The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan (private feed for kbockus@gmail.com)

John McWhorter On Woke Racism

For anyone who follows online debates over race in America, John needs little introduction. The Columbia linguist just wrote a bracing tract, Woke Racism, against the new elite religion. He, like me, despises the racism inherent in critical race theory and its various off-shoots, and let’s just say we talked very freely about many of the dynamics of our time.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here.  For two clips of my conversation with John — on the banality of wokeness, and how the woke religion hurts African-American kids — head over to our YouTube page.Speaking of John, a reader mentions him in the context of this dissent:Love your podcast, but your complaints about the NYT are becoming tiresome and seem to reflect a lack of recent reading. With Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, and now John McWhorter writing consistently reasonable columns that are not knee-jerk liberal, your tirades against the Times sound more like sour grapes every week. (No rational person supports Trump, so those voices aren’t going to be heard there except in the occasional guest column.)Sometimes you paint with such broad strokes that you fall prey to the same distorted view of the opposition — lumping them all together with the most extreme elements of the woke left and exclaiming, “Can you believe what they’re saying?!” Stop with the straw men!Sour grapes? The NYT has published many of my essays and reviews, and gave my new book a rave. But if my reader thinks that non-left views have more than token appearances in that paper, then I don’t know what to say. Conservative writers need not support Trump, but might be able to defend the non-interventionist, neo-protectionist agenda that also seeks to limit immigration. Another reader is curious to find good alternatives:As a lifelong Democrat (I was elected to county office on the McGovern ticket) and subscriber to liberal mainstream media, I was interested in your antipathy to those sources. What I need is balance. What sources and commentators do you trust for their objectivity?The Wall Street Journal is often a very neutral read in its news pages. Various Substacks help balance out the left-framing of everything. The Economist is much more based than the biased CNN or MSNBC.Looking back to our episode with Cornel West, the following clip, where he offers his take on critical race theory and the 1619 Project, was really popular among readers:One reader remarks how “Cornel West just exudes a cerebral, erudite common (universalist) warmth and decency. Is this why he’s seemingly so out of fashion on the left?” Another reader:“We’ve got to fight the notion that whiteness is reducible to white supremacy.” Yes — thank you, Dr. West. This is my issue with how CRT is being disseminated. I don’t have any problems with teaching history, however reprehensible some of our predecessors behaved, but don’t teach children that they have some sort of original sin based on their skin color.Condoleezza Rice said the same this week:Another reader on Cornel’s deep love for the humanities:I found very interesting Dr. West’s response to your question of who people should read more of. His response was Chekhov. Now, critical race theory would tell you that Dr. West, a black man, shouldn’t find too much in common with Chekhov, a dead white man. But in fact the opposite is true. Moreover, Dr. West’s analysis of Chekhov’s work wasn’t a critical theory analysis of cis, white, patriarchal, capitalist, etc, etc. Rather it was a fundamental engagement with. the. text. — can you hear the annoying clapping? — and what that text says about the HUMAN condition. I think there is something deep to this, especially in our current cultural moment. That a black American professor in 2021 finds such deep communion with a Russian white playwright from (roughly) 150 years ago … worlds apart, and yet deeply connected.And this is the real beauty of a liberal education — you can commune with anyone outside your own “lived experience” and learn from them. Their identity matters far less than their ideas — and the more cultural and historical boundaries we cross the more we stand to learn. Many more readers keep the conversation going over the episode with Briahna Joy Gray:This was a really good talk. While it can be fun to hear you, Andrew, chat with your old buddies, this is the kind of talk I’m here for. Briahna is obviously incredibly sharp. In my experience, articulate thinkers like her are rare out on her wing. She really is the kind of progressive intellectual we need to put forward the best version of the worst ideas from the left. I’m so tired of only finding rational sense-makers clustered around the center of everything. I enjoy getting my opinions challenged, but it doesn’t work if those doing the challenging seem delusional.And so, it was a bit frustrating to hear Briahna make so much sense, and then draw conclusions that don’t line up with her premises — i.e. how she ascribes so much of America’s problems to class differences, but then talks as though race is the biggest game in town. But I also know she has a long life of hard thinking ahead of her, to work out some of the kinks in her own moral and political reasoning, and articulate more connections that will help me see the flaws in my own. I can’t wait to see who she’ll become in the next 5, 15 and 50 years. Anyway, I just wanted to put my order in for more conversations like that, please.The conversation between Briahna and me will continue soon, when I go on her podcast, Bad Faith. Another reader quotes me:“Why, then, one wonders was the black family far, far stronger a century ago, when oppression was much greater and the welfare state so much more meager?”Mass incarceration. And I learned that from Briahna on the Dishcast.It started way before mass incarceration. No doubt that hurt it as well. But how else are you going to stop endless murder and mayhem in your communities — if you don’t take the killers off the streets? Another reader:I want to share one point that I didn’t see mentioned in your reader responses to the Gray interview. I understand the reason that Ms. Gray, and others, seem unwilling to acknowledge “even the slightest contribution of cultural factors.” It’s the underlying meaning that they assume such an admission would mean: that the cultural factors are the fault of the individual. In other words, for her to admit that absent fathers are the problem, either: *  She is admitting that the fathers inherently don’t want to be there, or*  She’s afraid others will interpret it as such.  The one dissent you posted speaks directly to this misunderstanding when the reader writes, “To hear you lament the lack of father figures in the ghetto as if this was due to the unique moral failings of Black men” ... when people on the left hear someone say “it’s because the fathers are absent,” what they hear is “the fathers are absent due to a moral failing.” The most common way these two sides talk past one another is conflating “responsibility” with “fault”:Left: “You’re wrong, it’s not their fault”Right: “No you’re wrong, it’s their responsibility!”Both are right.  