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Aug. 9, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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FLIPPING THE SCRIPT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep639
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
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Coming up, I'll show how the House GOP can flip the script by using the special counsel standard against Trump, knowingly making false statements as the basis for impeaching Biden.
Georgia House Representative Misha Maynard joins me.
We're going to talk about why she left the Democratic Party and became a Republican.
And I'll expound Vaclav Havel's famous essay on tyranny and powerlessness, showing its contemporary significance.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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I want to talk about the crimes that are alleged against President Trump and the crimes that are being committed, have been committed by President Biden.
the interesting...
Relationship between the two.
Now, I just saw this morning that Representative Comer has disclosed that the Biden family has received $20 million plus in bribery payments from various entities, which Russia, apparently Kazakhstan, China we know about, Ukraine we know about.
The amount gets bigger and bigger, more accounts, more and more money.
So you've got a vast criminal enterprise under the direction of Joe Biden, carried out by his underlings, which is to say by his two brothers, his son Hunter Biden.
And all of this so far, the left is dismissing.
There's nothing there. This is just a sideshow that the Republicans are putting on.
They're focused on the Trump crime.
And Biden is too.
Remarkably, it's come out now that it's Biden who has been pressuring Mayorkas, has been pressuring Merrick Garland, has been pressuring the Justice Department, the DOJ, to go after Trump.
On the most recent indictment, CNN said that this was a personal victory, a personal vindication of Biden, who believes that Trump's actions around January 6th are, quote, sedition, sedition.
Now, Trump is in charge with sedition, of course.
But the interesting point here is that it could very well be that the way that they're going after Trump, the way that Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ are going after Trump, Namely, they're going after Trump on the idea that not only were his claims of election fraud false,
and they're going to have to prove that, but that Trump knew that they were false, and they're going to have to prove that, and good luck in doing that, because if there's one thing that's more obvious to me than anything, it's that Trump believed Trump.
Initially, believed subsequently, believed at the time of 2000 Mules, believes today that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.
In fact, after watching 2000 Mules, Trump jotted on a little post-it and handed it to me, the words, rigged and stolen.
So, this man believes this with all his heart, and to prove otherwise seems to me an impossible project.
But nevertheless... The point here is that there is a way that the House GOP can flip the script, turn the tables, use this legal standard against Biden.
And what do I mean by this?
What I mean by this is Biden on many occasions has said things that are not only false, But we now know that he knew they were false.
And this has happened time and time again.
By the way, this idea of saying things that you know are false goes back to Obama.
Let's think about Obamacare.
If you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Now, Obama is the guy who supervised the drafting of the legislation.
He knew that that was false.
So not only was the statement false, Obama was aware at the time that he said it.
It's a knowing lie by Obama.
So has Obama committed a crime?
Well, I would say no.
Obama's a liar and he's the great deceiver, as I sometimes call him.
But that's not breaking the law.
But Jack Smith says it is.
Jack Smith says of Trump, and you just have to read the indictment and nothing could be more clear.
Now, There are people on the left saying, well, the indictment isn't getting Trump for his free speech.
It's not even getting him for knowingly lying.
It's getting him for conspiracy to commit crimes.
Well, it is true that there are conspiracies to commit crimes, but then you've got to spell out what the stand-alone crime is.
Let's say there's a stand-alone crime of, say, embezzlement or a stand-alone crime of bribery.
Then you can't say, I have a free speech defense because I, quote, promised to pay you money if you give me this in return, and I just spoke it, so it's free speech.
No, because the free speech itself is not the crime.
The crime is the bribery.
The crime is the embezzlement.
So, in this case, what is the crime?
What is the crime outside of Trump's free speech?
And the answer is there is none.
There is no stand-alone crime.
And yet, they're trying to make it a crime.
And the point I'm trying to make, and others have made this too, Jonathan Turley and others, that this can backfire on Biden because the House can begin even now.
They don't have to cross every T. They don't have to dot every I. They can begin impeachment proceedings against Biden and include in the articles of impeachment that Biden not only knowingly lied...
I have no involvement in my son's dealings.
I've never spoken to my son about business issues.
We have never received any money from China or any foreign entity.
