We’re closing in on the end of the year, and it’s natural to search out themes that emerged in my conversations with John. There are some old standards: DEI, the rise and fall of wokeness, the changing social role of race, and so on. But there are some new ones as well. Shortly after the summer of 2020, Trump was voted out of office, and it looked like his political career might be over. Now he’s on his way back into office, seemingly more popular than ever, and bringing with him an uncertainty about the future that excites some of us and makes others uneasy (to say the least). Trump hasn’t changed. Has the country? Are we reverting to the pre-COVID, pre-George Floyd, pre-Biden status quo ante? Or is a new alignment emerging?
John starts us off by bemoaning the ways ideological opponents demonize each other rather than trying to understand each others’ thinking and motives. (And he avers that he does not do this to Trump supporters.) With “peak woke” a thing of the past, affirmative action struck down, and Trump set to re-enter the White House, I ask whether DEI programs are next. As John says, old-school racism is relatively rare today, and parts of our discourse need to acknowledge it. A jury acquitted Daniel Penny, who was accused of negligent homicide after putting Jordan Neely in a chokehold that killed him. Would a white man who killed a black man, even unintentionally, have beaten the charges in 2021? Penny committed an act of vigilantism John thinks was necessary, if tragic. On the other hand, self-professed fans of another vigilante, Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, conjure sickening memories of those who said the US got what it deserved on 9/11.
1:33 Demonization on the right and the left
6:23 Is Trump’s election the nail in the coffin for DEI?
13:50 John: It’s no use pretending that racism in America is as bad as it was 50 years ago
16:33 Ground News ad
18:36 Has Elon Musk “encouraged” or “permitted” more racism on X?
19:30 John: It’s a tragedy that Jordan Neely died, but he needed to be restrained
30:12 If Daniel Penny had been a cop
34:05 ACTA ad
36:18 The glorification of Luigi Mangione
47:06 Cheering for the villain
55:43 Will New York remain a sanctuary city?
Recorded December 13, 2024
Links and Readings
John’s NYT column, “How to Dangerously Misread a Very Important Verdict”
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