Eli Lake (Rough Transcript)
We dive into the morality of consuming art from Ye (and other morally-dubious artists); the Israeli elections; the American midterms; and neoconservatism with journalist and podcast host Eli Lake.
The following is a rough transcript of our conversation with Eli Lake, “The Art of Being Offended.”
Please note that this is a full, rough, unedited transcript. If you’d like us to polish and edit these transcripts, please consider supporting Uncertain Things as a paid subscriber!
Adaam: Hey, Vanessa.
Vanessa: Hi Adaam, how goes it?
Adaam: It goes well, it goes well.
Vanessa: Oh. Look at you with a positive answer. How? Off brand. Back to the caves. You until you feel worse.
Adaam: I, I took a nap after three days in a row, not three nights in a row, not sleeping. Wow. The nap, like I'm, I'm working on a theory, a new theory that sleep
Vanessa: is good for you.
Adaam: Yeah.
Vanessa: Mm mm. I feel like nap is very much Russian roulette though. Like it can destroy you or it can make you that. That's to get a roll, that nap dice sometimes.
Adaam: So today we have Eli Lake in two parts, I guess. Yes,
Vanessa: yes. Well, I mean it's mostly part one and then there's like a post,
Adaam: right? Some, some coda. Well, Eli is a social commentator of many topics. He used to write for Bloomberg Opinion and currently writes for the New York son.
Vanessa: He has a great podcast called The Reeducation with Eli lake.
Adaam: Yeah, which you all should listen to cause it's fantastic. It starts with a well produced monologue that is basically polished opinions that are always fascinating often.
Argument inducing, but fascinating to listen to. He,
Vanessa: he, he does admit that he occasionally likes to troll for the funds, for the funds of it.
Adaam: Who does, but not who doesn't
He also came into it without even trying to suss out where you and I are politically, which is great because that's, that, that would've given him a headache.
But it's like, but it's, it's nice. It's just like I'm, I'm, I'm just in for the conversation. So I, I've been waiting for a while to try to get him on, cuz I wanted the excuse. I ended up saying, you know what, there's never gonna be a good time. So I just brought him on. And then the Kanye, oh sorry. Yay. Um, controversy happened and the, um, what else did we talk about?
The Israeli elections. The Israeli elections, and a variety of topics that Eli was perfect for. So we talked to him about the role of the artist as a political commentator, or lack thereof, or lack thereof. Uh, the line between politics, morality, and art and creativity. Bit of history of the Israeli elections, of course, some political pond tree when it came to the, the midterms, which is also why, um, we invited him after the midterms to record a little tale to the conversation, to, uh, to reflect on how well his predictions panned out. The spoiler. Both he and I were mostly wrong,
Vanessa: so it's fun to have him back to, to reflect on the wrong, the wrongness. Uh, one thing I will note too, for the person who is not as up on their Israeli politics, I will say that ADA and Eli's conversation was a little bit more advanced level. So I do recommend, um, first checking out. Aam did a great, uh, episode for the dispatch, which is kind of like your 1 0 1 to Israeli politics called Be's Back Baby. Is that what it was called? Yep. Called Be's Back Baby. Check that out. First, I would say if you, if you are into Israeli politics, we'll drop a link in the show notes. Yeah. And then with that, you'll have the primer that you need to hope. Follow along on a Do Eli, uh, going back and forth on these.
Adaam: Yeah. It very quickly devolved, uh, the Israeli conversation devolved into two Jews, um, arguing about Israel while Vanessa stares intently trying to follow the conversation, scratching her chin with waspy solidity.
Vanessa: Hey, I'm not a wasp despite my appearance.
Adaam: You have that Catholic blood.
Vanessa: I come from Catholic Lineage . All the guilt is of my domain.
Adaam: Guilt is thee
Vanessa: and as folks are checking us out on Apple Podcast or whatever podcast player of choice, uh, you should also check out another podcast called Preconceived. We've talked about them before and they're still kind of a, a partner of ours.
Adaam: Yeah, it's hosted by Ze Mank and, uh, we think there's probably a lot of audience overlap there because his focus is taking the title suggests preconceived notions and try to understand why we hold them and how to break out them shattering thought patterns and breaking out of our epistemic mold's. Kind of the uncertain thing thing. Right. And, uh, Zale has a variety of great guests. You can just scroll through the catalog and see authors, thinkers, scientists. Psychologists, researchers, the lot necessity of a recommended episode,
Vanessa: uh, episode 66 called Unorthodox Leaving Extremist Religion with Gene Steinberg. Lots to explore and check out with Preconceived. So go forth.
Adaam: So that's it, you know the drill. Follow us on uncertain.substack.com to get both the episodes and the. Newsletters, you can give us free specs to get the extra content. And if you want to support us further, five star reviews on Apple podcasts go a long way.
Vanessa: Oh, that's the way to do it. Five stars.
Adaam: And with that
Vanessa: Eli, like
Israel's Red Wave
Adaam: just recent happenings kind of like collided and gave me a gazillion excuses in one week to, to bring you on. So I actually don't know where to start. They are the areas that I originally wanted to talk to you about, but you also have a generalist perspective on a variety of cultural phenomena.
And so I'm just gonna throw out a bunch of buckets and you can pick the first one to start with. So we have the artist formerly known as Kanye. We have, um, Elon Musk. I think it's gonna fall into it. We have neo conservatism and we have the Israeli elections. Um, am I missing something?
Vanessa: Um, did you wanna, you had, you had texted me earlier that you might wanna talk about some like foreign policy stuff and or Mueller investigation
Adaam: falls under the neo-conservative bucket I think. Suppose. Okay. Okay. And if there's something particularly, um, on your mind, aggravating or pleasing maybe.
Eli Lake: Well, I just, uh, published my episode on the Israeli elections called Red Wave Over Israel, where I, I don't know if you've listened to me. I'm very, I'm very happy with that episode in the, the monologue.
Sorry to, that sounds imo, but, um, , I, I tackled the hard thing, which is, uh, I Tamar Ben Gare and his party. Uh, which is, uh, translated, I guess into Jewish might or Jewish power. Jewish might, yeah.
I, I, I literally just recorded in episode four, uh, the dispatch podcast about the same topic. Um, and so it's like, it's on my mind as well, like literally five minutes before starting.
I guess. This is a lot of these Israeli minded people. It's on their mind. And for in summary, the Ben VIRs party is the Jewish Nationalism Party. It's, um, extreme far religious messianic right, uh, faction in Israeli politics that has been anathematized since late eighties, um, and is now been resurgent and laundered back into politics by, um, the machinations of the, uh, Netanya government and the charisma of Ben Veer himself.
I think that's basically right. Yeah. It's, it's, I I think it's fair to say it's like it's America Hana inspired and my episode that, that has, uh, on this. Spends a bit of time looking at Kahan and the Jewish Defense League and his migration, uh, politically speaking to what I, what I call, you know, he, I would say he died as a Judeo fascist mayor.
Kahan did. He favored the policy of transfer, which is the forced expulsion of Israeli Arabs, uh, from what you consider to be the land of Israel. Um, and that is, that is eth obviously ethnic cleansing. Now, Atara Benga, uh, doesn't go that far. What he says is that he wants to expel disloyal Arabs. Um, and because he's somewhat loose in the definition of what a disloyal Arab is, I believe it allows for what I would say are kind of reasonable non-racist Israelis to project that he is being reasonable.
And it allows for fanatic racist Israelis to say, oh, he's sickling to us.
Adaam: That's the beauty of the word disloyalty in politics though, right? You can use it as a blanket to cover whoever they are.
Eli Lake: Correct. And that it's a typical demagogues trick, which is you say something. That is provocative and vague, and then you act offended or persecuted.
When somebody says, what you have suggested is barbaric,
Adaam: how dare you claim that? I'm, I'm saying that old dissidents should be thrown in prison. I'm not saying that at all, but this dissident, however, definitely deserves being transferred.
Eli Lake: But I mean that, okay now to steel man, it because, I mean, I'm deeply uncom, but on the other hand, there are terrorists in Israel who do things.
Are awful. And there, you know, there have been SPS of, you know, I don't know what you call 'em, maybe call them terror waves. I mean, like a few years back there was something called the stabbing into fa where people like Palestinians inspired by social media would just like at random stabbed Jews and Okay.
So that's terrible. If you're caught, you know, doing that, you should probably, I mean, you know, you should go to prison obviously, at the very least. And
Adaam: in context, I grew up in Jerusalem during the second Infa. Yeah. I had buses explode right outside of my high school and friends. Yeah. Blow up. I have no particular, um, sympathy for terrorism of any kind.
No matter under what guys, of course. And in what kind of legitimation. The, the idea that Arab Israelis, who, for whatever reason, for whatever type of radicalization should be treated in extra-judicial ways is totally wrong, deeply uncomfortable to me, and that that's the implication. This
Eli Lake: is the irony, is that part of what Ben g Vire is saying is, The Jewish state has not protected Jewish citizens.
I mean, the, the line that he keeps going back to is that Jews are treated as guests in their own homeland, which is absurd. Come on. It's a demagogic. It's not only issg
Adaam: like, like you can talking about, uh, the American border for instance. You can trump being a demagogue and everything, and you can talk about how he's over heightening the danger of the border, maybe.
But it's absolutely true that American politicians have abd their responsibility to enforce border control in the South. That's just a disaster. And it's not just Democrats fault for that matter, but when you talk about Israeli security and to claim that the Israeli machine has been abandoning Jews for slaughter or anything like that is absurd.
Israel. In many ways, shockingly safe nowadays because of Titan security. Now, of course, there has been some upheaval recently, which has been driven more by civil uprising in the Arab Israeli communities, the knife tadaa, and, um, most recently the, um, the riots in law and around the country, those were a shock to the system because of how radicalized people who have until now been considered integrated or assimilated into society to some extent, um, have turned.
So it was a shock. But you need to go a long way to claim that this therefore proves that Israelis are being treated as guests in their own land.
Eli Lake: Well, the, the, there's an irony of course, because Khan's original Jewish Defense League and people inspired by Kahan after his death, like Maru Goldstein were themselves, like at times, terrorists.
I mean, Jewish Defense League bombed. Soviet, you know, diplomatic consulates and things like that. And also Arab consulates in the name of what they believed was sort of a, just more just cause. And, and Ben Goldstein, who shot up is one of the themes of Jewish history. I mean, one of the worst. And Ben Veer
Adaam: had his, um, his image plastered on his wall for until very recently.
Eli Lake: Yeah, no. And, and that, you know, that makes him a, a, am I allowed to curse on this? Like it's a piece of shed thing to do. So, um, I end it though by saying, listen, the one thing we can say is that Vir now is going to be part of a ruling coalition. He is. His party won 14 seats. .
Vanessa: And, and just for context, is 14 seats like a, a lot?
Is that like Yes, he's the
Adaam: third largest party out of 10 who have, um, made it through the cutoff in the Israeli election. Okay. So
Vanessa: this is, he he's coming in with power
Eli Lake: behind him. Well, yeah. And also just to keep put in some context, the first run, uh, when Kahan was alive, I mean, here's an irony. Kahan Judeo fascist murdered by an Islam fascist in 1990 in New York City.
But when Kahan was alive, um, you know, he, his high watermark for the cock party was one canes seat. Um, and the leco and the labor part of the two dominant parties in Israeli politics conspired to screw over Kana and his party by successfully passing a law that made it, you know, that barred him and the party from running in 1988.
Um, this time around the, um, oh, ITSMA Yadi was courted by Netanyahu initially in 2018. And so you didn't have Likeum big and famously would leave the Esit when Mehanna spoke. Uh, you didn't wanna even acknowledge it. And so there is something there with like Netanyahu sort of making them kosher and encouraging people to sort of vote for various joint lists so he could have a right wing coalition.
