The Path Forward and Future Outlook

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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now to get your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save Well, I'm here with my guest today, Tom Nichols He is the author of several books, including the one we'll talk about today He's a staff writer at the Atlantic and And Fally, my old Job, a professor emeritus of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, where he taught for twenty five years Welcome to the show, Tom Thanks for having me, again Shun So you wrote the deeath of expertise in twenty seventeen. before a lot of what now feels obvious head fully come to pass. In that book, you argued pretty convincingly that there was a growing contempt for knowledge and expertise alongside a culture of narcissism And as a result of all that, we had a political system that was becoming almost suicidally So nearly a decade later, I thought You know what? I'm going to bring him back onto the show to revisit the book and talk about what you think You got right and wrong. And if you believe that we are indeed witnessing the total and complete exhaustion of democratic self government as we know it. How's that? Yeah, that last one you know, that'll take us a little while. But you know, start with what I got right and wrong. The first thing I ever wrote about the death of expertise was pretty much like a blog post in twenty thirteen It was just me kind of venting about You know arguing with experts. I mean, it wasn't just that people didn't I didn't write the book because people distrust experts. That's old, right? That goes way back um, white jacket anxiety, right? you know? and and um peopleeople not liking professors and pinheads and you know, the guys in propeller beanies and all that P push me to write it was people then talking to those experts and lecturing back at them about their own area of expertise And it happened with me, for years, I was a Russia guy. I was a Russia expert. I went to the old Soviet Union. I did archival research. I wrote books about Russia, and a young guy system in time You know, Tom I don't think you really understand Russia. Let me explain this to you And I thought, wow How did we get to that point you know, in American culture, where people, you know, o, you're an oncologist, Let me tell you about cancer Um, you know, you're a pilot. Let me talk about flying with you. And And so I wrote that and that's when I got right. that this was happening and it was this was a social phenomenon, and I gave a name to it. What I got wrong was that when I wrote the book, I said, o, we've probably reached the high watermark of this craziness you know, one war or recession or a pandemic and this is over and that Part of the reason I was wrong is that I didn't expect a major American political party to make it a fundamental plank. of their entire platform. you know, that rejecting expertise couldn't imagine that that was actually going to lead confirming Robert Kennedy is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I mean, I just couldn't see that far. I had a failure of imagination came to just how crazy this could get I take it u So I guess here in the yearar of our Lord, twenty twenty six. you think the book? I take it, you think the book held up quite well. If anything, the diagnosis was correct, but understated The diagnosis was correct. I certainly didn't think that it was going to become an existential threat to democracy itself which it, which it has, but I'm a little more optimistic about it because I think, you know, people in the end, people rely on expertise every day. That's why I was saying, it's not really the death of expertise. It's kind of this political carping about expertise. It really has become a political phenomenon that almost anyone who argues with the no nothings that populate an administration like this one are called elitist and you know, anti American and looking down on ordinary folks and all that all that stuff. and u That's extremely dangerous. pololitics is sort of interesting and tragic in the sense that the The relationship between cause and effect is not always super clear, whereereas you know, if the engineer messes up the bridge And it collapses, veryy clear what happened there. R. But trying to connect tariffs or international monetary policy to you know, higher prices, you know, for steak in the in the local grocery store is yeah is a little bit harder And yet There are people there are children sick with measles Um, you know, there are literally outbreaks of measles happening U, you know, diseases we thought we had tamed, whooping cough and you know, other childhood diseases. There is a direct line that people should be able to see between um, you know, somebody like RFK who You know, I mean, where do you even begin with that? Pod idea stuff that he pushes out U, and their children getting sick I think the problem is that people don't want to see that because And this is something else. I think I kind of underestimated because I thought better of Americans. But I think I underestimated the degree to which people feel just, u out of control. and that this kind of approach. you know, where Bobby Kennedy goes on TV and says just ate a lot of raw meat and drink raw milk and E some nuts and beres and you won't have cancer anymore, you know, or something like that. People go that I'd rather do that than listen to a doctor because that feels empowering And I think I underestimated the degree to which most Americans just want somebody to tell them what to do easy and simple and clear Um, and that That was kind of a shock to me Are there any major threads in that book or any major arguments in that book? You you would write differently today if you are writing it now didn't spend enough time talking about the kind of warping effect of loneliness and social media because I think Um, A lot of what you're seeing are people joining these kind of communities of anti expert cranks because it gives them a sense of