Lie upon lie upon lie.
And there's every reason now to believe that Biden knew that those were lies when he said it.
He knew that he had had all these meetings in person as well as on the phone.
He knew that he had conversed with Biden Business Associates.
He wrote a letter to Devin Archer about his business.
So Biden is actively involved and yet lying about it.
So the point is that the House Republicans, if they're smart, if they're imaginative, if they want to push the ball, they should do it.
Grab a hold of the Jack Smith standard, which is knowingly spreading falsehoods.
Include those in articles of impeachment against Biden and turn Biden's own standard against him.
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We're moving ahead and you The idea of launching multiple indictments against a former president who happens to be running again In 2024 is unprecedented.
The Democrats have thrown all historical caution to the side.
They are in a stampede to get Trump.
He's facing dozens and dozens of felony counts.
He's facing not just decades, but in a sense, centuries in prison.
And you might ask, why are the Democrats doing this?
What is their real goal?
Is it just that they are in such a Trump derangement frame of mind that they want to somehow, it's just a vengeance against Trump?
Is it just vindictiveness?
Is it we just want to see Trump in prison?
That alone is going to give us enormous satisfaction.
And all of that is to some degree true.
But I would argue that the real reason is very simple.
And it's summarized, actually, in a CNN article, which I want to talk about.
It's an analysis by a guy named Harry Enten.
The chance of Trump winning another term is very real.
In other words, the Democrats are beginning to worry that they won't be able to beat Trump In 2024.
Now, I realize that if you say this to Democrats and you say this to leftists, they erupt.
And they go, oh, he'd be very easy to beat.
He couldn't be easier to beat.
The Republicans would be much smarter to nominate somebody else.
But if so, I say, if that's the case, then why not let Trump run?
Remove the obstacles because that's the guy you want to run against.
If Trump is so weak, why wouldn't you want a weak candidate?
But the fact that they are determined...
And in fact, there's no equivalent attack on any of the other candidates.
Yeah, there are attacks on DeSantis, attacks on his Florida record, and so on.
But by and large, the focus, the thing that gets the Democrats really incensed is Trump.
The article explains that no one in Trump's current polling position in the modern era has lost an open presidential primary.
He's pulling in more than 50% of support in national primary polls.
And they say that DeSantis has now dropped under 20%.
So DeSantis was at one point climbing.
It looked like he might be in contention with Trump, but he's under 20.
No other contender is at above 10%.
And so, basically, the margin between Trump and the rest of the field is about 30 points.
In other words, putting them all together.
Now... The writer, Harry Enten, says Trump is leading not just nationally, but he's leading in all the early voting states.
He's up double digits in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.
So this race seems to be—I won't say the race is over.
I don't think it's over until it's over.
And also things can change.
And maybe at some level, the indictments will have an impact.
That's at least what the left is hoping.
They're hoping that piling indictment upon indictment, and next comes the Georgia indictment, that Trump will be essentially almost disabled from being able to campaign and being able to compete.
And I think even some of the Republicans kind of sulking on the sidelines are secretly hoping that this is the case because, of course, that would make their candidacy viable.
Remove Trump from the picture, and it's pretty much anybody's race.
Now, says Harry Enten, continuing in his CNN article, he says, you might think that we're only talking about Trump getting the nomination, but hey, you know, he's going to be trounced easily by the Democrats in a national election.
And Harry Enten says, not so fast.
He says, he remains competitive in a potential rematch with Biden.
He's talking about a recent poll from Marquette Law School.
Trump and Biden are tied percentage-wise with a slight statistically insignificant, but nevertheless favoring Trump.
The ABC News Washington Post poll had three surveys, and Trump came out ahead every single time.
It was within the margin of error, but again, Trump was ahead.
And then Harry Anton says, to put this in perspective, Trump never led in a single national poll.
For the entirety of the 2020 campaign, Trump was always behind and sometimes far behind.
And the same story was true in 2016.
Trump was behind Clinton by double digits.
This is why Frank Luntz on Election Day tweeted out, Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
He was so sure because it wasn't close.
Hillary Clinton was way ahead, and yet Trump won.
