The Bulwark Podcast XX
[0] Hi, Charlie Sykes here, there's really never been a better time to help support the mission of the bulwark to bring sanity and a non -tribal lens to our national politics.
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[8] Welcome to The Bullwark Podcast.
[9] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[10] It is Wednesday, and once again, stop me if you've heard me say this before, I feel like I've taken crazy pills.
[11] So as an antidote to all of that, we are joined once again by our good friend, Tom Nichols, staff writer at the Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College.
[12] Tom, welcome back onto the podcast.
[13] Thanks, Charlie.
[14] Well, where do we start today?
[15] I really want to talk about what's going on in Russia, the clock ticking in Russia, Vladimir Putin's various meltdowns.
[16] You and I were talking about this right before we started.
[17] I find myself going back and forth between saying to people, hey, guys, could you just dial it down a little bit?
[18] just calm down, have a sense of humor on the one hand, and then also looking at it around and going, hey, you people, why do you not have your hair on fire?
[19] And this would be my reaction, you know, in the same day, different hours.
[20] But it does feel like we just toggle between these two extremes, right?
[21] It's either, okay, this is just too ridiculous.
[22] I have to back off versus, hey, guys, there's a big fucking meteor headed right toward your head.
[23] Why are you not more upset?
[24] And you're not going to solve it with a meteor.
[25] meme.
[26] No, or a tweet.
[27] I think the thread that underlines that, because I've had the same feeling you do, Charlie.
[28] I think, you know, and this is going to sound like another edition of grumpy old men here on the bulwark, but...
[29] It's what we do.
[30] They're brand.
[31] It's a, hey, you know, these kids today.
[32] But I think the thread for me that underlines it is something I've written about before, which is seriousness.
[33] You know, it's, it's a, you should have your hair on fire about, the decline and potential, you know, overthrow of the constitution of the United States.
[34] That's a big, goddamn deal.
[35] On the other hand, you know, calling yourself the resistance, you know, like you're all wearing berets and skulking through the forests of France in 1944, is just silly.
[36] And so there's a, there's this kind of tacking back and forth between, you know, law, nothing matters.
[37] And look at this funny meme.
[38] made with a dog and, you know, people saying, oh, my God, you know, this is, everything is fascism and Nazis all the way down.
[39] There's no adult response to this, which is, yes, this is, I might be one of the few people that like President Biden saying semi -fascism.
[40] I think of it as incipient fascism or, you know, kind of minor league fascism compared to the 1930s.
[41] But it's, it's fascism nonetheless, at least in terms of its content.
[42] By the way, I'm just free associating for a moment.
[43] I was going back through something the other day and, you know, oh, you guys have never used the word fascist.
[44] You know, you should have used the word fascist.
[45] I was looking up Charles Krauthammer's old piece about Pat Buchanan 30 years ago.
[46] And there it is.
[47] Crowdhammer called Buchanan a fascist.
[48] So, you know, there were conservatives who were ahead of that curve.
[49] Boy, I miss Charles Crouthammer.
[50] Yeah.
[51] Yeah, well, don't we all?
[52] But I do think that that's the thread that underlines all this of saying, look, there's a, you know, these are adult reactions you need to have, which is to be concerned, to be resolute, to want to do something about it.
[53] But, you know, you're not solving it by wearing, you know, stickers that say, you know, vis la resistance and law, nothing matters.
[54] I mean, there's got to be something in between there.
[55] Well, and I did my newsletter today about the rights lust for violence, sort of just playing off of this new Roger Stone video.
[56] And again, Roger Stone is one of these perfect examples where he's a complete clown, but he's a clown with a flamethrower nevertheless.
[57] And, you know, he's talking about, you know, we need to go out there and kill people and shoot people, shoot to kill, Antifa, you know, fuck the election.
[58] Let's go right to the violence, et cetera.
[59] And, of course, Roger Stone is a clown, except that, okay, people, you know, this is not just theoretical out there.
[60] You have the January 6th rioters.
[61] I didn't include this, but, you know, CBS has a big story about a survey.
[62] More than 18 months after the rioting at the U .S. Capitol by a pro -Trump mob, an estimated, listen to this, 13 million U .S. adults or 5 % of the adult population, agree that force would be justified to restore former President Donald Trump to the White House.
[63] And an estimated 15 million Americans believe force would be justified to prevent Trump from being prosecuted if he is indicted for mishandling classified documents or anything else.
[64] This is a study from the University of Chicago.
[65] Dr. Robert Pabe, who's the director of UC's Chicago Project on Security and Threats, said, we don't just have a political threat to our democracy.
[66] We have a violent threat to our democracy.
[67] And so, like, people, you know, this is no joke here.
[68] You have American greatness, which is sort of the intellectual.
[69] home of these super maga types like Victor Davis Hansen.
[70] And they're running this new piece by Michael Anton.
[71] Remember Michael Anton?
[72] You know, the flight 93 election guy from 2006.
[73] And I don't know how you read it as anything other than a justification slash call for violent revolution.