Exactly. What matters is how we fix it — and if we can. This next reader wants me to “please dive deeper on absent fathers!”I loved your episode with Briahna — it’s so interesting to get the socialist perspective on policy debates, to make us think more broadly about what’s possible. Like many listeners, I was particularly interested by your exchange on the causes and consequences of absent fathers. I think this might be a bit of a blind spot for you, having never negotiated fertility, pregnancy, and parenting within a romantic relationship. For me and my other highly successful, college-educated friends (all straight women), birth control was serious business from early adolescence, for both us and our parents. We all knew that an unintended pregnancy would really undermine our ability to pursue our goals.The women I’ve known who became single mothers had a very different approach. They were not very proactive and diligent about birth control and became pregnant at young ages while in youthful romantic relationships that lacked the stability and economic means to be an independent nuclear family. These women (girls really) usually still lived with their parents! It’s a pretty difficult situation to integrate a new young father, especially when the mother’s parents may not be very welcoming.Your Dishcast guest Bryan Caplan touched on this topic as well: in order to avoid absent fathers, we really need to focus on people waiting until they are in a stable, mature relationship to have children. (As I understand it, one of the best tools for this is long-term reversible birth control, like an IUD.) You should invite an expert on this topic on your podcast! I’m not sure who would be right — maybe someone in Brad Wilcox’s circle (though not Brad himself, I don’t think). Maybe this guy, Nicholas H. Wolfinger? In the meantime, you’ve piqued my interest, so I’ll be diving into a whole journal issue on the subject, “Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility.” I also just read a Brookings piece titled, “An analysis of out-of-wedlock births in the United States” — written by none other than Janet Yellen, of all people! Essentially, the increased availability of contraception and abortion has changed the dynamics of premarital sex and unplanned pregnancy, ultimately resulting in a huge decline in shotgun weddings.Out here in Las Vegas, I’m catching up on your podcast episodes after the birth of my second child — out of wedlock, in more of the Scandinavian fashion, because my partner makes waaaaaaay more than me and I would lose tons of tax benefits if we tied the knot.I agree on early, easy access to contraception. It both reduces the number of kids without fathers and the number of abortions. Win-win. Yet another reader:What I found most interesting about your conversation with Briahna is that in terms of policy, you and her actually agree on quite a bit, which you repeatedly make clear. You are both interested in UBI, for example. What’s really different are the philosophical underpinnings behind your positions. Briahna supports UBI because she sees it as a way to help poor and working class people for their own sake; you support it because you think it helps stabilize a society that becomes unstable when there is too much income inequality. Same position, but with a fundamental difference in motive and emphasis. One more reader this week:I just listened to your conversation with Briahna while passing into my 10th hour of tomato harvesting for the day. So this part made me laugh:“ … instead of some migrant worker having to spend all her day in the hot sun picking tomatoes, that that process can be automated and that migrant worker can … can do anything else in the world”As a migrant (from East Sussex!) who works 40 hours a week at a Montreal rooftop greenhouse, I can happily report that tomato harvesting is wholly conducive to podcast consumption. I look forward to The Dishcast every Friday! Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Woodward & Costa On The Peril Of Trump

In the year or so that I’ve been podcasting, this may be the most significant conversation I’ve recorded. It’s a civil, careful examination of the core political question we face today: how can we save liberal democracy from becoming tyranny? The skill with which Bob Woodward and now Robert Costa have put together a chronology of the Trump administration should remind us of how truly grave the threat was — and is. No hyperbole here; just brutal realism and a refusal to deny what is staring us in the face. Something new for the Dishcast this week: video. If you’re a paid subscriber and want to watch as well as listen to my discussion with Bob and Robert in our DC studio, go here. Or check out this short clip of the 1.5 hour episode:You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. For two audio clips — on the various signs of Trump’s insanity, and on how the non-interventionist president still got us on the brink of war — head over to our YouTube page.Staying on the topic of Trump, several readers reflect on the episode we did last month with Michael Wolff. The first writes:I really appreciate your measured but firm concern about Trump, and I thoroughly enjoyed your conversation with Wolff, whose overall take on Trump — not a mastermind but a moronic, egomaniacal, accidentally genius, dangerous rabble-rouser — has always seemed the most accurate one. But what I’d add to your essay on “Deepening Menace of Trump” is that, if he’s re-elected (and I agree with you that it’s VERY possible), the GOP and the various amoral grifters attached to Trump will have had four years to give far more purpose to strip-mining democracy. Whereas the first time around, Trump was an unguided missile, someone who no one was sure could be manipulated, it’s now clear he can be maneuvered to do all sorts of catastrophic harm by people skilled at flattering his demented ego and exploiting his proud ignorance of history and how government works. Take the first Trump presidency and add to it the steely discipline of GOP cynicism and the ever-increasing, violent insanity of his cult followers, and your “deepening menace” becomes lethally nihilistic on many levels. This next reader, on the other hand, gives Trump much more credit:Michael Wolff has such a narrow, one-dimensional view of Trump that it’s hard to swallow completely. I voted for Trump because he lacked the smooth rehearsed qualities of professional politicians. I hoped a businessman would provide refreshing leadership. (After all, Reagan the Actor turned out to be quite wonderful in most respects.) I have lived to regret my vote for Trump, because his hideous personality has completely overshadowed his accomplishments. If he had stayed out of view and simply put forward his agenda, I believe he would have been re-elected. His response to Covid was far better than Biden’s, something the mainstream press has given Trump little credit for. The great masking debate notwithstanding, it truly was Operation Warp Speed. And while many, including myself, are impatient with anti-vaxxers, you should pull out the clips of Kamala Harris casting doubt on a “Trump vaccine.” If Trump had been re-elected, would the Left be the main vaccine holdouts? Maybe so.Other Trump accomplishments include:* Slowing illegal immigration and his success in requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico. * He was derided for trying to work with Kim Jong-Un, an impossible task, but Trump managed to put a pause on North Korean nuclear reactor development. Under Biden, the reactor has again been fired up. No other president did anything meaningful on this front.* Largely ignored was Trump’s successful efforts to broker some degree of cooperation between Israel and Arab countries.