And so what Harry Hinton is saying is that when Trump is able to come from behind by 10 points against Hillary, and when he's able, even though with Biden there was a margin, it was such a tiny margin, much smaller than the polls showed.
So the election day result was much smaller.
And we're not even talking here about all the cheating and so on.
We're just talking about the tabulated result.
So In Pennsylvania, late June, Quinnipiac University poll shows Trump tied with Biden.
Actually, Trump is ahead by one point.
And this is the second Pennsylvania poll that has Trump leading over Biden.
So what Harry Enten is saying is not that Trump is going to win.
It's obviously too early to tell.
But he's saying that Trump can win.
This idea that Trump is not going to win, that he's going to lose even bigger than before.
I mean, there are people who believe that.
But it's not borne out by the survey and poll evidence, at least not what we have so far.
And this explains the kind of almost apocalyptic fear on the part of the Democrats.
They think that they might have to deal with Trump for a second term, and Trump for a second term might be adopting the policy, or at least the slogan, that terrifies every liberal, no more Mr.
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Get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA. Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Representative Misha Maynor.
She's a member of the Georgia House of Representatives for the 56th District.
She's a mom of two daughters, a physical therapist.
She's currently working on her doctorate in business administration from North Central University.
Her website, Misha, M-A-S-H-A, Maynor, M-A-I-N-O-R.com.
You can also follow her on Twitter, at Misha Maynor.
Misha, welcome to the podcast.
You created quite a stir recently when you announced that you were quitting the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party.
Now, I'm really interested whenever someone has a kind of conversion story, whether it's a You know, a communist who becomes an anti-communist, or whether it is somebody who's an atheist who becomes a Christian.
These journeys are interesting because I like to know what causes someone to shift in a pretty important or fundamental way.
So can you talk a little bit about how, as someone who had been in the Democratic Party, I assume that you lived in a democratic milieu, maybe you're from a democratic family, what caused you to sort of Thank you for having me.
You know what? Really, it was a decision about policy and not necessarily party.
There are some fundamental issues that the Democrats are completely against that do not benefit my community.
The main ones being school choice.
In some of the schools in my district, 2% are meeting math proficiency, 3% are meeting reading proficiency.
And so to have a standard that we do not approve of children having choices, I'm fundamentally against that.
The other one was defunding the police crime.
I represent the heart of downtown Atlanta.
So crime is rampant.
It doesn't matter what socioeconomic community you are in.
My constituents said they do not want to defund the police.
And the third one really is putting people over systems.
The best example for that is a prosecutorial oversight bill that we passed this past year.
This bill really puts people over the system.
And so it's some fundamental policy issues rather than, you know, I want to be a Republican.
Right, right. Let's look at those policy issues.
Let's start with the issue of school choice.
Now, for a long time, the position of the Democrats was something like this.
School choice is an attack on the public school system.
Public school systems are underfunded.
If you provide more funding, the public schools will fix themselves.
That's the solution to get more people into the public schools.
But it seems like you've reached a point where you're like, you know what, we've sort of tried that, it's not working.
Is your view that the public school systems are irreparably broken and that therefore parents need to be given alternatives?
I think the school system is broken.
That does not mean that the teachers are broken.
The teachers are beholden to a broken system.
The teachers aren't allowed to have the freedom to teach the way they were taught in school.
And, you know, the school system in America was built on a bell system.
That bell system is based on manufacturing during the first industrial revolution.
We're past a robotic system.
We're in artificial intelligence.
It's ChatGPT.
You can go into Whole Foods, put your hand on a platform, and you can check out with just your hand, which means that...
Jobs for people that can't read and can't perform simple math are going to be eliminated.
There was a study by Goldman Sachs that said 300 million people are going to lose their job to artificial intelligence in 10 years.
So the system is broken.
It can be fixed if local school boards decide they want to be more creative.
Somebody, I remember hearing a striking observation recently.
Someone said that if you go into a hospital today, it would be unrecognizably different from a hospital, say, a hundred years ago.
There would be all this new technology.
They'd be using lasers, new ways of doing surgery, and so on.
