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There's a few breaking moments in life where like whatever your stuff is and whatever you believe it's suddenly like you just for whatever reason like there's some like existential thing that you you get confronted with it at some point and either either you cower in that moment or you confront it and I I just think that everyone that confronts it, it doesn't mean you'll win the first time around. | ||
You might learn some really bad lesson. | ||
And by the way, that's not to say, look, James Damore did get laid off. | ||
You might be laid off. | ||
You might lose friends, all of those things, except the real question is, do you wanna live sort of bowing down all the time to some unknown enemy? | ||
Or do you wanna say what you believe and then at least have a chance to live on your terms? | ||
And I think that that's what a lot of people are realizing right now. | ||
unidentified
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[MUSIC] | |
I'm Bridget Phetasy and I'm here with Dave Rubin with the Don't Burn This Book | ||
book club doing chapter two. | ||
unidentified
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Hi, Dave. | |
Hello, Bridget. | ||
Chapter two. | ||
We thought this would be a good one for you in light of the Phetasy evolution. | ||
Yes, it has been an evolution. | ||
I think what, you know, right out of the gates in this chapter, you talk about years of self-deception. | ||
You mention when people maybe have been deceiving themselves for years. | ||
What were you deceiving yourself about for all those years? | ||
Yeah, well, I think one of the things that's happening right now is that a lot of people are realizing either that they've deceived themselves or maybe that they've viewed the world a little bit incorrectly | ||
and they're trying to piece together a new world. | ||
And actually, even though I wrote this before coronavirus, especially right now, I think a lot of people are going, | ||
oh, there's a new world on the horizon. | ||
Maybe everything that I believed in before isn't quite exactly right. | ||
Maybe I have to think about a new way of thinking about things. | ||
I referenced in chapter one that it's time to come out and I talk about coming out of the closet, | ||
which usually people apply to sexuality, and that right now there's a lot of politically closeted | ||
people that just aren't saying what they think. | ||
And it probably goes both ways. | ||
Mostly I'm talking about it from a lefty to a more centrist or right thing, | ||
but I'm sure there's a version of it that's the other way, that you grew up very conservative | ||
and you start thinking more liberal thoughts and you could be closeted that way or any which way. | ||
Look, I was closeted about my sexuality first, so I just know what that thing is, that sort of insidious inability to deal with reality as it is. | ||
And just once you can't accept a part of yourself, whether that's your sexuality or just something that you innately believe or feel or want to fight for or any version of that, once you don't do that and you start hiding that, It cascades into just like a gajillion other problems. | ||
Yeah. | ||
How do you tell people who might suffer real life consequences to come out? | ||
Because unlike sexuality now, thank goodness, you can't lose your job, for instance, if you come out. | ||
But some people, you talk about it in this chapter, James Damore, might lose their jobs And how does somebody, how do you, how do you go about coming out or do you? | ||
Yeah, you know, it's super interesting. | ||
It's so interesting because when I go to college campuses, I get some version of this a lot where young people will be like, you know, I want to tell my friends that I'm a libertarian or I want to tell them that I'm a conservative or something. | ||
I once was giving a talk a couple of months ago in Atlanta and a young guy came up to me at the bar after the talk and he sat down. | ||
And he happened to be a young black guy and he sat down and first he told me that he was gay. | ||
And then it took him another like 20 minutes of chatting. | ||
Like the gay thing, he was just like, I'm gay, like whatever. | ||
And then it took him like another 20 minutes of talking to basically admit that he was a conservative. | ||
And he actually told me, he told me, this is a young guy, I'm talking like probably 19, 20 years old. | ||
He said that coming out to his parents about his conservative beliefs was way harder than coming out as gay. | ||
As crazy as that sounds. | ||
As crazy as that sounds. | ||
And I've heard a lot of that type of story. | ||
But what's also interesting, when I mention people like James Damore and Lindsey Shepard at Wilfrid Laurier, who is a TA, who literally all she did was show her class a Jordan Peterson video and then was taken into the diversity and inclusion office and reprimanded. | ||
And many other people that have survived the mob one way or another. | ||
You know a ton of these people. | ||