So that's important point to make. On the other hand, you know, Benca vi his entire life, His entire adult life. He has been an agitator from the outside. He has had the luxury of being somebody who didn't have to make, who didn't have the responsibility of making, having power. So he's able to say kind of ridiculous things about the Jewish state without, you know, having to actually think about like, okay, well now what, what would you do?
So that has an opportunity maybe that will destroy him, maybe that he will moderate. I mean, I'm, his story isn't over yet. He's only 46 years old. So in that respect, what I'm saying is that if it's true that, you know, cuz he goes out of his way to say, listen, I'm not calling for the transfer forced expulsion of Israeli Arabs as Kahana did.
He says that over and over again. And I'm not trying to make it seem like he's not, it's not troubling. And he doesn't, I, in, you know, in my monologue I mentioned all the stuff about Robert Goldstein and everything like that. But I'm saying that this is a new experience. We don't know what he's going to do when he does have influence and power.
And it may, we may find out that he will be someone else. And I just would say that it's, maybe it's a kind of corollary. But there was a time when people thought mono and big and was a fascist. That was a famous letter from Albert Einstein and Hannah Rent when he came to America, like on the eve of Israeli independence.
And first of all, they were co they were totally wrong, aboutum big. And he was absolutely not a fascist. He was anti-fascist. And I can get into that another point, but, and, and for
Adaam: context is the first prime minister in Israel that represented the Nu Mai party. Mai party was the founding and ruling party for 20 years,
Eli Lake: was it?
Yeah. Before Israeli independence, he was the rival of, um, of Ben Goon, the kind of George Washington of Israel. And, you know, there were things that he was responsible for, such as, you know, his Excel forces were responsible for the b the bombing of the King David Hotel, which was British military headquarters.
He, he practiced gorilla warfare against the British occupying forces, which at the time the Jewish community notice the issue was against. And this, and people said he was a fanatic because a lot of this, he was also, you could say the Excel forces were, along with a Lehigh, were responsible for the Darius scene massacre, which to this day is kind, you know, is kind of part of his legacy.
And that had, that led to this view like, oh, this guy's a sort of horrible fascist. Well, it turns out that he was a, he was an extremist. I wouldn't, I would, I would say, I guess you could say he is an extremist, but he wasn't involved in the,
Adaam: in these early days, he was part of the extremist factions of the Israeli independence movement.
Eli Lake: Yeah. I, I, yeah, extremist is kind of a loaded word, but what I would say is that he, he was, he, he had a foul odor among the kind of American Zionist at the time and the certainly benor despised, you know, in these, in these days. And. Anyway, throughout the course of his life, this was in his thirties. Like he proved that he was not only, you know, he was a great Zionist and a great kind of Israeli patriot, but he, he was the one who ended up making peace with Anmar Sadat, uh, which is the first major peace deal that Israel signed with one of its Arab neighbors.
Um, you know, his decision, uh, when there was an arm shipment known as the al on a ship called the Alt, which is a famous scene like, you know, kind of where there was a real danger in the beginning of Israel that you would have different, you wouldn't have a single, a single monopoly of violence. You wouldn't have a single idf, which is the Israel Defense Forces.
And there was militaries. Yeah, there's an arm shipment. And then there was a big debate over like whether some of the guns should go to like, you know, the be affiliated itself versus a Haganah. And there was a Jews fired on Jews. The ha, you know, there was the, the Haganah fired on the ship. There were casualties.
It could have been a civil war. At the very moment of Jewish independence. And instead it turned out that be had the kind of courage and and vision to stand down and stand down his forces and his loyalists. And as a result there we, there was a, you avoided that kind of civil war so unthinkable.
Adaam: Yeah.
Just to add some more color to it. This is a little irony of history cuz we like ironies in this conversation that the mai party that was a socialist and worker party was unsurprisingly much more representative of the elite culture at the time of Israel. Totally. And it was bein who was the first spokesperson for the people who really were second class at the time, the, the Miza Jews and a lot of the actual working class of Israel, even though his party was technically in favor of more, um, market liberalization.
Eli Lake: That's right. That's right. Anyway, there's a, it's a fa he's a fascinating figure. And my point only in sort of raising is I don't want to even, I'm not, I'm not saying Tamar. Oh,
Adaam: Vanessa's expression is just, how the fuck did I get
Eli Lake: stuck in this? Sorry. We'll talk about Kanye soon enough if this is not, but Imar Beier story is not yet written, and he has an opportunity to prove many people like myself who think this guy is kind of a proto fascist wrong.
Mm. Even though I'm not, I'm not holding my breath, but I'm saying that, you know, there's a lot of stuff here and, and by the way, I could totally see Netanyahu being the cynical Exonian figure that he is turning. On these religious Zionist and turning on this party and saying, you guys are too extreme. And then having the kind of, you know, and pivoting and like, you know, trying to, to, to break off saying, I don't know, the Ador Lieberman faction of the Anti Bebe Coalition.
We were, ju
Adaam: again, this is something that we were just talking about. Um, the idea that Netanel is necessarily gonna create this coalition. The expected far right coalition misunderstands Netanya, because Netanya is not really a far right leader. He, he is the king of status quo and he is one of the most impressive politicians in terms of really being able to hold 17 different, uh, uh, plates in the air.
Yep. He, there is a non-zero chance that he leverages the fact that there is a threat of a religious messianic takeover of the politics and say, Hey, look, uh, Lape, go whoever the centrist and the, uh, sent right parties. I know you hate me. I know you literally formed a government to ostomy last year, but it's either you join me and give me what I want in terms of my, uh, judicial reform, et cetera, et cetera, or I'm making deals with the economists, so what is it
Eli Lake: gonna be?
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a, that's a fascinating thing. I I, I didn't mean to sort of, I don't wanna be naive about it. Uh, there's a lot of really bad things about Zamar bedroom beer, but what I am saying is that it's funny how once you see some of these outsiders get power, they can become very different people.
And you see it all the time, by the way, I mean, if you look at like the Tea Party in American politics, right? And then you compare that to the MAGA movement. Hmm. It's like everybody thought you could draw lines. Yeah. I'm just saying it's like, it's fascinating to me to see what happens to political figures that begin their career as these fire brands on the outside.
And then once they have power, they become, you find them, they kind of get moderated and corrupted. It's just, it's like a cycle of things. Yeah. But then
Adaam: you have cases like take, Ted Cruz has a starting the tea party, talking about small government and respecting the constitution and. 2020 completely throwing all of that away by January 6th specifically.
And you can start thinking that maybe it's really just about rank populism and his taste for arsonist that's guiding him.
Eli Lake: Yeah. But he wants power. Mm-hmm. . .
Adaam: Yeah. Well, don't
Eli Lake: they all? No, but I mean like he really wants power . He wants that's he's, that's he's got his eye on the prize. You know, he's, wait,
Vanessa: I wanna just circle back to make sure I, I understand, you know, the, the beginning of this conversation, which is where do we derive.
The popularity of this, uh, of, of this movement. Now that's taking over the, the Israeli Par Parliament,
Eli Lake: parliament here. You, you gotta read a piece from Armen Rosen in Tablet Magazine, which is a profile of Benga Vir. He was just an Israeli and he interviewed him too. Phenomenal piece. You gotta read that because that I learned so much from it.
I gotta shout out to Armen Rosen. You guys should have him on this podcast. He's so good. That piece really puts it out there. And when he says this, there's a lot of people, and I talk to people in Israel about this too, by the way, who were not kahanas and aren't settlers, but for whatever reason, they're like, listen, this tech miracle in Israel kinda left us behind.
And like, you know, rents are too damn high and we can't afford a place and. You know, every, nothing seems to, you know, there's a, there's a kind of dissatisfaction on the losers in the tech economy in Israel. Mm. Some of it is that, some of it is also that there really has been some insecurity or a sense of insecurity similar to America.
Like where there's crime. You may not be able to show it with statistics, but there, you know, in the 2021 War with Gaza, there were these sorts of, I don't know, like, there were, there were moments where like, you know, cuz a lot of the cities are in Israel and towns are called mixed, they have Arab, Jewish, Jewish people.
And there was a concern that like, you know, there were some of the neighbors were, you know, reacting to the latest war in such a way that there was a sense of insecurity. There was a little bit of,
Adaam: there were s there were riots in, in cities that, yeah, I don't remember seeing in my time. So yeah, it's, it's, it, it, I can understand that anxiety, but it's interesting about the more populist economic insecurity point because it's true.
And that's hardly discussed because, You see that under the Netanya 12 years of market liberalization and the ascent of tech, Israel has turned from an economic backwater to one of the world's top 20 economies. But it has kind of become, uh, a single crop state. Like it only does tech. There is nothing else if you want to ha like the, the, um, the ability to have a living wage in any other industry.
But, but tech is strained at best and
Eli Lake: natural gas
Adaam: or natural. Sure. If you, if you happen to own national gas, natural gas, or be part of the, uh, extraction efforts, then yes, you make, you make good money. Um, but, but it's true. And though it is happening here as well, I see the
Vanessa: parallels here for sure. I don't, the only people I know who are comfortable in making a good living are in tech right now.
Anyone I know who took a different path is struggling. Both Trump. Well, . Yeah. But anyway, so it sounds like that this politician is tapping into kind of the currents that are happening. The people feel left behind. It sounds like he also has some, like Netanyahu shine a bit in, in recent, and so there's these things are converging to make him
Eli Lake: popular.
Yeah. And he has this look like he's schlubby , but like, he looks like a common man. Like if you look at Yair lap, the, the last Prime Minister or the Karen Prime Minister, I guess, who's about to lose his coalition, um, you know, he's like really in shape. He's very handsome and charismatic and like you look at like Tamar Ben Gare and he does look like, like, looks like, like Bluto from Animal House or something.
Like he's just like, you know, he's a schlub. But um, you know, and I think there is something that appeals to it. I do think that he taps into something that's deep in like the Israeli soul, which is. He says that line that Jews should not be treated as guests in their own homeland. And that goes back to bacon.
And it goes back to, it goes back to something really deep about Zionism. Like we are gonna demonstrate that this is our homeland. And that sense that like, you know, in the shadow of the Holocaust, like the Jewish people, their resilience and we're not gonna be pushed around. And that gets to something that's like hard for me as a diaspora Jew to appreciate, although I can appreciate it kind of by knowing history.
But like it's. I think that, that he's, he's kind of stirring that up as well. It's
Adaam: interesting about the schist that you pointed out. Yeah. It, it does have a kind of a, a ue long charm
Eli Lake: in his popular. Very good. That was smart. That was very smart. Yes. Another demagogue, another populist . What did he say? He said like, you know, spoils for my friends and, well, what do your enemies get?
Good government .
Adaam: Um, okay. So that was, that was our Israeli bucket. .
Um, talking about, um, charisma. Let's talk about, yay. Sure. So is it, yay. You are
the, you're the super fan.
The Genius and Folly of Ye
Eli Lake: Sca. Sca. Yay. I guess I'm a super fan. I really do think he's a genius and, um, I appreciate his music. I don't have a feel for his footwear.
Hmm. Uh, I should say I'm not a sneaker head. So it's like that, that to me is like, I don't know. I guess I'm generally not into swag. Yeah, I'm not into swag as much either. Yeah. I can't really swag. It's hard for me to judge his fashion. Um, it's not my style, but like, again, I don't wanna, like, it's hard. I can't quite understand that.
I do think he's a fascinating figure because I do think he's, he's a legit musical genius who has chosen to also be a celebrity in the reality television space, which I had. So I always associate it with, that's fame for people with no talent. Right? And here's a guy who's bursting with talent who seems almost more interested in becoming famous in that, in that context.