community. because it's empowerment and connection you know, I didn't spend a lot of time in the first book, for example, talking about in the first edition of the death of experxpertise talking about things like Q andon. You know, because again, I thought, well, that's that's kind of that kind of came and went Um, But U I should have thought through more of kind of The psychology of this um that I think has turned out to be really somethingomething we need we need to think about more as a democracy. I mean, we cannot become I'll steal a line from Peggy Noonan here who warned that we are becoming a nation of sullen paranoids And you can't sustain a democracy on sullen paranoids Well, let's talk about the mechanism here. I mean, for me, it's going to come back to the internet one way or the other. Um In your mind, at least, how does a society go from skepticism about elites which is good and necessary and justified to outright contempt for competence itself, like the idea of competence, the idea of expertise, which is stupid. and self destructive. How did we get from one to the other I think your temptation to go straight for the internet, I'm going to detour you here a bit Yeah and say that it's partly the response to a modern highighly advanced technologically adept society where everything just works And I think people have gotten it into their heads that Everybody can be an expert at everything and nothing is that hard to do because they live in a world where things just Let me give you an example of what I mean about how this prosperity and high level of technological advancement has you know, made us more prone to this kind of behavior, this kind of rejection of expertise I was born in nineteen sixty. so I grew up in the nineteen seventies and You know I had my first car in the seventies It used to be a pretty common thing to be able to say, oh, yeah, sorry, man, my car broke down My car, in the trunk, I carried a quart of oil, a bottle of antifreeze U, you know, a leak stopper, the stuff you pour into your radiator if it springs a leak, which I don't think even I don't even know if they make that stuff anymore. because cars were unreliable, you know, even the cheapest car today is this remarkably reliable thing. and it frees up the mental space to think about other stuff. And there's a term that sociologists use for this called edonic adaptation. When things get to a certain level you take that level and you just accept that as the base instead of the ceiling. And then everything that doesn't meet that level, becomes a failure or an injury or somebody screwed up. And I think that technological advancement is what opened the door people to have the time The leisure and the environment to sit around and bitch about how nothing works and nothing, you know, everything's broken I'm It drives me crazy talking to people Some of whom are close to my age, but who say things like You know, I voted Whever Trumped number Be we just have to shake things up. Things are just so bad. And I'm like, wait a minute. I lived through the seventies I lived through nineteen percent interest rates You know, I live through ten percent inflation and eight per seven and eight percent unemployment. What are you talking about? And they have no They have no mental horizon for this. They just think if there's the tiniest blip in the road because things have been so good for so long for most people. and I'm not going to m not going to disparage, you know, the suffering of people who have gone through bad times. But even in the best economy, there will always be people who go through bad times People I think have the luxury now to sit back and say Look how screwed up this is. I mean You know, my car loan is now at two percent And they think that's like a terrible injury to them Well, the frustrating thing is it's not really policy failure. It's just like a kind of natural law of politics, where you accumulate enough privilege And over time it just produces like a very particular species of entitlement and stupidity. It's just sur I seem pycle of things I think the word, you know, we tend to shy away from this word, but I would even call it decadence. It's a big word I used to tell undergraduate students when I was teaching kids, I would say Every time you turn on your tap in America and drink a glass of hold clear Clean water. That's a miracle That's a miracle. There are places where you just can't do that and I would try to explain to them how teams of experts from city planners to you know, elected politicians to engineers all had to get together to make sure that when you turn your tap You don't die. from whatever comes out of that And people just don't think about that anymore. They take it for granted and then complain that, you know wasn't cold enough for you know, it had a little rust in it or something. and there there's just that the willingness constantly complain about things and then to say, And here's the kicker I could do it better. Anybody could do this. I could be a governor, I could be president Why not let a talk show host run the Defense Department? How hard can it be? Well, what is that about? I mean, the you know, being spoiled, being privileged, all of that seems obvious enough, but that deep resistance to learning itself and then also that tendency to dismiss the idea that authority or expertise is even a thing at all worth desiring or that it even exists. at all It's a phantom. I mean, what What is that about Well you just said the magic word authority And this phenomenon, by the way, is global. I mean, you know, you have people in Italy and France and Japan, but the uniquely American part when you said authority, I mean, the national credo of America is you're not the boss of me can't tell me what to do I'm independent, I'm fully autonomous Um you know, we've really lost and this now we can come back to your problem about the internet and loss of community because we all think we're these fully empowered little islands peopleople you are completely capable of everything. U And that's