University of Washington. Being a strong man, tap Seattle's premier, tent-based science outreach activity. Astronomers hate this one weird trick. Seven tips to reduce your gray matter fat. Insert other clickbait titles. You've seen them. I've seen them. We're going to talk about them. And because I feel like I'm here with 100 of my closest friends, I want to give this talk on slightly a personal note. This is something that I haven't really talked about before, so come along with me on this journey. Be a little forgiving as I explore this thing that's been bothering me. And I want to get it off my chest. And I want to talk to you about this. But before we dive in, I want to set some ground rules for what I'm going to say and what I'm not going to say. And the first thing I want to say is, thank you for coming out. Thank you for supporting science, local scientists, local business, local beer, local vegan hot dogs. And thank you for supporting knowledge and truth in a time when we really need more of that. Thank you. Give yourself a round of applause for that. OK, good cheesy audience interaction. Check. Next. OK, the first thing I want to say is, am I this way? OK, there we go. The first thing I want to say is, I am a huge fan of science. I love, yes, I love science, right? There's a reason that I do this for a living, and it's not the pay, and it's not the glamorous office. Though UW is a lovely campus, you should all visit.  It's awesome. And I love, every time I see in the news, cool headlines, amazing graphs. I love that graphs become part of our narrative and part of our news media. It's an exciting time to be a fan of science, to be part of the sort of cultural movement that appreciates knowledge in the search for truth. Thumbs up science. OK, so first, I love science just like you. I'm a fan of science. The second thing, which I think is actually just restating the first thing, is that when you're a scientist or when you're a fan of science, you love failure. You love being wrong. Being wrong is just nature telling you that, no, try again. Come up with a better idea, a better explanation for how the universe is working. So if you love science, you have to love the struggle, and you have to love truth, OK, truth. And that's what this talk is about. It's about rooting out the BS and discovering the truth and appreciating and celebrating the truth. Being wrong is OK. I'm going to talk about clickbait articles and headlines that didn't turn out to be true or were over-exaggerated or pictures that were like, oh, that was photoshopped.  So we're not here to dunk on people who are just enthusiastic. We're here to help get everybody on team truth, team root out the BS. So being wrong is OK. Let's move forward from there. So with those ground rules in place, come with me as we talk about clickbait, misunderstandings, and maybe even some outright lies. All right, the first example I want to talk about is one that started many years ago, something like almost 20 years ago, which is this so-called the Mars hoax. I'm sure people have seen this in their inbox with like forward, forward, re, forward. Go outside and see Mars. It's going to be the size of a ham sandwich in the sky. I've seen this email repeatedly over the years. This is called the Mars hoax. It even has its own Wikipedia page called Mars underscore hoax. And it tends to crop up every August, sometime in late August. Usually August 25th or 27th, something like that. And the claim is that go outside, because Mars is going to be so big in the sky that it'll be giant and it'll be awe-inspiring. It'll be as big as the moon or as big as, again, a ham sandwich or something. I don't know. It'll be huge. It'll be spectacular. It'll be the last time in 40,000 years you'll see it. And you've got to go outside.   And then you're disappointed.  There's a reason I didn't do this in college. And you move on. And little by little, we chip away at your interest and your excitement and your enthusiasm and your belief and your trust in science as an institution. OK, the funny thing about this hoax is that it was based largely on the truth. Is that about 20 years ago, there was a time when Mars was the closest it had been in like 40,000 years. It was slightly closer than it usually is, which made no perceptible difference whatsoever. Mars is like a dot.  And that was Mars at its closest opposition. And it was cool. And Hubble, I think, actually even took this photo. The Hubble Space Telescope actually took this photo at that point, because it was slightly closer. I think it was cool. But this has morphed and recurred, because it's so spectacular and ridiculous. OK, here's another great one that I see a lot. Any time there's an eclipse, any kind of eclipse, really, you see this thing floating around Reddit and Twitter.  Wow. And it's awesome. Look, that's just objectively awesome looking. There's the Milky Way, and there's a shadow, and there's contrasts and colors. And this is somebody's work from an art website, DeviantArt. This is somebody's Photoshop, where they were trying to show off cool stuff. This was not meant to deceive you. It was meant to be like, hey, look at my Photoshop skills. And instead, it's been co-opted into this hoax about this amazing picture has only been seen by astronauts eating ham sandwiches once in 40,000 years. And it's nonsense, right? This is not what an eclipse from space looks like, and you wouldn't see the Milky Way. But the enthusiasm is good, right? That's the point. People aren't sharing this because they're trying to get you to buy something. They're sharing it because space is cool, and science is cool. And I've hit like on this before, and then be like, ah, damn it, this is the Photoshop one, right? Eclipse from space. OK, the third one that I want to talk about right here is the super blood wolf coyote moon thing, right? Like, we did have some amazing eclipses. Some amazing, this was from space.com, but like some amazing eclipses. This is all good. I'm happy here. I don't love the title. I don't know what a blood wolf moon is or what makes it super. But like, I'm fine. Go outside, watch the eclipse. It's cool. It's amazing. Take a picture. It's great. This is fine. This is a problem. This is Rio de Janeiro, plus, I don't know, like a Ridley Scott movie, right?  What? Right, you can go, I mean, this should tell you this is a problem because it's even on Snopes, right? There are BS websites, Snopes.com, the super moon nonsense. This is a problem. OK, the point of part one of this talk is science communication is important. We've got to communicate what's true.  They retweeted, this is yesterday I took this screenshot, so it's 15 minutes plus 24 hours. Millions of Americans think chocolate milk comes from? Brown cows. Come on, what? No, that's not true. Right? I don't think so. The survey that they link to says 7% of adults in America think chocolate milk, this is not astronomy for all those playing along, this is just milk. 7% of adults in America think that cows produce chocolate milk. And what's funny about it is also this survey was kind of garbage, like if you go back and look at the survey, they did do a survey, but the survey is not rigorous, so the whole thing is just nonsense, and it bounces back and forth. And what I love about this is that the guy is offering the cow, there's two straws, the two straws slays me. But then he's like, there you go, cow. OK, but the point, if there is a point, the point is that science communication is important, and chocolate milk is delicious. Let's talk about some real science. OK, so that's popular culture stuff. This is the stuff that pops up in your news feed, in your email. This is what I work on. I've written a paper on this star. I've worked with the lead author of this study before. This is a really amazing, true, amazing detection of what's called Boyajian star, named after Tabitha Boyajian, a professor who discovered this amazing object. And here's the deal. This is why we all went, whoa, it did this. It had these wiggly lines. And to scientists, that's a huge deal, wiggly lines. Because the shape of these lines were totally unexpected. Something passed in front of this star to make it go dim for a day or two, and it had a really weird profile. And we don't really know what it is. And that's the God's honest truth. We don't really know what it's probably dust, or a comet, or a bunch of comets, or something. That's not that exciting. Nobody's going, wow, out there. OK, so the Atlantic picked this up, because it's kind of cool. It's a really unusual discovery. The most mysterious star in our galaxy. All right, that's fine. That's fine. I don't have any problem with that. Astronomers have spotted a strange object. Yeah, it's fine. Scientists study extraterrestrial civilizations are scrambling to get a look. I get a little worried. We're OK. It's fine. It's fine. It's the Atlantic. It's a good publication. You should subscribe or whatever. Here's a funny outfit called the Washington Post. The flickers are consistent with an alien mega structure like this artist concept of halo or something. Is it flickering because of aliens? Show more. It says no. It should say no. OK, this gets better. This is the fine folks at Discovery. Again, we're not trying to dunk here. We're just trying to point out interesting facts. Here it is. Has Kepler, the space telescope that discovered this, has Kepler discovered an alien mega structure? I love this one because the artist's rendition is so, so pointless. Like it looks like firefly. Why did they cancel it? OK, here's one more on Boyajin's star. Have aliens built huge structures around Boyajin's star? Probably not. But alternative explanations are hard to come by. This is true. Here's another good artist rendition. It looks like a bunch of iPhone 8s centered around a campfire, which is funny. And here's the really funny part about this one. Scientific American is a pretty reputable publication. Here's the funny thing about this one. This guy, Jason Wright, is a professor of astronomy at Penn State University, is an absolutely brilliant scientist who I've worked with. And he, and this is a former graduate student of his Kimberly Cartier, they are the real deal. And this is the problem. You've got to write this, or at least the editors think you've got to write this headline to get people to click to read the article. The article is completely sensible. But the headline is ridiculous. And I'm making fun of Jason because he's smart, and I love him. But we do look for weird stuff. We do look for weird exotic patterns. This is an illustration that I drew of exotic patterns we might see in data that could be indicative of aliens. Jason himself actually works on the honest to God search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's a fascinating topic that's finally getting subtraction and not being just laughed at. I'm hoping to come back and, yeah, thank you. It's awesome. We ought to look. I want to believe, and we ought to look. So there is real science here, but oh, golly, we need to be careful about reporting them. These searches and these finds, we got to be really careful. We have an obligation as scientists to be really careful. And I worry. I worry that we're not. But ominous logo hiding off the side of the screen. But we are faced with an even bigger challenge, a challenger who has a lot bigger machinery behind them that we are going to have a hard time beating. And that is the social media science fan accounts.  Occasionally get it wrong, but they actually do really care about science. I don't want to pick on them, but I'm going to pick on some other people here. OK, here is an account called atPhysics-Astronomy, or atOrgPhysics. They got a really cool domain name. Here's a picture they posted September 6th. View of Hurricane Dorian from the coast of Florida. Spoiler, no, it ain't.  We don't get a lot of them here. But they're a big deal.  They're not really that funny. And if you saw this on the TV, and you went outside and freaked out, like, oh, we got to pack up and run because I recognize this coastline, we got to run. This is not great. I don't like this. This is unethical, I think I would categorize this as. And they have 110,000 Twitter followers. This post had 100,000 retweets.  