the danger in this ? And what I see in that is still quite this is, you know, my critique or my worry , still not quite grappling or not quite understand it like how bad it is and where we are . But there is , you know, a part of me that wants people to feel everyone's better angels . I think politicians should do that. Right. I actually do think like this kind of like when Trump, you know, during COVID said, well, it's only going to hurt blue cities. Like that wasn't just bad for blue cities. That 's bad for like that is how you get fifty years from now ? Like a civil war. Like it starts with that , you know what I mean? And so like I guess, you know, like I'm conflicted myself in that if I'm being honest , you know ? No, I hear you. I'm also conflicted in it because it's like, I hear those words and I did I had the opposite initial reaction to you, which is kind of like, yeah, I love that. Like yeah, you're right. Romney and John McCain were honorable. That's nice. And then I heard you talk and I was like , yeah, but it also fuck these people. You know what I mean? And I don't know, you know what I mean? And maybe there's a way to do both. And that's a little more artful. I don't know not to nitpick the speech making, but like maybe there's a way to do both. Also, most people are complicated. Like you're not like they have been honorable . Like there are moments, you know what I mean? They really were, you know, honorable. And, you know, so I don't know, look. Look, Tim as writer, I am, I guess, much less interested in the heroism or the particular weakness or dishonor of certain people and I'm more interested in the structures that make them possible. You know what I mean? I can't sit here and give ten minutes on why Mitt Romney sucks or why John McCain sucked or why I can't, you know, they're probably very honored . Throw in some Democrats in there too. Joe Biden on the state. Yes. You know, people are a product of situations, you know , more than anything . I want to play Selec because it does tie more directly to your ar ticle that in Vanity Fair that we're going to dig into, which looks into what an ex black president could look like. Looks into Kamala Harris' campaign and in particular her relationship with activists in Gaza and how that interplay negatively impacted her campaign. There's a lead into that though, Obama does start talking about foreign policy and tries to contrast himself with Trump and his views on foreign policy. And I think that the way he does it, he talks a lot about the structures that you're talking about. And so I just want to listen to that and get your reaction to whether this is a workable framework anymore for how the world should work. And what I heard on every continent as president is that America , when American foreign policy lives up to our highest ideals , when we champion human rights and democracy the sound stewardship of our planet . When we take the lead in eradicating disease and feeding the hungry and educating children , when we encourage cooperation between nations , instead of trying to dominate and bully and squeeze every advantage just because we can Man . And most of all, when we show through our example here at home that even a country as big and diverse as ours can make democracy work , it turns out all nations , including ours become more prosperous and secure , and the world gets a little bit brighter . It's the case for benevolent globalism. Benevolent hegemony, I guess. Yeah, I mean , that was pretty good. That was pretty good. I mean, that's I mean, that's probably generally true. The complication for that is, I mean, and this is what I spent much of the article doing is and I didn't know this, you know, when I when I certainly , you know, the last time I really wrote about at blength , you know, about President Obama , I did not have the requisite knowledge and understanding of the amount of times and degree to which we have not actually done that though . And I actually think one the things that we're really avoiding on the foreign policy front is the extent to which Trump is actually an extension of some of our worst impulses. That actually might be the area where he's most American. Ben Rhodes has a piece that I won't quote from, but it's in New York Review Books. It's a review of Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. I really am Gay McNamara. It's a review of his biography. And one of the things that Ben, who, you know what I mean? Was in the Obama administration as close as anybody to Obama foreign policy, but what he comes to at the end of that is that, you know, we have basically allowed ourselves to believe that our mythology of good intentions was enough , but as it turns out around the world they remember other things . Yeah, you know, and I don't know that we grapple with that enough. Yeah, it was interesting. You laid it out a lot in the article. I don't know, you and Julian Casablanca stuck on the same page because when the strokes were playing at Coachella this year, they did a little thing where they put us on the video screen all the things all the people we fucked over the seas , you know, from the CIA like over the last forty years. And then I was like reading your list. And I was like, it's kind of similar to what the strokes are playing at Coachella. We're looking at going through all of our worst