[74] And you're looking around going, okay, people, we are in a combustible period here.
[75] This is, you know, we're not dealing with a world in which the worst crisis we face is high gas prices, I guess, what I'm saying.
[76] Not to minimize that.
[77] It's astounding because, you know, this is not the Great Depression.
[78] This is not World War II.
[79] This is not some, you know, systemic crisis.
[80] And yet these clowns writing articles about violent revolution.
[81] For them, it's a game.
[82] For them, it's, you know, I was this close to being one of the elite, to being, you know, part of the governing crowd.
[83] I mean, these are people who hate elites because they're not in.
[84] them and they don't it's not they don't want to have elites they just want to be the elite and displace others that they don't like and so they kind of write these idiotic pieces because for them it's just a game let's see who wins let's see what happens in the next election let's keep throwing dice you know you'll notice that roger stone you know makes sure that he's not actually in the middle of the fight and the rest of these people won't be either they are riling up other people to send them in to hurt other Americans and then end up in jail for, you know, six or seven.
[85] One of the January 6th guys just got almost something like seven years yesterday, you know, hope an afternoon of violent political tourism was worth seven years in jail.
[86] And this guy was one of the guys who is part of that mob attack.
[87] He brought his son.
[88] He brought his son there and they were playing with tasers and things like that.
[89] And look, why was he there?
[90] He was there because he was ginned up by all this rhetoric from people saying.
[91] you know, real patriots need to fight back against the regime.
[92] This is 1776.
[93] So here's the thing is you keep throwing those memes around and people will believe them and they will act on them.
[94] So not to trivialize this, but I find myself in order to maintain my sanity thinking that one of the most important political documentaries of our time is not, well, there's two.
[95] There's idiocry, right?
[96] But there's also Zoolander because so many of the politicians sound like they're Zoolander.
[97] I mean, Elise Stefanik sounds like she's a character from Zoolander lately.
[98] I mean, that gives you, but also, remember the classic scene, and people need to go and find this, the Zoolander gas fight, where they all go and has all funning games at the gas station, and they're playing with the gas thing.
[99] And they're, you know, spraying each other with gasoline.
[100] Like, what could go wrong?
[101] This is so cool.
[102] And, of course, it ends precisely the way you'd expect it to end.
[103] I feel like America is like we are in the Zoolander gas fight scene.
[104] When we're talking about the writer who just got that long sentencing, who brought his son, you know, there is this weird thing of why am I going to this?
[105] Well, because it's 1776 and, you know, revolution.
[106] But also, this is going to be cool.
[107] I'm bringing my son.
[108] And we're going to wear, you know, cool costumes and capes.
[109] And it's going to be a hell of an afternoon.
[110] We have their Instagram and their texts and their videos of, hey, I just did this really fun thing, and now I'm going to go back to Texas and sell real estate.
[111] Well, it doesn't work that way, but it tells you about the kind of fundamentally shallow approach that these people take to politics that's been encouraged by, again, this kind of chorus of, you know, the wannabe clowns who are like, you know, but for the Constitution, I would have been Secretary of State, you know.
[112] And they rile at people.
[113] And suddenly the fun turns into Michael Fanon, begging for his life and pleading that he has children.
[114] And then, you know, seven months later, standing in front of a magistrate and realizing that your life's over, that your life's been completely destroyed.
[115] And why?
[116] Because you watch too much fucking TV.
[117] Yeah.
[118] And months after this, rather than this sobering us all up, things have gotten worse.
[119] So you were mentioning the adults, Who are the adults?
[120] Where are the adults?
[121] Yesterday, the judge in that case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, was very much an adult.
[122] And she said, very much so, yes.
[123] I just want to read what she said, because this is, this was, this was clear.
[124] This was clarion.
[125] She said, the judiciary, if nobody else, has to make it clear.
[126] It is not, it was not patriotism.
[127] It is not standing up for America to stand up for one man who knows full well that he lost instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert.
[128] Some prominent figures in the Republican Party are cagely predicting or even outright calling for violence in the streets if one of the multiple investigations doesn't go his way, Judge Jackson said.
[129] And then she says to the rioter, you were not prosecuted for being a Trump supporter.
[130] You were not arrested or charged and you will not be sentenced for exercising your First Amendment rights.
[131] You are not a political prisoner.
[132] You are trying to stop the singular thing that makes America America the peaceful.
[133] transfer of power.
[134] That's what stop the steel means.
[135] Wow.
[136] Yeah, it was incredible.
[137] And with no clever circumlocutions here, I mean, she just went right at it.
[138] And I think, you know, especially having to put a guy away for seven years, he needed to know why he's going.
[139] And to his, I guess, small credit, I mean, he said, I guess I deserve whatever I'm about to get.
[140] But that's what happens when the spell is broken.
[141] But you look at the tape of January 6th.
[142] And, you know, even as it turns into violence, these people all think they're at a party.
[143] They all think, you know, that they're like, you know, woodstock with bear spray.
