A2 The Show

Unlocking The Dynamics Of American Politics With Historian Michael Anderson | A2 THE SHOW #526

On the next episode of A2 THE SHOW, we welcome Michael Anderson, a historian and political analyst with a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. Known for his deep insights into contemporary American politics, Michael's latest book, “America's Counterfeit Democracy: Rule of the Power Elite”, examines the growing influence of elites in U.S. democracy. We'll discuss everything from genetic influences on political leanings and the importance of moral balance, to homelessness in California, tribalism in Congress, and grassroots efforts like Braver Angels. Michael's perspective offers a fresh, historically grounded take on today’s political challenges. 👉 Twitter X: https://x.com/MAndersonsblog 👉 Website: https://www.mikeandersonsbooks.com/aboutmike 👉 Substack: https://substack.com/@mikeabooks 👉 For more information, please visit our website: https://a2theshow.com/a2-the-show/

⏰Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 4:39 - Genetic influences on political leanings 10:01 - Genetics vs. environmental factors in voting 14:09 - Moral balance and tradition's impact on politics 20:42 - Balancing liberal and conservative influences 25:06 - California's $24 billion homelessness spending 30:06 - Elections as a means of regaining control
36:57 - Braver Angels and bridging political divides
40:00 - Tribalism and progress in Congress
45:09 - Importance of left ideology and the Progressive Movement
51:03 - Conservative students shifting to liberalism in college
55:06 - Discussion on socialism and parallels to "1984"

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Broadcast on:: 13 Sep 2024
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Guys, thank you for joining us on A2 The Show. We today have Michael Anderson. Michael is a historian and political analyst with a strong focus on contemporary American politics and its challenges, holding a PhD from Case Western Reserve University. He uses historical perspectives and the analysis of past political systems to understand and explain current events. Michael's original research has made significant contributions to the study of modern politics. His fifth book, America's Counterfeit Democracy, Rule of the Power Elite, was released on September 2nd, 2024. So definitely check it out and buy that book. Right Michael? Yes, sure. Michael, one of your books is labeled, it talks about tribalism in the US. And I kind of wanted to, like when I first read that title, I was like, how does tribal For me, when I looked at it, I thought it's sort of was labeling what community is, because that's what I see in the US as there's multiple groups of communities that are growing and not necessarily a form of tribalism per se. So I could be wrong, please share your perspective. Well, it's a semanticl issue really. I mean, when we think of tribes long time ago, well, Native Americans, but even back to ancient civilizations, like Rome was founded by three tribes. And so tribes in that, in this definition, mean groups of people that live together and have joint goals and rely on each other. So a tribe is an ancient human behavior. I mean, people were, humans were first in bands, 50 to 100 people, and then they formed tribes which are bigger bands, and it was a natural organization for people. What's happening now is that people are retreating to their tribes. So it's a comfort level, but the tribes are opposed because there's a right and left tribe. And the tribes are being dominated by ideology and helped along by social media and traditional media, et cetera. So because they like controversy, and so they get a lot of a lot more pears eyes and pears the ears paying attention to social media. The problem is, and I can go into more detail, but the problem this causes is we have about 10% or 12% of the United States determining the political narrative for everybody else. Because if you look at the left extremists and right extremists, they're about 7% to 7% of the population. So those are people who are rigid, on the left they'd be communists or socialists typically, and they'd be radical conservatives who are idealistic and don't waver from that idealism. So everything you see on social media is related to those tribes, and the center has fallen out of the political system because the tribes have become more prominent, and we see more about the tribes than we do about everybody else, like the independence, for example. So my first four books talk about basically the genetic basis for political morality, and so this features it factors into this whole thing. People on the left and the people on the right are different genetically. So and I got interested in this topic when I wrote my first book because I didn't understand why the left and right couldn't get along basically, and basically both of them believe that they're right and the other side is wrong when in fact that's not the problem. The problem is they're different, and what we have to do to function as a country is develop consensus among different points of view and move forward that way. Because either one of the groups does not have an adequate view forward for the country. People on the left tend to be interested in change. They are drawn to equality, so they want to see a more equality based country. And so they like change. People on the right are more comfortable with the status quo and drawn to tradition. So those are very different views of the world, but they're valuable because if you look far enough back to the genetic beginning of these behaviors, they came out of the migration of human beings out of Africa. And when human beings started encountering different ecosystems, they had to develop adaptations to different environments because it wasn't homogeneous. So you couldn't really develop genetic by natural selection. You couldn't develop traits that would allow you to adapt to different ecosystems, but you could more quickly develop behaviors that helped you be adaptable to those different systems. So in the case of the left, the people on the left were interested in change and they made good hunters and the people on the right did not want to change and they made good managers of the food supply. So when food was scarce, it was the liberals that wanted to find food and were willing to do it and were good at it. And food was in plentiful supply, the conservatives, they tended to be more conscientious, they were better food managers. But the point of all this