It's like once you once you sort of get in the pool, this is a Douglas Murray line about, you know, if you get in the pool, you might find out the water is not cold. | ||
I think generally what happens is, you know, a guy like James Damore, who's, you know, by all by anyone's estimation, he was extremely good and probably still is an extremely good engineer. | ||
He had just got a promotion like two months before at Google. | ||
They send him to this diversity training class, and then they ask them, we would love your feedback. | ||
And I'm guessing most of those people didn't give any feedback. | ||
He actually did it. | ||
They said, here's homework. | ||
The poor guy, poor guy, whatever, he goes ahead and does it, and then not only loses his job because of it, but then we see what happens with everybody. | ||
The machine just comes after them. | ||
All the hit pieces, suddenly he's racist, even though he didn't talk about race. | ||
Of course he hates women, and he hates gays, and the rest of it. | ||
And you know, I mentioned this in the book, but it was the only time ever in all the shows that I've ever done where James Damore came in here. | ||
He was so nervous and so quiet and shy and so somebody that didn't, he didn't want any of this. | ||
I had to spend about an hour with him just, just kind of getting him to open up. | ||
And then fortunately, you know how it is. | ||
Sometimes the camera goes on and people just magically kind of become something. | ||
And he was able to turn it on 10%. | ||
But he's still pretty quiet and shy and the rest of it. | ||
But the point of it is, is that if you embrace it, you will get to the other side. | ||
Like I have no doubt that James Damore right now does not regret what he did. | ||
Sure, maybe he'd have a better, I don't know what his job is right now. | ||
I know he's still in the field and he has an engineering job. | ||
But I have no doubt, it's not at Google. | ||
I have no doubt that because he stood up for himself, he's proud that he did it. | ||
I know for a fact Lindsey Shepard is proud that she did it. | ||
I know that Jordan Peterson, who stood up against Bill C-16 in Canada, I know he's proud. | ||
So all the people that I've seen survive, it's like every single one of them is better, even though yeah, some friends are gonna turn on you, some people are gonna say some horrible things, and most likely HuffPo ain't gonna be nice to you either. | ||
Yeah, to say the least. | ||
You say, too, and in fact, if you miss the boat, there's a chance you'll end up stranded. | ||
Where will they be stranded? | ||
unidentified
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Well, I think you only get a couple... I understand the metaphor, but... Did you understand the metaphor? | |
Yeah. | ||
It's not a literal place, although you could be stranded on an island, I suppose. | ||
But I think part of it is that, you know, you only get a couple chances in life to really like stand up for what you believe. | ||
Like we all kind of, we all kind of walk through life and there's a sort of day to day routine. | ||
And we're, we're into like a particularly weird aspect of it right now with coronavirus, where we sort of like, it's like, does the week end anymore? | ||
And is Wednesday the same as Sunday? | ||
So it's a little strange right now, but yeah, nobody knows anymore. | ||
Right. | ||
but I think there's a few breaking moments in life where whatever your stuff is and whatever you believe, | ||
it's suddenly, for whatever reason, there's some existential thing | ||
that you get confronted with it at some point, and either you cower in that moment or you confront it. | ||
And I just think that everyone that confronts it, it doesn't mean you'll win the first time around. | ||
Like you might learn some really bad lesson. | ||
And by the way, that's not to say, look, James Damore did get laid off. | ||
You might be laid off. | ||
You might lose friends, all of those things. | ||
Except the real question is, do you want to live sort of bowing down all the time to some like unknown enemy? | ||
Or do you want to say what you believe and then at least have a chance to live on your terms? | ||
And I think that that's what a lot of people are realizing right now. | ||
That thing that's been quieting all of us, that makes all of us secretly be like, oh, I don't wanna be called a racist or a bigot, even though I'm not those things, it's like, it only gets power by us never confronting it, and I think more and more people finally are starting to confront it. | ||
How do you know you're not deceiving yourself now, or how does one guard against self-deception? | ||
It's tough, right? | ||
Because you could end up going, and I think about this a lot, because look, I'm not stupid or naive, Like, I've been embraced now by people that I used to think were the bad guys, right? | ||
That now I find to be quite tolerant and open and all that. | ||
I'm not saying they're all perfect, for sure. | ||
But I am sort of welcomed into a new home right now. | ||