Here's another one, from atInterestingSci1. To their credit, they don't try to explain what it is. They just say, wow. But this is like a baking experiment gone wrong. What is this, Toronto or something? Shout out, shout out Toronto. Yeah, this is Tim Hortons. They have 143,000 followers. This has 15,000 views. It is, I don't know what, I mean, it's fine if it's art. It's fine if it's art. It's cool, it's engaging to your eyeballs. But it ain't science. And it's not science and nature, the account title. You know, I worry about this. This is what's causing me worry. How do we fight back against this? Here's one more. AtZonePhysics, which is a sweet Einstein logo and a cool banner. Oh, they've got a great URL, physics-astronomy.org. That's cool. That's a great URL. I wish I had that domain. And 800, almost 850, better part of a million followers. And they posted, this is yesterday, November 20, 2019. Yesterday morning, when I grabbed this, it had 250 retweets. It's since grown. Pluto has been reclassified as a planet. Rejoice. No, it hasn't. That is a lie. Not only that, if you click on their silly website and you go to the article that's linked, it's a link to an April Fools article. What do we do about this? OK, yeah, physics, yeah, whatever. Here we go. They're a big deal. They've got lots of followers. This is a huge impact for nonsense. This is going to cause people a lot of confusion about what we do. That upsets me a little bit. Not like, damn it, you've got to get it right. Or like, you should know better. But the due diligence, where is the celebration of truth? You got it wrong. I'm not worried about that.  Where is that post? Where is the integrity to say, we messed it up? It's OK to get it wrong. I get it wrong all the time. At 850,000 followers, there are only two astronomers in the world with more Twitter followers than that. One is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson in New York, TV celebrity. The other is Dr. Brian May, also known as the kind from Queen. He was only in one of the biggest fans of all time. And he's only got a million followers. So go follow Brian May, huh? And then this account slides in above Phil Plate, the bad astronomer who is one of the biggest deals of astronomy communication. If you're not following Phil Plate, man, get on your phone right now. Ignore me. I got 2,000 followers. Ignore me. Go follow Phil Plate. He's the real deal. These people are crushing him. This is concerning. Why? Does this page exist? Here's your answer. This page has nothing to do with physics and astronomy, of course. It has to do with affordable islands and a man turning an airplane into a house, which actually does sound really cool. And look at the deepest hole the planet has. And this yacht, right, these are ads. I think this is self-explanatory. I think this, you can understand what I'm saying here. This is a machine to get you to click on things, to get your eyeballs on things, to get you to engage with things so they make a few pennies. And they do that a million times a day. That's depressing with my beer. Dramatic interlude. So what can we do about it? And I don't mean just like, what can we, the noble astronomers, I mean like, we, you, what can we do about this? Because the fact that you're here gives me a lot of hope. The fact that this is the 56th event for astronomy on top of Seattle. Shout out to astronomy on top of Seattle, 56th event.  It's not actually freezing, thank you, that's true. I was wrong. Thank you. Keep them honest. What can we do about this?   The internet is how you found out about this event likely. The internet is how I reach people every day and communicate science. The internet's a great thing. This is like a cultural problem that we can address. I want to end this on a hopeful note. So I have three action items, three things that we in this room need to do. Number one, we need to communicate about science. We as scientists need to communicate science. There's a great little blog post by Professor Michelle Franco from Bryn Morrow College and she ends it by saying, if we don't tell them what we do, the pseudoscientists will. They will fill that vacuum with nonsense. Now she's a chemist and so people are worried about putting chemicals on their hair and vaccines and stuff like real problems. Vaccines, vaccines are good. Vaccines are, they're a good thing and chemists worry a lot about bad reputations. Yeah, if we don't tell them what we do, the pseudoscientists will. That's a real threat. So to the scientists and the science folks in this room, tell them what you do so that nobody thinks these things. So nobody thinks that chocolate cows make the super blood moon or whatever. We gotta tell them about the science. We gotta spread truth. It's important. Number two, you more broadly than people in this tent can help share and intervene. One of the only ways that we can beat fake news.  One of the ways we can beat, we can so-called beat this kind of phenomenon is by intervening and telling people, actually that was garbage. And it feels so helpless in the moment when you have these tiny interactions, when you're butting heads with your great aunt or whatever on Facebook, but like, look, 253 tweets, we gotta try. We gotta try to intervene and tell people that wasn't true. There is research. There is research. I should have put a citation here. There is research that shows that by making these interventions, by telling people that like, hey, that was not a really reputable source that you linked to that one time. Maybe you should try. People actually do tend to get a little better. There is some hope that by elevating the discourse of people about science and about truth more broadly, that we might hope to center around something in this world that is true again. I think that's an important thing to strive for. And you all can help. It matters when you subscribe to somebody like Phil Plate and retweet the things that are cool about science. And it matters when somebody retweets the super blood moon over Rio de Janeiro with a cow jumping over it, that you say, that doesn't, that looks like Photoshop to me. I don't think that's real. Those things help. And third, and I think this is a more subtle point, but because we're in Seattle, I think it's worth standing up here and trying to make at least, we need the help of technology and technology companies with this problem. Now, I'm not the only one saying this by any stretch of the imagination. Finding spam and finding falsehoods and fake news is a huge deal right now. And a lot of really smart people are working on it. I took this screenshot of the Google Optimized Resource Hub, which is just like a documentation hub for how to get people to like look at your website and click your links. This is a really useful resource for developers who are trying to make websites that are pleasant to look at and great. Because they want eyeballs. Because the entire economy of the internet is based around eyeballs. We need other solutions besides just eyeball time equals dollars equals the only thing that matters on the internet. We need tools that help us optimize for things besides just eyeball time. We need tools that help us figure out what's the most efficient way to get knowledge across. What's the most efficient way to identify bad actors who are spreading misinformation and intervening when people are trying to share that content saying, just so you know that that's BS. How do we get these tools? I am not a programmer by trade. Some people in this room probably are. This is something important that matters to us. That matters to scientists. That we want, we need tools and we want tools to help build partnerships that will reward people who are creating science and science knowledge. So one thing, yeah, whoo. Also, Dr. Jesse Christensen, another amazing astronomer, Vlogbrothers, I think the best channel on YouTube.  Hank and John, there you go. There's the AOT bump. We already do this to an extent, right? These platforms verify or put fancy check marks or stars, nice people's names. Why not little brains? I don't know, this is like a cute idea. Why not, these are good sources of reputable truth and knowledge. Why not reward this by helping draw the reader to these kinds of sources? This is one trivial example. And going back to number two, technology companies and advertising companies will care if we all care. If we are subscribing to scientists and broadcasting that message of truth, then they will pay attention.  So subscribe to your local homegrown scientists and to your truth. All right, and in conclusion, again, these three action items, we need to do science outreach, we need help from everyone to spread truth and identify falsehoods. And we need the help of technology companies. And with that, I will thank you all. Thank you all for coming out again tonight. Thank you.


Now the obvious part for this session is the midterms coming up on November the 8th. America's first chance to put their thumbs up or thumbs down on the Biden administration. And when I remember when around the time that Biden was elected, he was kind of seeing a possibly modifying figure, maybe he was going to calm things down after the outrageous and brash Donald Trump. I think it's better to say things haven't quite worked out like that. So that's what we're going to be discussing for the next hour and a half or so. We've got a fantastic panel here for you today. I'm going to introduce them in order that they're going to speak. So to your left, we've got Jack Garland from the University of California, Los Angeles. Then we've got Darren Brooke, chair of the Iron Rands Institute. Then we have Richard Johnson, who is a lecturer in US politics at Queen Mary University and five of the head of the girls who is the chief operating officer at Feature Story News. That's enough for me. I'm going to have five minutes each. And then we might hear from you and what you think is going on. Okay, Jack, do I get this off the phone? Alright, so we're talking about midterms and the culture wars in the US. And if the United States can maintain its role as a preeminent power as a world leader despite the culture wars and despite polarization happening. So Americans care about domestic issues. It's really hard to get American voters to care about foreign affairs. And so the number one issue on everyone's mind right now is inflation. And that stands, Democrats, Republicans, and Dependents. It's more prominent among Republicans as their main issue compared to Democrats. But everyone's top issue right now is inflation. And then, like every midterm, this midterm election will be a referendum on the president to go by. And so apart from inflation and a referendum on Biden, we now move to the more social cultural issues. But there's a very important distinction between cultural issues and cultural war issues. So cultural war issues are issues where policies aren't proposed, ideas aren't proposed. It's just reverses listed. It's not trying to convince people of an idea of a policy. It's just trying to rile up their base and rage the other side. And so the number one cultural issue right now is abortion. And there's some legitimate debates around abortion with real policy implications. And a lot of room in the middle, a lot more than it may seem, to make some compromises. But the Democrats and Republicans are both exploring this issue to make it a cultural war. And so on the left, we have Joe Biden tweeting recently that a vote for Democrats is a vote to make Roe v. Wade law, which is not that simple. With that statement, he's trying to get Democrats excited and get them to the polls. And on the right, we have Lindsey Graham proposing a bill that fans abortion nationwide, which breaks from the Republican ranks and goes against the Republican idea that abortion should be a state's issue. His proposed bill, he knows will never pass, at least not in the next few years. And it's just meant to get Republicans excited, pro-life Republicans especially, and once again, get them to the