is, okay, so that creates flexibility, right, in adaptability, but neither group would have been able to function on their own. If we had all liberals, they would be out hunting all the time, they'd all get killed because they would take high risks. If we had all conservatives, we wouldn't hunt at all. So I mean, that's the point. And when we talk about the extreme ideologues, remember, even in the ancient world or in prehistoric times, the people who were ideologues were on the edges. There's a whole spectrum of people in the middle. You know, if you're a pure independent politically, you're not really into any ideology. You might be interested in practical government, you know, which is what I consider myself to be. My undergraduate degree is an engineer, is an engineer, so chemical engineer. So what engineers do is design solutions for people that work, okay? So that carries forward into my politics because I don't believe in inefficient government. I think government should pass new laws by consensus that really work. And lately, not much works. So that's a big problem. But so we sit here with tribalism and my fifth book addresses the issue of billionaire control over the government, but while we have tribalism, we can't come together and detect the billionaires because we're split. And of course they love it because we're fighting amongst themselves, so there's no target on them, basically. Wow. Okay. So you're saying while we're fighting between left and right, the top is really benefiting from all this language. Right. Let me ask you a question about genetics. So you have conservative genes and progressive genes. Okay. So does that mean that I can know who I'm going to vote for based on my genetics? Am I going to vote for common or Trump based on my genetics pretty much? You can. Well, I would, the quick answer is yes. I started my first book after I read, "You Who Jonathan Haid is?" Of course. Okay. So I read his book and he really solved the problem of why there, why there, people are different and because they're different moral, they have different moral priorities blah, blah, blah. And he keeps, there's still a website that he assisted managing. Maybe you know about your morals.org. You can go in there and take his moral preference test and then you can get the graphs that were in his book applied to you yourself. So I mean, you can see, and I have those graphs in both those books you held up, but if you're very strongly left or very strongly right, you're going to, that you're going to probably vote for the party that more closely represents you. If you're not, if you're in the middle, then you're more likely a liberal, a liberal or not liberal, a independent or a moderate. And so that doesn't, that won't really tell you anything how you might vote. So I consider, I'm a genetic conservative. My parents are conservative. I'm conservative, but I have very liberal views on, or at least consensus based views on most of the cultural things. Like abortion, I think abortion's okay. Because it's the time limits per yearly, and I think most people feel that way. I think it's 62 or 65% of conservatives feel that some abortion is acceptable. So I mean, all this fighting is about again, you have extremes, you have the women's movement who doesn't want any, any constraints put on any woman's life or body at any time. So anything, any abortion prohibition is not acceptable. And you have religious fanatics on the right who believe that you can't, you can't allow any abortions at all. So again, this is ideology driving the direction of the country instead of consensus. Because most people could reach consensus if they sat down and talked about it. What's the history of the word Democrat and the word Republican, is it referred to like democracy and a republic? Yep, well, Democrat, you're talking about the parties, right? So let's start with the political systems, the most famous democracy was Greece, of course. And that's at the standard for democracies that exist today, even though no one could implement a Greek democracy today, but that's where it came from. Demo and Kratis is the organization of the groups of people because the demos are the tribes in ancient Greece. So I'm not exactly sure where the parties came from when they, as you know, when the Constitution was approved and stuff, the founders were hoping there would be no parties because they saw parties as very dangerous. But Jefferson's, so they were the federalists led by Alexander Hamilton. And then the Jefferson's party was the Democratic Republicans, basically, which is a combination of those two words. And, but he, Jefferson was fighting for states rights. He believed the states should have as much power as the federal government, and he thought a strong federal government was dangerous. It could tend to, trying to a monarchy. But so the Democratic Republicans, I think to him, meant the people's voice in operating a republic because, remember, the founders did not, there's no mention of the word democracy in any of the founding documents because they patterned our government after Rome because they believe the Roman Republic was the best model to use. So Jefferson's party, eventually, when got to Andrew Jackson, he dropped the Republican part and it became the Democratic. Not sure exactly where the Republican party name came from. It was, the party was formed in 1854 and Lincoln was involved in it at the time. I don't remember who came up with the name. Gotcha. Okay. I have another question to you about morality, say, here, without moral balance, our republic will fall. Right. Does that refer to religion at all when you talk about moral balance? Well, all of my books, I think the first four books all have chapters about what I call moral capital. And I didn't invent the word Jonathan Heit did, but he defined it in his book and then never mentioned it again. Whereas in my books, I've carried that forward, basically, and expanded the concept. And so moral capital is really the traditions, the human beings value, family, local community, meaning your neighbors or coworkers, your religious community. And it doesn't have to be a religion. It can be just a moral community that is more than friendship. You know, you could be in, well, soccer fans are a moral community because they have a deep feeling of affinity toward something. And so that's a moral community as much as a religion is. You can have the environment be your moral community. That the earth is sacred and man should not disturb it. And the fourth one is patriotism