Which I, which I have to say is really interesting. You know, like why he, you know, I mean, the fact that he had this marriage to Kim Kardashian and what's Kim Kardashian's? Great skill. And I shouldn't say this cause my wife is like a huge, like, she, she loves that stuff, but like, I don't get it, you know, like,
But I, I wanna, uh, drill into your, uh, your claim, your bold claim of, uh, he's genius.
Um, I don't actually dispute it, but there is a right and wrong answer as to why he's a genius. So, what's yours?
Oh, cuz he's in my view, um, well, David Samuels wrote a famous piece about him at the height of his like, cultural power called American Mozart. I say that Yay is the American Miles Davis, which is to say for the genre of hip hop music.
I think he's changed it maybe three or four or five times in the way that miles changed jazz over the course of his career and his, so, and, and it also, by the way, this is very similar to like, someone like Bob Dylan, another genius who just as everybody was like really getting into, like, when Dylan's folk sound, he goes electric and just as everyone's getting into electric, he decides to put out a bunch of country, a couple country records.
And this is like, they're into that sound. He decides he's gonna find Jesus and do Christian rock. I, it's. And I love that in that he, he constantly, he's, he's, he's always furtive and moving on to the next thing. And his catalog and his output reflects that. So he, you know, comes on the scene as a producer.
He makes, he's probably like the last great producer of the golden era of hip hop in the 1990s. You know, you, he meets up, he, he hooks up with Jay-Z. You listen to an album like The Blueprint or the Black album, you know, Kanye's like all over that. And then, you know, his first album calls Drop, it's just a stone called Classic.
And the, the two that he does after that are kind of similar and they're, and they, but they get more intricate and he adds more layers. And you can hear, like on the second album, there's a song called We Major, where there's just a breakdown, which is a beautiful piece of original. Sounds like it could have been on a Stevie Wonder record.
Then he does 8 0 8 s and heartbreak by the by pitch filtering his voice and then using it and, and exploring how he can use his voice and create and like, almost become, you know, to bend it in ways that are, that, that make it sound more computer and robotic, which we hear, you know, auto tune as, and that style with tpa and everything else like that.
Well, Kanye really kind of does that in the hip hop world before almost everybody else. And then, you know, you have something like my, I I always, it's my dark, twisted, beautiful fantasy. My beautiful dark twist. I forget what exactly what the, that record is Spin, the greatest hip hop record ever made. It's, yeah, much more than just taking these samples and then wrapping over it.
He's creating symphonies, uh, with little pieces of sound. He's like a brilliant collage artist. Um, you know, I, in my monologue on Kanye that I released a couple weeks ago in the middle of all this stuff, And I talked about, um, I kind of tried to draw the similarity of the Ezra Pound, but it's this idea that when you're explor, you know, like when you think of Ezra Pound's, epic poem, the Contos literary professors for people who are real scholars on this will say it's like a kind of almost a catalog or like a journal of one man's, like really deep reading of stuff.
Like it's his interaction with these texts. And there's another thing which I didn't put in the monologue, but I think is really interesting that, uh, you know, there's a great cia, um, a really important kind of like one of the founders of the cia, James use Angleton, who, when he was at Yale, was started a, a poetry review and he was in touch with Ezra Pound and sometimes he would, he would ask Ezra Pound for.
Contributions, but sometimes Ezer Pound would just give him quotes from other stuff he was reading. Well, that's very, it strikes me, and that's a version of what hip hop producers do, say they take from sounds and things from before, and they create something new out of it. And that is what, and Kanye is brilliant at that.
And he will take, you know, a version of a song and then adds certain things. And like, that's, that's musical genius. So he does the My ERs, which I think is a great high watermark for him. And then, you know, he keeps moving. I mean, the next one of note to me is Yeezus, which is a really grimy, almost post-industrial record.
It doesn't even, in some ways sound like rap. Um, and that takes a lot. And then I really like, you know, this is it, it's debatable, but I think he has another resurgence in the Trump era after he comes out as a Trump guy. He releases an album called Yay, and then kids see Ghosts and then Jesus is King.
Those three records I think are absolutely brilliant. I like that. He is somebody who is an, is a hip hop artist, who as a rapper is from the very beginning with Jesus walks. He, he's bringing in religious themes and things that normally we just don't associate with it. And so he's got a, for me, um, an amazing kind of catalog.
I'm still absorbing the two Donda releases that he's done. I find the first one is really good. I, you know, but anyway, I, I think he continues to put out quality work that's kind of a, if you think about it, that alone put out relevant and important records since he started putting them out in like 2003, 2004, and now it's almost 20 years later.
That's a kind of miracle too. If you think about the shelf life and relevancy, I mean, Jay-Z I guess he put out four 14, but I don't know that Jay-Z after. After the Black album, I would say that, you know, then it's, it's very uneven. Kanye's still putting out great stuff. So, so I
Vanessa: was gonna just start getting into the, this issue of the, the art ver artist versus the, uh, art politics.
And the politics. Yeah.
Adaam: Right. And as a, a pound is a good segue. Yeah.
Vanessa: I mean, I mean this is a topic that you talk about a lot in your podcast. I think you've had a couple episodes, like teasing out, um, to what extent we wanna hold artists accountable for what they say politically versus do we just ignore it and, and only focus on the art and, and, and relate to the artists via the art in the way that is more meaningful and useful to our time, and kind of find perhaps their political leanings irrelevant.
Um, I do think that there's. There, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that there's like a hierarchy when we're talking about artists and there's the, there's the kind of celebrity that you were talking about earlier of like, no talent, celebrity, no talent. Mm-hmm. celebrity with talent and genius. And I feel like we are much more likely to give a pass to the genius for having, uh, , uh, questionable political ideologies.
Sure. Because we wanna interact with 'em and their, their genius level work is so worth talking. Whereas when you get into the middle place, it's, you get into a bit of a Meier category now because it's like, how talented are they? Do we justify it versus do we, do we just stop buying their work? You know what I'm saying?
Like, there's a, it's, I feel like it's more difficult to have this conversation when you're talking about not the geniuses.
Eli Lake: Well, I, I, yeah. And it's, it's, it's, how do you know, right. Um, Yeah, I mean, I, it's hard to say because it's like, if you're a genius, you're probably gonna have a huge amount of work. But, you know, I guess there's some,
there's some artists who produce a lot of work and none of it's good I mean, like, uh, in one of my earliest episodes called the Art in the Artist, I, I led with the idea of Kenny G being a phenomenally great guy by all accounts. By the way, Kenny g I think makes terrible schlock . But you know, listen, the, he's a great guy. He's a great dad. Scratch Galer nice investor, totally great with his fans, and there are legions of them and they, you know, it's, there's a lot of people with bad taste, , they all, but Kenny G's really good to all of them, and they um, he just seems like a great guy. And yet
Adaam: someone needs to cater to the people with bad taste.
Eli Lake: Yeah, exactly. But, and yet, like if, when you go through like the legends of jazz music, like Charlie Parker, Terrible guy, you know? Mm-hmm. . I like to think about the Beatles because by all accounts, um, Paul McCartney is genius and a great guy, like by all accounts, McCartney's a really good guy. John Lennon, terrible guy, but essential, you know, and so what are you gonna do? So anyway, this, so, but I totally take your point and it's, you can't really know. And
I, I would rather be more tolerant than less tolerant. My issue is like, on the one hand, if you're just talking about like what you choose to listen to, if you don't wanna listen to r Kelly anymore, I totally understand what R Kelly did is terrible. I think r Kelly is in the genius category, is put out a lot of great stuff. But that's a personal choice.
When it gets to coordinated campaigns that are going to pressure streamers or platforms or radio stations or whatever it is, to basically try to create something that's Dream Hampton, uh, the journalist called a Cultural Death.
Well, First of all, who are we punishing when we do that? Are we punishing the artist that are still alive? Well, to a certain extent, yes, but we're also kind of punishing us
considering the fact that, you know, I mean, listen, r Kelly should be in jail right now for what he did. But if he, if there was a jailhouse recording studio, I bet he could probably put together a banger in an afternoon. Let's be honest. I mean, he's just, that's, some people have it, some people don't. Okay.
Um, and I, that's how I felt like about why as repo was such an interesting story because if you go back, and I did listen to a lot of his radio addresses when he was, you know, help broadcasting on MU's Radio Roma. And I thought more and more as I was looking to him, I'm like, uh, this is not convincing anybody.
This is nuts. And it's fascinating because he's great, he's an amazing poet, maybe one of the greatest poets to ever live in the English language. But this is not, it's not like he's an effective propagandist. I mean, I can't imagine an American,
Adaam: would it mattered if he were, would it have changed your opinion on him?
Eli Lake: No it, on this I'm pretty clear. Like I just think that you gotta just let him cook, even though he's got horrible politics and criticizes politics. But my thing is that like it's interesting is that
he was tried in absentia and convicted for treason, which would get you executed normally. But then to spare his execution, he was declared insane and he spent like 13 years in a mental institution, which I would imagine was kind of a hindrance to his creative work. And strikes me as like, again, who are replenishing, you know, I mean cuz we're gonna read Ezra Pound's poetry for centuries. Um, And did we not get as much poetry from Ezra Pound as a result of that? And by the way, when he was through with his experience in the mental institution, as I say it, in that, in the thing, he was a broken man, and he kind of soon after, went into the last 10 years of his life, basically kind of a self-imposed silence and wouldn't barely speak.
Okay.
Adaam: So before I, I wanna actually play devil's advocate to what you just said. Okay. Before that, let me just like do the throat clearing for myself. I every once in a while when I talk about, um, you know, you can read Jacob rolling without getting angry about this, and people would say, oh, you're not, uh, transgender yourself.
You don't know how it affects yourselves. I say, sure. Fair enough. Sure. Whatever. I dunno with Yeah. You feel like, okay, he is talking about the Jews and I'm part of this satanic ball that he's talking about. So I, I. A test that I don't give a shit. Um, is it, do I think that there is potential social problems associated with it?
Yes. And we'll get to that. But does it affect my listening of, um, my dark, beautiful, twisted, tra, uh, whatever? Not at all. I, I hear it for what it is, and maybe it's because I've been trained, first of all, as a Jew. I. If you give up on all rabid antisemites, you lose half of literature and half of classical music.
And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not passing on on the good stuff. I'm, I'm gonna read the story. I'm gonna read the master in Margarite and, and fuck you. I'm gonna enjoy it. Yeah. I'm not gonna enjoy Vagner because I find him dull, but too much pathos for me, but not because of the antisemitism. So that's my throat clearing.
And, and with, uh, ye's, current outbursts, and we didn't actually set it up, but I assume that people are plugged enough to know that he has been talking, not just mild antisemitism, but you know, textbook antisemitism, textbook, uh, textbook. It's like almost a joke. It's like literally reading the cliches from the dictionary definition of ju debating propaganda.
So I don't care. Yeah. Does not affect my e emotional, um, um, connection to his work. But to play, to play devil's advocate, your assumption in saying, Who does it hurt? Uh, when we punish these artists, it actually implying that it actually hurts us. We hurt ourselves, we hurt the culture by ostracizing these, um,
Eli Lake: well, let's be specific. I don't if you want to, I don't think we are hurting anybody.
I think it's important to say, I like, I like Kanye's music, but this is antisemitic and you shouldn't say it Right. And criticize that. That's I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about that. No, of course, I'm talking about of course, anything
Adaam: that is a coordinated effort to limit their ability to express themselves.
Eli Lake: Right. Either limit the distribution or affect them in such a way, like if you put him in a mental institution, could Kanye still, I mean, I, it's hard for me to know because I have never been in a mental institution and committed to that. But I would imagine that if you were a creative person and you couldn't leave a facility and you had to take certain drugs or whatever it was, that might affect your creative output.
Adaam: It might diminish your creativity,
Eli Lake: if you diminish the creativity of some of these bad artists or problematic artists, then who is punished? It's the rest of us who enjoy their.