hits. All the Alan Delas worst hits. But what I thought about what it feels like the case that you made there and Ben Rhodes' change of heart is evidence of this that like the narrative on this domestically is changing . And like when you're last on, we were talking a lot about the power of narrative. And I do feel like , I don't know, I feel like had Harris won the narrative that Obama kind of lays out there, like, you know, the best of what America has done makes up for our failings and that we're a force for good in the world was still kind of the dominant one, you know , like there were people who disagreed, obviously, but it was still the dominant narrative . And it kind of feels like to me , certainly on the left, but even in the kind of JD Vance, Tucker wing of the Republican Party, that narrative being challenged and it might be hard to really ever get it back . I think that's true. And I think what I think I haven't seen a polling on this, but perhaps I'm being too optimistic about this, but my general sense of Americans is look they may not understand the details of this or that, it may not be up on, you know, what argument is being made for what But I don't think we love foreign wars in general , in general . Now we do it. That's not to, you know, exempt, you know, the country of it. And then like Iran is so It's so dumb . Like it's so dumb. The war, the war, sorry, not the country. Oh my god, honestly. Well, I mean the country does some dumb things too . I mean, so do we just it's not just America does . But anyway, no, the war was a lot of countries do dumb things, yeah. Yeah, the war was so dumb . But the war was so dumb that it's hard to mask it . You know what I mean? Like there's not any, you know, sort of, you know, narrative and Trump didn't try really hard by the way. Right. You know, to provide much. It's just the violence, but here's where I want to push people a little bit . Iraq was dumb too.. Right Iran was dumb too. And look, there's a strong argument that Libya was actually dumb too . That doesn't make Qadhafi a good guy. You know what I mean? That doesn't make him okay , but you know, Obama himself says that's the biggest mistake of his residence. You know, he himself, you know, says that. And so like gospel was a lot of other things besides this, but certainly dumb is one of those , you know? And so in that respect , I think we let ourselves off a little easy. And I think it's easier to accept like when you talk about the narrative changing, it's easy to see it with Trump because he's so profane . Yeah. You know what I mean? And brags about, you know, violence try to rest it in the flag and in the American spirit because he doesn't believe in any of that, right? No. And so that lays it a lot more bare. That's right. That's right. And so I think that makes it a lot easier for people to see certain things . Hey yeah, we're just doing some upgrades out in the back porch. It's looking better. It's a little cozier, looking a little less like a college frat house vibe , but now we need some additional furniture to be able to really tie the room together, so to speak . So I'm testing out dupe. com and I'm telling you, it's making shopping easier. Instead of scrolling through pages of options I didn't like, the Dupe Research For me tool asked me questions about what I wanted. So it only pulled up things that I wanted to see. It saved time, it helped me find exactly what I was looking for. Have you ever tried to buy something online and suddenly you've got like twenty five tabs open? It's standard for me. What have I got open right now? Doing a quick count live . twenty three. Got twenty three tabs open right now. You're bouncing between all of them. Like you're a mad scientist. 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You start with Finny Lou Hamer , who was I guess you describe kind of the heroine of the twenty four convention. There's a lot of odes to her just talk about why you kind of start with her and how you tie it to the broader critique of the Harris campaign. So I was I was at I was there in twenty four . And what I was aware of immediately was the fact that Fan Hang was being praised and you know, everybody, you know, she was on everybody's lips . But what I remembered is that actually the Democratic Party did not , you know , ultimately seated a segregated delegation and did not allow her integrated delegation to be seated. That was the end result . There was the end result of back in sixty four or whatever in sixty four excuse me of the struggling in sixty four, that the Democratic Party didn't do the right thing . And the reason why it did not do the right thing is because Johnson was deeply afraid of losing the deep south, which he ultimately did, by the way, or many of the states in theep De South, I should say it like that. And then at the same time, you know, I was watching this group of Palestinian Democrats and people who are sympathetic to, you know, the Palestinian cause there who were not asking, you know, for delegates to be seated. Many of them are already delegates, but we're asking for a speaker . And I was made aware that there hadn't been an Arab American speaker on the state since nineteen eighty eight . And so what I saw is I was watching this phrase or this person had been pushed out of the frame in ' sixty four and was being claimed as