or love of country. So one of the problems we have is all four of those things are under attack, families under attack, communities are under attack, religious, very heavily under attack and patriotism is under attack. It's like a bad word to be patriotic. And so that's part of the problem because the left is the main attacker because they want to open up society and broaden it and seek equality. The right wants to protect traditions. So tribalism is really the fight, the response of the conservatives against the liberal ambitions. And just like in the prehistoric world, we need both of them. We need conservatives to put a break on the liberals, but we need the liberals to get to move forward and to change. And I think most conservatives would say they're okay with change as long as it's sensible. So that's the story. Gotcha. Say it. Any comment? Yeah, I kind of going back to the genetic makeup part. So based on what we were discussing earlier, we were saying it was mentioned that based on your genetic makeup, you can identify what political party you would vote for. But it has shown before people's behaviors have changed, including their voting. So, let's say if someone's genetic makeup says conservative, how do they start voting for the liberal side once they grow older or they face a certain set of events in their lives? What is the change basically that makes them to vote for the other party? Great question. First of all, if you look at the breakdown of the association of genetics with political behavior, the genetic influence is no more than half. It's like 50%. It's like nature, nurture thing. So the other half is your environment, your associations, your family, your neighborhood, your friends, your school associates, that influence it also. Now if you have conservative parents and you live in a conservative neighborhood and all that, you're probably going to be conservative. But it's not a cut and dry thing. I think the actual distribution of kids when they grow up is it's about 60 or 70% have the political persuasion of their parents. It's not 100. And people change because they're environmental factors that can influence your political morality. So, you're absolutely right, it's not a predictor. It's a pretty good, you can say there's a good probability that you can predict it from the parents and the family and all that stuff. But it's not 100% certainly. And kids that go, I mean, then you have the parents, what if you have one parent that's on the left, one parent's on the right? I mean, then it really becomes no predictor at all, genetically. It comes like a flip of a coin then. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And is it possible to go from like extreme, so let's say your parents are extreme right and then somehow you find yourself in the extreme left, is that possible or like can the environment that you live in sway you that far to the other side? Good question. I don't know the answer to that. I bet there are life traumas that could do that. I mean, let's say like your parents could kill or something in a car accident. I mean, where it's so overwhelming or traumatic that you have to adjust your whole worldview. I mean, maybe you become, I don't know, pessimistic and then takes you in a different direction politically. But that certainly can happen. Okay. And yeah, that makes sense, like it would take something that completely changes who you are. That's, that's something to look at. I wanted to also go to the point when we were, you were saying that liberals are the ones who take the risk and cause change while the right, while conservatives uphold traditions. I wonder if the most suitable candidate for, like this is, this is what I was thinking when you were saying that if the most suitable candidate for presidency would be possibly someone who's genetically a conservative but lived in a liberal environment so that he can have a certain balance between the two like 50 50. Yeah. And then, oh, there's only, there's only one problem with that. The candidates are picked by the parties and the parties aren't looking for balance points of view. They're looking for ideology. So, and I mean, it even goes higher because it, I mean, if we segue into my fifth book for a minute, the basis of the book is that billionaires control our government. We don't. And it's a pretty simple philosophy ever since agriculture, when people could start owning land, they could accumulate wealth over use of that land. So governments began after agriculture because food allowed people to densely populate. You could have towns and cities, whatever, and then you had to have governments. So basically wealthy people have controlled all governments since then. When you think about it, if you're the richest people in town, I mean, you're not going to let the government do what you don't want them to do because you can influence them to do something different. So the billionaires, and it supplies to the, this world economic forum thing, because that's really a global billionaire club, but they're interested in two things. They're interested in increasing their wealth and creating a stable society so their wealth isn't threatened. Those are the two things. So basically they, in controlling the government, they're, they, and what I, I use the term power elites in my book, which I didn't invent, was invented by a sociologist named C. Wright Mills in a book in 1956 called the power elite. The power elite are billionaires who are interested in politics. There are many billionaires that aren't. They just ride around their yachts and have parties. But they're some that are interested and they get together with CEOs of major corporations of which some of them are the billionaires and they, they figure out how to control the government. And there's really basically three ways they do it. They influence directly with political contributions. They influence indirectly by taking very high positions in government. Like if you look at the justice department or state department or whatever and you look at all the people running it, they'll, they all went to prep schools. They all went to Ivy League universities. They probably worked as consultants. They may have worked at a think tank. They may have been at a major corporation. They're all the same, but they're all, they're all teamed up to influence government action. And in the book I have, there's a little chart in there. Somebody did a study on bills introduced to Congress and what could, what was the likelihood of a bill being passed based on