And maybe they see me and they go, oh, well, here's this nice guy and he's open minded and he treats us well. | ||
So we can kind of use him along the way, too. | ||
I don't think that's really what's happening with the people that I've truly sort of embraced in this space, let's say. | ||
You know, Glenn Beck or Shapiro or Prager or some of these other guys. | ||
But I think the key of what you're asking really is, like, how do you make sure once you think one thing that when you find something else that you start thinking, how do you make sure you don't fall in the same trap again and then just end up doing it, you know, three years later and then just keep, like, you know, jumping, hopscotching through life? | ||
I think the key is that you got to start doing some work. | ||
And that's what a lot of the rest of the book is about, which is you really got to start "knowing your stuff." | ||
So look, you're the one who coined the famous factory settings line. | ||
And I love it so much because we're born with these factory settings that culture | ||
and education and movies and everything kind of teaches us where it's sort of like | ||
Democrat good, Republican bad, lefties are nice, conservatives are cold, Republicans like war, | ||
Democrats like peace, like some really crazy stuff. | ||
And when you break out of that, there'll suddenly be a whole new world and you'll go, oh, that stuff isn't true. | ||
But it doesn't mean that everything that you're going to get on the other side is true either. | ||
So I think it's then on you. | ||
I mean, a lot of this book is why I want people to think for themselves. | ||
It's on you, not to just then go, oh, there's a whole new group of people here and they've got new thoughts. | ||
There must've been right about everything and I was wrong about everything. | ||
Like, it's not like that. | ||
I don't think I was wrong about everything before and I've somehow come to the truth now. | ||
I think I got some key things wrong and a lot of my good liberal ethos was always there. | ||
And it's still here, and I think actually the conservatives that I disagree with, they actually appreciate an honest liberal debating with them. | ||
Right. | ||
Somebody made a really great point that I'll never forget and they said, it's not what you're saying, it's what you're not saying. | ||
When I was saying everybody's accusing me of being a grifter or whatever and so what are you not saying? | ||
Is there anything you're not saying? | ||
Are you censoring yourself in any way now? | ||
Wow, I don't think so. | ||
I mean, if I am, or even if you think I am, I would love to hear it. | ||
I think I have been as honest with every one of my opinions as humanly possible. | ||
Look, in this book, if you're just like a complete ideologue on each side, you're a pure Democrat or lefty or you're a pure Republican or conservative, whatever, There's stuff to be pissed off at me for all of it. | ||
I mean, the abortion chapter, I literally end it by saying, now that you all hate me, let's move on. | ||
So it's like, you know, abortion is the one for the right that they just view as like, this cannot be touched. | ||
Like it's pro-life, pro-life. | ||
But I make a pro-choice argument here. | ||
You know, like I talk about being married to a man in this book. | ||
You know, they know I'm against the death penalty. | ||
Like this is stuff for them that's really tough. | ||
And yet at the same time, obviously I'm hitting things that the left's not happy about when I do a pretty swift blow against identity politics and a bunch of other stuff. | ||
I don't think there's anything else that people don't know about me. | ||
Well, I'm certainly not intentionally hiding anything, I would say it that way. | ||
But also what happens is as you start embracing it, you will go, oh, there was some stuff I didn't know. | ||
So for example, when people say to me, well, have you shifted on anything or is it just that the left went bananas? | ||
It's like, well, actually, I do think the left went bananas and they have a real issue with free speech and cancel culture and all that. | ||
But I'm fully up front. | ||
Economically, I've absolutely shifted to the right. | ||
I want you, Bridget, to keep as much of your money as possible. | ||
I want to take more money from the government so they can't just do stuff and it's your money in the first place. | ||
I'm pretty sure that whatever you earn, you know a better thing to do with it than they know what to do with it. | ||
By the way, I'm pretty I'm happy that right now, with everything going on with Corona, as messed up as it is, I think a lot of people are waking up to that. | ||
All these people that are struggling financially, it's like, yeah, you should have had more of your money in the first place. | ||
I think that a lot of people in liberal enclaves in particular, just because of the nature of the crackdowns, seem a little bit more draconian. | ||
Places like LA, our mayor in particular, is very hardcore. | ||
Do you think How many neighbors did you spy on today? | ||