polls. And then Democrats and Republicans both have their pet projects, their pet cultural war issues that they push once again to get their voters out to the polls. So the Republicans in the last few weeks have ramped up attacks on Democrats for being soft on crime and for allowing crime to happen and run rampant throughout cities. They're not really proposing any policies except for the very general funding of the police. And then on the right, they're on the left, they're very concerned about the January 6th committee right now, and what issues or what recommendations they might bring forward in the coming weeks. And they are now trying to reach Republicans or reach independence by talking about January 6th and talking about Donald Trump. They're trying to get another attempt to bath Trump and to get their base excited. So moving on to America's role as a world leader, Trump recently proposed a peace deal or peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, and he actually suggested that he could moderate these peace talks. So that brings, obviously, with American policy and with Ukrainian policy, and I think it's safe to suggest that he and his candidates, that he is supporting the midterms, are less supportive of Ukraine in their fighting against Russia. At the same time, Senate Minority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, is one of Ukraine's most ardent supporters. So it's hard to say that more Republicans in Congress would result in less support for Ukraine. I think in the short term, even if some Trump Republicans win their elections, support for Ukraine will be steady from America. And Biden right now is Biden and Democrats. There's been a bit of a shift from past years. They are coming out more supportive of Ukraine. But like I said earlier, I don't think this election will change how much support Ukraine's gotten from the U.S. So to answer the main question of this session, can the U.S. lead in this all this polarization? It did. It started before. It started this last year. It did it with a bill providing semiconductors and chip-manufacturing in the U.S. as opposed to in China. And it did it when Congress rallied around Democrats, Speaker Pelosi, when she visited Taiwan. And then, most importantly, it started three times and three separate bills since March providing support humanitarianly and militarily to Ukraine to amount to about $65 billion. So no matter the result of the election, the U.S. will continue to be a world leader because politicians understand the responsibility the U.S. has. In the long term, however, there's a possibility America retreats from the world stage. But this won't be because cultural wars have destroyed us from within, causing our GDP and our military might into the car. Americans on the right and on the left in 2022 don't care as much as they did during the Cold War or even in the last 20 years about America being the world's longest superpower. Thank you. Thank you. It's hard for me to see that. I think America is going through a real crisis, a crisis of identity, a crisis of trying to figure out what it is, what it stands for, what it actually represents. For a very long time, the ideas, the founding of America, the ideas that made America what it is, I think the greatest country in human history, I know that may not be popular in this audience, the freest country by many measures and certainly the most powerful economically and militarily in human history. The ideas that made that America possible have been a decline now for decades, one could argue, even a century. And that decline has reached a real pivot point. America is now a reality that nobody in the political spectrum in the United States represents what were the ideals that made America great to the extent that America... I mean, it's kind of funny that Donald Trump had this term of make America great again with Donald Trump as the concept of what America is or what actually made America great to begin with and that's part of what he figured so visually. There is no political voice today for if you will the founding fathers of America. There is no voice today for the concept of individual rights, the concept of freedom, the concept of liberty in the United States. There was a struggle and a battle between the left and the right and who will control our lives and in what way that control will manifest itself. One of the striking things about this midterm election is that while the economy will dominate, yes, I agree that this is going to be determined that the Republicans will probably win certainly in the House, possibly even in the Senate, primarily because the economy is doing so badly under Joe Biden, the certainty of that is that nothing would have been different if Republicans were running things right now and many of the inflationary pressures that exist today were caused by Donald Trump's policy of writing method checks to everybody, bailing everybody out during COVID, and generally increasing government spending throughout all four years of his administration. And Donald Trump argued for an infrastructure bill far, far greater than anything Joe Biden actually passed. I mean one of the things that is true globally too and true, you see, you're living in it right now in the UK, that there was a complete consensus about economics between the left and the right. Trust tries to cut taxes a little bit, tries maybe to bring in a little bit of markets into the UK political establishment and she gets crushed by even proposing such a preposterous idea of maybe cutting the top marginal tax rate of 45%, which makes imminent sense as you go into a session to cut the top marginal tax rate if you care about economic growth ultimately, which you can't defend it because the consensus among the people, the consensus among intellectuals, the consensus among everybody is we need big government involvement in the economy. And that is true in the UK and that is true in the United States and that is true in Europe. There's complete consensus about economic issues. We're all a way to the left of center on economics. Everybody is, even Elizabeth, even trust now, Liz's trust has been brought to her knees. Now she is going to be left of center on economic issues. So what's the difference between the Republicans and Democrats? What is the battle about? The battle is about cultural issues. That's how left and right are defining themselves. That's how largely concrete that is true of the United Kingdom as well. Here, the big difference between the left and right to a larger extent is around these cultural issues. The popularity of Boris Johnson in the last election was not due to his revolution in economic plans. It was due to his nationalism and his conservative cultural views while shifting left under everything economic. And we're seeing that in the United States exactly the same phenomena. We're seeing the cultural issues as defining the two political parties. The cultural war as defining the war between the two political parties. Economics in a sense is irrelevant. Economic outcome might be relevant. That is the swing based on how the economy is doing. But the economic policy of the Biden administration and Trump administration is almost identical. There is almost no differentiation. And I would venture that whether you vote for labor or you vote for conservative in the short run at least there's going to be very little difference in terms of economic policy. Thank you. So we'll let you come out. I want to use my time to reflect on the first two years of the Biden presidency. A week before the U.S. presidential election 2020 Joe Biden visited a steeple town in Georgia called Warm Springs. Warm Springs is a population of about 500. It's closer to Alabama than it is to Atlanta. And in a tight presidential election visiting such a place that is not particularly boat rich is an unusual move. But Biden was going there because of the symbolic significance of Warm Springs because in the 1920s, 1940s, the most famous president for Warm Springs was President of the Franklin, Donald Roosevelt. Joe Biden is the only U.S. president to have been born during Roosevelt's presidency. 12 year presidency. It's interesting he's the only one to have been born during that. And for Biden, Roosevelt is something of a political hero. Biden decided to put the portrait of Roosevelt in the office where Obama once put Abraham Lincoln, Donald Trump once put Andrew Jackson. Biden wanted to draw the comparison in two respects. One was the scale of the challenge that he was facing. He wanted to draw the comparison with Great Depression and the COVID pandemic and the economic crisis and the states were facing the result. And also the scale of ambition. Now, in both respects, Biden was being somewhat at the bottom but too campaigning in poetry and perhaps he was taking a bit of a classic license there. I think to take an honest assessment of Biden's presidency is to say that Biden has had a consequential and a reasonably legislatively successful first two years. This is in some ways partly out of Georgia, which helped give him presidency and also gave him control of the Senate. But Biden also has key challenges. Challenges that Roosevelt himself might recognize. He faces a divided party. So did Roosevelt. Roosevelt's New Deal was not the program that Roosevelt himself might wanted. It was a compromise he had to reach with the Southern Democratic faction of this party. Sometimes New Deal is described as a compromise between Sweden and South Africa. Biden himself has a divided party between the sort of left, justice, Democrats, Black Lives Matter, wing of the party, the more moderate, blue-dog wing of the party. And also Biden and again this is something that Roosevelt might recognize faces an intransigent Supreme Court. And a court that does threaten to constrain his agenda and certainly to put certain questions back in politics that had been taken off the agenda. That being said, I think there's some interesting continuities also to think about between Biden and Trump. I think that Biden has, in foreign policy terms, there's been greater continuity and change. I think that, in particular when it comes to China, I think Biden is a China hawk. He may not express this word in the same way as Trump in terms of the substance of U.S. policy towards China. Not that much has changed. On trade, Biden emphasizes a main America agenda. On the border, Biden has not really reversed a great deal of Trump's restrictions at the border. I think this means that Biden is in some ways a unique figure within the Democratic Party. So one who has the capability to pull this off in a highly divided party. It's fine that severe weakness, of course, is age and concerns about that. But in many ways I think the bigger risk would be to try and replace them with someone else for the next election. Given it's not clear that anyone else of the next generation could really hold the Democratic Party together. I think that Donald Trump is likely to be the company. I think he will be an effective campaigner and Biden really isn't quite the type. But I think that Biden has been able to thread the needle on some of these real difficult issues the Democratic Party itself is battling itself with. The final point I'll say is of course that the elephant in the room is the Supreme Court. In some ways liberals are reaping what they sowed by an over reliance on the court. And deep political foundations are some of the objectives that they wanted, relying on a court that could be a typical mistress. So I work in the news business and when we started thinking about the coverage of the midterm elections back in the screen. It all looked fairly predictable. Usually midterm elections are a referendum on government. The economy was doing badly and it just looked very predictably as though it would be a Republican sweep that they would take the House, they would take the Senate. There would be a real dissatisfaction with gas prices at $5 a gallon, which I know is not very high for Britain, but that's astronomical for us. So that was kind of what we thought was going to happen. But I think the interesting thing is