But if you go into a classroom...
what it was a hundred years ago. So it does appear that the school system, and by the way, this would also apply to some degree to private schools, that there hasn't been the kind of adaptation to the world we live in today. So it seems to me what you're saying is we need to try new things and we need to put the power in the hands of parents who will have some options for their children. But when you came out and took this position, I mean, presumably the Democrats could have said, well, Misha, that's your view. It's
not our party's view, but you're welcome to have that view.
But that really wasn't their position, was it?
It was not their position.
In fact, that one vote had my colleagues start putting up thousand dollar checks on the internet for someone to run against me because they were just that opposed to school choice.
I represent a district in Georgia that has the highest number of charter schools in the entire state of Georgia.
My constituents want choice.
I voted the way my constituents wanted.
The Democrat Party was completely against not just me, but the 60,000 people that I represent.
Very interesting. Let's turn to defund the police.
I mean, that is such an extreme idea, and yet it almost came out of nowhere and suddenly became orthodoxy.
Do you think that the origin of the idea was just a kind of absurd overreaction to the George Floyd situation?
How do we go? I mean, there was talk of police reform for a while, but suddenly this idea of taking the resources away from the cops, were you shocked when that suddenly came center stage?
You know, the part of the problem, in my opinion, with politics in general is we let the media take wind of some talking points and as politicians, people want to just go with it because that puts them in the spotlight.
I was actually campaigning during this defund the police and George Floyd activity, and may he rest in peace.
But I campaigned on, no, we do not need to defund the police.
I was never for defunding the police.
I'm the victim of stalking, and so I'm intimately aware of the need for law enforcement.
My suggestion after being elected in a committee hearing was, We need to increase funding for social services and mental health.
We do not need to take away public safety dollars.
So that was my stance from the very beginning.
And interesting enough, Democrats today are saying, we never said that.
We never said she wanted to defund the police, but the records show otherwise.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with Representative Misha Mainer, Georgia House of Representatives for the 56th District and now a Republican.
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I'm back with Georgia Representative Misha Maynor.
Her website, Misha, M-E-S-H-A, M-A-I-N-O-R.com.
We're talking about Democrats and Republicans.
We're talking about school choice and defund the police.
You made an interesting statement that I saw in one of the articles where you said that it's not just that you're...
Joining the Republican side, but it's important to you to expand the Republican base.
And maybe there are things that you've noticed about the Republican Party that it can or should do differently.
I'm always interested in the perspective of someone kind of coming in, if you will, from the outside.
So can you do a little bit of a...
A doctor's diagnosis of the Republican Party, kind of where it is.
I mean, obviously, it's important to have a strong Republican Party in a state like Georgia.
What is right and what is wrong with the GOP and how can the GOP expand the ranks?
Well, let's start with women are underrepresented in any political party.
So that's first and foremost.
When you think about the Republican Party, you imagine only white men and a few sprinkled white women here and there.
Black people, it's actually stigmatized to be black and to be a Republican.
There are many constituents out there that are black and Republicans, but they would never in a thousand years Let that be known to their family, their friends, or the community.
So with that being said, there are outliers.
There are extremes on both sides.
I have been a centrist since I came into politics.
I'm going to remain a centrist, which is why really the switch is easy for me, because I was back and forth anyway on just really picking the best policy for the people that I represent.
But what can I do?
How can I help? One, I can show minorities across the world, or at least in America, that it is okay to be a Republican.
This does not have to be a dirty word within your circles, mainly because of the policy.
When you think about, I'm doing an event in Boston, and so I've been doing some research on Boston, and the abolitionist movement was started by Republicans in Boston.
So Republicans have a good historical background, if you will, for freeing Black people in general versus Democrats have a historical record.
The Dixiecrats here in the South were the ones that were enslaving African Americans.
And it really was a policy issue that a party wanted to stay in power.
And so things shifted.
But freedom, prosperity, people over systems, these are all fundamental issues of the Republican Party.
The Democrats say they are a party of inclusion, but that actually is not the case because if you believe in school choice, you're not included.
If you don't believe in defunding the police, you're not included.
And so it really is a matter of the Republicans have a bigger tent, and I hope that I can show more minorities, don't be afraid, dig into the details of the legislation that you're contemplating, and let's go from there.
