So we were at a point, actually, where we were beginning to examine ourselves. That's what the populism of the left and the right was all about. Let's take a hard look at who we are, how do we fit into this more complex world, what needs improvement. And that means examining your security agencies, the flow of information. We had whistleblowers stepping forward, telling us about our government spying on us. We had the military-industrial complex being examined, why do we need it, what is it doing.
And what I think is at work here is this, again, Trump -- washing -- suddenly the FBI, they're virtuous. The CIA doesn't lie to us. The NSA doesn't lie to us. Anytime the U.S. is involved in the world, it must be on the side of the angels. And so the most powerful nation in the world that can really seal the future of the planet will go on as an unexamined phenomenon now, not responsible for any major problems. That is the mood of the moment. And what they will do, as you point out, is redbait or McCarthy-bait anybody who gets in the way of that narrative.
SC: Bob, the problem with the way you formulate it is -- and even if it's true, and I probably agree with about 75 percent of it -- that it's too all-embracing, it's too sweeping, it's too beyond the reach of solution, it's too existential. We need to identify the issues that imperil us the most, and we need to find people to address them. The only major successful electoral politician that I've come across, who shares probably 75 percent of what you say, is your own former governor Jerry Brown. We don't agree with him about everything, but on these basic issues, he agrees there's a problem. He's 80 years old, but if I could pick one candidate who has the concerns we have, and the experience governing -- because we don't need any more presidents who have never governed. If I could wish myself a candidate tomorrow, even though he's 80 years old -- but we've got, everybody else is in their seventies, I mean other people who are at the top. But he really thinks along these lines, partly because he's a reader.
KVH: Steve is quite traditional in a sense, going to a candidate after you kind of gave a jeremiad about the crisis. I think you're right to some extent, Bob, but I also think you're talking about the establishment, you're talking about a media that treats left-wing populism almost like a dead fish. I think there's a disconnect in this country, and I think millions of Americans, without learning it from the New York Times or the gatekeepers, know there's a crisis in this country, and they're trying to find ways to see another way. And that, to me, is hopeful: that there is a change, there's a new generation, there are new insurgencies. Maybe not at the scale commensurate with the problem, but they're existing without an establishment willing to work with them. In fact, there's a suppression of these insurgent forces, yet they keep coming. They keep coming from different directions.
RS: I mean, I just -- what is frightening about the moment is scary not because progressives aren't stronger or weaker, or the next election or this candidate. It's that we've lost common sense. And so we are at a moment here now where everyone wants Congress to get Trump! Get him, and knock him out! And whether we have a reasonable trade agreement with China, or whether we can get rid of nukes in North Korea, or what are we really going to do about climate change -- because if you don't have good trade agreements with China, you're not going to control the burning of coal or anything else, you know. And so there are serious problems out there, and we have a mood of giddiness, of nuttiness, where you don't discuss these things. They're seen as a distraction. And I want to offer one last point. We had the renegotiation of NAFTA, OK? Trump did talk about, he wanted to get rid of NAFTA, change it. I only bring this up because people are looking for daylight, positive, or what have you. Trump has been negotiating with China, and this goes to American exceptionalism now. Are we going to let him go to the next stage, as Japan did, where it isn't all dependent upon poorly paid women assembling iPhones, OK?
And so with this NAFTA agreement, I want to end on a positive note, and again let me get in trouble here by saying something positive about Trump. In that, whether he did it or some aide stuck it in, for the first time in a trade agreement we say if you're going to make a car in Mexico and bring it into the United States duty-free, 45 percent of that car has to be made by people who are making 16 bucks an hour. If we did that for China in these trade negotiations now, including maybe the right to unionize, the right to take it to local courts, which didn't happen under the old NAFTA and so forthwe'd have an economic revolution in those countries. And you could forget about the border.
If people could make a decent wage on the Mexican side of the border, they're not going to want to come over to this side. There's no discussion of it. There's no discussion of the nuclear arms race, which you were bringing up with Jerry Brown. What does it mean that we suddenly abandon an arms [agreement]? I'll tell you, another subject, the third rail one that we haven't talked about. If there was a foreign power that interfered in this election, it was Israel. No one dares mention that!
KVH: Bob, to say "nobody" is dissing Truthdig, is dissing The Nation
RS: No, I shouldn't say "no one," obviously -- yeah.
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