that whereas that is on everybody's mind, inflation hasn't actually become the issue that people think it is in the election. Because as you said, quite rightly said, there is no debate about how to deal with the election. I mean it's just kind of this act of God, the pissed off and so they're anti-government. It doesn't really work itself out of policy and the only policy that seems to be effective at the moment is to explore our inflation by having a strong dollar. I mean that's kind of almost the only thing that's happening. But when you look to what the issues were in the spring, it wasn't very much the culture issues of school choice. We planned a whole kind of series of packages, news packages that we were going to do on school boards and school elections and school choice. Because it seemed as though the culture war was unfolding and school choice was going to be a very important issue in this upcoming election. And it would be the stick that Republicans could use to beat the kind of woke Democrats very effectively. But what's kind of thrown a spanner in the works in this particular climate is actually abortion. The abortion issue I think has changed the culture wars in quite an interesting way. Abortion traditionally in America was used as a stick for the Republicans to get their vote out. It was something that was always a way to rally the troops to get to the party fave on to get the vote out. And so it was seen as an issue that would favor Republicans. With the dogs decision and the decision to throw out Roe v Way and then the subsequent election in Kansas, I think that issue has changed dramatically. But what's happened is that it took everybody by surprise. The right belt that they had an issue that they really went on. And this was, you know, it makes fantastic. And they had a majority on the court. This was like their wet dream, if you like, of what was going to happen. But it's really kind of backfired. And I think now there is a genuine debate about abortion, which even the left are really not in a position to take charge of. So if you look at the sort of pro-choice organizations in America, they kind of put abortion very much on the back burner. They thought it was either a settled issue or that they had to talk about abortion in a much more kind of woe quay of talking about pregnant people and chest feeding and all this kind of stuff was what was dominating the left simply. So now you actually have ordinary people who would like access to abortion now saying that this is one of the key issues in the election. And I think it will not necessarily mean that the Republicans will not win the House. I think the Republicans will sit in the House, but I'm not entirely sure they'll win it by the thumping majority that they thought they would get. And I think that if you look at the Senate, it's also going to be quite a challenge, I think, for the Republicans to win the Senate. I mean, they ought to win it, given what's going on in the world and the kind of popular policies that they could put forward at the beginning. But I think abortion has to understand the works for them, because ordinary women need abortions. And so young women, suburban moms, that kind of key voting element of the public have got caught up in a cultural issue which previously worked in a different way and now suddenly is getting people to come out and vote. And we'll have to see how effective it is, but I do think it has changed the landscape. That's very much. Okay, so now it's your turn to make your points, go to questions. Have we got some mics going around? Yeah, can we get a mic to this side there? And if there's another one, can we go over here? Oh, okay. Okay, has anyone got a question upstairs? My name is Calvin. Can you stand up? Oh, in my head if I stand up. Let's go ahead. Alright, hello. My name is Calvin. I'm around the state of America right now. It seems to me that there are two sides, right? There's being sort of called the Trumpy side and the sort of woeful side. But it seems the both sides look at the other and say that there is pathology and there the cure and vice versa. But it seems to me that both sides are sort of a matter of the deep pathology that is shared that is in the other cure. And I wonder to what extent there is a failure on both sides to diagnose properly what is the problem. In the history of medicine, people often mistreated things. A misdi... Because a misdiagnose is the confused symptom of the pathology. How are we collectively left and right misdiagnosing the nature of the problems that are lost? It seems to me whether you are left or right, whether you are the sort of the woke people who have very literal use of language or the sort of nationalist people who have very figurative use of language or the people on the left who are looking to a utopian future or the people on the right who are sort of Halcyon past. Whatever the differences are, they both seem to be very dissatisfied with the present. And I wonder who's interested in being served by everyone fighting with each other. It seems to me that you have sort of neoliberal context where you've seen social media emerge where the money is being made by dividing the ruling of turning each side against each other. Because whether you are someone in sort of a flyover country suffering an opioid epidemic, having a job shift overseas or you're someone who's 25 living in New York City where you can't afford your rent, you're both being screwed over by the same thing and yet they hit each other. So I'm wondering is there a failure to diagnose the problems that are lost? Thank you. Thanks. Yes. So the issue of, I guess, what people outside call threats to democracy has become an incredibly major issue. I was a journalist in 2020 in Pennsylvania. I covered the election there and there were a lot of chants and shenanigans by the Trump side that overturned the vote in Pennsylvania and, of course, now there's the prospect that some of these Pennsylvania Republicans get indicted and try to do the same thing again. And then also you have, of course, that will actually be overshadowed by the censorship of Hunter Biden's black population on behalf of Democrat-oriented technology companies. And I sort of like this suburban battle that's pitching up, I know, that will be any other cultural issues that become a major thing in the schools, but then, of course, we have the abortion issues. So this very important target demographic of suburban women, I guess, I just amass them all the panel. Like, for both parties or more, is either a part of your side, in your view, more of a threat to democracy? If not, why not? And similarly, like, what way, given all the different things, do you think this demographic plot will trend in my own state? Lady, behind you there. Hi, Hank. Well, there's still a few questions. I'll just stand up. Now, you make the point about the, that nobody's standing up and sort of like, in the family order. I've got a question very interesting from a UK perspective, thinking about the government-controlled law. I'd really like to hear what you do about that, but the law seems slightly astonishing to me. I mean, but, you know, we don't have, like, one school shooting in this country. It's a great way our girls ought to change, but there's sort of resilience of the government will be. And is that, I suppose my question is, is there something actually quite positive about that? Or is it another, just another sort of culture war issue? It feels to me that there is something intrinsic and positive about people's, people's resilience and sticking with our era at Christ's era. John, there. Yes. Looking at America from Britain, you know, it's quite a strange thing.  And that's the view from Britain. So really my question is, is that, you know, I'm looking at it from my own point of view. I don't share the British point of view on this. It looks to me as if the state in America is attempting to be legitimate of Trump, preventing him running in 2024 to look at the 106 hearings and so on, and also his effective censorship once he seeks to be president or even before the end of that presidency he was censored on social media. It doesn't appear, you know, is there such a thing that we recognize as the deep state which is looking to promote purely the democratic side? Can we get a little up to this? Yes, I just wanted to, going to raise the issue, going back to the title, Can America Survive? I want to ask the panel what possible impact the so-called cultural wars will have on America's economic and financial state because I can't see this issue about abortion. It's going to have any direct impact on visitors, but I could see that movements like BNM would have impact on the economy. The thing is that at the moment America seems to have given up its military role worldwide but it's still well ahead economically and financially and it's going to take some time for China to actually catch up. So I want to see whether how much effect these cultural wars are going to have. Looking at both sides, on the political side, to what extent will Trump keep his grip on the GOP? Do you see that changing in the near future? What do you think is so good for his services to science for this change? I don't think it's that great. The reason why we can in the sense that we're only in the range of time we've probably achieved more than we're expecting to do. What do you see in the near future? Has anyone like a li-fi to unify a party? It seems to me that the next generation is happy. Hello, I thought I'd come to you first. There's a few different questions around democracy, de-legitimizing our opponents. So obviously, Trump famously denies the 2020 collection result. But also you have Biden calling his opponents semi-fascists. This general sense that the other side is not legitimate and not to be engaged. But how do you think that could play out in these midterms? I think that's I think that is very much how American politics are at the moment. Essentially, people are the strongest card each party has is demonizing the other side. So for Democrats, what's going to get the vote out then is to demonize Trump and to basically say we've got to vote Trump's candidates and he's the problem and if we can make the whole election about Trump, then that can kind of cover over a multitude of sins that's not particularly dealing with problems. And then similarly for the Republicans, I think they would like this to be a referendum on Biden and they see Biden and the vote left as the problem. And I think what that means is that I think the danger of the cultural war is and I think this is a it may not seem to sort of work out at the level of Ukraine but I think you can see increasingly is the division within America. I think it's becoming a much more fractured and divided society. I mean there's even kind of moments when you think would Texas split off or but obviously Austin is in the middle of Texas one of the most liberal cities there is. It's not just a state by state but the big sort of people just living with people that they agree with and divide between rural and cities, the coasts and what you call the fly over states. I think that division is incredibly damaging for America because it means that there is now no consensus in any kind of way about what it really means to be American. And I think that's where the division I think is dangerous. I think it leads to a kind of chaos which is unpredictable. And I think that is a problem. I think the interesting thing on some of the points about democracy I'll just come back on that. Traditionally in America you would think that the GOP and the Democrats gerrymander their kind of boundaries so that they can elect their own. One of the interesting things about this election is the general consensus is this is going to be the least influenced by the gerrymandering. It's actually quite a fair division at the moment. It probably won't stay like that but it is quite fair. So I think what we actually see now that one issue I think is on the table in terms of restricting but voting rights perhaps in the way that people talk about that before I was just going to put that on