Polarization, partisanship and threats to democracy

Make Me Smart November 10, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Hey everybody, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense. It is Friday today, November the 10th.

Kimberly Adams 

And I know it sounds like Kai is talking through a tunnel, but he’s really okay we’re having some audio issues. But anyway, I’m Kimberly Adams on my very nice microphone. And thank you, everyone, for joining us on Friday for our weekly Happy Hour economics on tap. And yeah, we’re glad to have you here and Kai, we’re glad to have you here despite the technical difficulties,

Kai Ryssdal 

Despite everything, yeah. So I I think it’s that the rats chewed through my cable that leads out to the shed. That’s what I really think but I guess we’ll see. Anyway, we will do, even though the sound quality is terrible, we will do some news. We’ll do a game and then we’ll get you on your way. Before we get to it, though, what are you drinking today? What are you drinking today?

Kimberly Adams 

So I’m trying something new, which is this cocktail more or less called a 50/50 or a Rye-Na and it’s half of bourbon, so not rye, actually half bourbon, half artichoke liquor, like an Amaro, it’s called cynar, I think. But I had some that I got for a cocktail I was making it one point. And then I’ve had it and so I’ve just been looking for cocktails to make with it. And then it was a little too bitter for me. So I added some pomegranate juice, and it’s delicious.

Kai Ryssdal

That’s awesome.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah, yeah. What are you having?

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m having what will be the first of several, because it has been a week, Chainsaw Bunny from from Paperback Brewing here in Los Angeles. I was out for dinner the other night with my wife and another couple and we drove right by the brewery and okay, this is more than you need to know. But he and I had already had a couple and he said, “Hey, you want to go to Paperback Brewing?” And I’m like, No, man, I got a soccer game at eight o’clock. I gotta get up. Anyway, bunny with a chainsaw. Paperback Brewing here in Los Angeles. 8.2% ABV, excellent beer. And I will relax into my afternoon and evening here in Los Angeles.

Kimberly Adams 

You deserve it, you deserve it. Okay, shall we do some news? What do you got?

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, let’s do that. Let’s do that. Am I gonna go first? Okay. So look, I am. So I, I don’t want to be a downer. But here’s where I’m gonna go. I despair for this country. And I despair for this country for a lot of reasons. But the reason I mostly despair for this country is the leading Republican candidate for president who will more likely than not win the nomination, says stuff like this, about his justice department. He says, If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go out and indict them. Mostly what that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They’d be out, they’d be out of the election. And, and It troubles me that that’s not a 72 point headline in New York Times that it doesn’t lead every NPR newscast, and every network news show and CNN all over the place, we have become numb to the dystopia that the Republican Party and its leader presents, and that really troubles me. And and, you know, there will be, there may be people who will say, oh, you’re being partisan and you’re a journalists, you can’t do that. I will not stand down in the face of threats to democracy so we can have that conversation. But the the idea that this didn’t get more play than it’s getting, is crazy making.

Kimberly Adams 

I often think to the conversation I had with my grandmother in 2016. And I’m not going to say how old my grandmother is, but suffice it to say she remembers the lead up to and the actions of World War II with great clarity. And she said to me, in 2016, that the way the media was covering Donald Trump reminded her of the way the American press covered Adolf Hitler leading up to World War II, because she said and I’m going to paraphrase, but I remember the conversation clearly. She said, everyone knew what he was doing. Everybody said he was saying what he was going to do, but nobody believed him. Everyone thought he was so charismatic and just dismissed the things he was saying. And everybody sat back and just watched what he was doing until it was too late. And she said that to me in 2016 because, you know, she knows I work in media and it was a chastisement. And she said, Everybody believes that it can’t get that bad. But it can. And this is exactly what it looked like back then. And that chilled me to the bone at the time. And it still does, actually. And this is a conversation we’re gonna have to have, you know, there’s no way you can avoid in this environment, getting the label of being partisan, while also standing up for democracy, because unfortunately, that’s where our polarization has landed us. You’re either on the side of democracy, and unfortunately, that means you’re saying a lot of negative things about one section of our political landscape. Or you try to pretend like it’s a false equivalency and then you know, you’re diminishing the real danger.

