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Twice a week van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay to set, the biggest topics in Black Culture, politics and Sports on their show Higher Learning.

They discussed the most important and timely conversations, while also frequently inviting guest on the podcast and occasionally, debating each other, check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:19

Hello and welcome back to plain English.

Today.

I want to talk about political identity.

The question of today’s episode is something like, what is identity and how is identity contributing to the craziness of American politics today?

0:38

And I want to start this all off with a confession, which is that I honestly think the conversation around identity can get a little bit.

Whoo, a little bit, philosophical a little vague, a little bullshitty and I want to start with something super.

Treat a story A History, A History of how we became polarized around one, very specific sliver of our identity, which is where we live.

1:01

So, today in the 2020s Democrats win in cities period and Republicans win in rural areas.

This is an ironclad rule of politics in 2020.

Joe, Biden won all 20 of the largest cities in the country.

But 100 years ago, the heart of the democratic electorate was not in American cities.

1:22

It was a bunch of rural white, Southern, dudes, and Western Farmers.

So how did we get from there to here?

What is the 100-year history?

I’ve had the Democratic party, went from being a rural coalition to becoming a strong Urban identity.

1:42

And this is a story in four parts.

Part One, Call It The New Yorker effect in 1928.

Al Smith won the Democratic nomination for president.

Who is Al Smith.

You probably haven’t heard of him because he lost to Herbert Hoover but Al Smith was an Irish Catholic New York, Governor.

1:59

He had a strong backing from immigrants and left-wing Urban workers and he loses.

But four years later his successor as New York Governor runs on a similar left wing.

Form and that guy crushes, his name is Franklin, Delano Roosevelt.

2:17

And so you be getting to see the Democratic party at the national level, a connection between the urban left and Democrats part to the great migration in the first half of the 20th century.

Millions and millions of black people moved from the rural, South to the cities of the North, and the Midwest in 1900.

2:35

Detroit was 2% Black by the 1960s.

It was more than 20 percent black.

Back.

That is The Great Migration.

And black.

Americans played a critical role in pushing.

The Democratic party left on especially civil rights.

And so, the party of the urban left-wing worker also becomes the party of the urban black voter, but this only takes us to about 1978.

3:00

So, part three is the culture wars starting in the 1970s Evangelical, Christian leaders become more political and they find a home within the GOP, especially under Ronald Reagan.

She did.

He moves right on abortion and issues like that, which appeal to the religious rural based.

3:17

So what do Democrats do in response?

Will they become the pro-choice party, appealing, more to Urban Cosmopolitan values.

Rural moves right cities, move left, finally around the 2000s.

You have the diploma divided after 1980s factories, shut down.

3:35

And the urban economy moves toward Finance, media, marketing Tech.

What do all these?

Jobs have in common Blue Collar.

Urban workers.

Don’t do them.

Al Smith poor old Al Smith.

His base does not do these jobs college graduates, do them.

3:52

So Democrats become advocates for the so-called knowledge economy because they’re already becoming the party of the city where the knowledge economy is based their interest become the interests of the urban educated.

And because politics is just a game of dividing, the country in half and trying to win 51 percent, Republicans go in the opposite direction.

4:08

They become the anti college party, that dominates the less educated.

And more rural parts of the country.

So that’s it.

Al Smith Great Migration culture wars college, that is in something like two and a half minutes, the 100-year history of how Democrats became the party of the city and that is why the identity of place.

4:28

Today play, such a huge role in American politics.

So, for the rest of the podcast, we have as our guest, Atlanta staff writer David from David is a former speech writer, too.

George w–, Bush, a prominent essayist about the dangers of Donald Trump.

4:45

And I thought we could use his erudite, modern moderate perspective to help us understand the big identity questions of the moment.

Where are we coming?

Apart?

And where are we coming together?

I’m Derek Thompson.

5:03

This is plain English.

5:26

David welcome.