there. New York Times recently did a piece on congratulating the Democrats on doing enough gerrymandering to the need of the things that happen. Such as the Bracen Smith. One thing to say is that the notion of a cultural war in the United States is not new. It basically had to be carried into the 1992 Republican convention that there was an inter-culture war. And really a sense of sharp battles in American politics over questions of identity and cultural issues throughout the first war period can be found in the battles over education integration battles over the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War abortion debate obviously it's been a small prayer more likely same-sex marriage and so on. It's not that the United States has suddenly discovered a culture war on different forms. I suppose in one sense perhaps that maybe going back to the original question of how that could be a sense of a source of some assurance the United States trundles along throughout history even with these battles. On the threats to democracy I think this is perhaps an area that is newer and might be a cause for concern. Of course there have always been voices at certain elections that have questioned the outcomes during that 2000 election there were certainly some Democrats who didn't think that the election had been properly allocated to George W. Bush and some Democratic members of the House objected to the certification of that for college votes in 2000 and a few more in 2004 and the controversies were very high. Of course Stacey Abrams in Georgia thinks he refused to concede using the Governor's race a few years ago. I think this is on a what we're seeing in terms of the 2020 presidential action by Donald Trump and some of the supporters and it is on a different level and scale and I am concerned about how this is becoming a litmus test in many ways within the Republican Party and a vital element of democracy and users' consent in perhaps both sides to different degrees but not fully subscribed to that in the past but it seems to be really fading now and I think that's a big concern. Yeah, I wanted to put this one to you she's talking about Americans still ordinary Americans if not their politicians still are very favorite for their rights and their arms I mean you can give another example in a certain space didn't tolerate lockdown isn't there some optimism there? No No? Not for me anyway No, I mean the very idea that there were lockdowns in the United States of America show horrific that yes, about a year after the lockdown started a few people rose up and protested over it but the very idea that Americans Democrats or Republicans anybody would allow the state to lock them down over a virus is so shadowy that it turned me from optimistic or pessimistic about America because I couldn't imagine if you told me that there was going to be a virus that primarily kills old people, right, does it keeps the young people pretty much safe that we would lock down the entire society we would lock down everybody and lock them at home and that Americans would just shrug and go fine, that's okay and maybe a year later they would remember or maybe we have some liberties and maybe we have some freedoms and maybe we should reject I would have never predicted that and indeed the CDC never predicted it and it's why in not a single plan that the CDC had prepared in advance for pandemics was ever a lockdown ever considered and in that sense the West didn't use the CDC manual they used the Communist Party of China's manual to deal with pandemics we all became like China, like that China has won the cultural battle, like that we economically moved towards China and we dealt with the pandemic like China and it's, I know this is not a popular view in Europe but that's pretty horrific the fact that our individual liberties can be taken away by the government like that by scamming us into our homes and look, I'm not a deny of COVID I'm vaccinated only at least three and not a deny that this was an awful virus but this is like the worst way to deal with it possible and the fact that of all the individual rights that Americans possess the one that they are most adamant about is that they can hold on to their M16s it's not inspiring me if they if they hold on to their first amendment as strongly as they hold on to those M16s I would be a lot more inspired but just seeing an attack on the first amendment a dramatic attack on freedom of speech and again, we're way ahead of you guys because you guys have hate speech laws and things that violate free speech right off the back but in the United States we're seeing it both on the left and the right clearly Donald Trump was egregiously hostile towards freedom of speech to the extent of going after Jeff Bezos because he owned the Washington Post or the story that was negative towards Donald Trump the left with its war crimes and its cancer cultures clearly does not believe in freedom of speech there was a real attack on freedom of speech in the United States today and I wish Americans would be holding on to that I think and not to mention separation of state and religion which I think we suspect maybe to abortion which there's not particularly strong powerful constituency to hold on to that but the left would like to impose their kind of religion on us and the right would like to impose their kind of religion on us but impose religion on us both parties want to do Jack is there anything there you'd like to respond to do you have any audience I'm going to try to hold on to everything from the audience but really quick about the COVID is that things the cultural way yeah well first off China is still in these lockdowns and the most U.S. states were out of lockdowns within about two months so I think that's the biggest difference there but I want to touch on everything so to the guns real quick the second amendment is the right to bear arms and the reason you don't see one of the reasons you don't see big non-reform happening in these mass shootings which are uniquely American causes from mental health media sensationalism and you go into that but it's law abiding gun owners who don't want to be punished for these one-off cycles which I'm a little sympathetic toward now assault rifles that's a whole new question so that's the second amendment the third amendment is that the government is not allowed to quarter soldiers in your home so that just gives you a little sense on yes the bill of rights is great but you know it's not like everything in it is worth depending to that and then with the election and election deniers there's a poll recently that one-third of Republicans would like their candidate to concede if they're to lose so only one-third of Republicans think that their candidates should concede if they lose and about half of them are Democrats so that just shows you where faith in elections is diminishing and that's probably the biggest point I pessimistic about in the future also in these midterms a lot of people don't realize that there are a lot of state elections too so the governor raises secretary of state for states they have elections coming up and those secretary of state through state are in charge of administering elections and there are about a dozen Trump-backed secretary of state candidates who have said explicitly that they would not certify their state's results if they had the same sort of anti-Trump results in 2020 so that I think is concerning let's see the military I would push back with that the US military is in decline it's still I think the second most allocated item in budget so almost $900 billion a year goes to our military and like I said earlier we have $65 billion worth of funding to Ukraine I think about 40 or 45 of that is military and the Javelins and other equipment has proven really successful we have long range of missile defense systems on the way let's see for the Democrats, for the Biden successor I don't think it's a clear person for him that would be it's not Kamala Harris she's very unpopular people will suggest Keith Buttigieg who is the current transportation secretary he was the mayor of the third largest state in India so he doesn't have many credentials I think most likely is that Biden will make a decision around the first of the year if he's going to run again and if he's not going to run again he'll probably be the primary he has a little bit more credentials but again I mean he'll probably run we'll see and then with Trump I think his fate depends on his candidates in the midterms if his candidates do well I think he'll run, if they don't do well he might run still but I think we'll have a lot less cloud for the Republican Party and it's real quick it's also totally abnormal for a presidential candidate to still have this much power of his party it's ridiculous Mitch McConnell since January 6th has disengaged himself completely from Trump I don't think he's spoken at all Ken McCarthy condemned him on January 7th and then about a month later was down in Mar-a-Lago talking to Trump and he is in line to be the speaker of the House that Republicans are to win let's see okay okay let's go to the audience again there's a couple of things we haven't quite touched on yet things like crime Black Lives Matter the climate another big cultural issue even though you can pretend it's about science but then there have we got two mics down here and everyone upstairs okay so let's have this person sorry this person here and then you with your hand up upstairs and then would you bring it down just a quick question on the cultural war I haven't completely gone ahead around it because on the one hand I can see that the way this person is constituting is enormously divisive and that is enormously problematic I completely get that I understand that obviously why do you ask Mario okay let's just go ahead and ignore this which doesn't work I mean it isn't the paradox that in the way we need a culture of war for different kinds of issues so for example we need some kind of national politics we're afraid of the American national framework we need a culture of what we mentioned where we speak we could have a culture of war we could have a culture of war on the climate they were afraid to mention so when in fact what we really need is income prosperity we're overly concerned about the climate we do need to wage a culture of war on prosperity so how are we thinking that the first thing a culture of war is not a bad thing but we need to have a lot of disputes with the game of the United Nations population rather than dividing it unnecessarily and yet upstairs just a quick one I think Mario recently said we put the odds of civil war at 30% it's all that simple and you've probably never put it that way there's probably a near certainty where do you see it on that channel yeah I've heard the Americans speak about civil war I mean I've heard that in Spain I've heard a few Americans about civil war I was a bit eccentric but what I see is how do we reach a big bloke I'm basically a big bloke in this country we apologize we're going to come over what she said about civil war and the the response to the way the policy was to say yes this is racism I'm just going to close it immediately challenges the most extreme interpretations of civil rights theory and so that's that line has been drawn there about the local parties first response to the ban in certain parties or even responding to the legislation on trans rights or trans legislation and also which might imagine what we're going to challenge in the inhaling of that so we've reached the bloke it's obvious that our authorities have realized this is the case maybe the Americans have also realized this is the case if so what's the alternative and it seems that workness was a response to the the way the what was more significant work as a discontent it didn't was going on after the civil war and the 1960s was the official racism that they had but that's changed now and the situation has changed even though we've got Donald Trump so what's the is the way back going back towards the constitution going back to the American constitution and there was democracy and ultimately