Kai Ryssdal 

It, It troubles me so deeply. So look, I actually just going down into the YouTube chat here from Sarah Mohan, or I’m sorry, I’m probably pronouncing your name wrong, Sarah. She says, not a fan of Trump. But I am a Republican, yet I listened to every episode of this show. So I appreciate your not being a fan of Trump. And I appreciate you being Republican and I appreciate you listening to this program, this show. But, but, but what do we do with a party that has become and I use this word advisedly, unhinged, where its its base, and its most most of its elected representatives are election deniers, or worse? There is a core of the old Republican Party, which is still there. And I guess I just wonder how, number one, what do you do with that? And number two, I wonder how long it is actually, until we have three major parties in this country? Right. The Democrats who have a challenge on the progressive left, but are mostly hanging together. The what used to be Republicans, and then the Trumpist. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

And the people who are sort of the traditional Republicans, they’re just tapping out, you know, you got Mitt Romney over here, trying desperately to convince Joe Manchin not to run third party. And all of these Republican senators and members of the House who are sort of the old guard saying, you know what, there there is no place for us. But what what are they to do? I mean, you speak up against Trump, you get primaried out and the party becomes more extreme. So, yeah, it’s, it’s grim. And I think that puts the responsibility of our job in even more stark relief in the coming year. But we’re doing our best, and we’re gonna continue to do that. Yeah.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry, sorry. Wait, sorry. Before you go on. What just share Mahone? Or I’m sorry, Sarah. Next time you put something in the chat, tell me how to pronounce your name. She said. I honestly think there are a lot of us Republicans who can’t find a place for ourselves. And I hear that. Anyway, I’m sorry. It’s, it’s your turn.

Kimberly Adams 

But you know what? It’s it’s it’s the official celebrated Veterans Day. So you get the longest rant you like today. Well, thank you.

Kai Ryssdal

I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Kimberly Adams 

So speaking of which, what’s your take on thank you for your service?

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh, that’s so interesting. I, you know, so I I am deeply proud of my military service defines me, as I think I’ve said on this podcast to this day, I find great value in it. And I think it’s a real challenge for the society that there is such a divide between the civilian and the military. Something like 6% of Americans are veterans. And that means that 94% of Americans don’t really understand what it means to deploy and to have the challenge that there’s challenges that come with service, full stop. I also think that the hagiography of the American veteran, the raising up of us as paragons of mostly paragons of virtue, and people have done selfless things. And people have sacrificed which a lot of us have not me, I was a non-combat veteran is a little bit distorted. So when people say to me, thank you for your service. I say, thank you. I appreciate it. And that’s about it. Look, you have to know that I didn’t really do anything in my service, right? It was peacetime I, I, I had a great time in my military service. I was not traumatized. I was not PTSDed. I had there was nothing bad about my service at all. But I really wish we would spend more time thinking about what it means that so small, such a small slice of the American public bears. I’m sorry, not to the American public, such a small slice of the American citizenry, bears the burden that comes with military service without so much of the rest of the country really being aware of. That’s it.

Kimberly Adams 

Is there something better to say? Or even better to do, than “thank you for your service?” Other than not using it as a shopping holiday.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right? That’s, that’s a little tough, right? Because yes. So yeah, there is right. I mean, I mean, look, so I was an officer, which number one meant I had the education going in, and I had an easier time, physically in the service. I was an aviator, assigned to an aircraft carrier, which meant that when we had general quarters, drills, and the ship’s crew was fighting the ship, it literally was my job, it was my duty station to go to my bunk room, and basically sit in my bunk and do nothing. So I slept. And when I got out, I had means and support. But think about an 18-year-old Marine from Iowa. And she goes into the service out of high school, because she’s looking for direction or something else to do, or she wants to serve.