Vanessa: But I know that there's a distinction between like, when we're talking about r Kelly versus Esther Pound, the first time I've ever made this comparison.
Um, but I mean, we recognize that r Kelly should be in jail and we will take the, the, the cultural hit because he has done things that he needs to be in jail for. Right? Yes. And we as a culture have to stay, well, unfortunately, we will be deprived of future r Kelly songs versus,
Adaam: but that law,
Eli Lake: that's, that's, and I agree with you that that's a matter of law.
Vanessa: Yes. Right. Versus Ezra Pound. It's, it's a little more
Eli Lake: Well, he did, he did violate the law technically.
Vanessa: Mm-hmm. . And I guess the question is to what extent is, is are his political actions hurting us? And I think you could probably ask the same of, of yay. Right. To what extent are them just espousing their political beliefs actually causing hurt in a way that they, they are, their creative output should be curved because they need to be taken out of the, the cultural sphere, for example.
That's Vanessa. That is a very, very sured observation. Wanna say it was very good. I mean, I just, I, I don't think that there's, you can say, I don't know if we, I wouldn't call it political hurt because that's a, but I'm just saying they can, I, I, again, I don't think that there is such a, I don't think we should frame, frame it that way.
If, if, you know, Norman Mailer famously stabbed his wife mm-hmm. , and I suppose if he was convicted by jury of his peers, he should pay for that. Um, but Norman Miller also, like it's worth going back. Like there's a famous scene of like one of the early second wave feminist conferences. He gives a completely offensive speech in which, anyway, well we can curse on this.
He talks about his like, dick, but then I think he like, makes reference that he has a dildo. It's like, it's totally offensive and kind of like he was trolling. Okay. And you know what, like it's really offensive and like, I can totally understand it, but you know what? I just, you gotta let him cook. He's a great. Novelist and essayist and, uh, I don't have to cosign on stuff, but mm-hmm. . Um,
Eli Lake: so in my view, I distinguish between artists who violate the law and, you know, I think that everybody is equal under the law in our societies versus like these kinds of what makes a kind of crossing various kinds of cultural lines.
Vanessa: So words are not sufficient.
Eli Lake: It's not even about words versus like deeds or like, it's not even that. It's more like I would, this is how I would describe it. It's, it's, it's more that, um, I'm not gonna, I can't, I gotta distinguish between whatever your politics are, whatever you're putting your energies into, anything like that, um, it's like that is not gonna, that should not affect, you know, the availability of your art and that it should stand on its own and.
Like the inverse of that is we, who are not artistic geniuses, but who are in the cultural space, either as writers or whatever. Like we should probably stop looking to these artists for our political guidance. Like, why would we care what Kanye West has to say about a lot of these things? And I realize, you know, it's easy for me to say that there are people who really do care, but like, we have to just get out. I mean, like, you know, I'm, I, I can, I can fully understand the idea that my favorite recording artists are gonna have terrible politics. That's normal. I get it. Like, I'm not, I'm not asking the political leaders I most admire to record banger, , hip hop tracks, you know what I mean?
The Morality of Art
Adaam: Like, but actually, but actually there's a. There's a nuance there because when we were talking about what Vanessa called in the lowest tier of celebrity, which is the no talent celebrity, right? Then it's very easy to say, what do I care about? What they have to say, what do I care about, what they have to say about literally anything. Um, they exist to entertain me.
They are, they are visual or auditory props. But when you're talking about somebody that you consider a genius, that implies that they did something that was connected with your spirit, with your soul, with your. Inner world for sure. In a meaningful way that, and that's where morality exists. When politicians, in fact, I don't expect to be No,
Eli Lake: no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Our innermost soul, like, you know, you gotta accept man that there's these like animal spirits. There's gonna be things that art is gonna show you that's not gonna be like, you're gonna wanna see necessarily morality, politics that exists on a different plane when you're talking about, no, it's morality in politics that are separate.
I agree. But I'm saying that arti, like something that's artistic greatness is not necessarily going to adhere to what you think is the right morality. It's gonna probably challenge it. No, no, no. I didn't
Adaam: say it. Didn't say it would inform it. It's not pedagogical. Yeah. But it touches the place where morality is informed.
I think to some extent, I, the whole point experiencing masterpieces, masterworks in, in literature is that they touch and challenge. Parts of your moral presuppositions, sometimes even affecting them to a change. They're, they're not divorced from the moral world.
Eli Lake: Um, I'm not enough of maybe of a philosopher, I have to brush up on my philosophy.
I don't know about that. I kind of feel like philosophy
Adaam: even. I mean, think of how you're impacted by works of literature and Yeah. You, that you really admire. Do you just say, oh, this is just literature. It opened my mind to experiences, but it didn't make me at all question some of my presuppositions.
Eli Lake: Okay. That's fair. Great literature. Yes. I think you're right.
Great literature can change how you think about things and it can have in a, a downstream effect on your politics For sure. But the point that I would make encounter to that is that I want that realm of literature and art to be fluid enough that I'm not drawing boundaries based on what the downstream effect might be. Mm. You follow me? So it's like I. I think it's okay. Like you're gonna re some, I mean, I mean I, I'm trying to think of a, of a great piece of literature that had this effect on me. Like, I mean, I guess when I read like Orwell's politics in the English language in 1984 and Animal Farm, that certainly laid the groundwork for me in my anti-fascist politics today, or my small l liberal politics today.
For sure.
Vanessa: All the libertarians who read the fountain
Eli Lake: head. Yeah. Well, I mean, fountain head's, you know, it's funny, like when I was young and I read that, I was like, this is amazing . She's absolutely right. You know what I mean? Like there's, everyone's a fucking sheep and I'm out here and like, it's just that the world belongs to winners,
Then you like get a little older and you're like, uh, this is a little too much. I rand Yeah. It's very interesting thing about I Rand is that she hated William f Buckle. And William F. Buckley hated her. And so she was never really incorporated into the mainstream conservative. She would be natural for the conservatives.
Right. She should be part of the conservatives. But that personal, you know, those two geniuses hated each other. So
Adaam: that figures ,
but like for me, crime and Punishment Sure. And again, written by a problematic author and actually is
Eli Lake: Dote fc. How considered pri problematic? I, I don't know. I mean, people, everyone's
Adaam: problematic.
Everyone's is it, uh, but I consider, I consider it incredibly challenging morally, and certainly this is, it's not even, not attempting to be, uh, a guidebook for ethics, but it did shape a lot of my appreciation of the human condition and how people approach justice, how people pervert justice in themselves.
It taught me a lot about those, those supposedly relegated realms of politics and morality.
Eli Lake: Yeah. Okay. You know, you know, you know, you've, you've convinced me. That's a good, very good point. Frankly, online. Thank you so much for joining us , on the, on the, on the literature point. That's a very, that's, that's an excellent point.
I was thinking about what you're saying about like problematic authors. Mm-hmm. , I've always, it always goes in one direction, doesn't it? Right. And I kind of want to do it in the other direction sometimes and be like, you know what? I still read love in, I still think we should read love in the time of Colorado, even though Gabriel Garcia.
Hoodwinked bike, Fidel Castro and went to his grave as a com. Mm. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's always the other one. It's always the other direction. It was like, right. Yeah, no, he's a really good novel. But you know, he was, you know, he kinda a misogynist, like, you know, Picasso was really bad guy when, anyway,
Adaam: I mean, although I will say that loving times of cholera was not the legitimate book. I, I, I didn't like it. I thought it was great. I, oh, I hated, I love 100 years of solitude. My formative. Novel, but I, that's not novel. Oh my
Eli Lake: God. You were 11 at the time of call's. A beautiful story. No, no, it's beautiful story.
It's story about finding love when you're like at the end of your life. What a great, I hated the two
Adaam: main characters so fucking much when they finally got together. I like, fuck you. I think one of them leaves his wife or the, I loved it. I preferred the wife. I like the wife.
Eli Lake: I don't like this. Listen, I read it when I was a very young man, when I was in Europe on a really long train ride to the south of Portugal, but enchanted
Adaam: by the
Eli Lake: landscape.
Yeah. And I was like in the middle of a really great. A romantic affair at the time with this Australian woman, and it was dope. I was like, this book is so good, . Um,
Vanessa: that is the amazing thing about literature. It's a hundred percent dependent on where you are in your life
Eli Lake: when you read. I think that's true.
I think that's true. I think it's true, but it's also, it's like, like that's what the other thing is this, it's a secondary point on this, but it's like I want great writers and great artists to feel that they can create. Um, wearing that, there's like somebody looking over their shoulder, right? Who's going to like, say they're problematic and try to cancel them, right?
Because they're, you're writing in the voice of a, of a Mexican American when you're not a, you know, stop it. Mm-hmm. , let these artists be art. Let artists be, let 'em cook and like deal with the artists. It's, if you think the art fails for its recents and that's important. You know what I mean? And I don't, I don't try to do that kind of criticism.
I'm more of, I mean, maybe I should get more into it as I get older, but like, that's fine.
KANtreversYE
Eli Lake: But don't, don't tell me that. The, and I, I found it back to sort of, to put it back soled, back to Yay when he came out with this album called Yay. And I would encourage listeners who like good music to listen to it.
The last four songs of it are brilliant in my opinion. And I thought this is a real artistic triumph and the review in like The Daily Beast, my former publication. Was so negative and I thought it was only negative because of his, of, of ye's. Fucked up politics and it didn't actually deal with them. With the art and the work that they were talking about.
Adaam: You actually brought in something that I wanted to at least touch on. Yeah. Which is just a pet peeve of mine in the whole yay Traverse that when ye started
Vanessa: talking about Kae. Riveri. Okay. No, it didn't work. . I tried and I failed. Continue
Adaam: controversy. Kanye.
Eli Lake: Kanye controversy. Kanye. Kanye. Kanye. Controversy.
That's not bad.
Adaam: When, uh, yay. Went maga, um, and started, you know, trying to bring down. Uh, I dunno, norms, democratic Democrats, norms, liberal norms. Mm-hmm. or push back against stuff that, that were taken for granted by the cultural elite. You suddenly saw people who wrote, spoke and, and ranted about how much they hate rap.
Talk about, ah, this is, this is a good artist and that embarrassed me and cringed me out so much. It's stop, there's something on the right. Specifically if the,
if the left problem is that they take for granted that they are the cultural hegemon Right. On the right. It's, there's so much envy, cultural envy that whenever an artist just winks at them, they cream their pants.
Eli Lake: Hmm.
I think that's kind of a fair point. , I mean, in this case, in the case of yay, like he's, he's a legit, I mean like, oh, who did the Republicans have before? Yay. Kid Rock. The Oak Ridge boys. It's been lonely, especially in the musical space. If you're a Republican, you know what I mean? You don't Five for fighting. That's another one that's like coming out for the G O P. Can you a funny story about Kid Rock and the Republican Party? Sure. In 2004, I know I'm an old guy now. In 2004, they wanted to have Kid Rock at the Republican Convention, and it was vetoed at the last minute because he had a lyric about. Doing Barbara Bush in the tush.
Oh, . Swear to God.
Adaam: Oh, sweet days. Yeah. Sweet innocent days. Uh, I, yeah,
Vanessa: unless you wanna espouse upon this, uh, this point, Eli. No, no, no. I about the creaming of the pants and whatnot, but the
Adaam: cream of the pants and, uh, , what was it? What in the tush?
Vanessa: Tush and, and, uh,
Eli Lake: Barbara Bush.
Adaam: Barbara Bush
Vanessa: in the tush, right.
Pushing the tush. No, I, I have a theory that I've just come up with and it's probably very half baked, but I'm wondering if some of this, uh, addiction to, um, pushing artists into having the, the, the right political, uh, ideology and narratives, I, I wonder if it comes a little bit from people feeling overwhelmed.