* A less tangible benefit of a Trump presidency was a restored national pride and confidence. Obama seemed ashamed or disdainful of our country. America is truly a place where opportunity is endless and anyone can make good, and he didn’t seem to appreciate that.In my opinion, the Trump accomplishments prove that he was more than just a crazy guy who couldn’t pay attention.Speaking of policies under a GOP administration, a reader has a suggestion:I completely agree with your 2019 argument for nuclear power as a means of combating climate change. My recent brainstorm on the issue: on a political level, GOP primary candidates who are pro-nuclear seem much more likely to succeed than Dem primary candidates who are pro-nuclear. Is it time to reach out, or prod, the Republican Party to make it happen? Steal the entire issue of the environment while putting millions to work building power plants? Launch perhaps 10 years of sustained old-school infrastructure stimulus? Own the libs by making them live through an American nuclear Renaissance?This could win a lot of elections. But probably only on the GOP side, God help us.Yes! But of course no. Another Trump voter compares his administration to the current one:I would argue that Trump’s domestic and foreign policies were superior, on balance, to Biden’s. Foreign policy: taking action against China and forging Pacific relationships to that end; insisting that the Europeans fulfill their commitments to a common defense; the brokered deal between Serbia and Kosovo; and pursuing the Abraham accords. Domestic policy: the border policies; Operation Warp Speed; promoting our energy independence; and the tax cut that spurred economic growth. While both Biden and Trump supported the exit from Afghanistan, Biden has to take full responsibility for the withdrawal fiasco. The Infrastructure and “Build Back Better” pork bills will bankrupt my children and grandchildren and drive the economy to ruin. Inflation is back now. While the Delta variant is causing harm, one can’t blame Biden (too much), except for letting our scold-in-chief, Dr. Anthony Fauci, flap his jaws in excess. Pandemics affect both Republicans and Democrats. One reason that many Republicans and Independents support Trump is that he opposed the inclinations of the Administrative State. Many working-class folks feel disempowered by our elites. It’s their way or the highway. Biden generally supports the “wokerati.” People are getting fed up. Look at the minor “revolts” at school board meeting over masking children. Statistically, there is little threat to kids. People are fed up with the denigration of our country and the push to institute Critical Race Theory throughout our institutions. I hope that Trump doesn’t run again. I agree that he is a boisterous, divisive and cantankerous. I would not want to work for him. However, if he’s the nominee of the Republican Party running against either Biden or Harris, I will gladly support Trump. I was aghast at the January 6th riot. Yet the BLM riots were far more damaging to the country. Biden was elected as a unifier, but he’s as divisive as Trump.So if it becomes a choice of two evils, I choose Trump as the lesser of the two.Another reader underscores a big part of Trump’s foreign policy record:As a Bulgarian American, who now lives in Brussels, I am mostly interested in the effect of different US presidents on foreign affairs. By looking at the data, unlike all of his predecessors, the much maligned Trump is actually the first one who did not start a new war with the aim of feeding the military-industrial complex that has been ruling America since WWII.I am amazed how little attention people pay to the actual policies of our presidents, and the media distracts the people by emphasizing the character of the president. Obama was a nice person, yet a horrible president. Trump was the opposite. I feel that instead of talking about Trump’s craziness, people, especially in Europe, should erect a monument for him because he did not start any new wars that ultimately hit the EU. (Remember the “Fuck the EU” line by the Obama appointees who fomented the Ukraine-Russia war?)Here’s one more reader, on “Stop the Steal”:I regularly read that “two-thirds of Republican voters believe the election was stolen,” as you quoted, and I simply don’t believe it. I believe the pollsters; I don’t believe the poll respondents.It just seems impossible to me that 48 million Americans really believe that. If even a small fraction of that number believed Trump had the election stolen from him, there would be mass protests, riots — civil war basically — which would have shaken our country to its knees by now. Trump would be chaining his fat ass to the White House door. And as much as I loathe and fear Trump, if I believed the election had been stolen by the Democrats, I’d be out there raising hell, too. Instead, we had a few thousand goons cosplaying the “radical” on January 6th.  This was not nothing. The entire thing was and remains terrifying. But again, I believe very few people even there, in their hearts, believed that the election had really been stolen. (My fear is that among them were some flinty-eyed young men a la Timothy McVeigh, true believers on a mission.) Most of my family have sadly gone full MAGA, and when I confront them about Trump’s election lies, they sort of mumble something about “Well ... I don’t know, but I don’t trust those Democrats.” It reminds me of their half-denials of climate change and flabby anti-vaccination positions: they are more statements of group membership than expressions of true belief. When liberals call them “stupid” or “uniformed,” they are missing the point. It’s not about having grappled intellectually with these positions and come to the wrong conclusions. These are just public stands being taken, symbolic lines being drawn that transcend the actual issue at hand.  In the same way, I want us to call “bullshit” on progressive cry-bullies who disingenuously claim to have been made to feel “unsafe” by a pronoun they don’t like. We should not be taking the claims of Trumpets on face value. We should call them out for their lack of sincerity. “Really, you believe Democrats denied Trump a landslide victory and all you can do is complain that Biden is a geriatric socialist?”This reality might be more horrifying than them simply being under the spell of bad information. But I think we would do ourselves all a favor by seeing through the facade.I hope you’re right. I really do. Let me add one thing to these dissents: I’m really proud that The Weekly Dish has such a diversity of opinion among our readers and subscribers. You’re as much a part of what we offer as my own scribblings are. Keep writing. We’ll keep posting: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Cornel West On God And The Great Thinkers

Cornel West’s academic career is long and storied, having taught religion, philosophy, and African-American studies at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Union Theological Seminary, where he recently returned. He has written or contributed to more than 20 books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters — but he recommends you start with Chekhov.I met Cornel decades ago, when I interviewed him at Union Theological Seminary for a TNR piece I was writing on divinity schools. He has long fascinated me, and Race Matters had a real impact on me decades ago. Erudite, passionate, and deeply humane, he is an unapologetically leftist Christian, who is also a champion of free speech, civility and the classics. In other words: a rare and beautiful man.