Kimberly Adams 

Or for her college to be paid for.

Kai Ryssdal 

Or for her college to be paid for, right. Which is, which is great.

Kimberly Adams 

That was a huge draw when I was a younger person.

Kai Ryssdal 

Absolutely, I’m not sure if it is so much anymore. Maybe it is I don’t know. But anyway, but yes. So whatever the motivation is, she goes in the Marine Corps, and then she gets out three or four years later. And maybe college doesn’t work out, if it does awesome. And that’s great. But if not, the challenge for her is to find her place in a civilian society, when everything for four years has been regimented. When I got out of the service, I was twenty-, well, I’d had Foreign Service in between, but but I was 30ish, right. And I literally didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And my wife, who was amazingly supportive through all of this, but trying to embark on her own career after our path in the Foreign Service. Didn’t kind of know what to do with me. And so we went together to job counselors and people who’d helped me find my way in and none of it really resonated, because I couldn’t articulate what it was that I wanted to do in part, because for years, eight years of my life, it was all programmed, and there for me. We’re way off the beaten path on this podcast, but, but I really think that the best thing we can do for veterans is, of course, support them while they’re in the service. But more significantly support them as they try to make that transition out. Right? Because because that’s the really hard part. Boot camp sucks. And deploying for six months on an aircraft carrier is lousy, and going through a land war in Southeast Asia is way worse. But trying to regroup from that and recover to a civilian life is really, really hard.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, somebody in the chat said better than thank you for your service. It’s just asking a vet how they’re doing.

Kai Ryssdal 

How they’re doing. Right. And so I thought of that. I thought, and, and for so for peacetime veterans or for non-combat veterans like me, that’s a little like, I’m fine. Why do you ask? And for the, for the people who really had difficult service? That might be tricky. I literally don’t know.

Kimberly Adams 

What’s your, it’s not your business. You know. You know, it’s like how much like, in fact, I have a traumatic brain injury, and I can’t get my VA benefits on time. Right. You know, right. Yeah. All right. So all this to say, be mindful when you’re throwing around those “thank you for your services” this weekend to put a little thought behind it, right. I’m gonna hit my news item real quick, because it actually relates back to the top of the show and the polarization and dysfunction in Congress because as you probably saw, this afternoon, Moody’s Investor Services, Moody’s Investors Service aka just “Moody’s cut its outlook on the US ratings to negative from stable, pointing to risks,” I’m reading from CNBC. “Pointing to risks to the nation’s fiscal strength,” and I’m going to scroll down here. “Continued political polarization within Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt in debt affordability.” It does expect the US to retain its exceptional economic strength. But this is what everyone has predicted would happen. And because of the dysfunction in Congress over the inability to pass spending bills in the debt limit scare and everything else. I did want to flag that this week also, Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney, you know, the buddies introduced the bipartisan Fiscal Stability Act. This and I’m just reading from Manchin’s press release here. The legislation would create a bicameral that’s both bodies of Congress, “bicameral fiscal commission tasked with finding legislative solutions to stabilize and decrease the national debt, which now exceeds $33.6 trillion- more than double what it was just 10 years ago.” Then it goes on to talk about all the co-sponsors in the Senate and that the legislation is a companion to the houses bipartisan Fiscal Commission Act, which was introduced by representatives Bill Huizenga, I’m so sorry, and Scott Peters. Anyway, this is something that lots of the groups who pay very close attention to the national debt have been calling for that we need some sort of fiscal commission to come up with solutions. We were talking about this earlier this week, there are solutions on the table that would make a dent that would stabilize things, but the getting the political will behind them is going to be hard. There have been other fiscal commissions in the past, the green Cato Institute pointed out the Greenspan Commission, which did not go so well, when they attempted to work on that. But you know what, this has bipartisan, bicameral support, there seems to be some movement on it. And I think it’s worth watching. That’s all.