Because you know, you can get paid if you see your neighbor and oh my God, he was brushing his hair four feet away from somebody else. | ||
You can get some seriously cold hard cash. | ||
It's just so crazy. | ||
You mentioned identity politics and do you see, I see the right and use identity politics. | ||
Do you see any of that on their side, in the right wing at all? | ||
Um, I think there's probably some version of it there, but I think it's muted in many ways because basically the right has a bigger belief in individual rights. | ||
So where they may use it for like political tactics or like some subtle language thing. | ||
I do think that, look, if you're a libertarian or a conservative, you pretty much believe in individual rights. | ||
I don't know certainly any public intellectual on the right that doesn't believe that everyone in America should be treated equally under the law. | ||
I'm not saying that that person doesn't exist. | ||
I have yet to meet that person. | ||
Is there a Twitter troll on the right that believes, you know, something else? | ||
Of course. | ||
I think the bigger danger, and why so many people have trouble embracing the wake-up is that they see something wrong with the left because they think there's this sort of idea like you're on the left, you're just nice and open and you like gay people and you like Muslims and you're open and fun and whatever. | ||
And it's really just like a scary thing to go, whoa, I might be one of those people or something that's not these people. | ||
I think that really is what it is. | ||
So is there an identity politics On the right, well, look, yeah, I guess on the fringe part of the right, like, is there some sort of white identitarian thing? | ||
I mean, well, of course there is. | ||
Like, is there a KKK? | ||
Like, there is. | ||
I don't know how many people are really part of it, but I don't think it has any sort of, like, real, like, juice behind it. | ||
And also, oddly, and this is like the, you know, the political fishhook that kind of comes around, or the horseshoe, so that everything ends up the same. | ||
It's like, if you're a right-wing, what we would say is a right-wing, you know, white supremacist, Well, that means you're a collectivist. | ||
And actually, if you're a collectivist, you're really more on the left, meaning you believe in groups. | ||
When people talk about far-right, technically, actually, I should talk to Michael Malice about this at some time, but someone like Michael Malice is more what I would say far-right, if we're doing this correctly. | ||
Far-right meaning he's for far ultimate individual liberty at the expense of the state. | ||
That would strike me as more technically correct for far right, rather than an identitarian who believes in collectivism. | ||
That really goes the other way. | ||
But that's why the right-left thing, we always talk about this, the right-left thing is just so out of whack right now. | ||
It is. | ||
And it kind of leads me into my next question. | ||
You say the left is no longer liberal. | ||
And where do people who identify with progressive values, but perhaps not crazy leftist authoritarianism, go? | ||
Because they can't go, you know, I know a lot of people who can't just hold their nose and vote for Trump, for instance. | ||
And I know that the binary is kind of a myth, but at the end of the day, you have to vote for someone or not vote at all, but. | ||
Yeah, it's a tough one because yes, the binary is, it's a myth except it's reality. | ||
Except it's not, yeah. | ||
Right, it's a myth in that it's a myth like it shouldn't be. | ||
It's like an imaginary thing that sort of morphed into reality. | ||
So what I would say for those people, and by the way, obviously a huge chunk of this book is written for those people because I was one of those people. | ||
Look, I think you have a choice. | ||
Your choice is either somehow stay within the left liberal bubble and see if you can reclaim it from within, which by the way, I tried to do for a long time. | ||
You can watch a lot of videos of mine. | ||
from 2015, 2016. | ||
I'm going, guys, I'm a lefty, I'm a liberal, what are we doing? | ||
I'm screaming, I'm talking to all these lefties who are experiencing the same thing. | ||
And then at some point, I just felt it was an unwinnable battle, and I think a lot of people do realize that, that something has taken over on the left that is just decimating the whole thing. | ||
And look, even just right now with Biden, it's like they chose Biden, or the party chose Biden, And we can talk about all the mental stuff with him or whatever else, but it's like, there's no sense that these people believe anything together. | ||
AOC and Biden don't believe anything together. | ||
So my feeling is there's just right now, there's just not much left. | ||
However, what I do see on the right is there are plenty of more libertarian minded people, say like a Glenn Beck, and then there's more traditionally conservative people, say like a Ben Shapiro. | ||