certain criteria. If the elites are for the bill, you get, it has 78% chance of passing, no matter who, what the public thinks about it. If lobbyists are supporting a bill, then it has a 56, something like a 50, 56% pass chance of passing. If the public is supporting it and the billionaires and the lobbyists aren't, it has a 3% chance of passing. What? Yep. Because they don't do what, I mean, look, look at anywhere in our country. Look at why is homelessness not solved? It'd be very simple to solve it, build low cost apartments for people to live in and put them there. How did California spend $24 billion in the past 10 years on homelessness and there's more now? Where did that money go? It went to crooks basically or to government or redirected to government organizations that didn't use it. So now I got to temper my comment a little bit because if the public wants something and the billionaires do too, then it's going to pass. So there are things that help the public, the billionaires want a stable economy, sort of the public because if there's a stable economy, there's growth in law and employment, blah and plenty of jobs and stuff. So there's like a win-win thing, but the lose, lose for the public is things that the public, that a public benefit that the billionaires don't want, like solving the homelessness thing. Yep. But they're not going to make it happen. Their priorities aren't increasing their wealth and that isn't part of that equation. So would you say billionaires are a result of our capitalist system and this is kind of like a late stage capitalist or is this the best system we have? Are there better systems about this? Good question. I mean, I state in the book that we're in the worst shape we've been in terms of, people talk about this all the time, the ratio of the money a CEO makes versus the average person in a corporation, 30,000 times as much or 300,000, whatever it is, okay? The inequity has grown over the past 20 years in the United States, so it's worse now because of the billionaires, basically. But one of the things that happened to cause that, and I talk about in the book, first is the ascendancy of Silicon Valley and high tech, because that produced a whole lot of new billionaires with a tremendous amount of influence. Because if you look at Zuckerberg's influence in the world versus the CEO of U.S. deal, it infinitely more. So traditional industrial companies, which made billionaires like Rockefeller and all those people, are very limited in their ability to do that compared to Silicon Valley. And the other thing that happened is finance, because investing went digital in high tech, and so the investment companies now hire mathematicians, PhD mathematicians, to write new clients, to figure out ways to invest money, because this goes into that, and combining debt and all that stuff that caused a problem in 2008. So the financiers and the high tech people are now part of the power elite, and they're having a bigger impact, and they're enriching themselves. So that's why I think it's worse than it was before. Oh wow, have you thought of a solution to this? Like, how can we, it sounds like the billionaires have so much power and control that we don't. Right, right. That's a great question, first of all, back to the we got to get tribalism behind us to get together as a country, because we had to work together to take on the billionaires. My recommendation is to start with the elections, because the people have absolute control over the elections still, and they, I mean the system is rigged, but it can still be defeated, and the way it gets defeated is you throw out the incumbents. I mean, we don't need term limits or age limits, because the people can do that same thing if they put their mind to it. But what happens is, everybody says, "Well, we're going to throw out all those old corrupt guys, but nobody will throw out their old corrupt guy, they expect everybody else to do it, and then nobody does it." So there would have to be some kind of local level, grassroots movement that gets people organized in a way so they vote differently. Only 60% of the people vote, and how many, what percentage of the 60% don't know what they're voting for, another problem. Voting is supposed to be done by people who have studied the issues and the candidates, and it figured out which candidates best for their ideology and for the country, and they picked that person, not vote for who your tribe votes for. So that's a problem. We can't do some work at fixing the political process, maybe. I admire the UK process because I think the election time interval, there's like six weeks. I mean, and we spend a year, and we spent, this figure stuck in my mind, but in our primers this year, Nikki Haley spent $34 million on the North Carolina primary. Wow. Okay, so how many billions are spent on the whole thing, partly because it's a long time interval, if we had the UK system, we wouldn't waste that amount of money. And the parties are corrupt. I was amazed to read in the UK that you actually joined a party, you're a member, and the money for the candidates comes from the parties. Sounds like a reasonable thing. There's a billionaire founding nonprofit organizations to funnel money into campaigns instead. So here's another stat for you. If you are in a race running for any position in Congress, representative or senator, and you spend more money than your opponent. You spend 89 million, they spend 88 million, you have 90% chance of winning. Well, you got to spend more money. Why is that? Because the people are voting for the face that they see the most. What a ridiculous thing that is. It's just basically a marketing, marketing race, then a PR campaign. And when did it start being like that? In which era of the US elections, did it become pure marketing and not based on what the campaign of the candidate? Well, I don't know for sure. But I would make a real good guess on when, first of all, when the 24-hour news appeared, they changed all news because, first of all, you had to fill the whole 24 hours in and second of all, the traditional media then got stuck, they were sort of antiquated then. So they had to sort of adapt to the 24-hour news and then you have social media come along and they have to compete with social media. So they changed their behavior to try and stay relevant. You've probably seen the statistics, I think 70% of Gen Z's get their news on social media. They don't want you to news on TV, they don't listen, they don't read newspapers or any of that. So it's all marketing. And