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally agree. Totally. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. All right. That is it. Yeah. That’s all my news.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, so we’re done. And once again, I apologize for the lag and I apologize for me being on Zoom. You know, the rats ate my cord. That’s, that’s my, that’s my defense, and I get to continue it. I get to spend this weekend buying a new 100-foot cable anyway, we’re gonna take a break, and then we’re gonna do half full, half empty when we come back.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, half full, half empty. Welcome back, it is time to play our game, which is hosted by our very own Drew Jostad. Drew take it away.

Drew Jostad 

All right, according to a new survey from Intuit that claims that quality of life is more important to Generation Z than saving for retirement. The marketing label on this is a soft saving. I’m not sure about that one. Are you half full or half empty?

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s very interesting. I’m gonna let you go first.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m half empty, because I feel like it’s it’s it comes from a place of resignation. I think a lot of folks in Gen Z and Millennials just believe that retirement is not a real option for us. And that we will never be able to save enough to stop working. And so you may as well just try to have your little wins along the way. And I think that’s what this is. And it’s kind of, it is depressing. So there’s that.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I agree with Kimberly, are you, you’re a millennial?

Kimberly Adams

I am old one. But yes.

Kai Ryssdal 

Okay. I’m a very young, I’m the youngest, actually baby boomer. And my mother, who is a warrier has said to me increasingly as I approach closer than I would care to be the traditional retirement age. She always says to me, Kai, there’s so much time, there are so many hours in a day. And so, while I appreciate that, that it’s you know, I’m doubtful that Social Security is going to be here, it actually will. But that’s a whole different conversation. Don’t, don’t give up on on your later part of your life. I know it’s tough to see it at 25 or 30, or 35, or 40. But it’s going to be there and you got to deal with it.

Kimberly Adams 

So, I also had this feeling of like, I would love to keep being a journalist until the day I die, let me go out like Dan Shor, doing stuff right up until I leave, however, I have lived a life of work that is not hard on my body. And it is one thing when you’re working career is labor at a desk, and you can get like, you know, repetitive injuries and all these other things. But if you were a construction worker, or if you were worked in food service, most of your life, if you were a nurse, and that prospect of having to continue working, you’re gonna get to an age where your body doesn’t let you work anymore. And then those long years start to look a lot more scary. And I think that’s, that’s a big concern.

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally fair. Totally fair.

Kimberly Adams 

All right. What’s the next one now that we’ve just destroyed hope for the future?

Kai Ryssdal 

Kind of a downer podcast. Sorry.

Kimberly Adams 

Welcome to the new folks.

Kai Ryssdal 

Thanks for coming on.

Drew Jostad 

Are you half full or half empty on hot desking?

Kai Ryssdal 

So this is a story that I think Stephanie Hughes it for the radio show yesterday about companies basically, cutting back on real estate space and not wanting to deal with, you know, huge numbers of empty desks now that people aren’t coming to work. So for those who are coming to work, you don’t actually have a workstation. You go wherever there’s an empty desk, and somebody will come in right behind you and somebody will be have have been there right for you. Well, it’s a little weird, but look, work is changing. Work is changing. And the idea of having an office or a desk of your own, I think kind of goes away. So I’m neutral, it is what it is.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m half, I’m gonna go neutral because I’m half full. And that, you know, it means we can potentially make better use of that space eventually. I know it’s expensive to convert office buildings into housing, but we need the housing so hopefully it’ll work out. Companies using only what they need, but half empty because some people are really gross at their desks and I don’t want to touch what they do.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, that’s fair.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, what’s next?

Drew Jostad 

All right. A new strategy announcement from Starbucks has a goal to build 17,000 more stores by 2030 Are you half full or half empty?

Kimberly Adams 

Half empty. Just straight half. We have enough Starbucks that’s it.

Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t even know. Yeah, I think that’s what we do have enough Starbucks. That’s for bleeping short.

Drew Jostad 

What about in China though? Do they have enough Starbucks in China?

Kai Ryssdal 

Maybe not. So you know, it’s really interesting. I saw some piece the other day about how the Chinese are now getting very much getting into coffee culture where they’ve been a tea society for you know, millennia so but look if you’re going to be a coffee culture don’t be a Starbucks culture. There’s better coffee than Starbucks. Don’t hate me, don’t at me.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I I’m not great on coffee. It makes me shake because I’m a tea person. So too much coffee is never a good thing for me. All right. Yeah. Ah, is this the last one?

Drew Jostad 

I’ve got two more if you if you guys want.

Kimberly Adams 

Two more, okay let’s do it. Yeah, yeah, let’s do it.

Drew Jostad

Next story comes from Rolling Stone, A24 is developing an Elon Musk biopic with Darren Aronofsky directing.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh god, oh god, sorry. Oh god. Come on.

Drew Jostad

Looks like Kai’s half full.

Kimberly Adams 

He’s buying his tickets in advance.

Drew Jostad

He’s setting a calendar reminder.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my god, I can’t ah jesus. Sorry, I guess, I guess I gave it away, I sorry.

Kimberly Adams 

I feel like I should be half full just to be honoree and half full because I really just want to see Kai’s reaction to when it actually comes out. So half full.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my god, you’re a nightmare. You’re dead to me. Jesus.

Drew Jostad 

All right. How about a poll?

Kai Ryssdal 

Hang on. If he had stopped before he bought Twitter, right? And look, let’s so let’s be substantive about this for one second, and then I’ll get back to my gut reaction if he had stopped before he bought Twitter. And the reason I say before he bought Twitter is that in buying Twitter and doing what he has done to Twitter, he has disassembled a huge part of the controlling disinformation campaign that social media platforms have worked on for 10 years. And he’s just vaporized it. How long has it been, since he bought it a year, year and a half, whatever it is. Excuse me beer burp. And that’s just, it’s terrible. Sorry, another one. It’s really, really bad. It’s bad for society. It’s bad for this democracy. It’s bad for the global economy. It’s bad for everything. If he had stopped right before that. And, and the only thing we had to judge him on was SpaceX and Tesla, I would have gone to see that movie. For reals. I’ve said this. Right, there’s a bunch of us. This is a guy who, who, again, before Twitter, if he had, is successful at what he was trying to do with Tesla, and SpaceX, he literally changes the future of the human race.

Kimberly Adams 

I wonder, I so first of all, I think that it’s it would be very interesting to explore the co-amplification of Trump and Musk kind of coming into the space around the same time. Because the Musk of today would not exist as it does today, as he does today without Trump coming into the space the way you did. And Trump would not exist as he does today, without Twitter as a platform. And then now this round, Musk amplifying him again. And so these two, you know, interesting characters feed off of each other in a very fascinating way. But, you know, I think that it will be very interesting to see what treatments Musk gets in anything. I’ll be half full mainly to watch your reaction. But also because if done well, this could be very interesting, as a commentary on you know, what the real life villain origin story looks like.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, so it’s it’s I don’t know if you said this, it’s Darren Aronofsky, who’s the guy who did Black Swan. So he’s not a schmo director, right. I mean, he knows what he’s doing.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. All right. So now we have a poll. So folks who are watching in the YouTube livestream and have the ability to weigh in with Kai and I are going to vamp cuz clearly we’re in a vamping mood today and kill time for a bit. While you all vote, please do vote on whether you’re half full or half empty on the following topic. Go ahead, Drew,

Drew Jostad 

Are you half full or half empty on a one stop shop app for home buying, call it an Amazon for real estate?

Kimberly Adams 

I love that interview.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, so, thank you very much. Note to the producers of this podcast, should have flipped the last two, should have flipped the last two. I’m just saying. I’m just saying.