very American. You can't tell me what to do you know, you have to vaccinate your kids before you can put them into school. fififty years ago People like my parents would say things like, Ohh, thank God, the government is doing that Now it's all the these parents saying, You're not going tell me what to put in my kid You're not going to tell me what to do And that is, again, I would argue that's kind of an offshoot of decadence because it's very childlike. and that's a big part of rejecting expertise because expertise implies authority and authority implies telling people what to do. And in this country, you can't tell anybody what to do. Well, that's I mean, that's sort of the There's a kind of super charge Donning Kruger effect and for people who don't know Dun in Kruger effect is a pretty well established psychological phenomenon where people who don't know much about something tend to overestimate their own knowledge or competence. and You know, my God, the internet is just an absolute Farnival for this cognitive bias. and I think we just We have a lot of people empowered by the internet who believe they know more than they do. And they don't like being told that they're wrong. I mean, it's just, you know, old fashioned socratic humility is just not a good fit for the smartphone era, Tom. Just not a good fit at all. And yeah and the way the internet really accelerates this, think back to pre interternet days, if anyone can, if anyone can remember time before the internet, but I can't My brother used to emb bark, I'd rest his soul. He owned to dive, right? And My brother owned this like joint next to the railroad tracks You know, beh whole bunch of guys sitting at the bar And if one guy says something stupid Ten other guys leaned on the bar and go,, you know, you're an idiot, you know Here's where the interternet gets you out of that You can say anything you want and go ont to your squarehe headed girlfriend or boyfriend here the computer or your or your handy phone And someone will say, You're right What a smart thing you just said U yes, that conspiracy theory that everybody in the bar just told you you're an idiot about No, it's real You know, the way I described it is every town in America has one guy, right who walks around going,, the end is near and You know, the Donald Trump is a lizard person from Venus and Uh, you know, Kamala Harris is is here to steal your soul, right The thing with the internet is Each one of those people ten thousand towns across America can now reach out to the one other person in each of those towns and suddenly they're not a bunch of crackpots, they're a movement Theyir community. That's what the internet can do. and it gives it confirms you No matter what stupid thing you believe, someone on the internet will tell you it's not stupid because that's just the nature of it takes crazy ideas or conspiracy theories or crackpod you know, pseudos science and it creates a movement out of it. And you never have to interact with the people in your community You know, like at my brother's bar who would lean down the bar and say No, don't be stupid, get your kids vaccinated I mean, people don't normally draw a straight line from the loss of community to mass stupidity but it's there. And of course, again, the internet is the it's the conduit there, right? Because I think part of what Tch has done is remove us more and more world and we're spending more and more of our lives in the virtual space, but we still have that instinct for community, but the kind of community you are more likely to find on the internet because of the business model that runs the internet is this combination of idiotic and conspiratorial and also paper, paper, thin, right? I mean it's not a real community. It's a simulacrum of community, but you can absolutely derange yourself Well that way Yeah. And there's a couple of things to think about that. firstirst of all, and people say, I have a lot of friends on the interternet Well, okay, they don't. L, no, you don't. No, you have a lot of connections on the internet I think Um, That model you're talking about, it creates a sense of community that is still it's not really community because it's all about you. A real community is a diverse group of people, some of whom will not agree with you, but like you anyway Like one of the things that's great about a community about, you know, the local bar or a coffee house or You know, a bunch of people hanging on the beach or wherever it is is that you are not all thinking the same thing The community on the internet is you as the central player surrounded by People who say, yes, you're right. Yes, absolutely. Yes, I agree Um because that's the algorithm And I think it's telling that the very online folks and, you know, the the the kind of Elon Musk types refer to other human beings as NPCs which comes, of course, from the gamer world, non player characters. Right? They're just there. They're just props that are set up around you. It was probably maybe three or four years ago. I started writing this piece, which I didn't finish Um But I was basically going to make the case that this collapse of trust in institutions and authority was basically and existential crisis for our society. And you know I realize that's like the least punk rock thing a person can possibly say U, but I It's correct because a A society that this large and complicated really cannot function without that trust, or at least a sufficient level of it. I'll go where you just went. It's a threat to civilization The reason that we could Fction, create governments E Go universities run schools. Do all the things that make us a functioning civilization, not just an armed camp, in a world of armed camps. wasas that we We not only had a certain level of trust We agreed on basic that we understood the structure of a logical argument We had general rules for accepting what constituted evidence We had things like the scientific method Um We understood that Aecdotes are not data, that exceptions are not rules We've lost all of that again, reverting to this kind of childlike insistence that whatever I happen to think is therefore true because that is congenial to me And if you tell me it's not true, then you're calling me stupid And I hate you. Support for the show comes from Quince Summer presents a set of fashion problems. You want to wear upscale clothes, things that look nice, but are also light and airy. InterQints, they focus on high quality essentials that feel and look amazing Breathable linen and soft organic cotton. 