I mean, look at how potentially corrupt social media can be because you can have influencers on there that attract viewers and the influencer is paid by somebody else to influence a certain way. I mean, it's, it's, where's the truth? You don't know where the truth is. And often when I'm on a podcast, I, if I'm talking to Gen Z people, it's like, how do I know where the truth is? And I have to, when I write a book, I have to figure it out because I have to read enough on both sides to understand both sides to be able to write it. But so I'm, I'm used to it, but because I want to be objective. But I mean, the best advice is to find a trusted source on both sides. You know, like Wall Street Journal, I think is reasonably trustworthy. I know the New York Times is on the left, but I subscribe to it because it's important to read it. I also subscribe to a socialist magazine because I want to see what their point of view is and what their ideology is. So you need to find a good source on both sides and then figure out the truth in the middle, I guess. Okay, Michael, the, so the right and the left are attacking each other. We don't know what sources to trust. And most of the bills and laws that are passed through are not in our control. It sounds very hopeless at the moment. So is there something that we can look forward to? Is there some sort of hope that like the average person can look at and say like, okay, I can follow this. And like, I know you mentioned grassroots movement, but even that takes a lot of planning and a lot of structure, which is very hard to convince people of, so like, what can people look forward to? Well, let me start with the tribalism thing, because I am a member of an organization that's a grassroots organization, attacking tribalism, it's called Braver Angels. I don't know if you ever heard of it, BraverAngels.org, it's a national organization with local chapters in many, if all, you know, most, if not all big cities. And basically, there are months, I've longed the one here in Columbus, Ohio. We have a meeting once a month, and the meeting, the members are blue and reds in equal proportion, basically. So what the meetings are about is that you have one-on-one conversations with a person in the opposite point of view about issues, and you try and create consensus about it. So in having the conversation, first of all, you find out that the person on the other side is a nice person, they're not all horrible, like the media wants you to think. And I've never had, I've been to about eight meetings or something, I got it in the beginning of the year. I've never had a conversation that didn't lead to consensus with anybody. Because most people are reasonable, not like the people on the outside edges. So an organization like BraverAngels, and there are more organizations like them, can start to move us away from tribalism. The people have to not be lazy and just read, get their ideology from social media. They have to be willing to get engaged with other people and talk to them and read or learn what they need to understand in order to start making a difference. But I think you make the difference in the voting booth, so that's where it really has to go. Okay. So right now in the voting booth, we have a billionaire and then someone appointed by billionaires. Right. So I'm kind of stuck, honestly, you know? Yeah, but I mean, I'm active on Twitter, I do like it on Twitter every day, I try to read relevant conversations and respond to them rather than just rants, because 80% of stuff on there's rants. It's one side or the other, like Trump is a Nazi, okay, somebody makes a comment. But then they don't have any data to make that up, it's just a rant. So I try to put content behind my statements. I mean, I personally feel that this election is trying to slow down the woke left. So to me, the number one issue, you know, I don't like Trump and if anybody else is running, I wouldn't vote for him, but I want to stop the woke left because I think it's already gone too far. I mean, there's too many things that I don't like. I mean, the whole trans thing, which got out of hand, it was horrible in the UK. I mean, if they had clinics up and running, doing surgery on young kids that nobody knew about, I mean, it's incredible. But the whole, you know, identity politics thing, I mean, it's just, and the goal is to destroy our traditions, which is a direct attack on the conservatives. You know, there is no truth, all religious people are stupid because they believe in something that doesn't exist, I mean, and on and on and on. And it's about time we block that off for a while before we go back to that, you know, make it into something different that is more reasonable because you have to have both sides to make the government work, like I said. And so you can't have, you take tribalism to Congress, they'll never pass anything. This, they'll never agree. I wonder if you're sorry, Ali, I just wanted to ask a bit about, I wonder if, is the right wing now playing the victim, a victim card against the left, because the left with the world culture coming from the left and being very aggressive, is the right wing now kind of like, playing into that role? That what, that they're their victim? Yeah, like the victimhood mentality, and I was like, what's it called? Like, oh my God, you're trying to push too much of your agenda? No, where is the traditions? Well, I mean, the oppressor, oppressed thing comes from Marxism. So we have this whole thing now where you're either oppressed or oppressed, oppressor. So like white people, all white people are oppressors, even if you're a poor white living in Mississippi. All black people are oppressed, even if you have a PhD and you're a physician. So because the problem, and that's one of the issues I have, the problem is the left likes to put people in groups and box them in. So if you put all black people in one group, then you look at them all the same, including the individuals who have superior intelligence and have no, they're not in the group, because they can rise above it. They don't need the benefits of some government program that's designed to help black people. So I mean, conservatives look at the world as individuals. Liberals look at the world as groups, big difference there. Now, and let me go back to your question though, because I didn't answer it. The problem with conservatives is they don't really have an ideology. The left ideology is equality and the left is a big tent. It has socialists in it and Marxists and all those. The right