his hero was another group of people being pushed out of the frame too . That was, you know, like my initial thing. And then after doing the research, what became clear to me was that Fanny Rhaman was not just a champion of black folks in Mississippi and not just a champion of black folks at all, but a champion of human rights spoke out at a time against the Vietnam War when, you know, it was still not popular within the civil rights movement. Then in fact, she was not the only black woman that did that that Careta Scott King spoke out against the Vietnam War at a delicate moment and against Johnson. You know, at a very, very delicate moment before her husband did, much to the angst of the SCL . And I guess I was struck by the contradiction of praising people who in their time were radicals or seen as radicals, I should say , but not really living up to the example. So in the article, you talk , I know there's a moral critique and kind of historical critique of the Harris campaign, lack of grappling with Gaza, but there's also like political critique, which is basically that it simultaneously could have been the right thing to do and politically salient for her to align herself more with the protesters who were concerned about what was happening in Gaza. Before I give any pushback to that, I guess do you want to just explain that point of view? I mean, look, I'll just take it from hers. I mean, look, I heard from numerous people that she pulled folks aside. And you know, disproportionately black women told me this, that she pulled them aside and said, and this was before she was running, by the way, before like Joe Biden had dropped and communicate her deep discomfort, you know, and her deep feeling and empathy . And when I talked to them, afterwards, their thing was, I don't know why she didn't communicate this publicly. So let me just start from the perspective of what my reporting told me was like what she presented publicly was not what she actually believed. Now I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong, but this was told to me. I heard this numerous times. Heard this numerous. It's not like something that I just heard from one person. And so the first thing is, I would say is, were you true to your own beliefs ? And why are you true to your own beliefs about the value human life ? Human life, excuse me. Secondarily to that, are you being true to the people you claim as I talked about, you know, with Fanny Fanny Newhamer, you know, and Caretta Scott King. And the third thing is, Tim , you know, I can't give ul atimate verdict on whether Gaza lost her the election or not, and I can't give a verdict on whether they would have won her the election . But I do want to say this there are some things worth losing for and there are some things that people will remember you differently when you lose for them . And I just think that had Kamala Harris lost, and that was certainly a possibility simply because she echoed it and stated the beliefs as they were communicated to me, I think people would think about and I'm just not solely talking about Palestinian Americans. I think the party would think about her a lot differently in this moment . I guess I have two thoughts on that. One is and this goes to kind of this broader question about like harm reduction and candidates, you know, and I remember I I was was on on Dan Savage before he election he asked me to come. And he was like, I'm hearing from a lot of my listeners. He's a gay, sex advice person. He's like, He lives in Seattle. He's like, I'm not progressive activist types. And he's like, I'm hearing a lot of my listeners that they might want to send it out because they're mad at Harris about Gaza and they're mad at her about various things. And he's like, I want you to just kind of talk it out with me . And during that conversation , you know, he was making the point that like, okay, I've had to be a harm reduction voter my whole life, like up until just now, right? You know, like out in the eighties, my friends were dying, and I was voting for the Democrat because they were less so and I voted for Barack Obama when he said I shouldn't be right to get married and we not go through the whole list. You know, and so he was, I think, rightly kind of frustr ated with this notion that people were not going to do that in this case when the stakes were so high and that the gap between the two candidates was so great when it comes to harm or potential harm , even including in Gaza, by the way, there's no sense that Trump was going to be any better . And so when the stakes are that high , does that change that question at all or that calculus over whether there are things worth losing for? Yeah, I mean look,, I voted for, you know what I mean? And I told people and I went in front of majority Muslim and Arab American audiences and had to explain myself , which I did, which I did. And pretty much what I said is, look, we know as Black Americans, in general, have not had the luxury of voting in presidential elections for people that we felt fully saw our humanity and that is just what it's been for us . Having said that , I'll never forget, man, I was I was in and this is not the only time this happened, but I was in Houston, Texas, and I was, you know, with a group of Palestinian Americans, very accomplished group, by the way. And the woman's