On Fox News Channel’s Gutfeld last night, guest Dennis Miller asked frequent guest Emily Compagno if she didn’t just feel hopeless about the way things are going in the United States. One of the things that had led to this was her denunciation of some pro-Palestinian protestors saying “shame on you” to people at a hospital for cancer patients. It was pretty disgusting.
The conversation that followed was one of the most interesting I’ve seen on Gutfeld and hard to replicate.
Miller was clearly saying that one should feel hopeless about the future of this country.
I’m not so convinced. It’s easy to find, in a country with over 300 million people, thousands here and thousands there who just act horribly. But what does that really say about the country?
I’ve been at two local events in the Monterey area in the last two weeks that attracted people of divergent political views. I live in a heavily Democratic area and I’m a libertarian who, right now, is registered Republican.
The first event was a Braver Angels event. It was dominated by people on the left. But what I noticed, besides that, was the good will among pretty much everyone. An economist friend who was there pointed out that you would expect that because of self-selection. Who goes to such an event when the explicit purpose is to have people of divergent views talk civilly to, and try to understand, others? People willing to do that.
But the second event was not at all guaranteed to have people select for reasonableness. It was a meeting with a local politician named Kate Daniels who is running for the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. She got to speak but people at each table got to speak also. She’s clearly a big-government person. One of her ideas that I disliked the most was to subsidize renters who are having trouble paying rent. Subsidizing demand while not allowing more supply is a bad idea.
Daniels faced a lot of pushback from various people. It got particularly heated when she was talking about a state requirement that, implemented by a local government agency, required Pacific Grove, the city where the event occurred, to allow the building of 1125 new housing units. Someone in the audience yelled out that he or she (I can’t remember who) wanted no new units. About 5 or so people (out of about 35 people) applauded. But Daniels argued effectively. She pointed out that it’s hard to find a doctor who will take you because even doctors who are starting out find the price of housing in the area daunting. That interaction was actually my favorite moment. It reminded me of my favorite moment in the movie Jerry Maguire. It’s when Cuba Gooding’s character, Rod Tidwell, says to Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, “You think we’re fightin’ and I think we’re finally talking.”
There were lots of differences among the various participants. But the discussion was totally civil. It’s one sample point, I know. But so was that horrible behavior outside the New York hospital.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Jan 18 2024 at 10:56am
Incidents of bad behavior make the news. They make good video plus they are uncommon, man bites dog. When things go well, the huge majority of the time it doesn’t make the news and few write about it. While I am generally data driven on most stuff, one of the things I teach med students is to always be aware of what meshes with what you see and know with your own experience and i think this applies to life in general. The world isn’t really going to heck because out fo 350 million people 100 said something awful. There have always been small groups saying and doing awful things. What’s our real life experience?
In real life I talk with people on the right, my good friend and long time boss, and he’s is not a racist knuckle dragger. I talk with good friend and long time fellow chair and he doesnt want to destroy the country and control everyone. That ends up being largely true for everyone, with a few A-holes here and there sprinkled among different political affiliations.
Anyway, our politics goes up and down. It varies from bad to very bad, seldom reaching good, but that has always been true.
Steve
Ahmed Fares
Jan 18 2024 at 9:19pm
Poor reporting by The Jerusalem Post because it mentions the what but not the why.
David Henderson has written previously about Claudine Gay, DEI, and now Memorial Sloan Kettering. The following quote ties these three together.
So the attack against the hospital is an indirect attack against Ken Griffin.
Richard W Fulmer
Jan 20 2024 at 1:04pm
The “why” makes the protesters’ actions outside Sloan Kettering understandable but no less disgusting.
David Henderson
Jan 20 2024 at 3:10pm
Exactly. I didn’t look into “why” because I didn’t need to know why to judge their actions.
Mactoul
Jan 18 2024 at 9:24pm
Well, precisely the same could be said about almost every place in the world almost each period.
Even in Nazi Germany most people were kind, helpful and neighborly.
But it is the small activist minority that matters politically, not the inert majority. Here I find the typical phrase “tyranny of majority” downright misleading.
Nazis were never a majority and neither were Bolsheviks.
David Henderson
Jan 20 2024 at 3:11pm
All true.
Which means that we need to look at a lot of evidence to judge the claim.
Michael Sandifer
Jan 18 2024 at 9:49pm
David,
Why does an intelligent, educated person as yourself watch Fox News?
David Henderson
Jan 19 2024 at 9:18am
I find Gutfeld entertaining. I generally like the comedians they have on. I also like most of what Kat says: she often brings a different “non-Fox” perspective to things. I sometimes like the discussions. What I hate is Greg’s fat jokes and poop jokes: they’re disgusting.