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with Cornel — on how he finds common ground with bigots and racists, and his take on CRT and the 1619 Project — pop over to our YouTube page.Last week’s episode with Briahna Joy Gray elicited one of the biggest waves of email yet. Here’s the first of many readers to sound off:This was, hands down, your best conversation on the Dishcast. Ms. Gray is brilliant, and you were, as always, a worthy interlocutor. It was refreshing to have two smart people with very different points of view converse about complicated issues rather than endure yet another diatribe against wokeness. That script has become predictable and boring, and none of us who admire your intellect (even as we often disagree with your views) want you to become boring. There are many thoughtful voices on the left — some of whom regard wokeness as a distraction, which it is, so bring more of them on to your show.You can always drop us more guest recommendations at dish@andrewsullivan.com. This next reader also enjoyed the “fascinating” debate with Briahna and throws a barbed dissent my way:I admire your resolution to have on guests who clearly do not agree with you, and such guests are so much more interesting to hear than a sympathetic guest and you mutually endorsing each other’s dislike of Wokery, or congratulating each other on being Catholics. I must say I thought Gray had the edge on you in your arguments, and I found myself at times wanting to scream at your stubborn refusal to see her argument at its strongest. You are right in acknowledging the importance of two-parent households in raising healthy and well-adjusted young people, but you seem blind to the political and economic factors that have made that such a difficulty in the African-American community in the past 30 to 40 years. To hear you lament the lack of father figures in the ghetto as if this was due to the unique moral failings of Black men reminded me of the way that the British used to talk about the Irish during the Famine and afterwards. Dark references to fecundity, waywardness, intemperance and passivity were all leveled at the Irish then, as they are to African-Americans today. Lo and behold, when the criminal British Imperial policy in Ireland changed, the economy began to develop and the Irish showed those tropes to be exactly what they were: prejudicial nonsense. Until we stop the War on Drugs, reinvest in inner cities, begin to bring back industries and meaningful work opportunities, and reorient the police away from soldiering and into community care and treatment, these problems will persist, and people like you and others on the right will continue to blame the victims rather than face up to the logical consequences of the economic policies pursued by successive governments since the 1980s. Poverty is not a moral failing; it is an economic consequence of the system we have allowed to develop and until this is grasped, people like you are seeing the world with one eye closed.Why, then, one wonders was the black family far, far stronger a century ago, when oppression was much greater and the welfare state so much more meager? Another reader is more critical of Briahna:She set up a false dichotomy: “There are two options: Either you believe that Black men don’t care about their children, have some kind of fundamentally intrinsic cultural lack of interest in their offspring, or you think that there are structural factors that are making it more difficult for Black fathers to be in the home or for them to stay in relationships with the mothers of their children.”No. Both factors can, and likely are, at play. The real question is the relative way of the two factors.But Briahna simply refused to acknowledge ANY negative cultural effects. For her, it’s ALL systemic. And, as you pointed out, if it is all systemic, then that world has no individual agency — people are just helplessly subject to the whims of political and economic structures. If those structures were in fact the cause of all life-outcome disparities (an Ibram X Kendi notion), then those disparities may be solvable via government policy. And that is very likely the hope and belief of Briahna. She wants to solve the problems and thinks the entire solution is found in public policy.But she acknowledged, “I can’t legislate grit.” And that is true. So, to admit that culture (or individual agency) plays ANY role in life-outcome disparities at a group level would be to admit that social policy cannot solve all of those disparities; it can only partially address those disparities. And that is a “defeatist” view that Briahna likely cannot — or refuses to — accept. This blinds here to the most difficult part of the solution: How can cultural change occur outside of the context of formal legislation and other public policy?Perfectly put. Another reader continues that thread:I loved the interaction when she said, “I can’t legislate grit,” when talking about the agency of black people to make decisions and run their lives and communities. Nobody denies they have this agency, but that doesn’t deny the structural issues and consequences driven by government and social policy. To the people who were able to overcome those issues, good for them! Doesn’t mean that the policy, or lack thereof, didn’t have an effect that needs to be addressed and repaired by policy as well, and it certainly doesn’t mean that enacting those reparative policies is an insult to the agency, abilities, and intellect of those who were left behind.With the same “government and social policy,” and under neoliberal economics, other ethnic and racial groups have thrived — often in the very neighborhoods where my reader says the system prevents any substantive progress. How? Another reader contends with the culture vs. politics debate:I shared your obvious frustration with Ms. Gray’s unwillingness to acknowledge even the slightest contribution of cultural factors to the socio-economic struggles of black Americans. She kept responding to your inquiries about culture by asking what “policy” you propose to improve those cultural factors. Her question — and, to be fair, your response — reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how cultural change works. It is not an issue of governmental policy, but an incremental, glacial and unsexy policy of changing minds one by one. To be sure, there are governmental policies that can make marginal differences, such as subsidies, penalties and tax credits. Primarily, though, cultural change takes millions and millions of conversations and debates, discussions at the dinner table, social media messages, church sermons, parents setting an example for their children, etc. To make an analogy, you played a pivotal role in the dramatic cultural change in attitudes towards homosexuality. This, of course, did not happen because of a top-down law, but the bottom-up process I described.Ultimately, this is what makes Ms. Gray’s unwillingness to admit the obvious so frustrating: In light of her remarkable intellect, she could make a lot of progress in changing cultural issues in the black community. Unfortunately, she has the typical leftist mindset that holds that economics determines everything.And, in fact, the real effect of CRT as the successor ideology is that it insists that African-Americans have no chance of advancement until our entire liberal system is systematically dismantled and replaced by coercive racial and social engineering. It tells African-Americans that there is nothing they can do about their own plight. It contributes to a culture of failure and excuses for failure. Another reader worries that discussions like these have become too siloed:It is becoming standard practice in the media that only black people can discuss black people, only gays can discuss gays, etc. But this forces the black or gay person to acknowledge problems with their own culture, which often, as with Ms. Gray, makes them uncomfortable and they are unwilling to do so. She just refused to address the cultural issues of absentee fathers and extreme violence in the black community.Ms. Gray also discussed redlining but I wonder if she read John McWhorter’s discussion (in the NY Times no less) on redlining and how it affected more white people. She did not want to address the growing black middle class or the incredible cultural contributions that black people have made. In the end, she advocated throwing money at the problem while admitting that throwing money at the problem in the past caused problems with black families.That reader adds, “As a teacher, I’ve seen firsthand how massive amounts of money were given to ‘poor’ schools and how this influx of money had absolutely no positive effect on poor students.” Freddie DeBoer recently supported that point with a mountain of data. In my hometown of DC, the money spent on schools for black kids is staggering, and the results consistently appalling. On a similar note, another reader:The problem with the utopian vision of addressing all problems with federal programs is that we have 60 years of experience watching the federal government lead a War on Poverty that it hasn’t yet come close to winning, in spite of massive anti-poverty programs in all the areas Briahna mentioned (housing, education, healthcare, etc). Were LBJ’s experts just completely wrong about how to go about it? Were the programs too small? Did Congress and/or subsequent administrations undermine them?  