house who was hosting me , beautiful, large, large mansion . And she sat next to me, she said, you know, I'm from Gaza . Two hundred members of my family have been killed . And she said, I don't go outside anymore . I don't talk to my neighbors about this because they think it's right that my family be killed . I think there are two separate questions. There's one question for people like me about like what we should have done without vote and the answer to that, you know, for that to me is very clear. You know what I mean, we should have voted for Harris , you know ? I the loss of some measure of my humanity or I felt the loss of some measure of my humanity by turning to this woman and telling her you have to vote for a member of the administration that was shipping bombs for this to happen You have to now, you know, I mean? a con Hversaveation with your family tell to them why you Tim, I couldn't do that, man. I couldn't do that. And I got to be honest with you. If I were in her shoes, I don't know what I would do. I don't know because I think the thing we also have to face is everybody didn't make the decision that we made. Everybody didn't make it like they're Palestinian Americans and Arab Americans who made the harm reduction decision. In fact, Kamala won the plurality of the vote. So most of them did, you know what I mean? Like the plurality of the them made harm reductionist decision . You know what I mean? But look , I get it. I mean, the thing I would ask you is and the thing I've been asking myself is , man, what at point do we stop doing this? Like at what point, what is the point where we stop saying to people this is the most important election of your lifetime ? And you must accept things that In this case, you must accept the murder of your family members, the killing of your family members for the greater good. Like at some point, like we have to figure out how to have a different kind of politics ? Now maybe that's not when you go in the voting booth, but I feel like we go in the voting booth and then there's no discussion of it afterwards. It's just, you know what I mean? 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You also tell a story of Demishomali and people should just go read the article. I mean, you tell some just really heart wrenching, like brutal stories about people who had gotten out of Gaza and what happened to their family. And I do think that colors the conversation. And I think we'd better serve by just reading the whole article . My answer to your question is like, yeah, never , it's never going to be a better politics. And like you just have to accept it. Like we live in a system possible. Well, I think better things are possible. I think better things are possible. I'm not the mean that's like, oh, that person, you know, they think better things are possible. Fuck them. I think better things are possible. I think we can improve , but like we live in a country of three hundred thirty million people. Like there's like , I don't know, I look at the way people communicate now and with AI and the internet and how easy it is to manipulate people and how frail we all are and how much fragility all of you know the demons that we all have inside of us that we're trying to navigate and it's just like the idea that we're going to be able to get to a place where you can organize a country this diverse, this big in a way that is like totally pure , I just think it's kind of a fantasy. And I think that there's never twenty twenty pure. I just wanted to separate myself But surely pure. I hear that exists. But like, I don't know, man. I just think that the twenty twenty four election is such a strange prism with which to throw this complaint on that I'm tired of people telling me about like every four years it's the biggest election of our lifetime. It's like sorry I get the only election that we've had in any of our lifetimes where one of the candidates was a legitimate threat to end the system of government that we have . Like he was the only one. And so you can tell me like, oh, we can look back at twenty twelve or whatever and say that was a silly thing to say between Barack Obama and Matt Romney. And it was or ninet ineen ninety six between Bob Dolan and Bill Clinton was pretty silly. Also we don't predict a lot of things. I don't know, twenty thousand looks pretty important . If we start to play the counterfactual game and Al Goren's that we probably don't go into Iraq and who the hell knows we don't have Trump probably. You know, I mean a lot of a lot of little blocks fall a lot of ways is the meme where the person touches one block and then something crazy happens at the end of it, right? You know, like who knows what happens to Al Gorin? So I don't know. I am sympathetic. Like obviously, I would not look at somebody who has had two hundred people die in their family and say , You should do this. I'm going to tell you what to do . I think we can also just like say that the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was like the clearest choice we've had in a long time. And we're probably not going to have a better one after that, I don't think. Look, it was clear for me. It was clear for me, but one of the reasons why , um Well, I want to say two things . It is certainly logically possible that every four years it really is the most important election of