religion because these are these are unifying factors in social life or is there any more scope for more workness and more individualism and more isolation and nationalization and I was like do I have to do all of them Can you pass it to me? Yeah I was wondering recently there's a picture on social media of carnivores wearing white clothes and t-shirt I think was and I was wondering what you thought the role of like celebrities and sort of like what sort of discourse was I don't know that's just the thing of like in my generation of like 20 or 30 years but in terms of cultural that's like a very similar catalyst is it? Do we have the woman there with her hand up? Turn the phone back there Yeah When Oh yeah Okay I wanted to ask if you think it's possible to rate the consensus in this setting regarding the environmental issue of the impact on the role of the government and the size of the state and if you think it's possible which will be the best and most effective way And could you pass my back to the woman there and someone else I know I don't see how the U.S. can avoid civil war much of a trendy thing but it has been obvious for a while that there are two America's and these two America's cannot coexist either America is a country of freedom founded on the principles of revolution or is a white supremacist project that exists on the back and these two idealizations America cannot coexist and the way to negotiate any chance of them coexisting is rapidly breaking down as we are seeing with the de-legitimization of democratic processes My question is how could any of you see a way forward that does not involve mass violence Yeah, like that Just a very hate one Is this that we hate me? I'm going to start with an easy question civil war I'm going to start with the last one So I'm not a supporter of Donald Trump And he had some policies that actually even on the international stage definitely led the U.S. and I would say that the world he was big on other NATO countries increased their spending he brought the Democrats along with them I would say since January 6 since he told his attorney general his White House counsel many of his aides and about dozens of federal judges that they were wrong and that he actually had one that's when I got to the point where I don't want this guy close to politics ever again And back to piggyback on that with the civil war question I think civil war would be more likely with Trump back in the White House or running again in 2024 as Republican nominee because obviously if he loses in 2024 assuming that he runs against a Democrat in general election he will not accept the results and I think that he'll have the borders similar to how he did in 2020 to not accept any cost I think that's where it gets dangerous outside of Trump I don't think that the U.S. is close to civil war it's kind of interesting to talk about but I don't think that there is a I don't think that you would have these large armed actions going against each other like I mentioned earlier in my opening there's a lot more consensus in Congress than people realize taking just the infrastructure package for example like I said, the ATU crane even the COVID bills which was overspending but at least it was bipartisan overspending I think the media sensationalizes everything that happens in the U.S. politics and the extreme, the progressive Democrats and the Trump Republicans are made to represent the right of that which is not the case in reality they represent top 15% each of the electorate either because of the foreign之 or the creamest of Display it's a whole new approach whether it be in Trump them context of this or in Trump Congress OK, great and then we turn to the U.S. and have no idiosyncrasies on range of issues. Definitely most people are normal. And the fact that we color these states red and blue. But in every red state, there are big pockets of blue. And in every blue state, there are big pockets of red. And a civil war is not between the states, because as somebody said, Austin, Texas, which is in many regards kind of the heart of Texas, is very, very blue. It's very, very democratic. So if civil war would be within the states, it wouldn't be across the states. I don't see much prospects for civil war, because I will say with regard to the scary part is that such a large percentage of Republicans who support Trump are willing to reject the election, right? Are willing to overthrow an election in order to bring them back to power. That is the one. When Trump out of the equation, I agree, civil war is very unlikely. I'm out of here. Nothing too optimistic. I think America's declining is inevitable. That is, I do think America is declining. And this relates to the question about cultural war related economics. I think it certainly does, because I think the culture would distract from the fact that America is in decline economically, economic growth in America. Everybody cheered when Donald Trump said we had the greatest economy in history. Could we grow it 2% a year? It's pathetic, is all I can say about that. American economy is a decline. And the only good thing, what I can say is the Chinese economy is in decline even more so, right? So I think global economy is going to be troubled for the next few decades. And again, this is all kind of distracting from the real challenge which we face, which you mentioned regarding the civil war, what is America? Is America the principles of liberty and freedom and individual liberty and so on? Which is supposedly one side, I'm not sure which side, because I don't think that is represented at all in the American political map today. Or is America woke, or is America, as what's her name, the Congresswoman from Georgia, said, is America a Christian nation? Fundamentally Christian. So you've got tribalism on the one side, left tribalism and right tribalism on the one side, which is Democrats and Republicans both are now tribal and collectivistic and anti-American countries to handle the Bill of Rights. And I, by the way, would be willing to fight for the death of the Bill of Rights. It's important, yes, you might find one aspect of it to be irrelevant, but there are a number of aspects that keep the country alive and keep, I think, Western civilization going. But both those aspects, both left and right today are tribal. And there is no representative on the political map today or on the cultural map, not just political map, the cultural map for the individualism represented by the Declaration of Appendance and the Constitution. There's no representative for the kind of individualism represented even by somebody who I consider relatively mediocre, Oana Reagan. Oana Reagan could not win in the Republican Party today. And that is a travesty. Now, Oana Reagan's not my ideal, right? But he's sure is better than anybody else in the Republican Party right now. We're not calling you West. Oh, yeah, let me just say something about that. Unify it.  I mean, we're fine. No, this is not funny. I'm not meaning this is a joke. This is documented. He's got bipolar or whatever it is. The guy is mentally not there. And the fact that we idolize him and put him on a pedestal does not help his mental problems. It would be good if you got treatment and we didn't worship him. I think generally, who the hell cares when a singer as good as he might be? I don't get him, but as good as he might be, I think it's about anything. Why do we care about what singers and movie actors or sports figures think about politics? They're irrelevant to the political debate. I mean, they're relevant because people admire them, be above or beyond anything reasonable. But, you know, they are not shaping the world but shaping the world of the intellectuals. But shaping the world of the professors at universities, public pundits, and even the politicians, though, shape the world. They're just, in a sense, they're just multi-pieces for the intellectuals behind them. So if you want somebody to object to it, if you want guidance, it's always been the intellectuals. It's that's where it comes from. And these celebrities, I couldn't care less than any of them said. And I think some of them said something rational and reasonable. Melody Knights, they're given that they're almost always, whatever side they happen to be in the political map, unreasonable and completely, you know, completely nuts. Why would I care? Richard, I mean, one of the sort of things that's been coming up is that there are areas of kind of, you have consensus in Congress over different economic issues. It's pretty cool, obviously, not elected. In fact, at odds with majority of the opinion on the big issue of proportion. I mean, does that contribute, if you think, to the kind of tenor of the culture towards the sort of sort of the range that is often behind it? The fact that people feel that they actually can't influence anything. Yeah, so two points there. I think the first is to say that Biden has attempted to, in terms of his legislative agenda, has tried to keep all these social issues and cultural war questions out of his legislative agenda. And part of that is because of the reality of the narrowness of his majorities in Congress. Added to that with the filibuster that for the most piece of the legislation, Biden can need 10 Republican senators to agree to a deal through law. The exception there is with certain finance tools she uses this reconciliation process through, and that's how he's pushed through some major spending bills. Now, I don't think there is consensus on these things because every single Republican vote against Biden's last major spending bill. So there's that in a way, I suppose, as someone I'm generally a critic of anti-majoritarian rules like the filibuster. The filibuster in some ways does limit the ability of either side to really support your contentious legislation through. I think in some ways it is a bad thing for America because I think you put things through and then you have an election to help people accountable for whether or not that was a good decision or not. The core has been a long-running way of taking certain issues out of the political system. And the abortion one is obviously the most salient and fascinating in many ways where basically Roe v. Wade allowed Republican legislators to use, to pass laws that were highly restrictive on abortion that spoke to their core constituency in the core Republican primary voters, knowing that these laws would not go into effect because they were contrary to the Supreme Court decision and yet get the credit in the primary election. I suppose in a way what we have now is now the decision of a returnable abortion question back to the states and in some cases these laws have now been triggered into effect. These legislators are the dog that called the car. And I think it's going to be very interesting because about a third of Republican voters believe in access to abortion in some form and yet zero percent of Republicans in that house and just two Republicans in the Senate are of no choice in any form. So I think there will be a battle now within the Republican party in a way that there hadn't been before on the question of abortion. I'll be back soon to see how that goes. Emma. I was going to try to... I was going to try a couple of positive things that I could think about in America. I think that a lot of Americans have a great sense of their rights and I think it is a rights-driven society and I think that then sets up certain quite interesting kind of happenings which I think we can be quite positive about. I do think that the resistance of certain parents to having a school curriculum that was very much governed by critical race theory in that that happened. I think there's a lot of weird stuff said about critical race theory but I think the fact that parents felt that they wanted to have control over what their kids were doing I think is a very American response that you feel that you have correctful rights you have authority over your children and in that sense there are some really great things about America which is that when you kind of take away their rights people do react and I think it isn't