has no ideology like that. The right ideology is traditions and the status quo. And so, and if you asked a conservative, and I talk about it a lot in the conservative gene book, conservatives would rather live their lives than engage in politics, because they believe in freedom and independence and the ability to control your own life. They don't like fighting. They're very bad at fighting the Democrats. So, I mean, they always look like they're reacting and they're not equals in their ring. It's like going, the conservatives are taking a knife to a gunfight, basically. But they don't really want to be there anyway. So I don't know that they consider themselves as victims. They just think the other side's crazy and I'll just live my life kind of thing. Okay. Yeah. They're just living life and let it. The thing that I'm contemplating is, are they just okay with these changes? Like, because you said 60% of conservatives are accepting changes, but what about the other 40%? Well, I said 60%, 60% approve some kind of abortion. That's just one issue, like a gun issue or something, and I forget what the stats are, but the conservatives would be, I mean, because freedom to conservatives is a huge deal, and it's much less of a huge deal to the left because they're groupish. Conservatives are independent. So like you want, if I want to write to buy a gun, if I choose to, because I want to defend myself and I don't want anybody infringing on that freedom. So when you start taking conservatives' freedom away, then they get worked up and they're pretty worked up now. So because they're, they're getting, they're forced to like fight like the Democrats because you have to fight in kind. So I mean, the left throws mud at the right and the right throws mud at the left. I mean, they lower themselves to the common denominator to fight, I guess is the answer. Yeah. It sounds like the liberal is the, the younger sibling that's constantly poking the older sibling, you know, hands like a stick, and then eventually the older sibling just takes a stick and snaps it in half at some point. Yeah. It's like, just leave me alone. Right. Right. And I'm not, you know, I don't want this to sound like an indictment of the left by me, because I think what left ideology is important is long as it isn't too extreme. I mean, the left gets credit for the progressive movement from 1880 to 1920 that fixed a lot of problems in our country. You know, fixed child labor, exploitation of workers, corrupt politics. It fixed all those things and was a very fundamental in that process. But where it's going now, I mean, my fourth book talks about the reason it says Twilight of the American experiment is because the left controls all the media. They control the universities. They control the traditional media and they control social media with exception of X. So all we hear is left points of view and left ideology. So that, that one sidedness prevents the public from hearing the other side. So that's a very dangerous thing. And so, you know, 30, 40 years ago, if you had an idea as an academic, you're in an Ivy League school, you have a, let's say it's good idea or crackpot idea, who cares, it would be subject to debate within that institution before it reaches the public. So like you'd have conservative professors, you'd argue about, well, is there enough data to support this position, whatever. Now there's no opposition, the universities, because, I mean, I don't know if you've seen the statistics, but it's like 90% of professors are left, okay, the conservatives all went to think tanks, they left because they're academics, but they can't operate in a university. So now, whenever somebody comes up with an idea at any university, let's say in social sciences, it's an echo chamber, you don't have, it's that subject gains scrutiny before it gets to the public. So it's a problem. So the woke left just scared the way all of the conservative professors, like from academia. Yeah. Because, yeah, like, we all saw in like, in, in the news that this professor was kicked out for his right wing ideas, and it was like this, this professor got canceled for what they were talking about. It was constantly happening, like, it was like almost every week, something like that was occurring in the news. But I don't know, like, it went that far to 90%. Wow, that's extremely. I'll send you a chart or there's a chart in which, I don't know, it may be in more than one of the books. But I'll say, if you guys give me an email address, I'll send you that chart. Perfect. Yeah. Cool. Where was I, I forget where I was going with that. So continue. I had a question about freedom of speech that used to be when I was younger, a more left leaning principal, I remember, like liberals were more into discussing new ideas, conservatives would try to shut down, censorship was more from the right, but now it sounds like it's a bit of a flip. Yes. Totally. Yep. Everything's more, they've adopted the freedom of speech narrative and the left is more trying to shut down speech. Yep. How did that happen? Well, you know, growing up in the 60s, I understand very well, you know, because I lived through it. It was a counterculture philosophy that we don't have enough freedom, which I think was correct. And so like the ACLU was always suing organizations that they thought restricted freedom of speech. So the freedom of speech was a ideology of the left, as you said. Now it's an ideology of the right because the left controls it. I mean, if they've got all the media on their side, where is the right speech coming from? It's coming from Fox News and some podcasters and some conservative radio, but that's what, 5% of what's broadcast. And I mean, the fact that a conservative can't go to university and get a speech, they get locked out or that, you know, they had to put $5,000 of security deposit or they get shouted down or somebody trips a fire alarm, so they just don't go. So there are the students that are there never hear the other side, they never hear debate. Yeah, like you're saying, the echo chamber in academia, which is you don't hear other people's perspectives that oppose yours. So you just believe everyone around you has the same thoughts as you. And then whenever they finally bump into someone who just disagrees with them, they're like, why are you attacking me? And that's fine for the professors, but it's not fine for the students because they haven't formed their ideas yet. And so they're inundated with, you know, postmodernism and left thinking. And that's all they