your life that is certainly logically possible , but what I find is that we have a level of sympathy for certain groups of people and not for others. And in this case, you know, I mean like non voters . And so like for somebody that's just trying to live their life and go through their day , I guess I understand how at a point that message stops resonating . Right. Secondly at a certain point they they just just stop , you know, they stop stop hearing it. But the second thing, you know, I want to say is like the choice was clear for me with my particular history . But one of the reasons why you know I went through the history of those events in that article is because I was trying to reconstruct the memories of other people . That is to say if, you are an Arab American or you're a Muslim American, you're a Palestinian American, and you're in this country in twenty twenty four , and let's say you're thirty years old . What you remember is you remember Iraq? You remember Afghanistan ? You remember innocent wedding parties being hit by drones? You remember Abu Gareb, you remember ICE , you know what I mean? Like your memory is fuck man, these people have always over there, like I get calls from my relatives. You know what I mean? Like there's violence over there. I come here and the cops are like spying on my mosque. Like this, it's just constant. Yeah. You know, it's it's constant and it was constant for my parents too. And it was constant for my grandparents . And now here we are with, you know, I can't I don't have a stat, you know, in front of me, but you know, with the killing of the, you know, the largest amount of children , you know , of any war, you know, in the twenty first century . And I see all of y'all waving these flags for Ukraine . And then it's me and I can't even speak at the convention . Like where am I in this party? Where is my life? Where are the lives of my family members? And in this case, look, I'm with you, I'm with you. Kamala was the right choice . But I feel like I could also say that and say we have to do a better job. Like we have to do a better job making people feel like we see their humanity. And I don't think we did a good one , you know ? I think that's a totally compelling critique. And I think a critique that unites the fact that like Kamala didn't provide motivation to people and just takes us back to Obama the top, I guess, provide that aspiration or that reason to believe that they should help make their lives better. I think that's a legitimate critique of the campaign. I think it ties to other things besides Gaza, you know. You know, there's other things happen, though. There's also the easy side of this. We were talking at the top. It was sometimes my critique of the of the Gaza folks, not the people there, but like the pro Palestinian activist crowd, the uncommitted crowd that it's kind of, in retrospect, it's easy to be like, Well, she lost 'cause of this, this is my pet issue when like all the advertising that went against her was about trans surgeries in prison. So it was like maybe it was that Trump campaign didn't think that's why you lost. Like Trump campaign thought you lost 'cause this other stuff, right? So it's complicated. But I think I think that you make a compelling point about how to how to think about these things from the perspective of people that are coming from a different history . All right, y'all, I have a bad habit. You probably have it too. We know we should stop doing it . It's scrolling on our phones while we're laying in bed . And here's what's actually happening when you're doing that. The stress, the screen time, the just one more headline spiral, it all raises your core body temperature and a body that's too warm can't get into deep sleep. You're not just tired because the news is exhausting. You're tired because your body never actually recovered. The good news , and yes, there's always some, science has a real answer and it's simpler than you think your bed temperature . Enter ChilePad two point zero great name. The water based mattress topper that actively controls your bed temperature from fifty five to one hundred fifteen degrees all night long , no new mattress, no renovation, it fits over what you already have. Chili Pad two point zero actively cools or warms your bed using water . And water is the key here. Fans just move hot air around. Chiliped uses actively chilled water to cool the bed, actually pulling heat away from your body. It's like the difference between standing in front of a fan and jumping into a cold pool. It's one of the most efficient natural ways to control temperature , which means you get precise consistent comfort all night long, fifty five to one hundred and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. And it works with your existing mattress so no new bed needed. But this isn't just an upgrade, it's a complete rethink. The new two point zero comes with a redesigned dock, quieter than ever with a larger internal tank. The topper itself is now a premium performance grade cover that unzips for easy washing and has built in waterproof protection. The biggest change, the nightstand remote. Each side of the bed gets its own dedicated thermostat . Important to my house. And here's the part I love. It is a sensor that detects when you get into bed and automatically triggers your sleep schedule. Zero