Oh, and thank you for your compliment.
Michael Sandifer
Jan 19 2024 at 11:36am
Thank you for answering my question. I was just curious. You also seem to have the opposite temperament from many on Fox News, in that you’ve always seemed calm and thoughtful, and generally not subject to hot takes.
David Henderson
Jan 19 2024 at 12:12pm
You’re welcome, and thank you.
Jim Glass
Jan 20 2024 at 1:24pm
“Is the United States Beyond Hope?
Not at all. On the face of things the USA is set to dominate the world for the next hundred years, plus more. Who else? China’s got 1/6th the GDP per capita, a plunging population and the CCP driving economic self destruction. India? Maybe four generations from now. We pound on ourselves, but the whole rest of the world is screwed up too, mostly a lot worse.
Whether the USA’s liberal democratic regime as we’ve know it is doomed is another question. While the Roman Republic didn’t male it past 27 BC, the Empire went on and thrived, lasting another 500 years in the West and 1,000 years beyond that in the East. I can imagine a similar USA scenario.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 20 2024 at 2:57pm
Jim Glass
Jan 22 2024 at 1:39am
Perhaps you should clarify the point you are trying to make, I miss it.
The Thucydides Trap insightfully explains the great British-American War of the 1920s.
The CCP can use its power to fix a bridge? Well, yes, Mussolini made the trains run on time.
The CCP can use its power to ‘do big things quickly’? Well, yes, it very quickly made Jack Ma disappear while hammering down its entire tech sector, and destroying its entire private education sector in a day.
With its clever follow-up policies it has fueled an investment outflow(!) and the worst stock market in the world — China’s $6.3 Trillion Stock Selloff Is Getting Uglier by the Day — while a recent survey of 100 pension and sovereign wealth managers found that none of them, 0%, have a positive outlook on China. All of which is pretty impressive for an economy supposedly enjoying a post-national lockdown reopening recovery boom. (A couple of those wealth firms had a positive outlook on Haiti.)
Maybe the CCP has a masterful plan for future growth leading to world economic dominance? I dunno … Fresh from Beijing: Top Chinese Economist’s Shock Admissions on China’s Economic Outlook.
If the Chinese post-war had followed a political-economic program on a par with South Korea’s we’d already be living in the Chinese Century, right now. But they’ve been stuck with the CCP, and it ain’t going away, so it ain’t going to happen. Check the historical record’s 100% uniform economic final result of all Leninist regimes everywhere.
My guess is the USA’s #1 economic position is safe for a long time to come. But nobody knows the future. Maybe the Latvians will invent an AI to rule us all and our grandchildren will labor to serve the Imperial Baltic Alliance. Who knows?
Ahmed Fares
Jan 22 2024 at 4:17pm
Sorry, you’re now #2.
Also, China is doing Solow catch-up growth. Assuming they don’t fall into a middle income trap, which some economists say isn’t even a real thing, they have the potential to be four times as large. Economic power translates into military power. Then the fact that they’re part of the BRICS so they gain power that way also.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 22 2024 at 4:20pm
Sorry, in case it wasn’t clear, Dean Baker is referring to Purchasing Power Parity as regards China which is the correct measure to use when comparing GDP.
Jim Glass
Jan 23 2024 at 1:24pm
Dean Baker is now our China expert. 🙂
Has he got his IRA invested in Chinese stocks? The capitalization of the Chinese stock market has now fallen to $38 trillion(!) less than the USA’s.
The USA has a network of military alliances from NATO on stretching all around the globe, including around China (Japan, S. Korea, Australia, etc.). China has one (1) military ally: North Korea.
It isn’t translating so well so far, eh?
Quote of the day.
Dr. Michael E. Gibbs
Jan 24 2024 at 12:19pm
A number of years ago I attended a seminar conducted by W. Edwards Deming the “Father of Statistical Quality Control”. One of the comments he offered was that “Assumptions are conclusions based on facts not in evidence”. A turn of words that stuck with me which comes to mind when I hear people render opinions not based on fact. For example, in this comment thread Michael Sandifer asks this question of the author: “Why does an intelligent, educated person as yourself watch Fox News? The conclusion of course is that people who watch Fox are not intelligent. Yet he offers no evidence to support his claim. I would suggest that Michael find a Braver Angels Alliance in his area and go meet some conservatives who watch Fox. He might conclude that there is intelligent life among those who come from the “Red” side of the political spectrum. Check out http://www.braverangels.org to decide for yourself.
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