By the content options for them to consume. And I wonder if it's a bit of a, like if I have so much in front of me, I can't listen to it all. I'm going to sve out people who don't agree with me politically, because politics is everything now, and it matters so much that I will use this as, as one of my determining factors for why I should Yeah, my filter.
Eli Lake: Like, maybe hadn't thought about that, but that's genius. That's genius. Yeah. Yeah. Hadn't thought about that. That's really smart. I, I had no idea
Vanessa: if it's, if it, there's any merit in it, but I wonder if it's like a coping mechanism
Adaam: that's, that's fucking brilliant. At a minimum. It definitely allows people to. To let go of artists that otherwise they might clinging to more strongly because they know that there, there's gonna be others to fill in the void. Mm-hmm. , but maybe, but maybe there is something even more subtle that there's just subconsciously they're applying this filter because there's too much, I'm fucking suffocated.
And the
Vanessa: gatekeepers are no longer there to tell them what's good and what's not. Right. And you're just inundated. And
Adaam: so you don't have anything but half baked morality to call out your
Vanessa: art and to feel good about the art that you consume. Right. Like, you wanna feel, you want, part of what you're doing is you're, you're creating, you're, you're, I guess the way that you're, you're filtering your algorithms and your Instagram feeds is like, I wanna feel good about myself.
And so I'm just choosing what it is. And so I think that's, that's becoming the filter by which people want to consume anything. I
Eli Lake: love it. There might also be a type that would seek out artists. That have been, uh, you know, anesthetized because they, they want the transgressive experience too. Mm.
Vanessa: So you're saying it's having the
Eli Lake: opposite effect, I'm saying, is it depends on the person, right?
Mm. And there might be like an artist that you, that nobody kind of knew. I mean, I, this is not an artist, but there was a, there's a, there's a Philadelphia, Philly, like one of the greatest pitchers for the Phillies ever named Steve Carlton. Steve Carlton, uh, at some point early in his career with the Phillies, had a very bad experience during spring training with an inquirer or journalist who reported on his like cor rousing after the game or something.
And he decided from that point on, he was not going to speak to anybody from the press and. There was a famous joke in the, at the time in baseball, which was like, you know who, who speaks like there's only one person who speaks less, less English than Fernando Valenzuela and Steve Carlton. Anyway, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, so Steve Carlton, who is totally silent for all these years, superb, stellar, great pitcher, guess in the hall of fame. Finally, like some Inquirer reporter catches up with him at his ranch in Colorado. And guess what? It turns out that, that Steve Carlton is like a crazy anti-government, anti-Semite lunatic.
And it's like they're doing this whole thing where it's like, and you're, you. I remember as a kid, I was reading this piece and I was like, oh, that's what happened to Steve Carlton. Maybe you should have just kept his mouth shut. Right? Like, it's like, so, so sometimes you find out like an artist that you really like has these views that you can't imagine.
Like why does he think that? You know, I dunno.
Adaam: Mm. I I But when you said that they seek out transgression, uh, they seek out the experience of transgression. I wonder now, just because now we're completely theorizing un unprovable psychology, the idea that because we live in such a liberty society when it comes to cultural, um, morays, I mean, we are in a post south park society, seemingly, like everything is allowed.
At this point you need to make to anathematized things in order to have something to transgress again, to light. You are actually creating the transgressive, you're making it in order that there is a transgression later
Eli Lake: on. You can have the sacred without the profane. Exactly. So, okay,
Adaam: we have some, some unprovable theories.
Does it ex,
Vanessa: do I know any of our unprovable theories explain the desire to excise, uh, artists of the past though? Like what, what is, what is deemed. Acceptable. Now that is like, it's not like you're gonna have er pound poetry on your Instagram feed, so you don't have to filter that out so much.
But if somebody wants to problematize er pound now and say, let us, let us excise him from the cannon, like is where does the instinct come from?
Eli Lake: First of all, stop exci people. , , . Second of all, what are we trying to accomplish? Like with all of this? I mean like I, let's get it back to Yay, just for a second. Okay, sure. The argument, and I kind of understand it, is that it's very important to have, like everybody say, this is not okay for you to say this if you're a celebrity on a big platform. And that when we do that, we are strengthening a norm against toxic and dangerous antisemitic ideas and there is some sort of value.
But then you have to look at it from this perspective, which is that in the era that we're in, when you can, when people can find like other like-minded people all over the world that agree with them, it's not the way that it was.
It's not like, you know, it used to be like it, we used to have a, a Walter Cronkite who, you know, sifted through and filtered out all of the stuff for the news, and millions of Americans would watch him. And that was a very powerful position. And it used to really matter. Like if you were a comedian and you didn't get on Johnny Carson, then you will not have a career.
And like you, you know, that was, that's the stakes. Were very high for that sort of thing. So those gatekeepers, but we don't have that anymore. People will find what they're gonna find. So that's the first point. It doesn't mean that there can't be norms that we have places that we kind of create de facto that this is a respectable place or something like that.
But like, where does Kanye saying these crazy things, he's saying them on podcasts. Which, you know, I love podcasts. I have one, you guys have One i's like, we love podcasts, but it's not like, you know, it's not like he saying it on, like, you know, it's not saying it on cnn. Right. And the other point is that like, well he was saying it on Fox News, apparently.
No, I guess he was saying it on Fox News, but they edited it out. Right. Um, and forgot to mention, that's actually
interesting that they edited. I
Adaam: mean, I mean, I mean that's, I mean, that's very incriminating for Fox News, if anything.
Eli Lake: I don't know. I disagree with it. You think, but I'm, I'd stand out like a sore thumb on this one.
No. So I, I, I'd love to hear. Well, it's just like if you, I, I've never been in the television business, but I know, and I know a lot, a little bit about it, and it's like if you do a two hour interview, you're gonna edit it down. A ton and Yeah, exactly. So
Adaam: I mean, I, I mean, for whatever my experience in news production , there's not, that's not, that was not con, that's not editing down content. That's the sort of stuff that at a minimum you send out on a website
Eli Lake: because, hold on. But isn't there, like, if you're damned, if you do, you're damned if you don't, like, if you, if you decide to highlight that you, you, you highlight it, you're charge
Vanessa: for espousing this. I mean,
Adaam: there's also process. No, but Tucker Carlson was also, you're not espousing it, you're exposing it, the, the Taco
Vanessa: Carlson, but you're quote unquote platforming it.
Adaam: No, but, but now you're, but now you're, first of all, the Taco Carlson segment was framed as, Rehabilitation of
Eli Lake: He's normal. He's normal. Stop saying he's crazy. And then you're, he just wants, he just cares about unborn babies.
Adaam: Right. Exactly. Is is one of us basically. I see. Nothing, is nothing to see here. So there
Eli Lake: was something deceptive about Yeah.
And then you were him as a normal guy when in fact he was saying all this other crazy antic. Yeah. I think
Adaam: that's not
Eli Lake: there's, but not, I see. I think there's, I see.
But my point is, if you wanna strengthen the norm, it's like maybe the best way to treat it is like, well, I wasn't turning to Kanye for like, what is acceptable, like for media theory, you know what I mean?
Like, I don't know, like I'm not, so on the one hand, it's like if you decide to make it a big deal, then you know you're opening up another segment of the audience that doesn't respect any gatekeepers or any kind of ground. So, I don't know. It's like, what is the end goal? The end goal is to kind of enforce these norms to say these kinds of things.
Are you, you shouldn't be able to say that, but then it gets into like problems when we're, we don't have, I mean, we do, I think we do have a consensus in our society about basic, like some of this really extreme antisemitism. Like it's not okay to say that all the Jews like run the media in the banks and mm-hmm.
that kinda thing. Mm-hmm. . But like, we don't have a consensus right now on whether you can say that a man can't get pregnant. And that used to, until Elon Musk took over Twitter, that would get you kicked off of Twitter and it was like you were trying to enforce the norm before you had buyin from everybody
Adaam: else.
Yeah. I love that point that you, that you do make, uh, several times on your, on your pod, uh, the norms are strongest when they take their, like their, you actually let them go through the intellectual. Struggle of, of, of settling culturally before you try to force people to not think otherwise. And, and
sometimes it takes a while, but then when once the norm sticks, it, it's much stickier.
Eli Lake: It's resilient.
Vanessa: Yeah. And it's kind of the definition of a norm, right? It has to, it has to reach some sort of tipping point consensus to become a norm.
Eli Lake: Right. And what I think was happening, and I hopefully it's about to be over, was that there was a sense among, you know, progressive activists and big tech that they could, they could short circuit the pro, the organic process of persuading lots of people that this is, when you think about it this way and just impose it by saying, we we're not gonna be able to, we're gonna throttle this kind of speech. We're not gonna let you say this kind of thing. We're gonna treat this as if this is hate speech. And I think that that's really rubbing a lot of Americans the wrong way.
MidTerm Predictions
Eli Lake: And I think it's one of the factors that's probably going to lead. To, uh, a red tsunami in the midterms next week. Mm,
Adaam: yeah. That's, uh, yep, that's probably coming.
Um, .
Eli Lake: It is, and it's, it's like, like, you know what I mean? And I say this to somebody who is horrified by January 6th, would never vote for Donald Trump agrees with the Democrats when it says, when they, when they make the point that it's like, listen, you can't have a president who basically creates a campaign to de-legitimize the election that he lost.
I agree with all that. I'm in agreement, but what I can't take is when I, when the same party then goes ahead and does things that also undermine democracy, like agitating to censor the political speech of their adversaries, which they have been doing, or politicizing the fbi, which they did, and. Like, that's where I get like, that's like, I'm like, I don't know.
That's why I'm a neither Trumper as opposed to a never Trumper. Yeah.
Adaam: I like, I like that phrase of yours. I don't know what to do with moments like these when you . I, I, I felt very, felt it very acutely during 2020 when every second your attention has to jump between something that Trump is doing. Then something that's happening on the progressive obsession with making excuses for riots and loot.
Uh, so much between the spectrum between stupid and evil that was taking place and is still taking place, or at least stupid and wrong, that that is also clashing, that you feel like you're constantly in the center of two giant, uh, walls of, of water. I'm so sorry. Of my mosaic influences. I'm just imagining those child heston standing between those two walls of water.
You don't always need to pay attention to both sides at the same time or in the same, on the same matters. So for instance, when we were talking about elections, each election has a different risk factor and sometimes the around the country, because it's so big, but also so overly nationalized by by its news consumption, you'd have states that vote on problems that are happening in another state while then giving a pass to corrupt people on their side.
And this way in New York, a lot of the bad policies that ho, in my opinion, bad policies is that Hoku is gonna get a pass for are because of the fears and concerns around January 6th and the repealing of roe. And I don't know, I find it very hard to believe that abortion rights in New York state are currently at risk, or that electing a Democrat as the governor of New York will have any effect on democracy writ large.
On the other hand, you have a real election deniers being positioned and probably winning, um, positions of power where they could potentially overturn an election in 2024, regardless of the vote or even completely obfuscate the, the vote in real time being pushed forward because of panic about cancel culture, for instance, or critical race theory and things that don't really have a grip in their state.
Mm.
Eli Lake: Push back a little bit on that. Go ahead. Um, one reason why they're, we are at risk of election deniers, uh, winning elections is because Democrats and Democratic party Yes, yes. Spent millions of dollars to support them in primaries against non-election denial.
Adaam: Yeah, that's totally reprehensible. And I'm not exonerating
Eli Lake: these assholes, so that's one.
Um, but that's the only factor. No, I understand. It's not the only thing, but two. Like, uh, there is a kind of march for the institutions by the super woke and people who have dumb ideas and like, kind of, I would say anti-racism, uh, as explained by IMEX Candy and many people who kind of are, you know, in his orbit.