If there’s a better way, I’m all for trying it — nobody wants a dystopian America —but it seemed as if Briahna was advocating essentially the same kinds of things we’ve been doing for decades. In the end, you and Briahna didn’t seem that far apart. Address inequality, provide a better safety net, invest in the future through infrastructure and education, take care of people who are being left behind, address the specific problems we know about (including weak families in both black and white America) with concrete policy rather than nebulous attacks on either black or white culture — these are the kinds of things all people of goodwill should be able to agree on.Another reader dives deeper into the issue of absent parents:One area where I wish you pushed harder is the role fathers play in parenting style. It’s not just economical, which is important, but it’s important in the parenting style differences between mothers and fathers. I grew up in Compton, California, and two areas that would have an impact on parenting style is, A) focusing on LONG-term goals (like college, delayed gratification) over short-term goals like drug sales and gang life. Mothering style is generally more focused on the here and now. Did you eat today? Is your jacket on when it’s cold outside? Dads are more focused on the long term (relatively speaking of course. B) The ability to hear someone YELL at you, and you have to suck it up. Many of my Black friends growing up just frankly never really had a strong male authority figure “put them in their place.” Women just don’t command that much physical authority, even the very strong Black mothers raising these kids. When a Black kid hears his middle school teacher, or even a police officer, yell at him for the first time, it’s sort of understandable that he gets into a rage, since it’s an experience he is not that familiar with. A podcast guest on this topic I highly recommend is the academic Warren Farrell, and his books are great. He brings to light these parenting styles in ways I can see clearly in my own experience. (I am a single father, raising two kids.)As a side note, I don’t think any of the social safety nets will do much to change mobility. I highly recommend this podcast episode with Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman on mobility in Denmark — the safety net paradise of many of these lefties. Conclusion? Mobility there is exactly the same as in the United States. Guess why? The #1 factor is family dynamics. Fathers again. Government policy can’t change that. Period. I agree. I’d go so far as to say that if the black family had the same proportion of married parents in the home as the Asian-American family, racial inequality between the two would almost disappear. Our core question should be: what can we do to get African-American fathers to stay in the home and take care of their own kids, especially their own sons? We can’t legislate that, as Briahna notes. So how can we help?Another reader shifts to the Universal Basic Income part of the episode:When Briahna asked you if you would simply stop working if you had enough money, I found it totally unbelievable when you said you might. You and I both know you can’t stop. I can’t stop, either. Although my work is much less public, I don’t do it for the money. Certain people have a desire ... no, a *need* to do what they do, and we are of that ilk, Andrew. The fact of the matter is that once people have their foot on the rung of the ladder of advancement, human nature makes them want to keep climbing. We need not a guarantee of success, only the possibility to motivate us. So many people don’t feel like the possibility is there for them. And that’s not just in the urban African-American communities, but in the white rural communities, where “fuck it” is the mantra. The problem is many people don’t even get a chance to get their foot on that first rung. And that messes with pride. And maybe that’s the reason many of those folks abandon their families: they don’t want to be confronted with their own *lack* every single day.This next reader takes stock of the Dishcast, coming up on its one-year anniversary:Thanks for all these podcast episodes. They’re a brilliant addition to the Dish and have been a real delight. As with the content of the old Dish, I appreciate the great variety — from Michael Pollan’s lyrical tribute to the joys of gardening, to Tim Shipman on Boris, to David Frum’s careful introspection on what conservatives can learn from the woke, to Ross Douthat sharing his intimate journey with chronic illness, to the various up-close looks at gender issues (Dana Beyer’s, Julie Bindel’s, Buck Angel’s & Helena Kerschner’s, Mara Keisling’s) to many deep discussions of the Christian faith with many interlocutors (Caitlin Flanagan, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Antonio García Martínez), to Michael Wolff’s enlightening inside look at Trump — and that these conversations can go in almost any direction, and often far away from politics, to deeper matters of life and the heart.I’ve really enjoyed and learned from them as well. A final reader looks ahead:I enjoyed the episode with Briahna, and I like your idea of having more people you disagree with on the show, since it makes for interesting conversations. Please do the same with some people to the right of you; maybe Michael Anton again, Victor Davis Hanson, JD Vance, Chris Rufo, James Lindsay, Sohrab Ahmari, Michael Shellenberger, Dinesh D’Souza, Kim Strassel, Douglas Murray, Tucker Carlson, etc. Ann Coulter has already agreed to come on. The guru of Brexit and iconoclastic wonk, the brilliant Dominic Cummings, is also on the schedule. The other suggestions are excellent. Stay tuned. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Briahna Joy Gray On Race And Class

Briahna, a lawyer and political consultant who served as press secretary for Bernie Sanders, co-hosts the superb podcast Bad Faith. I start our enjoyable convo with a simple question: how can we best facilitate the flourishing of black America? I’m trying to reach out and engage more people I have disagreements with, to see where we might have common ground. I’m immensely grateful to Briahna for coming on.