friction. You get in, it kicks on . That's intelligent, cool sleep, literally . As I mentioned, we need the remote for the different sides of the bed because we're sleeping at different temperatures in our bed, you know? Don't want to get TMI, but there's some sweatiness happening on the other side of the bed. And the chilli pad , it's been a relief. I do have to say it's cooling us down and even allows for a little bit of cuddle time because you know I'm not drenched in my husband's sweat. Visit WWW dot sleep dot me slash bulwark to get your chili pad two point zero for up to two hundred fifty five bucks off with code bulwark. This special offer is available for listeners of the Bullwark podcast, but only for a limited time. Plus it ships free and you can try it risk free for thirty days with flexible payment and financing options. And if you don't like it, return it at no cost. That's sleep dot me slash bulwwort because when you optimize your sleep, you optimize your performance. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bo and Yang. This is Bo and Yang from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Boen Yang. Hey, Bowen, is it just me or does it feel like nothing is actually what it says it is anymore? Yeah, like when you order chicken fingers, you don't get fingers. You get mystery nuggets. Exactly. Well, except hotels dot com I was. gonna say hotels dot com because they do hotels. Refreshing. And when booked as a member, rewards are earned every stay, not points that disappear, rewards that work like cash and can actually be used. So the name checks out and the perks dude too. Yep , members can get up to twenty percent off tons of hotels with no blackout dates. Just works with real travel. Okay, that tracks. Hotels dot com it's all in the name. Can we go back to something that I just I'm interested in because I'm not interested because I necessarily think you're wrong. You may well be right, man. And so I just want to start with that because I don't have a real answer to this, but I want to go back to this the extent to which things can get better . It's not some of it's the fact that you know and I don't mean it's any sort of pie in the disguise sort of way, but that in other democracies, not every other democracy, but certainly in other democracies you're not necessarily , you know , put into not just two parties , but a presidential system that is not really representative of, you know what I mean? Of everybody in the country equally because of how the electoral college and how I just think if some of those structural things were different , I think people might feel differently about their politics and about their vote . Yeah. I have two thoughts on this. One is I do think in this place my original, my former it's been a while now my former Republican like my small C onservative comes in. This is Edmund Burke in me. That's like yeah, you know, shit can get a lot worse . And maybe just like focusing on making things incrementally better, making incremental positive change is a safer bet than like trying to make big structural change and not seeing what the unintended consequences are going to be and not being able to predict that will we move this thing within this other thing over here actually made it easier for the authoritarians to grab power or whatever. So that is an impulse within myself that isn't always right but that's just one. The structural part of this is like obviously true though. This goes back to the kind of narrative question about America and the force for good in the world and how we're the best democracy. And one of the priors that I've changed a lot is like our system is fucked actually. And when we started and tried to start other countries, I mean, Iraq , for all the horrible things about the Iraq war, shout out to the Iraqis. They've had nine peaceful transfers of powers. They're on a longer streak than us right now. And like, what do we do with their system system? We didn't give them a with like ours. We give them a system with more like Germany after World War two. You know, we learned things about like the nature of the system . And I do think that's right. Like I do think fundamentally that's right, but it's like , well A, how do you get the motivation to change that? And B, if you're like, let's say you're twenty twenty eight, this takes us twenty twenty eight, where you talk about kind of how Gaz will be a litmus test issue in twenty twenty eight is something I really agree with you on. But let's say that that person , whoever it is , has said and done the right things on Gaza and has presented themselves in a way that people will leave them. That is an authentic view. And then they say, I'm going to get in there in twenty twenty nine. What I'm going to do is instead of fixing the health care system or dealing with inflation or dealing with your particular needs, what I really want to spend my first year on is we're going to do fundamental structural democratic change . We're going to expand the Supreme Court. We're going to , you know, whatever chance, you know, empower that Congress. We're going to whatever I expand the House. Like, we're going to do all these different things. I think most people just be like , I don't I think that that's really challenging. Like somebody has to really get in there and say, I'm gonna eat this one