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What if your idea really connects with people and grows into something real Shopif I can help you take that chance They're the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide and nearly ten percent of all e commerce in the US from established brands like All Birds and Converse to entrepreneurs just getting started Their design tools make it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining with hundreds of ready to use templates to choose from built in marketing features, you can create full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. So you can reach your customers wherever they are It's time to turn those what if into with Shopify today You can sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at shopify dot com slash box. You can go to shopify dot com slash box. that's shopify dot com slash box There is a flip side to this coin, right? We spend a lot of time dumping on you know, ordinary people, the public and all the all their pathologies. We're ordinary want I want to just know I'm an ordinary person.' no, no. We're all part of the public. But right what I'm getting at, right is it's not just public, the citizens making bad choices There's also the reality of the sustained shittiness of the ruling class in lots of ways. I mean, how much of this story is about elites failing time and again and and people with good reasons saying, e I don't know about this. Well let's crap on the experts for a while, because there is a chapter in the book called When Experts are Wrong But there are several kinds of expert failure and they're not all the same. let me point out one thing, which I have spoken to You know, I keep saying, I'm an ordinary person. I grew up a working class kid. I have a pretty normal life. I live in a modest home in a small town in New England Public intellectuals elites, the ruling class I have said to my fellow academics and scholars to, they need to engage with the public. And they need to engage with the public like normal people. Um, you know and to talk like normal people because ye our client whether whatever kind of expert you are, lawyer, doctor, engineer, professor, Um, you know, whatever it is, your client is society in the end. We do claim a certain amount of privilege as experts and knowers And therefore we should return that back to society. and return it back in a way that is that we are speaking to people as our fellow citizens Um, and that can be uncomfortable because that also means sometometimes speaking truth not to power, but to the public So that's a problem right off the bat. You know, professors sometimes professors are the worst spokesman for their subject area because they they don't They're like they're like Martians, you know, they just don't hundred percent The other place, I think where experts have gone off the rails is that they are so worried about the public jumping on them or you know seizing on their mistakes that they hide their mistakes and they try and kick kitty litter over it when they screw up And they say, well,, you know I mean, the repligability crisis in science. That's a real thing. I mean, that's a real problem. And I've been when I was a political scientist guy I railed against the fake science of political science And I'm like, L, we can't we can't we can't rerun the Russian Revolution or World War O three times You know, we just can't U And so I think that has been a significant problem. where I think it becomes where we fall into a really ugly space is when the public views political outcomes as the failure of expertise because they don't because they think that bad decisions that have happened in political leaders are because of experts sock puppeting them from behind And they don't realize that I worked for politicians They listen to our advice. they don't always take it and they don't always take it in full U, you know, when when we talk about the failure of expertise and the lack of trust What are the two great moments we go back to Vietnam? and waterg Watergate exxactly But here's the thing about Vietnam and maybe this is a public service announcement people like Steve Binnon who carry around copies of the best and the brightest and think that they don't people don't understand that book. In Vietnam, the experts were pushed aside by people who were generically smart They didn't need the old China hands or the Southeast Asia hands from the State Department. There's a lot with the Harvard I'm smart That's how we ended up getting to our hips in blood in Vietnam. business guys, a lot of business and a lot No question, but you cannot run The defefense Department, the way you run General Motors. You just can't. People then say, well, therefore experts are idiots And yeah, sometimes we are. We're human beings. We screw up Um, you know, I think I still cringe at George Tennet telling George Bush, sllam Dunk WMDs It's our opinion, you know, the WMDs are in Iraq. We're going to find them Um You know, there are all kinds of political failures of expertise What is not a failure of expertise policies that don't work out the way the public likes them. And that's a different That's a different problem And then that's when they say, as you just did, well, our ruling class is shitty You know, they don't know what they're doing I will say this, let me speak in favor of the ruling class, which I have never been a member of Um At least not to my knowledge Um, When the book first came out, one conservative blogger wrote an op ed about it and he said, what