You’re such a good, big picture, thinker that I want to start with the very biggest of all possible, pictures.

I think American politics is in a berserk moment, right now, certain realities.

Certain, fundamental truths.

Do not seem to break through the way they used to.

5:44

So you look at the economy.

People used to judge the president based on.

Economy.

But today you see in polls that people judge the Economy based on whoever the president is like right now, Democrats say the economy is great.

Republicans think things are terrible ten months ago.

5:59

It was the total opposite.

Republicans were happy, Democrats were not.

What’s the difference who is sitting in the Oval Office?

I thought a pandemic a shared tragedy like a pandemic would enforce a shared reality.

But instead we’re still living in two different worlds, may be more different than ever half of middle-aged Republicans say they will not get a vaccine.

6:18

Just 2% of Americans who are Democrats say the same.

That is a 25 x reality gap between 45 year, old, Republicans and Democrats.

What is going on?

I think we need to retire that old slogan.

It’s the economy stupid and realize we have moved from an age in which the fundamentals mattered to a new age, in which identity matters.

6:46

I think we’ve seen lots and lots of data.

Points on this, that the strongest predictor for how you feel about the economy is not the economy.

It’s not even your personal economy.

It’s your partisan identification, with the party of the president.

7:02

We have these other strange things that are showing up, which is the increasing at agonism of parts of America to each other.

I’m sure you saw this Pew survey about how Americans don’t want to befriend each other across party lines or date even more strongly data across party lines.

7:18

So I think a lot of this is I’m reluctant to admit this because I spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand the connections between economics and politics.

But I think we need to overcome our conservatism our attachment to the past and say we’ve moved into an era in which the economy matters, less and less.

7:37

And so you can’t reason with people about this because they see something that’s more important to them.

When one last thing about this.

So there are once upon a time, there was a Psychologist named Abraham Maslow, who argue that human needs were stacked in the kind of pyramid.

And we moved up.

7:53

This pyramid from basic physiological, needs shelter, shelter food to psychic needs, and maybe it’s not surprising that as the country becomes more prosperous, that our political identities become much more about these kinds of higher up the hierarchy issues than before, and it’s just not going to matter so much that there’s a road or there’s a bridge, what matters?

8:18

is, does the politician validate who you are a firm who you are express your identity and For half the country a little more, Trump offended that.

And for about half the country by defensive there we are.

8:34

All right, David.

So let’s say you have Joe Biden’s here.

He gives you a call next week, and he says, David, I have an assumption that there is a new Norm in American politics a day.

Such that the old fundamentals.

Don’t matter.

8:49

It’s not the economy stupid.

It’s your identity, stupid.

It’s group identity stupid.

What do I do to navigate those Waters?

How do I put the Democratic party in a position to win in 2022 and myself in a position to win in 2024.

9:07

If I am swimming in a current of group identity Politics, the first answer that is you have to get smarter about what identity means.

Democrats in particular, are in thrall to a model of identity.

That is based on assumptions.

9:22

The census made a long time ago and on the Practices of college admissions offices.

So the one of the great challenges that Democrats have had in the past decade and we’re seeing it now.

And you surveys is there something there’s something called Latino or Latin X or Latin?

9:40

A sure however, they like to further.

So there’s this thing that is made up of all of these immigrants from all parts of the Western Hemisphere and I think logically Portugal and Spain as well and they are a block and they are going to end.

They are defined.

9:55

By their sameness to one another.

They are voters of color.

So they will naturally fall into line behind other Democratic groups.

And this just, I mean, I think every day is bringing this reputation that the identities that matter are rural versus Urban educated versus less educated male versus female.

10:15

That that one is in especially with young people, and I think so much of what is going on in our social life, in our politics is driven by increased.

The increasing tension and friction.

I say this as somebody who wants to have lots and lots of grandchildren.

So this is a very new thing on my heart.

10:34

But the tension between young men and young women there, that they’re non complementarity.