I think that's an, I think that's an anti-democratic idea. I think it's like fundamentally undermines like the basic compact of our country in, uh, that the Democrats are claiming to support him. Anti-racism is focused on having equal outcomes, not just an equal process. And the proposed like policy fix of is that you would, you would audit every government program to make sure that it's sufficiently anti-racist in the irem X kendi view of it, to which I sort of say like, um, That sounds terrible.
Like it sounds like you're rigging the entire, you know, like, I don't know, like I, and I don't think there's any kind of like, so I think that that's like a, that's a legitimate concern even if it's not necessarily true that um, the schools are as like bad as some people say. But like I think there has been some stuff that's been done in terms of the school curriculum and the attitude we saw in Virginia last year and the governor's race that like a Col was saying that parents shouldn't have a say in what, you know, the curriculum is.
And there were lots of people who were trying to defend that proposition, like Nicole Hannah Jones on television. And I just think like, that's wrong.
Adaam: So I don't, I think that might have been one of , the most amazing moments of political, I dunno if malfeasance of miscalculation, but at a time where even liberals are starting to hate on teachers union.
Mcca shares a stage with a teacher union head and, and goes on to completely endorse their right to control not just curriculum, but also school closures. That was phenomenal. It's
Eli Lake: horrible and
Adaam: like, but that was just being a really dumb politician.
Eli Lake: No, no, hold on. But there's a reason why they were dumb.
There's a reason why they're dumb. Okay. The reason that the Democrats are so politically inept right now is because they have a closed loop. Because they came in to after January 6th saying that there was no legitimacy of the democratic part of the Republican party, and that their political opposition were a bunch of fascists.
And we don't have to listen to a word they have to say, and I'm sorry, but like that means that you do not have the ability anymore to get the advanced warning and the signal that says, wait a second, what you're saying right now is really unpopular with voters because you only are filtering everything out except for like the people, like who are your.
Echo chamber, your chorus. I think it's the same thing. And that's
Vanessa: a problem for that. That's called cultural sphere. It's not just the political sphere, right? It's like, yeah, it's the
Eli Lake: cultural sphere and like this, this dumb idea among, listen,
I don't wanna be the old man picking it cuz you guys are great , but there's something about the Gen Z millennials where they believe that if they encounter views that uh, kind of go against some of their core beliefs, that it's somehow harmful to them and they don't engage it and that they shouldn't be asked to endure exposure to that kind of stuff. And I would really like it if all of these people who really believe that would just be disabuse of this notion because it's just not true. And you can't live in a free society and think that way, and you cannot agitate and expect for various nodes of authority to protect. From these kinds of things.
And that's why I'm so wary of it because even though like I'm Jewish and I, I can't stand antisemitism, but I almost think there's like a bigger fight that we have right now, which is to, you know, just stop being such WSIs. Like we have to have a society where it's okay for people to occasionally be offended and it's not the end of the world.
And people are using this complaint about their mental health or it's like words or violence or whatever it is. As a, you know, as a trans non-binary person, I'm here to tell you that, you know, this is so offensive and da da da da da. And it's basically a way to censor anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.
And I just think that more and more opinion, you can think that, but I want the people in authority to have some backbone to say. Whether you're a school principal or like a, you know, politician or like the president of a university, just say no. To quote Nancy Reagan ,
Adaam: I'm fully in endorsement of everything you said, but that's also why it's terrifying when you get Carrie Lakes in position of power, because I do, I think that a, uh, uh, a Trump or Trump adjacent, uh, government is gonna be more inclusive of offensive speech.
No, it's just gonna change the direction of offense. This is a person, and this is a, a, a movement whose psychology is that? Anything that offends the person of Donald Trump needs to be canceled, whether it's a
Eli Lake: Republican . Yeah. But I don't know. First of all, I'm not so sure that they're gonna do. And if they do, I will be.
I mean, I mean the first, but I don't, I don't you think, I don't think Republicans are doing that saying that
Adaam: I'm, I'm, I'm the people person who said that on, who says that a lot about people like, you know, um, um, ISIS and like, you know, take them at their word when they're talking about, um, , uh, their, their Islam, Islam, uh, Islam supremacist worldview.
I also take people at their word when they say that the election was fake, that Biden didn't win. And implicitly that Trump running again, there is no legitimate way in which he could lose. Meaning
Eli Lake: what the, but that's a separate, hold on, wait a second. To me, that's a sep that's a separate issue. Matt Fan.
That's a separate issue. I don't think you're gonna have Republicans saying you can't say anything. That offends Trump or Denigrates Trump, because we have, we, we, we can go back to the four years of his presidency when, uh, everything that was on cable news was denigrating Trump. And there was not, he did not do anything hemmed at times about like changing the line of laws and they were very bad ideas and I didn't like that he said mean things about my tribe of journalists.
Okay, fine. That's not good either. But I know enough, and I've been around long enough to know that there was far more stuff that the Justice Department did under Barack Obama that was much more of a threat in terms of investigating journalists in terms of classified leaks than what Trump Trump didn't like.
What did Trump do on this regard? I mean, like, I. Insulted Jim Acosta press conference or something. You can also
Adaam: blame incompetence to his
Eli Lake: inab, I think. I don't think that's the danger. I'm agreeing with you that trump's a danger, but that's not the danger. No, don't. It's a different danger from the left.
The lefts danger is that they're busy bodies who take over bureaucracies and they're gonna use that power as they march to the institutions to just try to impose their agenda by sponsoring speech that they don't like.
Adaam: Their march is complete. I think now we are prime to, don't you think so? I mean, they've, they've marched through, they, I
Eli Lake: wanna get back to Carrie Lake.
Carrie Lake offends me. She's an election and hire. I would agree with that. Okay. However, I'm willing to live with her winning in a red wave if only because it will send hopefully an important signal to the Democrats to like end this stuff. That's that, that is creating this response. Like, if we could get a moment where the Democrats are like, okay, let's, let's really examine, like, why did we lose and flame out so badly?
That will be a good thing for the country. And that's why I think, that's why I think like Democratic republics are a better system of government than all the alternatives because it does have this natural feedback system of self-correction and Right. And that's why like when they say vote like democracies on the line for the same shit for like more inflation and like rising crime rates and gaslighting and not being honest with us about how president is probably like not mentally all there.
Like, all you want me to, to, to endorse more of that, more Department of Homeland security censoring the internet. More of that , fuck you. I'm not gonna vote for that there. Yeah, no, I, sorry. Rant over. I know I'm
Adaam: totally down with the idea that you want to send a signal, and I'm totally down with the idea that both parties, by the way, need to get slapped in the face.
But I, but do you really think that's gonna happen? Did republicans. Have go through any soul searching about Trump after having several states where down you're ballot Republicans were winning, but Trump wasn't elected, but Biden was, uh, elected president. Did they go to any, maybe we should distance ourself from Trump, maybe for like a day.
There was a day where they considered it.
Eli Lake: No, no, no. Listen, you make a very good point.
Sleepy Joe
Eli Lake: However, the difference is there is no demagogue at the top of the Democratic party right now. That's one of the good things about having, you know, sleepy Joe at the top of the ticket, so to speak. Which is that, so you think it's more easily fixable?
Well, I
Adaam: do think it's easily fixable. I mean, the knives are already coming out for Biden, so it's as well, they should
Eli Lake: as well. They should. I agree. Um, I mean like, can we just say, I mean, like, I know Vanessa, you know what we haven't heard from you . Let me ask you a question. Sure. Is President Biden like mentally competent right now?
Could he, should he be the p.
Vanessa: So, uh, you're at talking to someone who does not follow the news. I'm not a news junkie. Um, I am a person. If it filters through to me, it's because somebody shared it or something really big has happened, or one of your
Adaam: flatmates, flatmates ranted about it
Vanessa: Correct. Next to you, which is, or, or Emma or my husband.
So, uh, what's filtering through to me is not, I, I don't feel like he's doing a great job, but I also can't point any fingers to what is doing what he is doing terribly. I just have a sense of, it's like he's just ing along. Um, and I know
Eli Lake: that he's a, is a problem. I'm just saying he's making a lot of mistakes that are, you can't just explain.
It's like, oh, well, Joe's always been like that. Mm.
Adaam: He was, he politician in the past, a competitive politician with plenty of gaffs, and not particularly profound, but at least politically savvy enough to get along to, I mean, if you watched the, his democracy and peril part two speech, uh, the other, it's just, it's not, it's not, it's not great.
Vanessa: And the, the mistakes are domestic,
Eli Lake: international, un also, he's like sha, he's like shaking hands with like the. I'm just thinking there's something like he's, he's not all there. He needs naps. I'm not,
Vanessa: I mean, he's not, he's not a young guy. He's a very, very old, one
of
Eli Lake: our oldest presidents. Yeah. He's gonna be 80.
Adaam: Yeah. And the question is not should he be euthanized, but should he be president? Right? Yeah,
Eli Lake: exactly. I'm like, if you Exactly. Give him a podcast, I think he could handle that
Ode to Robert Caro
Eli Lake: anyway. Uh, , I mean, Vanessa, I have to ask like, so, so, so is your, your bag is like your, your cultural. Uh,
Vanessa: architecture urbanism is my, is my bag?
Yes. Is that your bag? And I've been pull, I am a, a lefty, but of not, of a political persuasion. So insofar as I just culturally have been raised on the left. Uh, and this podcast is, uh, a, a dumb and eye having conversations with people that I never would have . That's so cool. And so it's part me learning and part me questioning things that I have sometimes taken for granted and also
Adaam: pushing against my supposition and somebody who's some would, are you too immersed in some of this bullshit?
Eli Lake: Have you, uh, well, I guess the question earlier, have you, have you read. Car's. Masterful biography of Robert
Vanessa: Becks, A power broker. Yeah, it is on my to read. Everyone talks about it to me
Eli Lake: constantly. It's dope as hell. It is so good. You gotta read it. I will. And then, then, then get into his Lyndon Johnson stuff, which is also great, but as an architect, as somebody who's interested in urban planning it, it unlocks so many things.
It's like a great biography, but it's more than a biography. It's like a history of like New York City and like why it's laid out the way it is. It's great.
Vanessa: Yes. And I just bought tickets to Straight Line. Crazy. So I'm gonna see that tomorrow. What is that? That's the new play of about Robert Moses. Oh. That Starring Ray Fines.
Eli Lake: Oh, okay. I gotta, if I'm in New York, I love New York. I gotta go to New York. And I, that's something I would
Vanessa: like, like Outand might, but maybe, you know,
Eli Lake: somebody . No, I mean, I'm in DC so, but I'll wait me out. Wait for it. That's really cool. Yeah. Anyway, great book Power Broker.
Vanessa: I've, I've heard it recommended many times.
Robert Carro is a exceptional biographer, so Yeah.
Adaam: Oh, this, it's great. I mean, I, I, did you read the Robert Carro? Um, It's not exactly an autobiography, but kind of like his, um, journal about, about writing about the craft.
Eli Lake: No, I have not read that yet. And I, I'm, I should read that cuz I'm, I've read everything else by Caro and, uh, I love his, I didn't read the the Johnson yet.
Oh my God. The Johnson's really good too. It's like you, when you, what you get outta the Johnson one. Well, when you get outta the Johnson one, it's like a history. You, there's a whole, you, it's also a history of the Senate. It's a history of like Washington in the middle of the century. It's really good.
Adaam: Yeah. I uh, okay. Should we
Vanessa: close with our blind spots question?
Adaam: No, before the blind spot question.
Neo-Conservatives and the FBI
Adaam: I just want to give you a chance to, uh, , um, what's a new conservative Are you one and why are you trying to take over the world? Uh, NeoCon conservative or new conservative, new NeoCon. Conservative. Yeah, that's my Israeli accent.