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two excerpts of my conversation with Briahna — on the extent to which culture plays a role in poverty, and on the causes behind the sky-high murder rates of young African-American men — head over to our YouTube page.After listening to last week’s episode with Antonio García Martínez, a reader writes:While I agree with you on most topics, I have never been able to grasp the logic of your position on immigration. In your conversation with Martínez, you explained that the core reason you support more limited immigration is for the purpose of maintaining the cultural status quo. For you, it doesn’t seem to ultimately be about economics or logistics or crime, just aesthetics. My question is, why do you think that as an individual person you have any right to decide “what London culturally feels like,” or something similar? Why should your aesthetic preferences about cities have meaningful implications for public policy? And furthermore, what about those of us who enjoy having a few really culturally diverse cities in the world like London and New York? Do we get any say about it?First off, it’s not aesthetics. I’m not even sure what you mean by that. It’s simply about not creating such massive and sudden demographic change that it threatens the cohesion and common identity of a nation-state. It’s about slowing migration, to encourage social stability and some measure of cultural continuity, not stopping it altogether. And of course I don’t decide. Voters do. And in such a situation, big multicultural cities are not threatened at all. Next up, a perennial dissent:I am sure you have heard this before, but I think that the experiences of African Americans cannot be compared to other immigrants. I believe you give short shrift to the ongoing experience and sensibilities of black people in the US. While it is true, as you pointed out in your conversation with Mr. Martínez, that slavery and discrimination were not created in the US, it held a special place, which I believe you minimize.In my lifetime I have seen the tail end of Jim Crow, the redlining, the mistreatment of Black students in schools, the unwillingness of academic departments to come to grips with the longstanding double standards towards Black applicants and faculty. I was alive, although somewhat young, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and during the backlash, the creation of “private” white schools. The Civil Rights Movement occurred when I was an adult. Anti-miscegenation laws were ended when I was an adult as well. I was alive when the Voting Rights Act was passed, and when it was gutted recently because Chief Justice Roberts thinks that discrimination in access to voting no longer exists.I could go on, but I think you get the point.  We need to consider the experiences of Black people who have this as part of their memories, and of their parents’ and grandparents’ memories. The effect of the experiences of Jews in Nazi Germany on their children and grandchildren are taken seriously, more seriously than the effect of slavery and the brutal experiences that lasted well into the present on the minds and sensibilities of Blacks. Discrimination is not over. There is ample empirical evidence that Blacks are still not treated equally, even though less unequally than in the past. But it seems like there is a real desire for them to forget their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences and even their own, and act as if they do not matter.I know you know all this, and I know you take it seriously, but I do think that the way you have discussed this history, and the ongoing effects of this history, has been dismissive. I do hope that you find merit in my argument and will examine how you have presented this in your past discussions.I do see a great deal of merit in what you are saying. The African-American experience in this country is indeed unique in its historic enmeshment with evil. The question is how we respond to that inheritance. And I think the woke left’s insistence that history can never be overcome, that the US needs to be dismantled for liberation to arrive, and that African Americans are uniquely incapable of agency because of “white supremacy,” to be unhelpful, if not downright counter-productive. You can acknowledge deeply the victimhood, without being defined by it. This is not a new tension: it has engaged black America for centuries. I think the current emphasis is off — and that we need more empowerment, and less victimhood.Another reader thinks all the debate over critical race theory is rarified and unnecessary:I have enjoyed your writing for years, and though I’m not a full subscriber, I get your Dish emails. Your style is excellent, thoughts insightful, and I generally agree with your positions. What has disappointed me lately is your focus on CRT and gender issues.I don’t disagree with your position on these issues, but I disagree with the amount of focus you are putting on them. If this were truly an existential threat to America, maybe it would be worth being the sole issue worth covering. But unlike you, I don’t see it as a menace, because I disagree with your evidence that it is taking over America and the Democratic party. It may be that Biden has swung left since being elected, and that he has either tacitly or actively begun promoting CRT and sex-doesn’t-exist policies. But remember that most voters didn’t know he would do that. He won the Democratic primary by a large margin. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, I like to point out to people, were two of the very few candidates who didn’t put their preferred pronouns on their social media profiles. People like Julian Castro, who complained that National Women’s Month was insufficiently celebratory of trans women, didn’t even register to voters. The woke crowd candidates got nowhere. Running on “white people are the problem” got zero votes in the Democratic primary. Sanders, while far to the left on economic issues, and who came in second, is hardly the champion of this postmodernist thought. His campaigns have been built on the assumption that racial and gender issues hardly matter and that economic concerns unite people across all backgrounds — a strategy that was highly successful. Meanwhile, Uncle Joe ran on being a moderate, folksy, bipartisan, soul-of-America healer-in-chief. Whatever these politicians are doing now, the vast majority of Democratic voters had no interest in this postmodernist, CRT nonsense, and indicated as much with their votes.You complain that the elites give too much credence to CRT and the like, yet you do the same thing. You are giving it so much air time. Why? Most people don’t care. I live in Oakland, CA. Almost everyone I know votes Democratic. And you know what? Not one has anyone ever brought up critical theory. We don’t sit around self-flagellating ourselves over our whiteness or straightness or what-have-you. I rarely even talk about this with my politics-obsessed friends who live in DC from when I used to live there. So how are you and I getting such different impressions?The reason I think you perceive this as so prevalent is because of social media. You probably spend a lot of time on Twitter. And if you don’t, the other elites you hang out with or hear about or interact with, do. This has created such a warped perspective of the world. I am very confident that if you spent less time online, and more time talking to average people (people who pay attention to politics every four years and know more “The Bachelor” contestants than sitting senators), or even time talking to people who care about politics but don’t live in a certain political and media milieu, you’d find that this isn't as relevant as you think.I’m sorry but the adoption of critical race theory by every major cultural and media institution, government at all levels, and corporate America, is a big deal even if many people are unaware of what’s going on. A generation of kids is being taught that liberal democracy is oppressive and must be dismantled, that the central meaning of their own country is persecution of the non-white, that white people are all vehicles of white supremacy, even when they are trying not to be, and so on. That’s a huge deal. Ideas matter. From a reader on the ground, in the classroom:I am a great fan of the Dish who, living in a bright-blue suburb of Boston, has found your columns very helpful over the past couple of years. It is very disorienting to observe so many of my friends shifting left without being aware of it, and feeling left out and isolated when my discomfort about the