And, and that, that’s, by the way, that if you want to start a successful Media company and you want that your target market is men who are angry at women or women, who are angry at men.

10:52

And those are the two most exciting parts of the Cast some stack industry and and that clear.

As we see with the latest.

I think it’s an NPR survey on the enormous gender gap among so-called Latinos, which is what like 40 points based on sex sometime.

11:10

Well, at what point do we say that we’re looking at this, these data points or imposing completely the wrong pattern on them and seeing Unity, where there is, where there is not and missing the unity where there really is, which is Young men and young women are increasingly oppositional to one, another politically, culturally romantically.

11:33

Sexually, I think a break down here.

Be really useful.

I mean, first I should say, you’re making me totally rethink the posture of this podcast that I’m not nearly, you know, I’m not nearly doing well.

Enough job choosing the side of the gender Wars here.

I’m being pretty amenable to all genders was my original strategy, but that might not be antagonistic enough.

11:54

So a quick Down to put some stats on what you just said.

There was a Wall Street Journal poll of Hispanic voters.

That ask them their opinions, the Democratic Party in the 2022, generic ballot Hispanic, women were +17 for Democrats.

Hispanic men were plus 16 for Republicans.

12:14

So quick Mental Math.

That is a 33 point gap between Hispanic men and women in 2024, for the presidential election, Hispanic women are Biden.

Plus. 25%, and Hispanic matter.

Trump plus twenty-three percent.

12:31

That is a 48 point gap between men and women among Latinos among Hispanics.

I mean, I really do think that the evolution of the Hispanic vote, might be the most interesting development in electoral politics right now.

12:48

You go back to 2000.

Democrats are used to winning this Panic, vote by somewhere between 18 points.

That was their advantage in 2004. 244 points advantage in 2012, but in December the Wall Street Journal, just did this poll of Hispanic voters and the Democratic Advantage among Hispanics was not 40.

13:04

It wasn’t 30 or 20 or 10.

It was one their advantage.

Among Hispanics has declined.

From about 30 to 1 Again, David.

Sorry to keep putting such impossible questions to you.

But what the hell is going on there?

Well, the process of Americanization assimilation.

13:24

The Process of Education, which has these hugely powerful impacts on those, who get it, and those who get less of it, gender gender divides.

As I as I’ve said, and I think the real, the real question is, why would anyone think it was otherwise, I mean, supposing we were doing politics in the air, but I don’t know. 1935, and then the assets had a lot of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.

13:53

Why do we invent a category called?

You know, East South Europe, as a serbs, and croats ukrainians and Jews.

If we can find an Ashkenazi Jew for our ticket, that’ll really help because the ukrainians, they’re all from the same part of the world.

14:09

They must be.

And it’s what you would say.

That’s this.

Is there a lot.

Antagonisms here.

There are a lot of cultural differences.

Now, there is some Unity of language in the Hispanic World some because many of the people who are Find a suspend actually speak indigenous languages and and not Spanish.

14:32

And there are other there.

Other divisions of class and race them in the Assumption behind.

The Hispanic vote was always the descendants of of Cortez and the descendants of Montezuma.

They had so much in common.

They’re bound to be political allies.

So I think we just need to that.

14:48

We created a category in the United States, for American reasons that began with the Census Bureau spread to college admissions.

A and we then have two arms and we then Rhea fight it and assume that this is going to be a powerful predictor of how people who are bubbling away in the American Melting Pot.

15:10

And you know, at this point, I think it’s also true that a lot of the identification as Hispanic is volitional mean.

If someone is born to a father, Erhu taste taste is most of his ancestry to South America, and a mother who traces, most of her ancestry to Eastern Europe, that young person that makes a choice about how do I identify.

15:36

And, and it’s quite possible that that family could have many children who each of whom have a different choice.

And at that point, say this category is not making any sense for any purpose, right?

Anyway, you think it doesn’t make sense from like an original definition purpose to say that people from Brazil and people from Mexico.