Eli Lake: Um, well the definition of neoconservative from Irving Crystal was somebody who was on the left who migrated to the right, which is. Fairly general. Um, but I think that's pretty, I mean, listen, it's, it's, the, the meaning of the word has been twisted beyond recognition, right? Uh, I call myself a neo-conservative more now out of defiance.
Adaam: Um, yeah. That's why I do it. I do, I I identify one just cuz it really gets people annoyed. Love it. Not
Eli Lake: as a troll, but just because like, I just think it's like people try to demonize the neocons in unfair ways and I'm like, right, you know what? Like, uh, well I call proudly like, and that was originally the thing cuz like NeoCon was a slur from Michael Harrington's socialist against their old friends who, who went to the right and Crystal was like, you know what?
Fine then call us. It's like the way that, um, gay people started calling themselves queer. So it's like NeoCon became like, was originally like that and then they was like, Hey, you're damn right. I'm a NeoCon. And. Then there was a period where it's like they were saying like, oh my God, like, you know, neocons are just these like, you know, people, it's like a synonym for Zionist trying to take over the world.
And that's not true. And I, I
Adaam: actually, the, the way I use it, it's also not as a troll, but I, I sometimes I, I, uh, call myself, um, even more defiantly I guess as an American imperialist. And that's just because I'm, there's an, oh, that is a troll. I like this. It's not, it's not completely a troll because I, I mean, cuz we were obviously talking about not real imperials and we're talking about some of the cultural influences and just growing up and being surrounded by people who, uh, especially professionally who sort of take for granted that American influence around the world is by definition corrosive no matter what.
It kind of bugs me as a non-American.
Eli Lake: So I guess I would say I call myself a NeoCon just because I'm old enough and I like live through the George W. Bush, like, you know, traves and everything like that. And that the word had. You know, I don't know, I just sort of stuck with the neocons and I write, you know, and now I write a com for the New York Sun.
I am a contributing editor Commentary magazine, which is a flagship neoconservative publication. Although what I've been writing recently for commentary is not, wouldn't fit neatly into the NeoCon. And I certainly am like in a very different place right now politically than like say Bill Crystal or some of the other neocons who became never Trump, because I'm really concerned about abuses at the fbi.
And I have to say, one of my things is that becomes somewhat red pilled on some of this issues having to do with domestic surveillance. That's why I brought
Adaam: it up. Yeah, yeah. Which I find in fascinating. So can you talk a little bit about this?
Eli Lake: Yeah, no. So I'm like very much like, you know, I have, I'm very proud of this piece.
I think it's really good. It'll be out in the next, it's very long. It's be a big long essay and the next commentary magazine, which everybody should read, but it's a look at the FBI from a kind of historical perspective. And one of the things that I get into in this essay is like, how. You know, like, is it okay that like after nine 11, the FBI basically started infiltrating Muslim American communities and you know, they, and, and preventing terror attacks by sending informants to try to like get people who might be like kind of these loner loser types, you know, to agree to some sort of plan.
And then we find out like one of these people have been working for the government the whole time. I'm uncomfortable with it. I'm uncomfortable with it in perpetuity. And like now that technique is being used against so-called domestic extremists. And I don't like, I'm against racism, I'm against the domestic extremist, I'm against, you know, white power militias.
All that stuff sucks. And I want the feds. I mean, I think of so far it's sort of danger. But I think there's a problem when we look at like the case against, of that kidnapping plot against me, um, Gretchen Whitner in Michigan. Most of the people involved in the plot were working for the FBI in some capacity.
Yeah. So like did you prevent terrorism or did you just sort of entice you instigate or did you instigate it like, I, I made a joke, but if I was, uh, what's her name? Tutor Davis. I think it was who the person running against, uh, Gretchen Whitmer. But I would say like, you know, Gretchen whi Whitmer, do you have it plan for protecting the governor's mansion from various plots by the FBI and like the suckers that they entice?
Like, it's like, so am I, does that make me, I, I'll call myself a NeoCon, but I'm very skeptical. I'm, so, I'm more, much more of a skeptic of some of these kinds of state powers. I'm certainly no longer the, I, I I, I think that there was a blind spot in that everybody thought America could do anything in terms of nation building.
I think it's much harder just to be much more of a serious commitment to it. Um, but I still believe America should be great power and I think American hegemony is largely a good thing for the world as opposed to, uh, any of the. Realistic alternatives to it. Yeah. Alternative. So I, I'm kind of a NeoCon, but I think we've all, we've all changed
Adaam: anytime that, uh, an ideology leads you to be so gungho that you can't see where your own side is violating some kind of civil rights or, or human rights.
And I think there, uh, during the bush years, there was a lot of shit. And I mean, there is something weird when, when you see people like Tucker Carlson now suddenly discovering the, the abuses of power by the doj because it's, it's afflicting his side. But on the other hand, you know, it's good. Like actually skepticism about state power is not a bad thing.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, however you ended up in this camp. Um, although, although there is a way, like you can cross a line and Well, I
Eli Lake: mean that's the other thing is that there's an internal contradiction, uh, in the kind of bushier conservatism because Bush himself was skeptical of, you know, large. Domestic government programs.
I mean, this goes back to Fa Hayek and others who would say, you know, like, listen, when you create a bureaucracy, it will never get rid of itself. It'll never solve the problem you're intending to solve. And you should be very wary of that. And that's why like traditionally republicans, conservatives, like free market solutions and things like that, well, like what is a nation building project in the Middle East other than an enormous government program.
So you don't think that the, the you're, you're
Adaam: and the carve out for the security state domestic. Exactly.
Eli Lake: Like, so those are government programs and they wouldn't, they be subjected to the same laws, you know, the same hayak in principles, if you will, as these other programs that you don't like. And I kind of, I should say I was aware of this.
I wrote a, i, I wrote a piece for Reason Magazine and you know, during the bush years called the nine 14 presidency where I identified some of these things. If anything, I think I've become like more. Like aware of it. I was always a little bit of an oddball in
Adaam: that respect. No, that's why, that's why I didn't even pick on you on this.
I was, uh, Tucker Carlson on the other hand, I I distinctly remember Tucker was used
Eli Lake: to be a major league NeoCon used to write for the weekly standard.
Blindspots and sexuality
Adaam: Okay, vanessa, shall we blind spots?
Vanessa: Okay. Uh, so this is the question we like to ask all of our guests. It's our closer. Uh, what are the biggest blind spots on the left?
What are the biggest blind spots on the right?
Eli Lake: Oh, wow. Those are good. You gotta gimme a second here. I gotta think about that. Cause that's a, that's a smart question. mull it over. . All right. Um, it depends, first of all, I don't know what part of the right we're talking about, but if, let's say the, let's say there, there's kind of an ascendent, nat con nationalist, right? Okay. So one of the, that's the postliberal, somewhat postliberal.
So here's where I think there's a real blind spot. The idea that we should use political power to accomplish our ends in these other areas. The blind spot is, What happens if you lose political power? Won't you be giving permission structure for your adversaries to do the same damn thing? To which I think the na, the NatCon would say, Hey, they're already doing it, so we have no choice. We have to do it. To which I'm saying, wouldn't it be better if you could devise a system and get buyin from everybody where nobody did it? Wouldn't that be good? So that's a blind spot on the right, right now that I'm wearing about.
Okay, let me think of like the real blind spot on the left, right? Let me, I gotta come up with a good one here. So many . Here's a's a basic one that I think is a blind spot on the left. Nobody outside of a very cloistered online community and a couple faculty lounges thinks there are more than two genders.
Just give up on it. You're not gonna get people to say, to stop using the word mother, okay? And you're not gonna birthing person. Stop it. Okay. It's been around forever. It is fake history. It's fake anthropology to say, oh, there have been other cultures where there's been third genders and fourth genders.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I'm just telling you, it's, I have nothing against If
you can be whatever you want be, I respect adult choices of adults to be whatever they want to be. I'm a libertarian in that way. I believe in maximal social freedom where I love America cuz we're a big country. You can walk on the, but the idea that you wanna try police language in a way to somehow break the gender binary is ridiculous. And you will lose. And you're, if you think that that's progress, it's just you're donkey, you. You are waving at windmills.
Vanessa: It's funny. I think the policing is the problem, but I, I actually think that there is a bit of an inevitable march towards including things like they and non-binary. I think that will happen eventually, but in, in, in a many ways despite the way people are acting right now. .
Eli Lake: Okay. You know what? I could be wrong. I, maybe that's my blowing spot, . It's my blind spot, is that I just, you know, you know what I mean? But like this, when I see the people say, well, you know, there are tomboys and then there's really girly girls.
I'm like, yeah, but they're blah. Anyway,
Adaam: I'll just, I, I, I feel like there is something about the way that this conversation is being policed that. My guess is that it ends up increasing anxiety on people who are, that have some identity confusion or uncertainty and letting people explore the mysteries of their own identity.
I think that's great on an individual level, but when you're trying to solve it by creating a gazillion buckets that they need to choose from, I think that's not, I'm not convinced that that's the healthiest way, but I dunno.
Vanessa: I think that's why queer has stuck around because it's, cuz it's so flexible.
Queer
Adaam: is wonderful. Also, the idea of queer is just great because you're saying I'm flouting whatever you are trying to shove
Eli Lake: me into. I've one of my, my best friend is gay, Amy Kerch. You should have all this. We're trying reached out. Okay, well, I'll tell. Okay. You guys do a good show. I'm glad you guys are doing this, but like, if I know people like you say I'm queer, But they have women.
I'm like, okay, so how are you queer? Just cause I didn't wanna identify that way. I'm like, well that just, okay, but that's not
Adaam: the queer that I'm talking about. Sure. There is some element where you find those totally straight guys and you ask them, did you ever fuck uh, uh, something that isn't a girl? And they'll say no, but they'll still identify a square and like, okay, now you're just playing into a fashion.
And yes, that exists. There are people who are exploiting this permissiveness and, and, and, and think that if they don't tag themselves as something that is outside the binary, then they are boring. So they have to be something special. They have to, to try to, to, mm-hmm. to go outside of the, uh, old norms, but.
Queerness is still a great category because it allows you to exist in the mess of sexuality without, depending on a specific narrow, overly defined category. It allows you to be in a muck of, figure it out for yourself, like find your own individual experience and that's great. Be as weird at as you want to be and let yourself be fucked by whoever you want to be.
That's great. My problem is with the over categorization and shoving people into increasingly diminishing, but still highly specific boxes, and then pretending that that's somehow fluid and
Eli Lake: progress. You're erasing gays and lesbians. I'm, I'm erasing gays and lesbians. Yeah, you are. Because there's a specific, gays have a gay culture, there's a gay history, there's lesbians have a lesbian culture, lesbian history, and the idea that now everything's just queer,
Adaam: is everything is queer, is that the existence of queer is fine.
Not instead of gay and lesbian
Eli Lake: culture. You know what, but it's not my fight, cuz I'm not, I'm not gay. So, I mean, I, I don't wanna like, it's not, it's not like my thing. It's like when people get like overly upset about antisemitism and they're not Jewish. Yeah. That's fair enough.
Adaam: I, uh, the only , I think the only passion that I I I bring into this is because I was, um, involved in the, from the secular perspective.
Cause I was trying to create a, a liberal space for expression in, in Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem. The pride parade was actually a meaningful. Statement. It was not just a festival. It was actually a statement about you are not gonna banish gay people from the city. You're let, you're gonna let them march.
You're gonna let them be themselves. Growing up around that community, the idea of queerness was not in any way race. It was about letting people find their own individual expression within the messy realm of sexuality and not letting it be constrained by the religious authorities that ran the city.
You're
Eli Lake: just pinkwashing. I'm
Adaam: pinkwashing The
occupation.
Eli Lake: You're pinkwashing like the, like, you know, like one day they'll have a free Palestine where gay people will be hung and executed for their sexual, that is exactly what I'm doing. I will not accept this pink washing until Palestine is liberated from the river.