[144] And this is, again, and I'll just keep hammering on this point I've been making for a long time.
[145] These are people who are looking for some kind of meaning in their lives and right -wing pundits who know better, who, and they know better.
[146] I mean, Michael Anton knows better.
[147] Tucker Carl says, I don't know, Tucker Carlson is just such an empty husk at this point.
[148] Who knows?
[149] But most of these people know exactly what they're doing.
[150] They know exactly the risks they're telling other people to take.
[151] And they don't care.
[152] We have to own the libs and win the game.
[153] Yeah.
[154] And there was actually, since we're talking about good pieces about this, and before we came on, I said your morning shots piece this morning was, I thought great.
[155] Thank you.
[156] Interesting as well that the artist formerly known as Alla Pundit, Nick Catojo, he had a very good piece where he said, said over at the dispatch yeah over at the dispatch you had the only animating notion among the conservatives now is spike right there's no programmatic issue there's a policy bit and it's nothing it's just whatever you're for i'm against whatever enrages you is what i want because i there's nothing else there's no there's no there with any of these folks they don't care about anything they just care about kind of their own sense of of inchoate and diffuse grievance about everything And the only reason we're really even talking about some of the stuff is, of course, because the former and perhaps future president of the United States keeps stoking it.
[157] And I think that one of the things was in Judge Jackson's mind when she was telling this rioter, as she was sentencing him to prison, was that there is this movement out there that regards the rioters as political prisoners.
[158] And in an undercover story, and there are very few undercover stories involving Donald Trump, But I think this one was that he actually called into a January 6th, you know, jail rally or something like that to express his solidarity with the people who are still in jail for what they did.
[159] And as Amanda Carpenter as documented, and my colleague at the bulwark, Amanda Carpenter has documented at, you know, in great detail.
[160] Trump has made it very clear that he intends to issue pardons for January 6th rioters who have been out of the late charge.
[161] Now, would that include the guy, the guys who took?
[162] tased officer phenone has he made any distinction whatsoever or are they all sitting there going not only were we really patriots not only was this 1776 but we are going to get away with it because when there is the restoration of trump 2 .0 when the military drags don't you know joe biden and kamala harris off the gitmo and and executes them and donald trump becomes president again he's going to pardon us i mean this is the sickness that unfortunately is shaping some of our, you know, our political environment.
[163] As if I could be more uncharitable, I'm going to be even more uncharitable and say, you know, this is not even a political stance.
[164] This is a group of people, you know, first of all, who don't have any clue what it means to be a political prisoner.
[165] I have no concept of that.
[166] And basically it's saying, you know, again, if our guy gets in, we win the game.
[167] It's like a video game.
[168] We get a respawn.
[169] We get another life.
[170] you know, we get, you know, player one is, uh, gets to go back to start and it's a clean slate.
[171] And we win.
[172] There is no sense there at all.
[173] You know, when people call themselves, I'm a political prisoner, I'm Martin Luther King.
[174] Well, um, none of you are producing a letter from a Birmingham jail.
[175] I'm pretty sure about that.
[176] You're not political prisoners.
[177] Yeah, these guys are not Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
[178] Pretty good for a non -Russian speaker.
[179] For a non -Russian speaker, as by the way, I just documented.
[180] So do your point about how, on the right, it's all about spite not policy?
[181] I guess this is part of that cognitive disconnect when you read something in like the Wall Street Journal editorial page where they're writing about the election in Arizona in effect endorsing conspiracy theorist, election denier, Kerry Lake, and saying what this election is really all about is about school choice.
[182] And that moment it's in the blowout.
[183] Monitor is a great piece saying, what planet are you on?
[184] And I have been a long time enthusiastic supporter of school choice.
[185] I remain a supporter of school choice.
[186] But I think it is absolutely delusional to think that our politics is about policy issues like this right now when you have the big fucking meteor heading our way, right?
[187] And when you have someone saying, I will turn 180, you know, turn on a dime, 180 degrees, you know, as so many folks have pointed out, right?
[188] What was Donald Trump's big populist agenda?
[189] A classic, rich guy, Republican tax cut and a trade war that hurt little guys, and they say, oh, okay, I guess I'm for that.
[190] And again, why?
[191] Because I have to be for the guy that pisses everybody off.
[192] And I was thinking about this issue of spite because there's still a layer under it of how did we get from 2015 where a lot of, I would say, decent people said, hey, the Democrats and their institutional.
[193] they're not dealing with things like immigration, they're not dealing with, you know, they're not, they don't care enough about abortion, whatever it is.
[194] Okay.
[195] But I think where the spike comes from is that all of these folks said, I'm going to take a chance on Donald Trump.
[196] And then it turns out that, oh, my God, this was a really bad idea.
[197] But I'll double down.
[198] And because we're going to get some things.
[199] Oh, man, now I know this is a really, really bad idea.
[200] So I'm going to triple down.