have experts ever done for us really in the past fifty years And I'm like leeaving aside the fact that you just live longer and you know, Cat scanners and things like that I don't know. NATO. global peace and prosperity, high standard of living and human existence U, you know, the end of the Cold War, the reduction of nuclear weapons, all things that were done by political Policy experts, I tried to stay away from science, you know, because you'd say, well, sure, scientists are smart. We all get that Um You know to say in the past fifty years, what have experts done for you? Every time you get on an airplane decide to jet off to Europe for I mean and by the way, elites are not the only people to do this. I have been on airplanes where I've heard graduate students talking about their weekend in Berlin Um when you get on a plane and just do that on a grad student, you know, weekend jaunt Experts made that happen for you. How do you recommend people separate healthy skepticism, which again is necessary. from the more destructive contempt for expertise that you know, obviously you were warning about in twenty seventeen and We're bitching about today Yeah, it's very hard to do because it requires you to separate out your emotions from whatever you're reading on a given day I always tell people that I'm paid to watch the news and write about it and be part of the media ecosystem And even I don't watch as much news as some of these folks do. I mean, you just have to unplug The other is to ask yourself, I think it to be Let me use let me use one of those academic terms to interrogate U versus to T to ask yourself an honest question Am I being fair am I You know, why am I why am I going down this rabbit hole? Is it because it's interesting? And it confirms my priors My advice to people is to treat information the way they treat food. Um Reasonable quality and reasonable portions. you know, read a national newspaper. W your local news. I live here in New England. I can get Providence, Boston. watchatch a half hour of local news Watch an hour to a half hour of national news. If you put those three things together a newspaper, some local news and the national news, you're done. And then ask yourself, if you're going to other sources, why are you doing that I had one of the most revealing conversations I ever had with someone when I gave a talk on this book guy comes up to me after the talk and he says, Allry, mrter, you know, Mr. Smarty ps U said, what do you read? How do you stay informed? And I said, Well I said, I used to live in DC. I like the course this was pre Bezos. I said, I like the Washington Post. pllus it has comics in it I try and read my kind of local small town newspaper when I can But I said The Washington Post is my go to because I like a lot of political and coverage and he said, I'm not that's inside the beltway stuff I said, OK, fair enough. I said The New York Times is a paper of record Not perfect Um, you know, a little stiff But it's worth reading He said East Coast ellites. It's right They said no one has ever accused the Wall Street Journal being two left wing I said and they're reporting on the front end of the paper is, you know, the best. I mean, they're just great reporters. and he said Capitalist elites And I finally I said, Okaykay, so you didn't really You're not really asking me a question You want me to cycle through all the media that you won't read for your reasons until I agree that you ought to go on the internet until you find stuff you already agree with And he got You know a little red and he was like, well, I said, what are your sources so I read things When people say that, Amazing when you talk to people and say, what are you what are your sources? Where do you Someone says, Ohh, you know, u We stuff, you know, Suff The deep state got us into Iran. So where did you read that? Well I read things In other words, I swim around in this big Dumpster of crap. until I find something that already agrees with something that I thought Well, look, the reality of time is that againgain, because of the internet, I'm a broken record here. News consumption is now indistinguishable from shopping That's what you're doing. You're shopping. and boy You've got a virtual supermarket Unlimited options. And what you want You want people I want people Um to go walk into that store and go straight to the produce aisle and get the eggplant. and the broccoli and the celery. All the you know, but what they're going to do is go and get the Skittles and the nerds and all the ultra processed shit in the middle of the store that's terrible for them, but it's cheap and it satisfies an urge and instinct and You know, I just think think I think we have all been put in a situation in which our worst impulses are now monetized and incentivized in a way that is increasingly hard to resist. So I'm very sympathetic to the play of all of us. I think we've been putting in a really. That's why we have to ask ourselves. why that's why the answer to all this always starts within us. You know, What are you reading and why are you reading it And and the biggest problem here is not with kids with older adults The fifty five and over I' been over the worst They're the worst. They're the worst. I've done this where I've been in front of audience. I say, how many of you get your news from Facebook and all these hands called? But I say stop that You're old enough to know better Do that you know, U And what and as you would point out, yeah, but that's fun. That's tasty. That's consumerism, right? It's giving me what I want. You know, that that that is just this kind of Dum Toddler like infantile narcissism That says I reject the division of labor and that's something I do talk about in the death of expertise that we really have We used to say, look, I am not going to build my own house You know, there's an architect, there's a guy who does windows, or's someone who does floors, there's a plumber Um We don't think that way anymore. And I've actually had people it's the quote is in the book because people kept throwing it at me over the years about Robert Heinlin The science fiction writers writer who would say, well, you know, real man can, you know do all these things Build a house and change a baby and fire a gun like no That's not We didn't prosper as a civilization. you know, by lumbering our own houses, we just didn't. and that's a myth. that's meant to make you feel good that's a bullshit myth that's meant to make you feel good about yourself and make you feel not so dependent on other people and on modern. modern life Support for the Greay arerea comes from Fetch Pet inssurance. Pets add so much to our lives, really too much to say in words. We've got a cat and a dog here at house Iilling, and they are the best. 