just a kind of both things but I think there are areas for positive interest. I see the same thing on abortion I think it's like the kind of debate in politics about abortion was one thing but I think that young women think they have the right to have abortion and they feel that that is the right and it's something that is worth trying to find out and in fact they've not even been mobilized for so long because I think this has taken out of their control and I think that in fact the fact that young women, my daughter is outraged she says they're treating me like a vessel I mean she's like, her friends they just really do not feel that their autonomy should be taken away from them and that may be the same sentiment that's meant to be behind all the guns I think it is that sort of sense that you have certain rights and being an American means that you have certain rights so I think that's a very positive thing about America I think there was, I wanted to come in on this peach-woke thing this is a bit more negative I think that the woke agenda in America is very much driven by identity politics and I think that the while you have people who see themselves as autonomous and having rights and at the same time you have an obsession with identity in a sort of narcissistic way of looking at those things and I think that all I can see is identity politics spreading I think in many ways the way that the manga people talk about being white is almost like becoming another identity so it's not just that it's colleges, campuses and all that where people think of that identity I think that in every kind of sphere of life it's not that there's people who are immune to it and so I think that when you have that dominance of identity culture and it really is engraved in American culture it does obviously divide people up as you get divided around our identity and I think it means that it may not be called woke it may be called something else but I think that sort of sense that we're vulnerable, we're victims we have to look after our identity we don't share things I think that's the flip side of it there's an intrinsic sense of people supporting to you know, don't like their rights being taken away but on the other hand there is a growth of identity politics which I think will mean that whatever is cool, boldness or whatever is quite a way to go Okay, let's have some audience especially since someone's right in the back Who the hell said that? Wait 20 minutes, no I'm not thinking of that That doesn't air, yeah What does it air? The variation of the civil war Can you start up? Yeah, the variation of the civil war I sort of evolved from the completion of the World Act in the 2020 elections where 40% or so of the country would want to secede or use in California if a Democrat or a similar number of Democrats would want to secede if the Republicans would chomp on I wonder just where secessionist movements were where they were up and down it's more or less where they've always been and I just wonder what they've been commenting on I've commented on recently I think there's been a lot of discussion about why someone like that said that in history now there was nothing about just inflicting maximum pain on the other side Is there a secession post about those celebrities who said they were going to leave when they were going to leave the country? Yeah, exactly, yeah Up there, you've got a question Yes, I'd like to ask about when I watched Joe Biden speak he obviously there's clips about he doesn't see my people there I understand and I just wonder it doesn't fill me it doesn't fill me with confidence with all the issues he's had and if I look at his number 2 Kamala Harris, she's even more ridiculous I've listened to her talk and she also doesn't make any sense and I just want to find out like does Biden actually have a lot of influence with the decisions that the way America's going and on Trump with him not conceding to the election I'm not saying I sympathise with him but I just wonder if I was he and I see like when the emails of Hillary Clinton happened there was no investigation there when Joe Biden's laptop came out it was just completely censored and I just wondered like he many supporters, especially when you see it on the news media they get sensationalised with these stories that they are hiding the truth while they're doing this why is this and then it rallies it kind of encourages them to say that there's a conspiracy against them and I feel that maybe Trump feels that and that's why he doesn't believe that he lost his election because if they did hide those other things, why else are they hiding? Is there an answer upstairs to your last question by the way, can we bring the mic down? I know you've already spoken can we bring the mic down stairs because there's loads of people in the talk here who's got the mic? Can we get over to this I think she's got the mic Question really for Richard to see where anybody is do you want to think that the Santas is a contender because culturally it seems to be in some way more in touch with the base with a Christian base but have more quality than Trump is and have his under being under 75 so let's get the mic over here lady here and then the gentleman I don't mind what you are going to speak thank you I haven't surprised listening to the panel because it seems to be for Donald Trump at all actually it seems to me like 40% of the American population in the sector now listen to me America does seem to have problems with the mechanisms for conducting its votes and that having tried that type of situation George Bush's brother-in-law was his cousin and I understand that Trump's position is that at the end of the voting the whole show that he'd been successful come next morning there was a classical transparency in the official votes that there's a prime of Beijing case because the in the series of New York films like by David and so a lot of irregularities regarding the official votes paid for by Democratic support services so people that believe that are aren't that hasn't been examined by a degree to a friend in which in which the Trump case regarding Mar-a-Lago papers are and that's the type of thing that's going to fuel the sermon I'm going to say practically I'm going to sort out what the voting system is so that there's people that are like in paper and sports that's the system but we're not funding we get so by talking and we believe in a time where it's easy to say that all in our own echo chamber on social media but one fact is you can go and look at the TV channels and you can go and look at them and you can see what people are talking about it's not a matter it's not being access to a point of view but look at that all there and it's not happening that the opportunities and structures exist within America so people can exchange ideas and there is one for the future just sit from the lady's idea this lady and then the man so very quickly about your point about Kennedy where I say we believe that's going to have a fucking circle but I think it's my the thing that people like Kennedy and Taylor Swift for instance don't have huge amounts of influence because when she treated millions of actually a disenfranchisement so I think that point is a bit my big point is about abortion which I don't think actually is a cultural issue I think it's a better one that's 50 cent of the population and there's a whole sleight of people particularly in America there's a picture of Donald Trump with member items signing away abortion rights for women I actually don't think it's a cultural issue and I actually think that if you got rid of it I don't think it would have happened there's a whole United States signing to that abortion so the gentleman's point over there that's not a cultural issue it's not an economic issue I can tell you that the economy of America there's a whole limit to what's basically working in Anderson and then factories and fast food restaurants and looking after your children and your old people I'm not going to be able to do any of that because they're looking after what they can't afford and therefore I would like to say please let's take a portion out of the cultural issue world and start talking about this medical issue for 50% of the population and you can then just say how does that learn to conversation and not talk about it we're going to have to talk about it because the evangelicals made an issue even if it is a medical issue First of all is that a topic? First of all, on Saturday's long wait Minus I don't like it sure it's an algorithm and the second quick question is, is Tulsi ever finished? If I were in the Republic and I'd be thinking let's get her in I'm just wondering whether that's actually possible and the third point is there's a lot of self loathing in American politics it's really irritating to hear for instance it happens with the Second Amendment I agree with the people that say there's something also about the Second Amendment and also whenever you have a sort of shooting going on you have this music and all of this happens to us but only in America do we have this actually we have a bigger sort of shooting that we have in Thailand which of course has much more on this but all of the biggest shootings have been in different places Pakistan, Kenya France, France and in America it only happens to us because we're so stupid and we have guns and I think that this is a home of the self loathing of this reporting so I just want to point out the best and most evil country in the world simultaneously yeah let's get some over here can we get one mic right up to the front and then to start the afterwards hi so your point about the people shooting schools and how they're an odd nutcase it's not one odd nutcase because they're happening once every week and as a 16 year old I can assure you school is supposed to be where I learn and where I should be safe I shouldn't have to go into school with what is essentially a bullet shield in my backpack so how is it fair that there was a tiny majority of people who were using themselves to fence and then everyone else was suffering because of it how is it fair on those who suffer can you pass my back to the lady here and who else wants to ask a question can we get the other mic to this gentleman with the glasses I have a question about the deep state I'm not a conspiracy theorist but somebody raised it behind me because the fact is people say old Trump accepted the result of the election Hillary Clinton and her supporters never accepted and then people say he didn't win the popular vote that's not the system the system is the electoral college and if you disagree with the electoral college you have plenty of opportunities to campaign against it but my question is okay so Trump disagreed with the electoral result there are two things Trump in his home was invaded by the FBI which seems to be acting as a wing of the democratic party now which it's not supposed to do it's supposed to be at least in terms of public view independent but the other thing is the way the people who protested on January the 6th let's go into a riot or whatever and invaded you can't disagree with their tactics but the fact is there's no evidence that any of them were armed the only person that died during the protest was a woman who was retired from the military who was shot by a nervous member of the security services so my question is I know that both sides try to de-legitimate the other but it does seem that the state is actively now involved in this process of demonization and the fact that you know, by the Hunter what's his name? Hunter Biden Hunter Biden was never really brought to task over the laptop all the illegal dealings the contracts he was able to secure as a result of his association with the president I mean we need to ask these questions because these questions have consequences for democracy and the way I see it it's not so much that there's going to be a civil war although I think people in the UK like that idea because they think that we're all going to be American who are just ready to shoot it out because they watch too many convoy films so what we're seeing is much