[201] And of course, by the end of four years with all of, you know, the annoying people like you and me and, you know, Tim Miller and others standing by saying, we warned you, you've been conned, this was the worst thing that could have happened.
[202] This is un -American, anti -constitutional, fascistic, pro -Russian bullshit.
[203] The spite now is, I don't care about politics anymore.
[204] I have to do something to alleviate the incredible sense of cognitive dissonance and shame an embarrassment that comes from knowing how much I screwed the pooch over the past five years because there's no, and I said it at the time, there is no climbing down from the tree these people put themselves in.
[205] So now they're just going to stand at the top of it and yell, burn it all down, you know, nothing matters.
[206] Donald Trump is God because they can't just, there's no way, and no one did this to them, by the way.
[207] It's not like you or I or I, anybody else didn't give them the space to say it there's just no way for them to say wow i screwed up this guy's horribly he's a monster this is insane this way i often think that we ought to spend our time reading more human psychology books rather than political philosophy books absolutely because what you're describing is the uh that that that cognitive lock uh that we're seeing that when you've done something truly horrible then you instead of going wow i need to change my my life i need to change my direction no it's I need to double down and find all sorts of ways to transform this into a good life decision that will, in fact, as you point out, give my life meaning.
[208] And to aim my rage and hatred at anyone who calls me out about it.
[209] Yeah, especially the ones who call you out at it.
[210] I mean, that's why I think they reserve their greatest rage, not for Democrats, but for fellow former conservatives or current conservatives who say, by the way, you've looked at yourself in the mirror lately because that's the real...
[211] Or to say, we warned you.
[212] And this is not conservatism and this is not the Republican Party that any of us once knew and that, you know, all of that.
[213] And they're like, you know, they can't that, that getting even with everyone who was right has become like this project for a fair number of these of MAGA world.
[214] I want to switch to Russia in a moment, but just on this point, you know, what's going on right now, and Trump is certainly very much part of all of this.
[215] And Michael Anton's piece where he's calling for the violent revolution is a more intellectualized version of it.
[216] But they're in the process of convincing themselves, sort of gening themselves to be more courageous, that somehow being more transgressive, more violent, more vulgar, more cruel is a sign of their courage.
[217] And defining anyone who goes, hey, you know, maybe we to be more civil.
[218] Maybe we ought to be more prudent.
[219] Maybe we ought to have more respect for the law and for constitution and the truth that these are people who are weak.
[220] And so that whole strength and weak thing, and we're doubling back to, you know, this, this is the fascist id at a certain point, that will to power that if you don't have that will and that courage, then somehow you are the weak sister you are the weak link you are the limp dick and this is the way they're there and you can sense they're they're working themselves up and into you know bravery means we go in and we finish the job right right i hope that anyone listening doesn't think that because i think these people are juvenile and silly that they're also not dangerous um you know like as you said you know clowns with flamethrowers, you know, there's a, there's a fundamental silliness about somebody like Stuart Rhodes, but that didn't make him less dangerous and the organization he was leading less dangerous.
[221] But there is a juvenile performativeness about this that is characteristic of fascism.
[222] It's, it's Tucker going to the funeral of the hell's angel leader and posing and, you know, chest, chest out and hanging with the tough guys and yelling into the camera about masculinity and wokeness and, you know, all of that stuff.
[223] And I'll only say this.
[224] There's one lesson I learned, you know, maybe sometime in my, probably about the time I went to Washington.
[225] And I met people who were genuinely powerful.
[226] And in other areas of my life where I met on occasion at people who are genuinely dangerous.
[227] The most powerful and dangerous people I've ever known never raise their voices.
[228] They don't have to.
[229] They speak quietly.
[230] They speak with purpose.
[231] They are a lot more dangerous in some ways than the people who get out in the street and start throwing things around.
[232] Now, there's an immediate danger from people like that because they break stuff and they hurt people.
[233] But the people with a real sense of purpose who are really, I think, you know, they're kind of really dangerous people who are.
[234] true believers they tend to be pretty quiet one of our shared favorite authors c s lewis talking about people in you know well -lit offices with manicured fingernails um doing terrible things and so i think there there is this kind of idiotic adolescence to all of this that nonetheless and this is where i was going to this serves the purposes of people who are much more dangerous that Tucker and all these guys in the street, they're just, they're fodder, they're raw material for people who really do think that the Constitution of the United States should be overthrown.
[235] And they are both in this country and overseas.
[236] And there is that intersection of, of clownishness and danger that we ought not to miss. And I was thinking of one of the great movies of the 20th century, Charlie Chaplin's great dictator, where he was mocking Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, not because he thought they were jokes or because he thought they were, you know, simply, you know, fodder for laughter.
[237] But, you know, he was pointing out, you know, despite all of their pretensions and their danger, that they were clowns, but that they were immensely dangerous, nevertheless.
[238] You know, people who go, you know, you and Tom are minimizing this.
[239] I mean, you're making light of these dangers.
[240] Well, Charlie Chaplin did that with the great dictator because I think there is a crucial role to be played for the mockery of these pretenters.