Successor Ideology is ridiculed. But lately, like you, I have felt that people are beginning to recalibrate their outrage, much to my relief. I am a social studies teacher who writes a bit on the side. Working in private schools has allowed me to see the impact of progressive orthodoxy on education up close. I find the results very concerning, but most of the reporting on this topic covers the most egregious examples of wokeness gone wild, rather than its more mundane but nonetheless far-reaching effects. I decided to write a piece for Areo about how US History curricula, which is one of the areas I know well, have changed in the past few years at private schools. As you will see, I don’t think the impacts of wokeness are all terrible, but I am very troubled. I hope you find the article worth your time and that it perhaps provides you with a bit more context about how woke ideas are influencing what students learn. This next reader should enjoy our new episode with socialist Briahna:Longtime reader here — you actually posted my responses a couple times back in the days of the Dish (about Bart Ehrman and a film review I wrote of The Bling Ring). My partner and I are enjoying the new weekly format and the podcast. Thank you for continuing to challenge mainstream media and offer rigorous critiques of liberalism. My politics, especially on economics, have moved sharply to the left in recent years. I remain more moderate/conservative on cultural issues. If I lived in Europe I’d be a combination of Christian Democrat and Social Democrat. On this score, I am with you about CRT. I must echo some of your readers, though, in pointing out that it’s getting to the point where you are beating a dead horse. There are other stories going on, need I point out.On that note, the socialist in me is continually frustrated by the lack of attention you pay to the economic inequality in the contemporary landscape. The crisis of late capitalism has produced staggering poverty, concentrations of wealth that threaten democracy, and suffering by the working class. Yet you remain preoccupied with immigration and CRT. And when the government decides for the first time in 40 years to give cash relief to the poor — for one year — you hyperventilate and call it a revolution. Please. Nothing Biden has done has touched any of the fundamental structures of the economy in the Sanders or Warren model — no increase in wages, no taxes, no regulation (not to mention nationalization). I know it feels that way after two generations of neoliberal oligarchy. It amounts to deficit spending and a Keynesian approach we haven’t seen in decades. And on that score, it marks a welcome shift away from the scourge of Friedman, Hayek, and Schumpeter. But it’s not nearly on the level of the New Deal, and the New Deal itself was only reform, not revolution. Certainly it’s no semblance of social democracy in the mode of Western Europe. And it’s light years from the Civil War, the only real revolution the United States has ever had. There, you saw one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful societies on earth utterly destroyed by military conquest, the enslaved class of workers rising up to fight in the Union Army and Navy, and the largest source of wealth totally abrogated with Emancipation. That is a revolution. Yet even our Civil War doesn’t hold a candle to what happened in Haiti or Russia or many other places.Don’t believe me? Just read people on the actual left, like Matt Karp at Jacobin. These folks want real revolution and they are not fooled by what Biden has done. So if the hard left isn’t happy, I think you should relax and not mislead your readers by crying that the sky is falling. Your masthead quotes Orwell about seeing what is right in front of your eyes, after all. In that spirit, choose your terms prudently.In any case, I would appreciate it if you paid more attention to the economic crisis and explored proposals that can respond to the socialist option that appeals to so many of us now. I know some conservatives are offering this in terms of nationalist or populist measures. But I see a paucity of that conversation in your show and column. Socialist Cornel West is coming on the pod next week. If you have a question you would like him to answer, drop us an email: dish@andrewsullivan.com. This last reader has a question for me:I started reading your wonderful Out On a Limb book. The first essay, “Here Comes the Groom,” reminded me of an interesting chat I had with my wife. I’ve always appreciated the narrative that the push for marriage equality was so successful so quickly because people like you reached out to your philosophical opponents in the liberal tradition of convincing through reasoned argument and open-minded discussion. You had a strong argument that resonated, so you convinced people, and thus society changed.I proposed this to my wife, who advanced a different narrative for that success: the AIDS epidemic pushed gay people into the spotlight and made them sympathetic; that was the primary cause for an incredible advance in social acceptance of gays; and once gay people are just regular people, of course them getting married isn’t that big a deal. So it would have happened with or without the organized push for marriage equality. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that alternative narrative!It was both! As I’ve often argued, marriage equality would not have happened without them cultural and moral impact of the AIDS epidemic. But equally, it was advanced by consistent argument and engagement and activism and public education. If you have any of your own questions or comments about Out On a Limb, shoot us an email: dish@andrewsullivan.com. I also just discussed the book via Zoom with Philadelphia Citizen co-founder Larry Platt: Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Antonio García Martínez On Christianity And The Woke Religion

Antonio is quite the Renaissance man: child of Cuban exiles, journalist, PhD student in physics, Wall Street ace, entrepreneur, Facebook ad pioneer, and Silicon Valley apostate. His NYT bestselling memoir Chaos Monkeys got rave reviews until five years later it got him fired from Apple a few weeks into his job because of a woke revolt. Now he has a brilliant substack. In this episode we dive deep into our Catholic backgrounds, Antonio’s break toward Judaism, and the new Woke religion.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To listen to two excerpts from my conversation with Antonio — on how he thinks Christianity is flawed compared to his chosen religion of Judaism, and on how the Great Awokening is very Puritan in nature — head over to our YouTube page.A reader reflects on last week’s episode with Ross Douthat:You and Douthat are my two favorite contemporary thinkers, so listening to both of you discuss such a wide range of topics absolutely delighted me. While you two have some commonalities in your respective backgrounds that are obvious — Catholic conservatives educated at Harvard and working in journalism — the fact that you have both endured chronic illnesses never occurred to me. Listening to you discuss the struggle and the pain, and the way that suffering has shaped your respective relationships with God, was very moving. I was surprised by how little of Douthat’s personal spirituality I knew about, despite having read him for over a decade and obviously being very familiar with his overall interest in religion. But you have a wonderful way of getting your interviewees to open up and of empathizing with them, and this interview was no exception.One amusing part of the interview, which underscores the complexity of both thinkers, was your discussion of the political landscape toward the end. I typically consider you to be to Douthat’s left, and in most cases that is true. But