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That's shopify dot com slash boox We all do it You have a night for yourself but don't like the sound of the silence, so you turn on the TV just for the ambiance It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone But when you switch to GaICo, you've got clas reps available around the clock So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to Gaio All right, so where does all this leave us now? man? I mean, are we fully post expertise now? If we are fully post expertise, what the hell is on the other side up that I's going to try and be out since we're wrapping up and, you know, we've been doing nothing but doom Y Like like that scene. Christ an opium. mees an opium. Yeahium. You know, it's like a Christmas carol where, you know, the ghost of Christmas presresent opens his robes and there's, you know, the internet and narcissism and on their forehes is written Doom. Um I'll give you some I'll give you a little bit of opopium, which is the reason that experpertise is going to persist and that people will eventually come back to it is because sameame Inevitably at some point people realize they can't live without it Everybody thinks doctors are quacks until they have a pain in their chest. Um You know, that We always come back to this. I'm thinking too, you know it's been interesting how many people have raised their eyebrows about the Iran warar, for example and saying, hey, didn't you guys have anybody who speaks Farsi in there So Chinany, Iran experts, I mean, even people in MGa world You know, are looking at the president saying, what, you did this based on a gut Punch I hope now that Trump's been reelected and people understand that tariffs are inane and are idiotic and stupid and that you know, going to war based on you know, a feeling in your tailbone is dangerous, that this fever will at some point break. I also hate to say that a certain amount of human damage may bring us out of this that you know, you will never see the Anti vaccine people say we were wrong But I suspect what you will see is after enough waves of children getting sick you will see people quietly going back toward science Well, it's always a question of, all right, so how hard ntill we have to crash and burn before that reckoning occurs. And Tom, I don't know. I really don't know. because Until or unless we end up on Fury Road you know, like there you will still go into that that big shopping mall or the big grocery store in the virtual sky. And you will still have the nut jobs on aisle eight and nine selling you the like paranoid conspiracism and the engagement farming and the cynicism and the hatred for you know the other side That stuff is pretty resilient. I was trying to end on an optimistic note, so thanks for nothing But well you could counter that with e Well I want to accept that. Now I'm thinking about what you said. and my big worry is that when people out of that you know, um, that the sources that they should go back to are being systematically undermined by a lot of oligarchs who are going to make sure they're not there you know, Bezos destroying the Washington Post Um, you know, or or, you know, the takeover of CBS and , you know, that sources that people should be able to come back to and trust are going to become just as polluted um by profit and, you know tranery and all of that U I mean, look You know, Your question haunts me and has for a while, how hard do we have to crash before we get it And the problem is It's both a problem and an advantage. The problem is that modern society is so resilient that we can really absorb the stupid decisions of millions of people and the system still chg chugs along Um because we are such a, you know, complex system now The crash can be ugly and you know, is there kind of a dark age ahead of us where it gets worse before it gets better. I that to come back to the very first thing we talked about, that was the mistake I made in twenty seventeen thought we were kind of like alcoholics sitting bottom right around then and that I didn't foresee Trump's election. I I tri I thought somebody like Trump was going to show up. U And then once he did show up, I said, well It'sing it take a couple of years for people to kind of get it that you shouldn't have a complete ignoramus trying to run a superpower but people peopleople in that first Trump administration ool noodles and baby bumpers on all the sharp edges of government so the Trump couldn't hurt himself too badly and couldn't really hurt us too badly That's not the case now So maybe this is the kind of dark time we have to go through where you have Trump You know unplugged taking us into multiple wars, destroying the economy, raising tariffs, blowing up our alliances Maybe that's what it'll take for people to finally Get it that, but again, I don't think they will until their standard of living. is appreciably impacted by it And that doesn't happen until things are really getting bad Well I have hope ll figure out your problem is that I can make a very clear and exhaustive case as to why we won't. I want to believe that we didn't live through World War II and the Cold War And you know, all of the terrible things and the AIDS crisis and COVID and all the challenges that were thrown at us over the past, eighty years.