15:53

Are you no one shared at this.

With one shared culture, but it makes less and less sense over time as they assimilate as first generation of come second, third fourth and they retain a kind of census identification, a census self definition of Latino, but maybe in their day-to-day life.

16:12

They don’t think about that.

Latinos have identification as much.

They think about other ways of identifying yourself.

Urban versus rural left versus Right male versus female and those other categories of self-definition, you know, are are more than Driver, it makes me think, you know, this is a hard question to ask and it’s a question of makes me explicitly aware of the fact that we’re two dudes talking about this.

16:33

So I want to phrase the question delicately, but why do Democrats have the guy problem?

Why is it Democrats who are losing men year after year?

Generation after generation, not just among white voters.

16:49

But now, as we’re seeing among Latino voters, Hispanic voters as well.

What is wrong?

With the way that Democrats are talking to men.

Well, let’s Also, let’s note that.

There is an equal and opposite Republican, female proper.

17:05

Sure.

Yeah, and so, So I don’t, I don’t know that we need to pathologize one party more than another and it just as a clinical point of view.

I mean, yes, I understand because it’s very important that Donald Trump not be president again, so you were worried about why are the Democrats underperforming, but you have correctly diagnosed the origin of the question.

17:26

Yes, but from a from a clinical point of view, you need to say why are men and women?

Voting equal increasingly differently from one another, and why are they grouping in these two ways?

And and as it, once you put it that way, you can sort of Becomes a less difficult question to answer.

17:43

You can see is that there are a series there.

There are just the Republicans identify with and Champion.

A series of issues that make men feel validated and Powerful.

Why is the gun issue become so important?

18:00

And what do guns mean and and guns are very much.

Although there has been an uptick in 20 and One of women, buying guns it remains an exclusively, male, not actually a disproportional email preoccupation and certainly is a voting issue.

18:15

Men care about it, much more than women.

We can see that.

Well, the gun puts power in your hand and you can see the power of life and death, the ultimate power.

And you can see why people who feel that in so many other areas of their lives power is ebbing away from them.

18:31

You pick up this tool and you feel powerful, you put it in your you tuck it into your pants and you walk around and for and for a moment you are I’m you dispense death at will and even though you might be constrained Enough by law that you don’t do it.

Unless somebody really Cuts you off in traffic, you know, you know you have this power and it’s tremendously for those who want it tremendously gratifying as the sex has become less complementary in the economy in sexual life and romantic life.

19:02

That now that there’s a party that channels male grievance and there’s a party that is more.

Hospitable to female aspiration and it’s not perfect because look, as my daughters and their friends will point out that there are quadrants of the progressive left, that offer a lot of play space for dickish Behavior.

19:26

I want to stitch together a couple ideas that were talking about because I could imagine a listener saying, oh, well, we’re talking about polarization by education, by gender by Place.

How are they all connected?

Here’s a statistic this year.

It was reported that women now account for 60% of College enrollees, college now is 60. 40 women over men.

19:48

How is that relevant?

Well as women become more educated and the Democratic party becomes more dominated by college graduates.

It’s naturally going to lean more toward women who account for the clear majority of college graduates and then one more degree, where do college graduates?

20:05

Especially young college, graduates move.

They move to cities where Democrats also dominate.

So this is the underground river connecting all of these Trends.

This is in part how the Democratic party has become the party of women of college graduates and of cities all at the same time.

20:23

I wonder what you make of that.

Yeah.

Well, And when you look at sort of counties, the counties that because prosperous counties the knowledge counties.

I mean, I think Hillary Clinton ones the counties that produce 66 percent of the GDP of the United States and Biden when counties, that produce 70 percent of the GDP of the United States and increasingly the model of red States.

20:45

Versus blue States, is is obsolete that ever every state virtually reproduces.

The so, the big ones went to Texas and Georgia.

I mean, that the The Houston Houston is Democrat.