And I'm just picking people out of our crew, but I could give you politicians in this vein as well. | ||
So you'd have like more libertarians like Rand Paul and then more traditional conservatives like Ted Cruz. | ||
I see that as fertile ground for something good. | ||
I always want the conservatives to know, by the way guys, I'm not trying to trick you into being pro-choice. | ||
I'm really not. | ||
I just want something broadly on the right to make a little space for the exact people that you're talking about. | ||
And by the way, I think they're doing a pretty good job of it. | ||
Because I think they are being kind of open-minded. | ||
When was the last time someone on the right really tried to mob you for saying something? | ||
It's weird. | ||
Yeah, my experience has been that they're more willing to at least have the conversation. | ||
And I think that's where the two parties are just so, look so differently right now, | ||
is that if you speak out against the tribe, you might be kicked out of, | ||
if it's, if you're, you might be kicked out of MAGA, for instance, | ||
but there's still space for you in the conservative party. | ||
Whereas if you push back against the left, you kind of just get kicked out. | ||
So I feel like there's a huge. | ||
Population of people who might be interested in your book, but there's where do they go? | ||
There's there I know well, where do we go? | ||
Where do we go? | ||
The answer is the answer is we build it like the answer is like we blazed the trail that that truly is the answer Look, everything's changing right now. | ||
You look I wrote this I finished this book in July and it's out now at the end of April but the but the point is that the ideas in here are timeless. | ||
And it's like the left, right, Republican, Democrat thing, that's not timeless. | ||
That's just a construct politically that can stay for a certain period of time | ||
and then moves on. | ||
We used to have the Whig Party, you know what I mean? | ||
We used to have other parties. | ||
So like nothing stays forever. | ||
And if maybe the progressives, or maybe they really decide to be the socialists | ||
and the Democrats can be more of the sort of corporatist wing and maybe ultimately the Republicans | ||
will say, here's our traditional party and here's a more libertarian party or something like that. | ||
But more than anything else, I don't think you have to belong to a party. | ||
I think you have to go, all right, here are 10 things that I care about, and six of them match up with these guys, and four match up with these guys, and I'll just kind of figure it out as I'm going to that voting booth. | ||
And you, I know we all become kind of political abstractions and almost cartoons online, and we're hard on the lefties. | ||
What good do you still see remaining in that, and this is my last question really, what good do you see remaining in the left, or what's left of the left? | ||
If by the left we mean sort of what modern leftism has become, so like the Bernie AOC kind of identity politics, government is everything left, then frankly I don't think there's anything left. | ||
I don't think there's any good ideas left. | ||
It doesn't mean there aren't good people there. | ||
I think there's people with some bad ideas that have been confused because of the factory settings and some other stuff. | ||
So I think it's our job, right, like someone like you that also is on your own political evolution and you did, you were exactly, the reason I wanted you to do this chapter was because you did embrace your wake up call and you're very upfront that like it's a work in progress and I'm not gonna be on a team right now and all that kind of stuff. | ||
So if that's what we mean by the modern left, then there really is nothing left, at least for me. | ||
If you mean what the last few disaffected liberals like, you know, the Jedi after Order 66 who were scattered across the galaxy, well then what do they have to do? | ||
They have to, I think they have to talk to the guys that they thought were the Sith who may not be the Sith. | ||
How about that for a Star Wars reference to bring it home? | ||
I had to cut like 80 Star Wars references in this book so I thought I could get one in there. | ||
Thank you for asking me to interview you and good luck with the book. | ||
I love I love it. | ||
It speaks to me, obviously. | ||
My awakening is definitely, it's been, you made so many people feel sane, and I am one of them. | ||
I am one of the people that, during the confusion, because what I think happens, like you said, is you start feeling like you're going crazy. | ||
And if there had been no internet, and no Dave Rubin, and all of the people you were speaking with at that time, I think I probably would have thought I was losing my mind. | ||
And maybe last it more than... more than I already... Listen, now you're doing that for other people, so I guess the adventure continues. | ||
Yes. | ||
Well, thank you. | ||
Thank you, Bridget. | ||
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