[241] tensions pointing out that these guys are juvenile performers like Tucker Cross.
[242] And I want to get to Tucker in a moment as well.
[243] If we were minimizing it, Charlie, we wouldn't be talking about it.
[244] That's how you really minimize it.
[245] The fact that we're sitting here having a conversation about it and that we're trying to peel apart, you know, what kind of danger, which groups present which kinds of danger, I think, is actually what, you know, where we're trying to be, you know, to illuminate rather than to minimize.
[246] Minimizing would be, let's just talk about, you know, funny stuff we saw on the internet today.
[247] That's not what we're doing.
[248] Okay, here's a segue from the clownishness to the really, really, really grim.
[249] You may have seen this.
[250] Donald Trump has out with a statement on social media offering to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
[251] Have you seen this?
[252] Let me just read you.
[253] Yes.
[254] And again, I'm laughing.
[255] Yes.
[256] In that kind of sad, grim, you know, like, if World War III breaks out and future archaeologists ever piece together what's left of this world, they're going to pick that up and say, really?
[257] Did this really happen?
[258] U .S. leadership, okay, in quotation marks, should remain, quote, cool, calm and dry on the all in caps, sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.
[259] This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet.
[260] The Russia -Ukraine catastrophe should never, all in caps, have happened and would definitely not have happened.
[261] Notice the passive voice there.
[262] No one did it.
[263] It just happened.
[264] It would never have happened if I were president.
[265] Do not make matters worth with the pipeline blow -up.
[266] Hmm.
[267] Be strategic, comma, be smart, in parentheses, brilliant, exclamation point.
[268] Get a negotiated deal done now, all in caps.
[269] Both sides need.
[270] both sides need and want it the entire world capitalized is at stake i will head up group triple question mark he can't stand anything that isn't about him and i think you know although i there's a part of me and i and this you know gets back to the unsuriceness problem i'm sure there are already people on social media or facebook or twitter or wherever saying see he's putton's puppet Putin wrote that tweet.
[271] First of all, Putin would do a much better job.
[272] Putin's goons would write a better tweet than that.
[273] This is him saying, I never understood anything about this stuff.
[274] I don't know what I'm talking about.
[275] I am emotionally disturbed, and I want this to somehow be about me. Let's talk about the Nord Stream pipeline.
[276] There's a lot of speculation about whether or not it was sabotaged.
[277] I think that more rational folks, and you push back if you disagree with me, If, in fact, there was sabotage, it was most likely Russia trying to punish Europe or in support of Ukraine.
[278] But there are other theories out there.
[279] And since we've been talking about clowns with flamethrowers, here's your daily dose of Tucker Carlson giving this weird Orwellian Putin spin suggesting it might have been, well, I'm just going to play and get your reaction, Tom.
[280] This is Tucker Carlson's deep thoughts about the potential sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.
[281] Action has a reaction, equal and opposite.
[282] Blow up the Nord Stream pipelines?
[283] Okay, we've entered a new phase.
[284] One in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world.
[285] It doesn't mean it'll go nuclear immediately, but it does suggest there could be consequences.
[286] If we actually blew up the North Stream pipelines, why wouldn't Russia sever undersea internet cables?
[287] What would happen if they did that?
[288] What would happen if banks in London couldn't communicate with banks in New York?
[289] Just that one piece of it, leaving aside its potential effects on our power grid.
[290] But let's just say the banks couldn't communicate with each other for one day.
[291] Will the economic effect of that be?
[292] We would cascade downward into your house.
[293] We could have an actual collapse.
[294] We could wind up very quickly in third world conditions.
[295] Those are the stakes.
[296] God's sake.
[297] Have the people behind this the geniuses like Tori and Newellyn considered the effects?
[298] Maybe they have.
[299] Maybe that was the point.
[300] What the, I'm, I get it.
[301] It's mad.
[302] Well, first of all, it's, it's, um, it's madness.
[303] It's mad libs, you know, has insert name of some Clinton official here, you know, or some Obama appointee here.
[304] But, you know, first of all, it, it, it, it, you know, it, it, you know, it, you know, it's, you know, it, When we get back to this problem of lack of seriousness, this is Tucker saying, hey, this is like a big game of risk.
[305] If they take Yakutsk, you know, we could take, you know, lower U .S. and blue pieces of red, he has, first, he has no idea what he's talking about.
[306] The intern, you know, from some right -wing publication probably wrote that monologue has no idea what you're talking about.
[307] And I will, I hate to ever engage on the substance of an argument like that.
[308] But if all of the undersea internet cables were cut and banks couldn't talk to each other, one of the first countries that would go under would be Russia and also China.
[309] So, you know, aside from the fact that, you know, that it's a bad, that it's a dumb idea, what Tucker's suggesting would actually, you know, hurt the people that would do it.
[310] But again, he's playing the game, Charlie.
[311] Hey, here's an idea.
[312] This thing happened in the news.