Democratic.

21:01

Dallas is democratic Austin.

Famously.

So San Antonio and we’re getting to the point where Fort Worth now is a democratic City.

So the the battle is now for Amarillo and Tyler in Texas and and George.

It has a similar kind of story and George is going to be very important that way in 2022.

21:19

So so far black Americans have been more.

Resistant to this trend than other groups and their powerful historical reasons why that would be so, and maybe it will continue.

But maybe the undertow is so strong that at least, I mean, not, I don’t imagine that black Americans become as competitive as as Hispanic Americans are.

21:41

But you may see some of this trend happening, especially if you know, under a post Donald Trump leadership, and of course, this has implications, not just what happens in campuses, but what happens for Lifetime incomes, I mean, because There’s historically and this may change but historically it is that women have greatly valued Partners who make at least as much money as they do and often express a preference and there’s a social science on this for partners make even more money than they do.

22:11

Well, if women are getting 60% of the Bas and that’s That asper that that hope is going to bump into some reality.

Is that more and more?

Women are going to be making more money than more and more men.

22:27

And that will mean either they have to change their ideas about what they’re looking for in a partner or they are going to be on partnered and and on the male side, you’re going to have more and more men who feel like Bringing home the bacon and titled them to certain things inside the house and now, they don’t.

22:46

But they still have, they still have their expectations of what they’re entitled to inside the house.

And that’s why I think a lot of the friction between the Sexes comes from with all of its political political effects.

Let me jump in here and share a theory that I’ve heard about why women overall lean toward Democrats while men lean toward Republicans at this Theory comes from Elizabeth Castillo at Dartmouth College, and it’s a story that begins in 1980.

23:10

So 19.

Katie.

You have the nomination of Ronald Reagan for president, the GOP drops its support of the Equal Rights Amendment, that would have guaranteed legal gender, equality for women and men.

They start to speak out against abortion and they embrace the Christian right, which at the time made a really big deal about the problem of working women for quote unquote, traditional families.

23:31

So November, 1980 rig and wins easily, but he loses women by eight points, in the first ever mention of a App appears in the Washington Post, three months later in 1981, the year Reagan becomes president.

23:47

So what happens?

Now, starting in 1981, you have a sorting effect.

There’s some evidence that male voters in the US had, for decades been more conservative than women on welfare.

Homosexuality use of force foreign policy, but it’s a parties became more ideological men and women started to sort themselves by their ideological differences.

24:05

The Democratic party became more reliant on women, on issues.

We out on winning women’s votes.

And so, Our policies became really attuned to women’s issues.

Women are more likely to live below the poverty threshold.

More likely to rely on food stamps, more likely to be employed in education Healthcare and lo and behold what party talks more about poverty?

24:25

What party talks more about food stamps, what party talks more about expanding education Healthcare, it’s Democrats.

And so you see this gender gap?

Growing 8 percentage points 1980 12 points in Two thousand, thirteen points 2016, and I find this stuff just absolutely fascinating and I think you can sum it all up with the question.

24:45

You know, where is America becoming more polarized and where we becoming less polarized.

So you look at gender.

We’re clearly becoming very polarized there.

But now look at something like race.

And I think this is going to surprise some people.

Race is becoming a little bit less polarized.

Hispanic voters is you said they’re moving toward 50/50 black voters.

25:03

Still overwhelmingly Democratic, but moving a tiny bit toward parity.

We’re polarization is really Rising is gender geography.

Rafi and education.

Urban counties basically all democratic-leaning Rural America veering sharply to the right.

Then you look at education College grads have swung left.

25:20

Non-college has swung, right?

And then third, the vaccines, and this is where I finally went to offer him to you.

David.

There’s this irony that I can’t get over which is it vaccine production was accelerated by Donald Trump and he takes credit for it maybe even too much credit.

25:36

But half of middle-aged Republicans say they refuse to be vaccinated.