hear. They don't hear an opposing point of view. Now, again, I'm going to temper my statement though, and this is important, a very large percentage of conservatives that go to college become liberals because everybody's a liberal in college, then they graduate and it bounced back to conservatives again because they become their natural selves. So the idea that the college is being left are going to somehow create 100% progressives in our country is impossible because you're not going to change. You're going to change some conservatives, not many. So conservatives will survive. It goes back to your genetic makeup, right? Yep. And let me say one more thing about that's funny. Back in the prehistoric times, I was talking about these behavioral tendencies of new versus status quo thing. Well, it's been shown that that is a negative, I got to think of the term here, negative frequency dependent trait, meaning if you had a bunch of conservatives and liberals in this band of people 500,000 years ago, and there's there to be too many progressives, some liberals would start being born to bring it back to level. So biologically, the trait had a leveling influence. So there would be equal amounts of both. But that's true of every trait or most traits, behavioral traits, I think. So this is like an evolutionary trait that came out of like this creation of civilization that maybe I'm just like adding the concept of civilization to this, but this topic. But because we live in this society where we need that balance to have a sustainable civilization, there has to be the balance of liberal and conservative. Well, right. In the prehistoric world, that was important because if you had too much of one or the other, your tribe may die out. Now it means less because we're not, this isn't natural selection anymore. So we don't, I mean, but now it becomes psychological and philosophical to say that we need, this is why I say we have to have even broadcast of information for both sides and we have to have both sides involved in consensus building for the government to move forward. In the 90s, there were all kinds of people in Congress who were, they called them, what was the, whether there were moderates, but they, like there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans and they were in the middle and they would act as arbiters against the extremists to help craft bills and laws that work for everybody. Well, as a country star become tribal, all those people left the field and all we have is ideologues left. So there's no consensus making entity in the Congress anymore. Yeah, yeah. So it's not natural selection, but I wonder if we can call it maybe a societal selection now, instead of a cultural selection. Yeah. Cultural selection. Well, let me take it to an extreme. If the extreme left had their way, they would have this be a socialist society and which has never been proven to work, but it's a very idealistic concept. I mean, it's a noble idea, but it just doesn't work. They could kill and they implemented it. They could kill human society, basically, because that would be that would be a control. That's like 1984, basically, because that 1984 is a totalitarian but socialist government because these managers control the whole population. So that's not a successful formula for the human race. Michael is appointing Kamala as a presidential nominee without a primary process. Is that something new? Is that undemocratic? Is that a threat to democracy or is it just normal? You may think I have a funny take on it. I don't. It doesn't bother me at all because the parties picked their candidate anyway. I mean, I mean, until 1968, there were no primaries. Basically, there were there were smoke-filled rooms where all the big shots in each party gathered together and they figured out, well, let's see, this guy can take this date and this guy and they picked the candidate. That was it. Wow. So, I mean, that's most of the history of our country. It was done that way. And I think to myself sometimes it'd be nice to go back to that because then it wouldn't be any primaries and all that money wasted and time. Let each party pick a candidate and then that's the best person that they think for their party and face them off against each other and see who wins. But in that case, the other thing about the Democrats, I talk about them being aggressive and pushing and all that stuff, they don't take any prisoners and so they will do anything to win and they realized after the debate that Joe couldn't win. And so they had to, it was either lose the election or figure out something else. Yeah, I saw an interview yesterday where the first thoughts were not to Kamala. They were to other like Democrat governors and stuff that are well-known like the governor of Pennsylvania, I think. But then Biden endorsed Kamala. So he gave her instant credibility, which kind of cut off anybody else being introduced. But the irony is she's a DEI candidate. So here we have a DEI candidate positioned to potentially be the leader of the free world. Is she the best person in their role? So good question. About democracy, is this the best form of governance? How can we fix the democracy in the US to make it so that we can contribute more? Does tech have a role? You know the famous saying, democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by man, but it's better than all the others. Churchill. Yeah, so I think democracies can work. I mean, they've worked pretty well until 20 years ago and there has to be some kind of adaptation to the increased control of the billionaires. Maybe there has to be a revolution. I don't know if some kind of revolution, maybe the Constitution has to be changed. But I can tell you the billionaires are scared to death of the public. That's why I mean the billionaires, you know I talk about this cabal of rich people and corporate leaders working together. They also control the public influencing network because there's seven big media companies they own all of them. So they control everything we hear through the media. The broadcasts are two types. One is persuasion trying to convince us to do something or think something. The other side is they tell us how everything is hunky dory. So you see a lot of stuff you pay attention to the media and this is okay. This happened. It's good. The economy is really good. It's not bad. Inflation is going down, you know, narratives that try to tamp down dissent through propaganda. So it's a big propaganda machine and people are going to have to get mad enough to want to do