[313] How do I spin this to make this about yet another, you know, cortisol releasing, you know, fear tirade for an hour on television to my audience that doesn't understand Nord Stream?
[314] First of all, could we just mention that there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we had anything to do with us whatsoever, that it would be crazy?
[315] I guess I am old enough to remember when Gene Kirkpatrick, launched herself into prominence among conservatives by taking on the blame america first crowd remember that used to be the mantra you lefties blame america first that is literally now the tucker carlson playbook blame america first there's a pipeline that blew up or had some sort of an accident so what should we go immediately i'm going to go on fox news and tell my millions of followers listeners viewers that you know we should should blame America first.
[316] You want to talk about how the world is turned upside down.
[317] You know, recently as a couple of years ago, the Wall Street Journal was editorializing the left still blames America first all the time.
[318] This is what they do.
[319] No, it is now the right that blames America first.
[320] And in even a crazier way, and I, you know, Kirkpatrick is one of the many people I miss. I knew, I will just say, I had a personal, there's a personal dimension of this.
[321] I was her assistant at Georgetown.
[322] She is the person.
[323] who got me my job in the Senate.
[324] I am impressed.
[325] I am very much for John Hines.
[326] She blurbed one of my books back when I was a young professor just starting out.
[327] And I remember that.
[328] In fact, I had a volume.
[329] I probably still have it around the house somewhere of the 1984 Republican Convention with her speech in it about blaming America first.
[330] But this is even crazier than that.
[331] This is not just, let me extend a tiny olive branch to our friends over on the left and say they had this notion wrong as it was that America was this baleful influence on international affairs that we were too big we were trying to run the world because we were threatened by anybody that wasn't a capitalist there was a certain coherence I mean it was I think I was wrong but there was a coherence to their anti -Americanism about America's role in the world this is uh -oh something happened and Russia's involved.
[332] Therefore, I must get on the side against the Americans and on the same side as the Russians.
[333] Because Tucker has made that clear.
[334] You know, why shouldn't I be for the Russians?
[335] In fact, I am.
[336] Well, then, you know, once you've already made it clear where you stand on this stuff, your opinion about who, you know, who could have been responsible for this Nord Stream issue, you know, you've already kind of made an operatory decision about whose fault you think everything is.
[337] I guess what I'm saying is it's beyond just an ideal, it's not even an ideological conviction.
[338] It's a reflexive, he reminds me of Vladimir Posner.
[339] Do you remember you and I are both older than, remember this guy, Vladimir Posner.
[340] He was this really well -spoken.
[341] He'd been raised in America.
[342] He spoke fluent, unaccented English.
[343] He was kind of the Kremlin's man over here, you know, and he could make these very elaborate, very elegant arguments for why everything was America's fault.
[344] nothing was the Kremlin's fault.
[345] And again, it wasn't really an ideological position.
[346] It was just instantly opposing anything America did and instantly supporting anything Russia did or the Soviet Union did.
[347] That's kind of where these guys are now.
[348] You know, there's just this kind of reflexive, you know, Russia is white Christian.
[349] Gay people.
[350] It hates gay people, you know.
[351] And we're the decadent power, so I'm going to have to support the chesty, cross -wearing, macho dictator, which, boy, when you talk about juvenile performativeness, that issue with Putin is, there's a whole other world of stuff going on there.
[352] But that's, I think that's what it's about.
[353] I don't think it's even that well thought out.
[354] So we're at an ironic moment here where we were talking about fascist and semi -fascist, and we have a new prime minister in Medali, who, you know, heads up a party that is really the successor to Mussolini's fascist party.
[355] And yet, the American right, people like Tucker Carlson are actually further to the right than she is.
[356] They are further to the right than the...
[357] She actually supports Western foreign policy.
[358] She actually supports Ukraine and is Putin skeptical, shall we say, unlike some of her coalition partners.
[359] So, yeah, it's like Tucker Carlson's going, you know, fascism in Italy.
[360] I can do one better than that.
[361] I can go further than all of that.
[362] And yet there are conservatives who have immediately their knee hysterics saying, well, why does anybody thinks she's she has anything to do with fascism?
[363] I don't know, because she picked up the symbol of the fascist party and put it on her flag.
[364] She's praised Mussolini for all we seen forwardably.
[365] She talks about, you know, international financiers and how they're ruining the world.
[366] But, but as you said, you know, even with all that, wait, we can still get further to her right than she is.
[367] All right, let's talk about Vladimir Putin.
[368] You had an interesting take on.
[369] Somebody was asking about these sham referendums, and they're coming back, what, 98, 99.
[370] percent of the vote saying absolutely we want to be part of russia and somebody said well how would you go for that why wouldn't you just you know why do you have to why don't you have something realistic like you know 69 percent or 70 percent um why is Vladimir Putin you know faced with all the criticism that just say a sham election why is he pushing it right to the edge and saying yeah it's 99 fucking percent what's that about right well because in a situation like this the goal is not to i mean the the veneer of is far less important than trying to convince your opponents that you are invulnerable, that you are already in charge, that opposing them is pointless.