Welcome to my show!
And then on and on, the Democrats used white supremacy as the kind of glue to create the so-called solid South for the Democratic Party.
And yet, I think you're quite right to say that, by and large, if, let's say, you're an African-American realtor or an African-American business guy and you're a Republican, You're probably not going to be advertising it, putting it out there.
It's something that you're kind of on the down low about.
So I'm interested, is it the combination of the media?
What is the reason that there is this awkwardness of blacks to say, hey, listen, I don't have any problem being a Republican.
The Republican Party actually has a much better history than the Democratic Party.
I think that it's really cultural.
African Americans, you know, if you think back to the Civil Rights Movement, post-slavery, post-Reconstruction, all of these moments are when Black people were told, you are a Democrat, right?
And I don't think people in general, I don't care what race or ethnicity you are, I don't think people really are digging into the laws and the legislation that's taking place.
And so Black people have assumed we were told we should be Democrats.
And so we went with it.
We've stayed with it.
And now because of outliers and also because the Republican Party looks like only white males, it is assumed this must not be the party for us.
When actuality, the Republicans in Georgia, I cannot speak for any other state, I can't speak for anybody else except for the Republicans at the Georgia Capitol.
I've made great friendships with these white males that have helped me pass legislation to protect HBCU students.
They have helped me pass legislation to improve workforce development options for people in marginalized communities.
The list goes on and on, and the list goes on and on for Democrats that are completely opposed to uplifting Black people, and I really honestly think it's a matter of fear.
Black people are Republicans because they have been scared into fearing a party.
I understand it now because now I'm in it, but political science, it's a science for a reason.
Fear makes you vote one way.
And so the Democrats put fear in the Republican values.
And that's just where we are.
And I hope that I can help change that.
Awesome. Well, it's been a great conversation.
Thank you for joining me, Representative Misha Maynor.
You can follow her at Twitter, at Misha Maynor, or her website, Misha, M-E-S-H-A-M-A-I-N-O-R.com.
Great having you on the podcast.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
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Go to relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. On the podcast, I often talk about the day-to-day issues that are driving our news and that are right in front of us.
But sometimes when we focus on those exclusively, we lose sight of the bigger picture.
And so from time to time, I like to Welcome to my show!
That was written by the Czech dissident Václav Havel.
This was in the time of Soviet communism when the Czech Republic, which was then part of Czechoslovakia, was part of the Soviet regime.
It was part of the Soviet empire.
The essay has become a kind of classic of dissident literature.
It's called The Power of the Powerless.
It was actually written in October 1978.
So think about it, it was written about 11 years before the Berlin Wall came down, and I would argue it's literature like this that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So as we examine this essay, we're gonna keep in mind what's going on in the Soviet Union, what's going on in Eastern Europe.
This is a captive population that is describing its phenomenon, at least Vaclav Havel is on their behalf.
Havel, by the way, went on to become the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
So he went from being a kind of dissident, organizer, writer, activist, to being the guy in charge of his country.
Kind of the same thing happened with Lek Valensa, at least very briefly.
Lek Valensa was a dock worker in Poland, then became essentially head of Poland, at least for a brief time.
And this essay lives on, and it lives on not only as a kind of artifact, but to me, as we read the essay, we find in a very strange way that it appeals to us today.
It talks about things that are happening here in America right now.
And all of this is another way of saying that the old distinction that we always made for really decades between the free and the unfree world.
We're the free world. They're the unfree world.
Why? Well, we have free speech.
We have freedom of religion.
We have freedom of movement.
We have equal justice under the law.
Trials in those countries are show trials.
They're manufactured. The evidence is rigged.
Whereas in our country, we have an independent judiciary.
We have juries of our peers.
So you see how this kind of wall that we customarily drew intellectually between us and them has now sort of come, it's tumbled down.
Because many of the things that happened in the old Soviet regime and in the Soviet empire are at least in a varied form and to varying degrees happening here in the United States.
Not all of them. We don't have a Berlin Wall.
We can still leave the United States.
But on the other hand, what happened to our freedom of speech?
What happened to our religious liberty under COVID? What's happened to equal justice under the law?
What happened to the idea that we have a two-party system and not a one-party state?