Kimberly Adams 

The other one was way more controversial, and we could have vamped much longer. And we obviously did vamp much longer.

Kai Ryssdal 

That is the art of producing. So this is a question based on an interview. I did on the radio show this week at some point about why basically, we have not figured out a way to disintermediate home buying and make it possible to do it from an app. And yes, you can get a mortgage on an app and you can refi the ATM and I get all that but homebuying as a as an organic sort of economic event is still really high demand and it’s really high bound because of varying state and national laws. It’s also a challenge because in escrow, you inevitably have a partner such as oh, just for example, my wife who insists on reading all of the two and a half inches thick pages of paper that you have to sign when you’re in escrow, love her though I do. So it’s really hard to figure out how that all works. And that’s why there’s no app for that. That’s that was the upshot of the interview.

Kimberly Adams 

I heard that in the interview but I really struggled to believe that the reason there’s no opt for that it’s just that the paperwork is difficult because it reminds me of why we don’t have free file with the IRS through the IRS. Yeah, it’s not because it’s so hard, it’s because of the lobbying that stopped it from happening. And as we’ve discussed on here before, the National Association of Realtors is a very powerful lobbying group and has incentives at the local, state and national level to make to protect the interests of their members. And part of the way that lots of professions protect the interests of their members is by increasing the barriers for people who are not members to do it, whether that means you’re a lawyer, whether that means you’re a real estate agent, whether that means you’re an insurance adjuster, pick your your thing on a lot of and they do require skills, they require skills that can be difficult and take time to learn. And maybe I shouldn’t have used lawyer because lawyer is very different than real estate agents, but you know what I mean, anyway, there is a very powerful moneyed interest in very deeply invested in making it very complicated to buy a house on your own. And I think that’s a bigger reason. So, anyway.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally fair, totally fair. Let us let us close the poll, shall we?

Kimberly Adams 

Okay so what was the question again, Amazon for real estate? I am believe it or not, despite everything I just said, half empty. I think that this is actually something that needs a bit of a human touch. But I still don’t love the way the model works now.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think that’s exactly right. The model is broken. And we saw that in the National Association of Realtors lawsuit in Kansas City about the realtor fees. I agree the model is broken. I’m not sure this is the answer. And the audience turns out actually agrees with this 70%, half empty 29% half full, which is 99%. Hello? Bridget. That’s 99%. It’s not 100%. Anyway, 179 votes. I don’t know why it’s Bridget’s fault. It just kind of is.

Kimberly Adams 

He just kind of decided. Just like blame Bridget. If all else fails, blame Bridget.

Kai Ryssdal 

Things have to add up. Could it be Marissa’s fault or Courtney’s fault? Yes, it could. But Bridget’s the one, anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

The buck stops at Bridget.

Kai Ryssdal

That’s right. The buck stops at Bridget. That’s right.

Kimberly Adams

We got to stop. We’ve been going, for real though Kai, I hope you do something good for yourself for Veterans Day. And to all the Vets out there. I hope that you get some sort of celebration that you actually like that actually does make you feel respected and valued. So there’s that and that is it for us today. Kai is going to be out on Monday hopefully doing said nice thing for yourself. I will be back with Matt Levin. And as always if you have a question or a comment that you want to share, or maybe a little bit of audio for our Thursday show, leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART. You can email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org

Kai Ryssdal

This might be the longest we’ve gone, 35 minutes on a Friday. We had some things to say I suppose.

Kimberly Adams 

Well and you had beer for the first time in a while.

Kai Ryssdal 

In a while. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Juan Carlos Torrado. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi. And I will get my Comrex fixed by next week. I promise. Sorry.

Kimberly Adams 

I don’t know these earbuds seem to be pretty freeing for you. The team behind our Friday game is Emily Macune and Antoinette Brock. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar, where the buck stops with Bridget is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and on demand. Happy Friday.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh my god. Oh my god. Yeah, buddy.