because people are going to feel like I'm out of touch and this is some concern of the elite, right? And so I think that 's that's where I get kind of pessimistic . The challenges feel such that I don't know that we have another option . In other words, look, I understand the conservative instinct and to some extent I share it myself. Look, what I don't want ? A is for another nine eleven and B for another nine eleven where we stand around and look at each other and say, Why would someone do this to us ? You know , I feel that we are doing things in the world and we are empowering things in the world and we are empowering forces in the world that endanger us and endanger humanity. If everything Barack Obama said is true about the positive aspects of America that people follow us and dot and all of that , what is eight years of Trump done then ? Because the inverse of that is true too , you know , what is, you know, that you know, long history that you know, I tried to outline an article. What did it do? What has it seeded in the world? And you don't need to believe that the United States of America is somehow uniquely evil power to grapple with that. It doesn't require that, but I don't know how we have a future going like painting our entire lives , it feels like every four years around these presidential elections . It doesn't feel like a good long term plan . Rhodes and I talked about this last time as he was on, and I think he's really good on this, which is you can simultaneously be able to talk about the way that our role in the world has been pernicious to a certain extent and that we need to redeem ourselves and reconsider exactly what our engagement is in other parts of the world. It doesn't mean we completely retreat, but like reconsider that. And simultaneously recognize that like there are maligned forces out there that would like take that power and then it could get worse. And this gets back to my small C. You know, it's like one thing it's like is the Chinese system is a Chinese run world going to be better? No , like the people in Hong Kong, right? Like that's the people in Guangzhou, you know what I mean? Like ask the Uyghurs, right? So like that complexity is there, but I don't know, man. I do think politically there's more space for kind of reconsidering this than before. I don't know. When I look back at some of my silly Republican stuff in the past. Like the one thing that was the silliest was when we made fun of Obama's apology tour in OH Like the standard which was like really like ninety five percent America, if you go look at those speeches and five percent like, you know, but we made some mistakes . And I just think that people are looking for a different narrative and the one that's more in touch with their experience . All right, y'all, I have a bad habit. You probably have it too. We know we should stop doing it at scrolling on our phones while we're laying in bed . And here's what's actually happening when you're doing that. The stress, the screen time, the just one more headline spiral, it all raises your core body temperature . And a body that's too warm can't get into deep sleep. You're not just tired because the news is exhausting. You're tired because your body never actually recovered. The good news and yes, there's always some, science has a real answer. And it's simpler than you think , your bed temperature . Enter ChilePad, two point zero. Great name. The water based mattress topper that actively controls your bed temperature from fifty five to one hundred and fifteen degrees all night long , no new mattress, no renovation that fits over what you already have. ChiliPad two point zero actively cools or warms your bed using water . And water is the key here. Fans just move hot air around. ChiliPad uses actively chilled water to cool the bed, actually pulling heat away from your body. It's like the difference between standing in front of a fan and jumping into a cold pool. It's one of the most efficient natural ways to control temperature, which means you get precise, consistent comfort all night long from fifty five to one hundred fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. And it works with your existing mattress so no new bed needed. But this isn't just an upgrade, it's a complete rethink. The new two point zero comes with a redesigned dock, quieter than ever with a larger internal tank. The topper itself is now a premium performance grade cover that unzips for easy washing and has built in waterproof protection. The biggest change, the nightstand remote. Each side of the bed gets its own dedicated thermostat. Important to my house. And here's the part I love. It is a sensor that detects when you get into bed and automatically triggers your sleep schedule. Zero friction, you get in, it kicks on. That's intelligent, cool sleep , literally. As I mentioned, we need the remote for the different sides of the bed because we're sleeping at different temperatures in our bed, you know? Don't want to get TMI , but there's some sweatiness happening on the other side of the bed. And the chilli pad '.s It been a relief. I do have to say it's cooling us down and even allows for a little bit of cuddle time because you know, I'm not drenched in my husband's sweat. Visit www . sleep d meot slash Bullwark to get your chili pad two point zero for up to two hundred and fifty five bucks off with code Bullwark. This special offer is available for listeners of the Bullwark podcast but only for a limited time plus it ships free and you can try it for risk free thirty days with flexible payment and financing options. And if you don't like it, return it at no cost. That's sleep dot me slash bulwwort because when you optimize your sleep, you optimize your performance. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bo and Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Boen Yang. Hey Bohn, point of order. It feels like nothing is what it says it is anymore. Point of answer. It's because everything has a catch. Hey, or it turns out to be something else entirely like a total catfish situation. Exactly, Bo. Except for hotels. com. Yeah, that one's pretty literal because it's hotels dot com. It's in the domain . You go there, you book hotels , hundreds of thousands of them. And hold up, that's it. That's it. And when stays are booked as a member, rewards are earned every time. Every stay, every stay, no tracking or managing, just rewards that can be used like cash on future bookings , which by the way already feels nicer than most rewards programs. Okay? Yeah, members can also get up to twenty percent off booking so savings start right away. Does that mean no weird restrictions? And no blackout dates. Book what works when, it works , it's actually really fitting of real travel. So the name is honest, you're saying. And the rewards are too. Exactly. Hotels. com. It's all in the name. Okay, this is your third time on Ear everyth six months. I'm going to see you again at Christmas , which is nice . Yes, I look forward to it. I want to end with the NBA, but I do, I feel like it's incumbent upon me to at least do one question of woke revisited every time you're on. Okay, I'm going to respect our people. Think about it a lot. Okay, last time we were on, I brought up to you white fragility and you were like, fuck you. Everybody brings up this book . You can't make an entire move ment answer for this book. Fair, fair, fair. Okay . So fast forward, though, since then, James Talerico has become the nominee for Senate in Texas. Good man. I interviewed him a couple months ago. Good dude, heart in the right place . And one of the shrugs was like, did anybody read this book quite project? I don't know if you've read the book or not, but here's something that he said in twenty twenty that's gonna be on TV screens in Texas this fall . White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus . But we spread it wherever we go through our words, our actions, and our systems , we don't have to be showing systems like a white h to be contagious . It's like man, this is how the fascists get in charge, man. We're telling like the white like a working class white dude in Texas can we back up? No, no,, no no, actually the problem is the problem is not that. I'll tell you what the problem is. Okay . Don't talk about human beings as diseases. Okay , thank you. Don't let me do that. Don't do that. Just don't, just don't, don't, just don't look, I. don' Lookm bound to no one in my criticisms of white people . You know, I'm like, I don't pull any punches. You can't talk about people's diseases. I just object to that. Like if it was just, you know, us and our, you know, that woke sort of secret society we have , you know, where we don't let certain people in and I heard I was like, man, you can't do that. What was the circumstance in which he said that . Was he running for office? He was in office. He was in the state legislature. Let me pull this up. This was during COVID this is during COVID and he was talking about it and he's like, one of the ways that we that we fight the disease is by saying black lives . I mean it's a fucking port it's a Portland er episode. I don't have to re again just read it one more time for me. Yes, sure. And so if we could pull up the next tweet, I thought I would have the goddamn Elon Musk has ruined Twitter search. It's Twitter search. It's actually gotten worse. Make a conservative argument He's ruined a lot of things, but like he's really ruined Twitter search. Okay, if we could find the follow up quote too. But here we go. Here is the here's the quote that he said, James Tell . Who we love . White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus , but we spread it wherever we go through our words, our actions, and our systems, we don't have to be showing symptoms to be contagious. It's like a COVID metaphor about how with COVID , you should mask, even if you're not showing symptoms, you can still spread. Like I actually don't understand what now I don't understand what it means. So there's this virus of white supremacy and racism out there or the immune to it because you're white. That's a metaphor . Yeah. And like you and you could spread it. Well, we'll read it to you from the start. So that was the second tweet and the thread. The first tweet was about Arbury, RIP. And he was like, he said he's the latest American killed by the v irus of racism. So racism is the virus. Racism is the virus. Okay . All right. And white skin gives me every white American immunity from the virus , but we spread them wherever we go through our words, our actions and our systems, we don't have to be showing symptoms, we don't have to put on a white hood to be contagious