So, Vaclav Havel speaks to all of this, and he does so with a kind of clarity and depth and shrewdness and psychological insight that is very rare today.
I don't see it anywhere in contemporary literature.
So, one of the reasons I We hearken to the literature of the past and also literature of other countries is it helps us to see them more clearly, but it also helps us to see ourselves more clearly.
So let's begin looking at this essay.
And the essay begins almost in a disarming way with an anecdote about a fruit vendor.
So I'm going to read and then I'm going to comment on it.
The manager of a fruit and vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan, workers of the world unite.
So, here you've got an apparatchik, a guy who's really a seller of vegetables and fruits, but he's putting up this sort of communist or Marxist slogan.
And then says Havel, why does he do it?
What is he trying to communicate to the world?
Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world?
Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals?
Has he given really more than a moment's thought to how such a unification, workers of the world unite, might occur and what it would mean?
So with this provocative vignette, Baklav Havel is off and running and he will use this anecdote about a vendor putting up a sign to expose ultimately the very nature of tyranny and totalitarianism.
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I'm continuing my discussion of Vaclav Havel's great essay, written in 1978, The Power of the Powerless.
We're talking about a shop vendor who puts up a sign in his window, Workers of the World Unite.
And Havel continues this way,"...I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions." The poster was delivered to our green grocer from the headquarters along with the onions and carrots.
He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years because everyone does it and because that is the way it has to be.
If he were to refuse, there would be trouble.
He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window.
Someone might even accuse him of Disloyalty.
So Havel here is getting onto something very interesting.
You have a tyrannical system, Soviet communism, state-run socialism, and it delivers to these guys slogans But notice that it requires the cooperation of the shopkeeper to put the slogan up.
In a sense, the shopkeeper doesn't have to do it.
There's no manual that says, put this up in your window.
But what Havel is getting at is that the way people are, they don't want inconvenience, they don't want trouble, they understand the zeitgeist, which is a word that just means the mood, the kind of overall tone of society.
They want to be in tune with the zeitgeist, and so they conform, they submit.
But there's a very high price, as we will see in this essay, to be paid for this kind of submission, and it's something that we should all keep in mind.
goes Hawville.
Obviously, the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit.
He doesn't put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses.
This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone.
The slogan is really a sign, and as such, it contains a subliminal but very definite message.
So Havel is now about to decipher the meaning of this slogan, but it's not the meaning that you might think.
It's not the meaning of the slogan itself.
It's not the content.
It is the underlying, sort of hidden message that Havel is about to disclose.
Let's see what that is. He goes verbally, it, meaning the meaning of this message, might be expressed in this way.
I, the green grocer, live here, and I know what I must do.
I behave in the manner expected of me.
I can be depended upon, and I'm beyond reproach.
I am obedient, and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.
So what Havel is saying is this is really what the greengrocer is trying to say.
It's like, listen, I'm obedient.
In a sense, I'm a slave.
I accept the system that is enslaving me, and I will conform to its rules and etiquette.
Leave me alone. I'm not a troublemaker.
So think about it.
This is not a message.
The slogan, Workers of the World Unite, would seem to be addressed to the people who come into the store.
But Havel is saying that, no, actually the greengrocer is not even talking to those people.
He's talking to somebody else.
But who? This message, of course, has an addressee.
It is directed above to the greengrocer's superior.
And at the same time, it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers.
So, the greengrocer doesn't want someone to call up the authorities.
Hey, listen, we see the Workers of the World Unite sign everywhere, but we don't see it here.
I mean, think about the resonance of this to us.
Hey, listen, I'm in a store.
You know what? People are walking around without masks.
I don't know how many people here are unvaccinated.
You may want to send the health authorities down here or the cops to find out what's going on.
This was going on in America not so long ago and maybe to some degree still going on today.
So the point I'm trying to make is while Vaclav Havel is speaking in a completely different context, his message is relevant.
The slogan's real meaning, he writes, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence.
It reflects his vital interests.
But, says Havel, what are those vital interests?
I'm continuing my discussion of Vaclav Havel's classic essay, The Power of the Powerless.