How did polarization which has existed in gender as existed in race has existed in geography?

How did it come for the vaccines?

Well, this is a rich crop topic and let me just say to the way you’ve preface.

25:55

The question there was a period when it looked like a way to sell the vaccines to the resistant part of the population was to give Trump a lot of the credit for that for it.

And so as a matter of salesmanship, I’m willing to go.

26:11

Yield, but it turns out it didn’t work.

And so now we can just talk about what is true and it’s you know, it happened on his watch.

So that’s good.

But it’s at every point of the way Trump’s priority was to deny the reality of covid and he regarded it as an impertinent piece of an important little miniature, Washington.

26:41

Delivering fake news that made him look bad and his reaction to that was just to deny its existence.

And so the administration it was it’s true that they remove some barriers that would have otherwise slowed, the development by private sector people.

26:57

But let’s find the most important work on this vaccine was done in Germany.

Not in the United States and Donald Trump.

So you could as well call it the Merkel vaccine if you’re going to call it anything.

Exotic holiday.

Yes.

And that wouldn’t be true either.

27:14

What is the connection?

So there’s a, there’s a popular level and there is an elite level at the popular level.

The the the number of Republicans who refuse to, I there’s just a kind of they Figured out that crop that they got the doublet, the true message, to of Trumps to double messages.

27:32

Yay.

Vaccines know, this, this this is pandemic is a fake and an insult and not my fault and any acknowledgement of it undercuts.

May they got the message.

He was more serious about.

And so there’s just a kind of truculence, which is I am not going to surrender to this reality or the this purported reality.

27:53

I am going to stay here and say, Trump was right.

The the whole thing is overblown.

The whole thing is an insult.

It’s in my way.

And the right thing is just, you know, either believe the conspiracy theories that it doesn’t exist at all or believe the Confederate conspiracy theories.

28:09

It was invented by Bill Gates, and dr.

Fauci, but just truculent dogged.

No, I won’t go along with this.

I’m not going to do it and if I get sick, I get sick, you know, it’s also true that fried foods aren’t good for you and that having a gun in the house.

Isn’t good for you.

Do I listen to The Experts about those things?

28:25

No, I don’t.

I’m not going to start now.

So I think you’re absolutely right that.

A lot of vaccine denialism is Downstream of covid denialism.

I think if if you don’t think this pandemic is a big deal, then it you’re going to be offended by the suggestion that you have to get a shot in your arm to make it go away.

28:43

You are going to be even more offended by the suggestion that you’ll be mandated by the state government to sit in a chair and let some person stabbed you in the deltoid, like look, this isn’t my philosophy, but like I recognize it As internally coherent, I think it’s coherently wrong.

28:58

But but, but I get the philosophy.

But I also think this anti-vaxxer philosophy and again, tying us back to Identity and education and why I wanted to talk to you in the first place.

How identity seems to shape everything that’s happening right now.

There’s something at work here about putting the scientific Elite in their place.

29:17

Like about getting to say, screw you to fauci you’re wrong, screw you to the CDC, you’re wrong.

Screw you to the New York Times and all you.

Liberals with your masks and your marching orders, new rules, you’re all wrong.

You’re all wrong about this thing, spread it on surfaces and wrong about the vaccines being Perfect protection against transmission.

29:35

And what I see here, which I think is is very interesting, is a political movement on the right.

That is devoted to skewering the edge of the educated Elite, but they’re so devoted to this project that they missed the big question.

They missed the big issue.

29:50

The vaccines save lives, the vaccines block severe illness.

They Make you less likely to die.

And I guess, I just wonder, what do you make of this?

The way that education polarization, which might be one of the most important stories in politics.

30:06

Today has merged with this instinct to deny the pandemic and the Therapeutics that could ended paraphrase.

Another saying, the only thing that can stop of bad expert with a wrong fact, is a good expert with a better fact.

So, when you say that at first scientists hypothesized, that the disease, To be spread on surfaces and later.