Uh,
Adaam: well I'll consider that closing the circle. There you
Eli Lake: go. That was, this was a lot of fun everybody. Thank you so much. This was great. Well, I love what you guys are doing. I think it's really so necessary right now. I just wanted to say that, that, um, We're gonna get past this moment of, uh, anxiety and intolerance and it's gonna be because of the work of, of young people like you guys.
So thank you. I appreciate the
Adaam: optimism and
Vanessa: think, and people should, yes. That is very optimism and people should absolutely listen to the reeducation as well because you're also doing this work. Thank you.
Eli Lake: Just so you like the show is great. I
Vanessa: love it. Yes, we do. We've been listening to it in preparation, so we've been, we've been enjoying, well, the
Eli Lake: new one, the thank you.
The, I love the monologue , like
Vanessa: very good. And I can't imagine preparing those for every
Eli Lake: episode. Yeah, it's a lot of work, which is why, uh, we're gonna start monetizing cuz I gotta get some cash for you. Um, anyway, but, um, it's a worthy product. I will say this, the latest one, uh, called Red Wave Over Israel is a good monologue.
It's all about Mayor Ka. And, uh, and the, uh, Judeo fascism, go
Adaam: listen to the reeducation before it costs you $8 for the reeducation check mark . All right, thanks guys.
Eli Lake: I appreciate it. Thank you.
Mid-terms Post-Script
Vanessa: This last time we chatted, you and Aam were essentially on the same page that you were predicting a tsunami, a kind of backlash against the Democrats, kind of focus on policing language and, and all of this stuff, and that there was gonna be a backlash against them in the midterms.
Um, pretty wide scale
Adaam: inflation and crime and sorry,
Vanessa: and inflation and crime and the lack of focus on those two, um, issues, right? Yeah. But it didn't really pan out so much as a tsunami, so I wanted to No, it did not. both a chance to reflect on that.
Eli Lake: And what did I say? I, I don't remember, but I hope I didn't say anything too embarrassing.
Vanessa: basically you were just like, you, you were pretty certain that it was gonna be a tsunami because of the, the
Eli Lake: we, we
Adaam: were both. Right. Right. We were both very like, okay, like they're, they're getting what's coming. Right, exactly. And apparently Republicans also got what was coming for them. So what are your thoughts?
Eli Lake: I'm just gonna make a joke. . Go for it. I don't recognize my country anymore. Uhhuh we're we're just turning into like, or Wells we're, you know, 1984 people love their chains. Theirs, they love their oppression. I'm sorry, I'm fighting this horrible cult that I got from my daughter. It gives you gravitas. Um, so that's why my voice is so RAs them mid.
It's not the beered give you No, it's not the midterms. I just. now it's my, I love my daughter, but she got the whole household sick. Um, okay. Um, but like, you know, I'm obviously don't think that, first of all, um, I mean, how many times before a major national election do we have to relearn the lesson that all of the polls are wrong?
Um, so that's a, we really need to
Adaam: get over that point where polls start pollsters and poll readers start believing themselves like, like around like a few months before the election. They're like really starting to take it seriously. And you, you just, just get swept
Eli Lake: up. You do. And you, every year we find out.
That it was, I mean, there were some polls that were correct. New York Times, Sienna College was totally right, it looks like. But there were a lot of, there were a lot of like, there were a lot of pollsters who had gotten the last one, right. That were then like, I don't know, they, and they were feeding us like on certain races.
They were totally wrong. And I'm not a super political junkie, but they were people who said that Tiffany Smiley in Washington State was really competitive. That didn't turn out to be true. Um, I'm not sure that there's a single explanation. I will say a couple points. One, I'm actually sort of happy that electorally speaking, it looks like a targeted strike against election denying Trumpists.
So it's like, you know, as somebody who is a neither Trumper, who doesn't like Trump, but doesn't like the Democrats and their resistance to Trump, there was something pretty good about this election in that respect. Um, I, if I was a partisan Democrat, I would worry that the important signal that would come to the Biden White House in a resounding loss has not been received, and that it could, and it looks like it's already maybe leading them to, um, assume that Biden was doing great.
And if he is, if he's nominated again for 2024, I think it ends in tears for the Democrats.
Adaam: Um, but there's a headline on the Hill that is Democrats faced uncertainties amid invigorating success.
Eli Lake: Maybe that's
Adaam: overreading what happened.
Eli Lake: Yeah, I mean, so, so that's another point, which is like, I think part of it was that there were really bad candidates, and if you, I mean, and you can look at individual examples like.
You know, Brian Kemp walks away with it. He's the governor who stands up to Trump in 2020 and insists the election isn't stolen and doesn't go along with him. And yet Herschel Walker, you know, it runs to, you know, a New York tie. So it's a runoff. Well, where did, there's six or seven or eight electoral points.
I mean, what accounts for that? Well, I think it accounts for if you offer an alternative to Democrats that doesn't embrace, you know, like lunatic conspiracy stuff about elections, you're in good shape. What about
Adaam: Democrats in the, what about New York and California? Do you think they're starting to hear the message?
New York at least got, not Tillery, but they at Ho Cold did win governorship, but, but New York suffered
Eli Lake: a little, it's closer than it normally is. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of house races that were, that went to the Republicans that normally wouldn't. And I think it was because there's a backlash on that.
So, I mean, we'll see. I'm, I'm incredibly unimpressed with ho so it's disappointing to sort of see her win, but, um, if she's savvy, she will internalize the lesson. I don't think necessarily, I don't think Gavin Newsome really is capable of that in California. But there's all kinds of signs in California, starting with earlier this year with the recall of Ches bod that, um, and we don't know what's gonna happen in la but of the, you know, you know, well, Canada was recently a Republican who I guess now was an independent Democrat or something.
Caruso the businessman, defeats caring bas, that's a huge deal in, in Los Angeles. That's a rebuke of business as usual as well. Uh, I mean, maybe we, maybe this is exactly the results we have. Here's the other thing. So far, even the denying the, the deniers have accepted their losses in the elections. That's really good.
It's a really low bar. And there's a part of me that's reminded of the famous Chris Rock joke. You're supposed to take care of your kids, but we had, we didn't have that in 2020. So what, how nice is it that everybody's kind of saying, all right, I lost the election. So that's good too. I,
Vanessa: I had a theory before that if, if it had, it did go more red, that it would be because folks were just more focused on inflation than abortion.
Um, and I was concerned about it because as someone who's pro-choice, I, I felt like government. Could do very little about inflation that would be meaningful. But it seemed like now was the time to Right, to put Legisla legislative pressure on abortion. Do you think that that might have driven folks to the polls?
Like, it seemed like the potentially they were more issued oriented, this, this midterms?
Eli Lake: You know, um, again, and I'm not the best, I'm, I'm not at like a political junkie type, but obviously the abortion issue motivated a lot of voters and, um, in some ways, like, I don't know if it'll continue to motivate them because I just think that we're now getting this point where there's gonna be a lot of states where abortion will be, um, there'll be fewer restrictions on abortion than it was under the Roe and Casey pre.
And there's gonna be states that are gonna outlaw it, but it's, I don't think it, I did a podcast on this, uh, several months ago and I came, I, I basically came around to the idea that it's not, we're not gonna return to the nightmarish pre-roe world. And I have to say for that episode, I recommended, it's called the Feminist Critique Play on the Betty Fri Dan, uh, book.
Um, I did a lot of research to educate myself as a, you know, straight Ashkenazi American male about the issue. And it was horrifying what women had to go through if they wanted to get an abortion under the pre-roe regime. Um, the stories. Uh, I, I don't think that, that you can't help but move you. I mean, one woman and I played a clip of her, talked about how she was told when she was getting her abortion that even though she was in anguish and pain, she couldn't scream because it would, it would, uh, tip off the neighbors and potentially get everybody in serious trouble with the cops.
Then the abortion doctor literally like showed her her fetus right after it, which is psychologically scarring, and then proceeded to molest her and then lecture her as he was molesting her, that she had to, uh, you know, be committed to chasity. What a terrible world that is, a world we should never return to.
But then I analyze it and think to myself was that, was the world like that because, solely because of the law, in part it was. , but it was also the culture. And so what was the victory of Second Wave feminism? Because they lost on era the Equal Rights Amendment in the seventies. But what they really succeeded at is changing our culture.
I was born in 1972. My mother was very liberal. My mother was a feminist. But I didn't know anybody growing up that believed some of these like trilobite ideas that I would associate with the men of that pre-Roe v. Wade world. And to me that's, you know, we, the nation, it was a great debt for the cultural work done by Ms.
Magazine and Gloria Steinem. Betty for Dan, um, you know, the, the original national organization for women, even if I disagree with their positions today on like, you know, How unrestricted abortions should be or whatever. There was such a huge hurdle that was overcome that we take for granted. And in that respect, I say, I don't think we can go back to that world because cultural change is, is much more significant in some ways than um, um, you know, a Supreme Court
Adaam: decision.
So maybe we'll end on this question. Yeah. Um, cuz you made me think of it. Uh, it's this topic that I love coming back to. There is a faction, and I mean the size of which its hard to determine, but people on the right who do seem to have some nostalgic outlook on the, the more overtly trilobite. Lifestyle, uh, people with medieval nostalgia, people with, uh, integrist uh, fantasies.
Do you think that that type of reassertion of, I don't wanna use the word, you know, patriarchal, but you know, old world, um, tendencies can really like lay roots in our politics?
Eli Lake: I mean, do they really want it? I mean, listen, we all know who Phyllis Schlafly was, right? Okay. She would say that she believes she'd like to return to traditional, you know, and that housewives shouldn't feel guilty for having the most important job in the world raising their kids.
By the way, I'd kind of agree with that in a vacuum. But here was this ama, incredibly impressive woman who would, who changed, uh, who prevented the era, who was a major part, the American conservative movement beyond just on the issue of feminism. And she would begin her public appearances by saying, I wanna thank my husband Fred, for allowing me to address you today.
Mm-hmm. , which was a troll because the reality is she was as this incredibly dynamic and talented person, we would, to use an expression, she was wearing the pants in that family. She was the one who was relevant and she did it by, and she demonstrated it in her dynamism. And what you find in the socially conservative ranks are not women submitting to becoming, to living in a world where they only exist as an extension of men as part of a marriage.
You know, as Betty, for Dan would say, there only exist as sort of instrumentalities for, you know, men or children or something. No, there, there are incredibly socially conservative women who are achieving great things, um, who are fully engaged in a kind of political fight. So I think it's a little bit different.
I think that it's more accurate to say, or, I mean, listen, I'm sure you can find examples of it, but I think it's more accurate to say that there are, th there are people who are on the social conservative, right? That if they were being, uh, the really, they, what they're criticizing is the excesses of feminism and the effects of liberal, the legacy of the room, right?
But, you know, we live in a world where people like to make, you know, kind of get attention for saying, for tweaking things and make, making extreme versions of the argument. So like, yeah, you know, I wanna return to that sort of thing. So, Matt Walsh. Do you know who he is? I'm sure we all do. Right? The daily collar guy who did what as a woman, which I think was a pretty good documentary, even though I knew it was coming from particular point of view.
The end of it, he's trolling as a scene with his wife, says she can't open a jar of pickles and gives it to him and he opens it. Does he wanna return to the 1950s? No. You know what I'm saying? I don't think he does, but it's his way. I think it's sometimes these are, these are ways of, of trying to antagonize one's cultural political opposition.
Okay. 15 minutes on the dot Bingo.
Adaam: Thank you for listening to Uncertain things. We're uncertain.com, where we have a newsletter too. And, uh, wherever you get your podcasts, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts if you wanna support us and share us with your friends and enemies. Until next time, stay sane.