[371] And so this is a result that says, we've taken this territory, it's done, it's over.
[372] And, oh, a referendum, you think we should have a referendum?
[373] Fine, fuck you.
[374] Here's your referendum.
[375] Yeah, yeah.
[376] Obviously, they're not sitting around going, how can we?
[377] make it look more legitimate?
[378] How can we convince the world this is legitimate?
[379] Now, there's none of that going on here.
[380] There's none of that.
[381] This is a signal to the rest of the world that this is a fait accompli and that they are completely in charge.
[382] All right.
[383] So most important question of the day, which I have saved for last now, we are getting these threats of the use of nuclear weapons out of Russia.
[384] As things have gone from bad to worse, is the mobilization.
[385] By the way, what a shambolic mess that is.
[386] I find these pictures out of Russia to be truly amazing.
[387] Just people just like leaving the country.
[388] And as you point out, I mean, they are just, they're throwing cannon fodder, you know, right onto the front lines right now.
[389] It's going to be a real meat grinder.
[390] So what are they left with?
[391] They're left with these threats of using nukes.
[392] And we have the former president Medvedev, you know, suggesting this is not a bluff.
[393] We are prepared to do this.
[394] This is the point of the referendums, right?
[395] To make it Russian territory.
[396] So that these military operations are an attack on the motherland, you know, on Russian soil, which therefore they would say justifies our use of nukes.
[397] How seriously should we take that threat?
[398] We should always take those threats seriously.
[399] But things you take seriously, you do not treat as likely or imminent either.
[400] And this goes back to what we started this conversation with, about somewhere between shrugging your shoulders and having your hair on fire.
[401] I have wondered, and I have no, you know, other than just kind of my gut instinct as a Russia watcher for a long time, I even wonder if part of the goal here is to send those guys to eastern Ukraine so that they die, so that literally their blood soaks into the ground and then Putin says, you see, this is now Russia.
[402] The bodies of thousands of Russian boys, you know, are soaked into this dirt, and therefore we can never leave it.
[403] literally something cost literally something right by the way there are cases in history where leaders have done this I mean Bismarck's attack on a fortress you know in the Danish war when his commander said this is completely hopeless a lot of guys are going to die and he went right that's exactly that gives us a place at the table all those bodies give us a place at the table and yeah it's the fortress at Duple and so you know it could be the Putin is doing something like that.
[404] The question is whether or not he gets, things get so unstable in Russia that he decides that the only way to scramble the deck, the only way to get a do -over and to, you know, kind of bring everything to a halt is to use a small nuclear weapon.
[405] Maybe, you know, I used to say, well, maybe he blows one up out at sea to show how he's so serious he is, or that he blows one up somewhere in eastern Ukraine to say this was to force, an unacceptable invasion of the motherland.
[406] I still think that's highly unlikely because I think even the craziest people in the Kremlin know that they're going to get calls from people like China and others who are going to say, you know, to use mob terminology that Putin would understand, now I got to turn my back on you.
[407] Now I got to walk away from you.
[408] And as I said yesterday in the Atlantic, I think that ends his regime faster than losing this war does.
[409] So I still think it's unlikely.
[410] And I still wonder if there are people, you know, in the Russian military are going to say some of our people are there.
[411] Some of this is going to blow into our country.
[412] You really, you know, this is this really an order I'm going to follow?
[413] But there are also people in the Russian military who are saying we are so humiliated that we'll do anything now ourselves, too.
[414] This is a bad, this is bad voodoo all around.
[415] And it's really dangerous.
[416] So it is really dangerous.
[417] And we know what cornered animals will sometimes do.
[418] What is happening with public opinion in Russia?
[419] I mean, up until now, if you believe any of the polls, which I think we should be skeptical about, but it would indicate that most Russians have supported what's going on.
[420] But, you know, that's, of course, before you have this mass mobilization and then sending untrained soldiers to the front line.
[421] So does public opinion matter, I guess?
[422] So does it change public opinion?
[423] And then does it matter.
[424] It does because, you know, part of what dictators want is peace and quiet.
[425] And when you're getting, you know, military recruitment offices, getting Molotov, cocked, thrown into them.
[426] That's a big deal.
[427] The other, there's a couple of things that aren't quite obvious to Westerners.
[428] One is that he's, at first he tried to do this by dragooning kids from the boondocks.
[429] The problem is the boondocks is where he's most popular.
[430] You know, and all those kids have cell phones, or smartphones, rather.
[431] And there are, you know, things are starting to come out and people are seeing what's happening.
[432] For people who don't understand how this is done, you know, here in the United States, right?
[433] If we draft you, Or if we pull you into the Navy or the Army, we send you to Great Lakes, we send you to, you know, Fort Benning or, you know, wherever, and you kind of train with everybody.
[434] Here, this would be like saying, you've been drafted, report to the 10th Mountain guys up at Fort Drum in New York, and they'll tell you what to do next, and they'll get you clothed.