something about it really. And a large number of people and it would be better if the tribes got together because that's a bigger, much bigger force that can't be stopped in whatever situation it creates. George Washington said, I hope the Constitution lasts 25 years because the founders knew, I mean, they knew it was a compromised document and they knew it was an experiment. So they didn't think, I mean, they would probably be amazed it lasted this long with as few changes as it's had. And Benjamin Franklin said, we need to have a revolution about every hundred years to get things back in order, which is an interesting statement. So we miss the first two. So I was on eight. One more thing, if I can't, I was on a podcast with somebody who was, I think he was a podcast host and he's very, he's writing a book about the 17th Amendment because it's a big deal to him. 17th Amendment allowed senators to be elected by the people and said they used to be selected by the states. So his thesis, and I never thought of it until he said this, that tipped the balance from the states to the federal government because if the federal government can control the voters, they can control the House and the Senate, whereas if the states named the senators, then the states are in control. So it took the balance, and I mean, you guys probably originally know the president was picked by the states, by the electors in each state. And then they made the electors electable, but they're still coming from the states. And so this balance is tipped toward the federal government power over time, and that's a problem. We're in the republic, and I wish we were more democratic, yep. But there's, there's a caveat there too, and that is the mob, right? Because let's, and I think of the mob when I think of people saying get rid of the electoral college, because then it will just be everybody votes. And so then the 90% rule about electability based on investment in the campaign will truly hold. There's a statistic, LA County is bigger than 17 states added together in terms of population. So think, think about that if you take the biggest cities in the country, and they all vote democratic. Well, the republicans would never win another election, national election, so yeah. So with the best system, maybe would be to have like smaller communities and have maybe each state have its own kind of presidencies as the US a failed system, is it not possible to have all these people agree on the same thing? Well, we gotta, we gotta get some power out of the federal government. I mean, one potential way now, and I don't know how practical it is, but you probably know that our debt reached 34 trillion dollars. Yeah. There's, there's going to have to be debt cutting, because we're already to the point, I think by 2030 or something, the cost of paying the interest on the debt added to the, the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will exceed the budget. There won't be another dime for anything else. So that's unsustainable. And so, and of course, everything in the federal government grows, nothing ever shrinks. There's going to have to be some reckoning about that. And if the federal government were smaller, it would be less intrusive and be less powerful. Because, I mean, how easy is it for billionaires to control 50 states? It's a lot harder than if they control one federal government, right? Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's true. So more decentralization. Yeah. That's what we need. Yeah. Sorry. This up so spicy. I mean, but there's some interesting things coming down like there's states talking about seceding now, like part of California wants to secede from California, part of West Virginia, or Virginia wants to secede from Virginia to become part of West Virginia. I don't know where this red state, blue state thing is going, but I mean, it could divide the country in half, basically. If each group adopts their whole ideology, yeah, I don't know what it means. That sounds scary, to be honest. That sounds like a civil war trajectory, to be honest, and that's not good. Well, you can't you can't have a revolution without the military. And we have that's a little bit of a problem, too, because our military was always small until after World War II. It was always in, you know, it couldn't take over the country. It was too small. Now it's huge. And of course, they have big weapons, so it's a bigger problem. But and you know this civilian government was going to control the military to try to keep the military from getting too much power. So the Secretary of Defense is a politician. He's not a general. So because Rome is a great example of the military getting too much power, and there goes the government that destroyed the the Republic and made it an empire. Yeah, it sounds like a logical decision to put the politician in that place. But anyway, my digress, Michael, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. It's been great having you on and having you share your insights and knowledge on the future of America. I hope the best of luck to you guys in the U.S. I'm here in the UK, I'm slightly safer. Well, really we have our own problems. Yep. How would how can people connect with you? How can people contact you if you would are willing to if you want to shout out your. Well, my website is mikeanderson's books.com. So it's Anderson with an S and books with an S. All my books are there links to my Twitter and Facebook are there on my subs, a sub stack. If you guys are interested in sub stack account with me to read my subtract articles, I'll be happy to give you a membership to to that because I write articles every every week. And, you know, follow me, follow me on Twitter or whatever. And if you know, all I need is an email address for both of you to put you on sub stack because that's how it's set up. Perfect. Awesome. We'll let you know. Send it your way. Yeah. And any last piece of advice for the American people before we sign up? Well, I'm an optimistic person in spite of what you may heard. I'm trying to I'm trying to give light to problems so people think about doing something about them. You know, and I think I think our democracy can survive. It just has to be more equitable. I mean, in terms of the government listening to the public. All right, and Sean long. Yes. Okay. We can thank you Michael for being. All right. Nice meeting you guys. Thank you for being on this podcast. Sure. Guys, this is how we sign out. Okay. So if you want to join us, we salute to cover the camera and please.