it was enjoyable to hear you outflank him to the right on the question of wokeism. Obviously you have different audiences, objectives, and temperaments that shape your writing.I also want to briefly note that I greatly enjoyed the old interview that Johann Hari did of you. Aside from how moving it was to hear you discuss your personal faith journey, it was incredibly engaging to hear you and Hari get into the weeds of political philosophy. Also, amusingly, I immediately picked up on your thicker English accent, which you eventually acknowledged as probable subconscious code-switching.I was in England at the time and the accent creeps back in. A question from a reader:I have a background in Philosophy of Religion, with some familiarity with political philosophy. However, Oakeshott is someone who has only come on to my radar since following you in the last year or two. Could you make a recommendation for where to begin reading him? I realize he apparently evolved in his thinking, but just curious of a good place to start.Read his introduction to Hobbes’ Leviathan. Then the assorted essays in “Rationalism in Politics.” Then try the final third of “On Human Conduct.” For a superb account of Oakeshott on religion (the ultimate focus of my own book on him), try Elizabeth Corey’s study. Another reader points to a sermon in the midst of the Jewish holidays:I love your writing and your defense of liberalism. Along those lines, I thought you might appreciate this impassioned, yet measured, advocacy of liberalism from a religious perspective. It’s the Kol Nidre (night of Yom Kippur — holiest time of the Jewish Year) sermon from the chief rabbi at Central Synagogue in NYC, Angela Warnick Buchdal, who is herself a trailblazer in being an Asian, female rabbi.  (As a Catholic, I hope you don’t mind the comparison at the beginning of Judaism to the Nicene Creed; not sure how valid that is). Her measured yet clear repudiation of identity politics at 14:34 is particularly good:Central Syngagogue is a Reform synagogue that is probably overwhelmingly liberal in its membership and “social justice” orientation, so I took this sermon, at the most important service of the year, amplified by the Internet and Jewish Broadcasting Service, as a good sign that more are waking up to the threats from the illiberal left.Another reader turns to the ongoing debate over Covid:Last week you wrote, “I am befuddled and maddened by the resistance of so many to such obvious common sense.” I find your position regarding COVID “anti-vaxxers” to be uncharacteristically devoid of nuance, especially in light of your recent interview with Michael Lewis. I think I can help explain the skepticism of at least some of the anti-vaxx crowd.There are many good reasons to be nervous about getting the COVID vaccines. The fundamental problem is that for those who are 12 and older, we have a one-size-fits-all vaccine policy. This despite many well-documented risks for several segments of our population. I will focus on one segment here: Males between the ages of 16 and 24.  This group experiences an elevated risk of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — after a second shot of the Pfizer vaccine. According to research conducted in Israel, the risk of myocarditis for this group is between 1 in 3000 and 1 in 6000. Additional studies in the US (CDC) and Canada support these figures. The CDC has acknowledged this risk by simply stating that the risk of getting myocarditis from COVID is higher than that from the vaccines. Therefore, young men should get fully vaccinated, according to the recommended schedule. Furthermore, they argue, most cases of vaccine-induced myocarditis are mild. I would argue that this is a grossly irresponsible and dishonest position. I have two male children, 17 and 21. After the older one experienced a fairly severe reaction to the second Pfizer shot, I decided to do my own research before vaccinating my 17 year old. (Also keep in mind that the younger one has only one approved vaccine option right now: Pfizer.) After presenting my findings to several doctors and researchers whom I know, they all quietly suggested that my son be vaccinated but that the second shot should be taken 10 or more weeks after the first shot, rather than the three-week standard protocol from the CDC. They all agreed that “spacing” the shots would likely reduce the possibility of severe side effects. Thankfully, and not surprisingly, my 17-year-old son did not experience severe side effects after his second jab.To mitigate the risk of side effects, why hasn’t the CDC pursued spacing shots or other options (e.g., hold off on vaccinating 12-17 year olds until a non mRNA vaccine is approved for them)? Instead they have adopted a “my way or the highway” position.  Furthermore, the CDC has damaged its credibility by shrugging off “mild” cases of myocarditis. According to the Mayo clinic, someone who experiences a mild case of myocarditis cannot play sports or otherwise exert themselves for three to six months.  Anyone who knows how to use Google can easily discover the CDC’s blatant dishonesty. Given my personal experience, I am sympathetic to those who are skeptical about COVID vaccines, if they are concerned about side effects. The vaccines present real risks that the CDC is not properly addressing. I take my reader’s limited point. But in the grand scheme of things, the CDC’s policy is not, I’d say, “grossly irresponsible.” A final reader ends on a promising note:In light of the census data that came out while you were on holiday, I am picking up a thread from your essay “The ‘Majority-Minority’ Myth.” Most pundits seem determined to view the data through the lens of white vs non-white and, accordingly, to assert that American politics will be forever transformed on the day that those numbers go from 60-40 to 49-51. You offered one good reason to wonder whether this is really inevitable, which is that the boundary between white and non-white is blurry and getting blurrier every year. I’d like to offer another, in the form of a question: what would be the basis of a political coalition among the non-white?It should be clear by now that “antiracism” has nothing at all to offer Hispanic Americans and is openly hostile to the interests of Asian Americans. The census confirms what every other data point over the last decade has suggested, which is that those two demographic groups are thriving in America. Why on earth would they sign up for the dismantling of a system that serves them so well?People love to suggest that the driving factor of our deranged politics is the fear that white people have of becoming a minority, but I wonder if it isn’t at least as much influenced by a certain group of “antiracist” activists sensing that their own relevance is rapidly fading.The reality is that there already exists a multi-racial majority in this country: the people who have more or less bought into the concept of the American Dream and committed to expanding access to it to all who are willing to sign up. This coalition includes the majority of white people, of Asian Americans, of Hispanic Americans and of a slice of the Black population that is hard to estimate but which may well be a majority of that group too.Perhaps what we are experiencing, rather than the rage and fear of white people, is the desperation of “antiracist” activists who see one last window to make their case that the whole system is rigged beyond repair before people finally acknowledge the simple truth that the American system, flawed though it is, offers opportunity for all.  That’s my hope too. If the GOP were not a completely batshit cult, its potential to become a multiracial party in defense of a free society would be considerable. But they can’t or won’t see this. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.