30:27

They were refuted by the way to Scientific it.

The whole the very Act of saying they were they were wrong and they were exposed.

It’s a child view of how science proceeds argumentative is a smart Alec’s view because what actually happens is a new problem comes along and there is a lot of noise and static and people of good faith and relevant expertise Trot working.

30:54

Urgently that this is not.

Nothing that you can wait for the answer offer early approximations of what they know.

And then as evidence, accumulates and as they are, challenged by other people with comparable expertise, they discover that some of the early presuppositions are mistaken and let’s bracket here, because this is the one you hear about most, the political people who said, it’s it’s bad to gather if you’re gathering for reasons, we for fun but To gather, if it’s black lives matter, it’s the somebody gave that quote to some Public Health person.

31:30

Okay, so that that kind of behavior is obviously wrong and obviously discrediting, but most of the time what was going on was in the early stages of the pandemic, people who were scientifically minded who were asked for real-time advice.

31:47

Said, this is the best we know.

Now, they weren’t wrong, they were just early and, and we want and we weren’t going to Well, we didn’t say to them.

Well, tell you what, you, here’s this new thing.

Why don’t we all die for the next six months?

And you go into a room and we will wait patiently dying all the while until you come up with a really bulletproof answer to what the problem is.

32:10

That’s not what we asked.

We said we want what you know, now, tell us what, you know now and we’ll take the risk that it’s going to turn out to be partially correct or partial or may be entirely wrong, but tell us what, you know, now and they did.

And and at every Some of those things did turn out to be premature, not wrong, but mistaken, or or overturned by later evidence.

32:36

And I think one of the things that the people on the internet who make these arguments are blind to the difference between good faith.

Errors based on acting fast on inadequate information, and bad, faith deception.

32:53

The difference between the people said we don’t we don’t think right now.

Masks are going to be helpful and the people promoted hydroxychloroquine was the people who said, we don’t think at this point of the epidemic masks are going to be helpful.

We’re acting on the basis, really?

Of the only thing they were concerned about was how do you stop the disease and they’re giving you their best?

33:12

Reading of the information they had it.

The people said, the answer is hydroxychloroquine were motivated by the Try to protect President Trump from is inhumane, disregard of human life and to come up with some excuse for him.

And then they ransacked, they were acting not their acting like lawyers.

33:29

I mean, that we I was trained as a lawyer.

So as a lawyer, you don’t care, whether your client is actually guilty or actually innocent the get the gills here, the client, the greater the glory, if you can win the client and acquittal and you say what you think will tend to support you are preferred outcome.

33:46

And you know, the Third outcome in your paid for from the start.

You’re not interested in in the pursuit of Truth.

And we need to separate those those categories of behavior.

And so, yeah, there’s as a scientist say, when about error that a mistake is not a mistake a mistake as a success, improving the, in disproving of mistaken.

34:07

Hypothesis about the problem.

That’s also, how how the, how the process of human knowledge of advances.

Well, this if I had to summarize, you just said in one sentence, it would be Science is hard and maybe that’s not the deepest observation.

34:23

But I don’t know an observation doesn’t have to be deep to be true.

Scientific thinking actually putting evidence over ideology is really friggin hard.

It’s so hard that it makes us desperate for shortcuts for cheat codes, and bias is a cheat code identity is often a cheat code, having an enemy having a political enemy that you can.

34:47

Just bounce off of that, is a cheat code.

These are all excuses to let go of our brains and choose the opposite of thinking.

And I think that is what I see running rampant in American politics today.

35:03

It’s not, it’s not just craziness.

It is the opposite of thinking.

So on that setting note, David.

Thank you for helping me think through some of these issues.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

35:19

Plain English with Derek.

Thompson is produced by Devon manzi.

We are off for the next week.

The next episode will be in the New Year.

We will see you in 2022.

Happy holidays.

Please.

Be safe and we’ll talk to you soon.