[435] I mean, there's no central way of doing this.
[436] So you have all these, this, as you said, this kind of shambolic mess.
[437] But, of course, there are now smartphones.
[438] Putin seems to forget.
[439] This isn't 1975.
[440] People are taking videos of this, and it's traveling all across the Russian Federation.
[441] So I think it does matter because his social compact with the Russian people was to say, this is going to be a splendid little war, we're going to have big parades, everything's going to be awesome, and it won't touch you.
[442] Peter Pomerantsov had a great line.
[443] He said, this was supposed to be a TV show.
[444] Now it's touching Russians.
[445] And the deal Putin always had was the old Soviet deal.
[446] You leave us alone, we leave you alone.
[447] You leave the people in power alone.
[448] We leave you alone to live your lives.
[449] Well, when you start dragooning people, I mean, this isn't even a draft.
[450] This is literally like dragooning people and pulling them in and saying, you know, go, go show up over there and get a uniform.
[451] You know, that breaks that deal.
[452] And then when things become unstable, I always say dictators seem completely invulnerable right up until the day they're not.
[453] Yeah, right on, but until Chowchescu goes out onto the balcony.
[454] You know, General Mark Hurtling has been writing and talking about this a lot.
[455] He talks about, you know, how much training an American soldier gets, how detailed, how long it takes, and then contrasts it with the really shitty training that we've seen in the Russian Army.
[456] This seems like it's becoming even shittier.
[457] And I guess, let me ask you this question, because you're a lot more knowledgeable about it.
[458] It strikes me that there was at one time, I suppose, an era where you could take an untrained soldier and hand them a rifle and just, you know, put them in a trench and then say, go over the trench and just, you know, you know, go and shoot at the enemy.
[459] That's no longer the case in warfare any longer and that the modern soldier needs to be much more sophisticated and well trained.
[460] And so Russia is going in exactly the wrong direction at the wrong moment.
[461] I would say that that notion of, you know, dragging a guy, you know, and handing him a rifle and pointing him at the enemy, that probably hasn't been the way that successful militaries work since maybe at least the 1870s, at least since the mid -20th century.
[462] But here's the reason the Russians think it works that way, or at least some Russians, like Putin, because their experience of doing that is when they've been invaded.
[463] And so, you know, when you've got the Vermeacht coming at you, and I highly recommend the movie Enemy at the Gates, because that's where a lot of people are pulling these memes from and other scenes about the defense of Stalingrad.
[464] Yeah, if you're defending Stalingrad, sure, hand a guy a rifle and say, listen, just kill anybody that's not us.
[465] And, you know, good luck.
[466] And the guy behind you, you know, you don't really have a rifle, but he's going to get shot and die.
[467] pick his up and then once again, kill anybody that's not us, kill, you know, kill Germans.
[468] There's a patriotic poster from World War II, a Soviet patriotic poster that says, one bullet, one German, you know, and it's got a kid, a fresh -faced kid holding a rifle, one bullet, one German.
[469] And that doesn't work anymore because Russia is not being invaded.
[470] The Vermecht is not rolling over the planes toward Moscow.
[471] And you can't just hand guys.
[472] a rifle and say, you know, save your motherland.
[473] And I suspect that even the defense minister, who has no military experience, by the way, doesn't understand that.
[474] I suspect that guys that served in Afghanistan and other places get it.
[475] Because to fight effectively, not only do you have to have some knowledge of, you know, basics about military.
[476] And I have never served in the military.
[477] I spent 25 years teaching military officers about strategy and policy.
[478] You do have to form some kind of shared identity.
[479] And General Hurtling talks about this a lot.
[480] The training together over time is what forges a bunch of, you know, rag -tagged bunch of guys into a fighting unit.
[481] And the Russians aren't doing that.
[482] They think this is, they're trying to recreate the sense of 1943, you know, the winter of 42.
[483] Here's your rifle.
[484] The enemy's over there.
[485] Go do your duty for the motherland.
[486] well you know that's just a recipe for getting your ass kicked and for having massive desertions for people that don't understand why they're doing this there was and i'll just there was one more more thing i wanted to add to this there was a um some film of this on one of the networks and this this russian woman yelling he's yelling for what yeah like you're pulling myself for what and that no one in 1942 no one after june of 1941 in the soviet union never said, for what?
[487] They knew for what.
[488] But Putin doesn't understand, is there millions of Russians looking around and going, you're going to do that?
[489] And for what?
[490] What are we doing here?
[491] What is the point of this?
[492] Tom Nichols, staff writer at the Atlantic and Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College.
[493] And his books include, as you know, the death of expertise and our own worst enemy.
[494] We always love having you on the podcast.
[495] Thanks for coming back today.
[496] I appreciate it very much.
[497] Thanks, Charlie.
[498] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio.
[499] production by Jonathan Siri.
[500] I'm Charlie Sykes.
[501] Thank you for listening to today's Bowlerk podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again.