We're talking about the greengrocer with the sign in his window, Workers of the World Unite.
And here's what Havel says, and this is where I think the essay really plumbs a depth that could easily be missed if we're not paying careful attention.
Let us take note. If the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan, I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient, He would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth.
The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity.
To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign, which at least on its textual surface indicates a level of disinterested conviction.
It must allow the greengrocer to say, Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power.
It hides them behind the facade of something high.
And that something is ideology.
Now there's just a lot here.
And let's try to see what's going on.
Havel is saying, look, the real meaning of this slogan, Workers of the World Unite, is not the slogan itself.
It is, I, the green grocer, am not a troublemaker.
I'm a conformist.
I'm actually a simple man.
I'm a coward. I don't want to fight the system.
I cannot fight the system.
So I am submitting to the system.
Now, Havel says, let's say you told the greengrocer, well, why put up the silly workers of the world unite?
Say that! Say I'm a coward.
Say, listen, I submit.
I can't do anything else.
What do you expect me to do? Fight the whole Soviet machine?
Fight the whole Czechoslovakian government?
I'm not going to do that.
But the greengrocer doesn't want to do that.
Why? Because, says Havel, we as human beings, even though we might be degraded in many ways, we have a sort of spark of dignity, a spark of divinity, a spark of kind of higher humanity.
And this pride, this self-pride, won't allow us to admit that we are...
Think of what happens in a criminal justice system.
You catch some guy who's, let's say, a child molester.
And how often does the child molester go, listen, I'm an absolutely disgusting human being.
I'm a child molester.
No, there's always some, I didn't do it.
I really wasn't trying to do that.
No, no, no. There's been a great misunderstanding.
It's not just that the guy is trying to beat the system.
He's not just trying to beat the rap.
He cannot say out loud to other people.
He cannot even afford to hear it himself, the phrase, I am a child molester.
And this is what Havel is getting at here, that the greengrocer needs a camouflage.
The greengrocer has to communicate that message because the authorities need to hear it.
They need to know that this guy is not a troublemaker.
And he's willing to say that to them, but he can't say it literally.
So he has to say it metaphorically.
He has to disguise his own degradation.
It's kind of like a slave who pretends, I'm not really a slave.
You know what? I can actually leave the plantation.
I'm a free man.
So, the slave, and this didn't happen under slavery, but I'm only giving the analogy to illustrate the point, Havel is saying that the grain grosser adopts the camouflage.
Because then if somebody says, hey, you're a slave, he goes, oh no, I'm not a slave.
I'm simply saying that the workers of the world should unite this.
This is a wonderful idea.
I don't know if it can happen, but at least it's a noble sentiment.
Now, at the end of the statement, Havel goes, Now, this is a very important theme, and we'll pick this up as I continue my discussion of this essay tomorrow.
But you had Soviet ideology.
You had kind of the formal communist ideology of the Soviet system.
We in the United States also have ideology.
So what is ideology?
Ideology is a kind of system for describing the world.
But it's a framework unto itself.
It provides a kind of The lens through which you see the world.
And Havel is making a point here that is worth thinking about, which is the tyranny in the old world.
This is before socialism, before communism.
This is even before Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Hitler or, for that matter, Joe Biden.
Havel is saying, in the old world, tyranny didn't have ideology.
In other words, some guy would conquer another tribe and tyrannize over them.
Or some guy would become a ruler, he'd come to power, he would muscle people around, he would tell people what to do.
But says Havel, this was not part of any kind of ideological system.
The guy didn't have things that he, for example, wanted you to believe.
You didn't have an old tyrant saying to people, listen, you've got to subscribe to this view.
You can't speak your mind.
His idea was, don't oppose me.
I'm the head of state.
If you oppose me, I'll smash you.
But otherwise, you can live your life any way you want.
Particularly interest me what your beliefs are, what you eat, what you do if there's an epidemic.
Whether or not you wear a mask is up to you.
If you want to drop dead, that's your choice.
So, by and large, tyranny of the old sort confined itself with protecting its own access to power.
But modern-day tyranny wants to subject us, to bring us to the knee, if you will, in all sorts of ways.
It wants to regulate, to some degree, our entire life.
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