more of a fragmentation and there's a desire for the middle ground most Republicans support abortion under certain circumstances through most Democrats support that we should have the right to bear arms but you know obviously we all support that people should be should be vetted there's a desire for the common ground but what you're seeing is a fragmentation and a de-politicization which is really really dangerous almost an organization politically thank you thank you who's re-apps did you stand up? who's re-apps? who's re-apps? who's re-apps? who's re-apps? who's re-apps? a well-willed worker for ideological reasons we have people being arrested by police for crime for mis-generating sampling on Twitter for retweeting a meme arrested, taken off the police station it seems to be in the UK other than America our life opponents said about some of the school boards pushing back it seems to me that only there are people here in these various meetings today there is no there is no there is no there is no there is just one side pushing and the other side Boris just rolls over there is no there is no cultural war here there's one side pushing and the other side abusing can we can we any more questions? yes final so one one first about COVID yes it was the only affected or it was personal people but when it first came and nobody knew what it was about and a lot of people were caught off guard it did affect young people and to this day a number of 130 people on the capacity of a 70 year promise program but the subsequent variants were far less aggressive but now on to my point, abortion first thing is abortion was talked about as an issue that pertains to bodily autonomy all well and good but the same people that talk about abortion and bodily autonomy seem to forget bodily autonomy when it comes to enforcing vaccinations we are going to enforce one type of bodily autonomy we have to enforce the other against the other it also seems that when talking about abortion there seems to be a secret consensus on the definition of women because they often people say it's about women's rights so there is some consensus on the definition of women that involves a capacity that needs to have an abortion and those who believe in abortion we talk about abortion, abortion, abortion, the right to do it but I never hear anyone talking about having more access to information as in first access to contraception making contraception is more accessible but also access to information as in more sex education especially to the younger ladies educating on what they are going to do that might land in pregnancy but also educating on should you have an abortion what sort of damage will happen in your body and damage that can have short, mean and long-term consequences so having more information available, I never hear anyone talking about that just don't be abortioning or nothing self okay thank you very much let's get in one more question and make it really quick please okay, really quick where do you think the Latino will go and remove that from the midterms because the rumor is it's going on so we can't make a difference okay let's get our panel to sort of sum up and it'd be great if you could bring it back to the midterms to the culture of abortion because guns fill all that hello the Latino the Latino I think it's really interesting and I think that what's happened I don't think that actually very much has changed in the Latino but I think there's just been a realisation that the Democrats dreamed that democracy was destiny if you're a person of colour or you're some kind of identity minority group then you're automatically a Democrat and I realise that that was a stupid idea because the people are equal and in fact there's quite a lot of abortion, there are quite a lot of Latino voters who vote in a conservative manner precisely because of abortion they are Catholic and they have those views and I think that I think the Democrats with Obama had this idea that America was ending this rainbow world which could only possibly vote Democrat because it would become more and more a rainbow coalition and it would become more and more Democrat whereas I think now whereas I think the African-American community votes pretty solid in Democrat I don't think any other groups do so I think the Latino vote it's not like it's becoming more Republican it's just that it's a bigger election of vote and now people realise that on average usually about 35% of Latinos vote Republican so it's I think that's where that's going but it's more that there's been a realisation on that I really didn't want to give the impression that I'm a kind of flag waving for Biden and didn't understand some of the things about Trump I think the difficulty is is that we look at Britain and we think there's more expression of freedom and populism in Brexit and that is just the beautiful thing and we got Trump you know and I think the point about Trump which is why I think he is an important person and why it's quite difficult to see who would replace him is that he he basically recognised that the high degree of alienation and distrust that existed amongst what meant in America and I think that he he basically forged that coalition and forced that agenda forced those people to be kind of put back on the agenda and to be hurried and I think that and that's one of the reasons why you know he was so successful was that he was able to kind of do that. I think the the problem with that is that he that's why his particular voting plot is so distrustful it isn't that everybody it's an accident that all of his voters think that he was you know fiddled out at the vote and was forward that's where they're coming from it's a level of distrust in the system a level of distrust that you know just is quite profound and I think that increasingly you know now we recognise that there is this very large majority of minority of about 30% of Americans who feel very unheard and to Santas you know will he be able to pick those up then I'm going to wind up. Trump is also great for the news business every time he says something you sell a story so I love him on that front. Basically bullied our parents being now the richest of families. Just on Trump I think that he in 2016 made important critiques about the democratic parties and the greatest of globalization and a certain economic model and it clearly failed broad areas of the country and I think that you see that the Biden administration has quietly accepted certain parts of that particularly with the Biden main America push Biden's trade Biden's hawkish niche on China and so on. The Biden administration doesn't trump it in as much but I think that's the legacy of an important I think positive contribution that Trump made. He exposed a terrible neglect of the democratic party electorate. The attempt to bring down Trump through a sort of semi-neval process over the last several years I think has also been a mistake of Democrats. I think that the impeachment attempts were a distraction and they were never going to succeed and enormous amounts of energy were expended on them and really Democrats should be building a political alternative injection to Trump and I think in some ways this latest investigation risks again being another distraction a side show from the Democrats actually being able to build an alternative political message. That all being said I don't accept the comment that Hillary Clinton didn't accept that she lost the 2016 election. I didn't like that she lost it and she did sort of make comments about Russia and so on but she had conceived the election and she didn't go to his inauguration and I think that Trump's behaviour after 2020 first of all was not necessary Trump did not need to do that I think he could have been a very credible candidate for the next election without having to go down any of that line in some ways I think it's weakened him by the scientists I was a threat to him I think he stole the frontman for the nomination but I don't think that he needed to do any of that I think it was a it was a terrible mistake Thanks Gary So let me just clarify I am very opposed to Trump I've been opposed to Trump in 2015 on the fact that he didn't concede the election and conceded in advance he is the worst thing to happen in American politics maybe never he has destroyed the Republican Party as a credible alternative to Democrats I'm almost as anti-Biden and Hillary Clinton as anti-Trump so it's not like I'm for these others because I'm anti-Trump I am for an alternative to both I disagree with my fellow panelist here because I think that Biden has done is took the worst of Trump's policies and doubled up on globalization is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the western world we have benefited massively from globalization and I know this isn't a popular view today both on the left and right but we all are far better because of globalization and the move I guess away from globalization is one that we are going to regret for a very long time so it's not that I am ignoring 40% of the population who support Trump I'm ignoring 90% of the population who support Trump and the people who support Biden I think they're all wrong and this is the point I was trying to make and I'll end with this because we're running out of time ultimately the fundamental question for America is is it the land of the Declaration of Independence is it about individualism is it about liberty is it about the political voice today for that perspective the left and the right are the same when it comes to their collectivistic view of what America is about it's all about tribes it's all about groups it's all about identity politics whether it's white or alternative and there is no voice today for the core ideas that made America what it is today and in that sense it will suffer economically as it evolves away from the land of entrepreneurs and the land of individuals I'll just briefly touch on Trump I'm not just like Trump hating, Biden loving whatever I was good at for Trump the reason I didn't was because I thought Biden would be a lot more unified he hasn't done it so there we go I was thinking of Trump as a chemo he knows he saw the political establishment, saw the Clintons saw the Bushes, saw the media establishment he wanted to rebuke that and he did but now he's gone because he's too toxic he makes every debate it's about him and about hating the other side also just because you don't believe the election was stolen it doesn't mean you are ignoring half the country more Republicans voted for Trump or more people voted for Trump than any other Republican candidate but that's impressive his support of other Republicans at the time of the election was 90% which even goes for an incumbent but now it's about 40% so it's important for Republicans to have since the election because of his focusness alright and now to my conclusion so we've mentioned this up here there are these two sides progressive Democrats and the Trump Republicans and both of them are responding to globalization and to failed foreign wars and those are two issues that I consider that would there are a lot of manufacturing jobs that have been sent overseas a lot of populations that have overlooked and the progressives and the Trump Republicans are both trying to tap into this population and I think it's important to address them and you see this Democrat party which was a majority of minorities in 2012 and you see it becoming a lot wider, a lot more urban a lot more educated and one of the most likely Democrats to be a swing voter is a non-college educated non-white voter so that's why I have some vote in the parties and their current state, I don't like it but I believe that they both have to adjust to the fact that Republicans are becoming more diverse and Democrats are becoming less diverse and the parties will have to adjust to try to get back that central voter before we give off the much needed round of applause let's go ahead and announce them join us now for the drinker sections at 55 Broadway which is above St. James Park Underground Station time to see you all there let's give our panel a round of applause