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I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The JackPod, where On Point News analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique clarity to the world we live in now. Hello there, Jack. Hello, Meghna. We are not on a highway. We are on a podcast, but it happens to be episode 66. So what's your headline? Calamity Howler. Calamity Howler. Okay, tell me more.
Well, that's a 19th century locution for what we would call doomsayer. And it's not what I want to be or even seem to be, especially this week, you know, when we seem to have reached peak calamity with...
Musk's beardless commandos raiding now it's 11 federal agencies in what Heather Cox Richardson labels a billionaire's coup. You know, it's hard to imagine a calamity that would compel louder howls than that unless…
it be President Trump's idea to indulge his edifice complex and build high-rises all along the Gaza coast and push out the population. That would be a calamity to be sure worth howling into the
into the wee hours about. So it's hard to say that we could come up with anything worse than this stuff. And yet, and yet, here I go toward calamity howling, the Democratic senators held the floor through the wee hours of Friday morning protesting the nomination of Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Why? Well, because he has views that sound like this. We would put forward some policy solution, and then we'd have the lawyers come in and say it's not legal.
You can't do that. That would overturn this precedent. There's a state law against that. This how is where so much of things break down in our country. And that's really what we specialize the most in. So, Jack, this is from 2023. Not that long ago. What is vote saying here?
Well, what he's saying, he lays out in more detail in an essay published earlier in The American Mind, the publication of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank in California. And the title really says everything. Statesmanship in a post-constitutional moment.
Volt was the OMB director, one of them, in Trump's first administration. And this essay sort of comes out of his frustration at people saying to Trump, his lawyers saying to Trump again and again, can't do that, it's illegal. Can't do that, there's a state law. Can't do this, can't do that. And he says that it really made him feel as if the entire project of the Trump presidency was illegal.
is being sacrificed on the altar of this petty fogging, loyally qualms about what's legal and what's illegal. Why worry about the rule of law, Votes saying, essentially. At a time like this, why worry about the rule of law? And he seems to be saying there's an original constitution. Let's go back and look at that. And then there's this thing that the Democrats and the
Deep State have created since with the idea of independent agencies of the—I mean, where do we get the idea that the Justice Department and the FBI shouldn't do what the president wants? Where did that ever come from? Of course, it came from partly the example of what Richard Nixon was doing when he, you know, suborned both. So he has this view of what he calls radical constitutionalism.
And in an essay on their substack, Bob Bauer, former counsel to the Biden White House, and Jack Goldsmith, a former official of the Bush Justice Department, they are the opposite of calamity howlers. These are cautious, careful thinkers. They don't get alarmed about anything. But this substack post succeeded in alarming lots of people.
They look at the range of Trump executive orders, you know, the TikTok, which was, you know, on TikTok, both the Congress...
And the Supreme Court had agreed unanimously in the case of the Supreme Court that TikTok had to be closed. Trump said, no, no, no, we're not going to close it. We're going to wait 90 days and take a look at it. As close to defiance of both Congress and court as you can get.
And they look at other things, you know, the suspension of foreign aid, the neutering, destruction of USAID, ending birthright citizenship, on and on. They look at these things which seem on their face to be illegal and some unconstitutional. And they say, well, what's going on here with all this? And they have three alternatives. The one is...
is incompetence. You just can't bet against incompetence with Trump. I mean, he does things out of impulse that no one would ever have imagined. For example, we mentioned the, you know, turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East. Who would ever have thought of anything like that
Except Donald Trump. So you never can discount incompetence when it comes to him. Well, that's true. But this time around for the Trump administration, I would discount incompetence, right? Because they had the dry run of Trump won from 2016 to 2020. And now they have come out of the gate. All the things that you just described, Jack, have only happened in the past couple of weeks. They've come out of the gate highly prepared and organized. Yes.
Yes, they have. And so that sets up the second alternative that Bauer and Goldsmith add and break. And that's, you know, well, perhaps they're trying to set up a test case to send to the Supreme Court that would test the limits of presidential power. For example, Russell Vogt and the president himself in his Agenda 47, which was his statement of his campaign aims,
They view the Impoundment Act of 1974, a post-Watergate reform that basically said the president can't decide what he's going to spend. He's got to follow what Congress wants.
If Congress has voted funds, the president can't say, "I'm not going to spend them. I'm going to impound them." Nixon had tried to do that, had done it, and the Impoundment Act said, "No, that's not only unconstitutional, given that Congress has the power of the purse.
From here on, it'll be illegal. Trump and a vote say, we're going to test the constitutionality of that.
and submit it to the Supreme Court. And then the third alternative is, well, but, you know, maybe they're going to do that. But when you start to, this is again, Bauer and Goldsmith and their calamity whispering, they say the third alternative is if you look at how little attention the administration has paid in these executive orders,
to the formal procedure of putting out executive orders, which requires an opinion from the Justice Department, which requires, you know, there are legal hoops you've got to go through. None of that has happened. And they point to how flimsy some of these cases are, including the case about
the unconstitutionality of the ban on presidential impoundment. And, you know, the flimsy pretext there, I could hardly believe it when I read it, is, well, Congress has voted a ceiling on appropriations. It says we have to spend that much. It didn't
mandate it doesn't vote a floor. So in other words, we can just spend nothing and well, we haven't done anything about the ceiling and you said nothing about the floor. We're going to kick the floorboards away and just that's our rationale, Supreme Court. Bauer and Goldsmith said it looks like they're going to try to essentially confront the Supreme Court
With if you rule against me Trump will say in this particular on the impoundment act say or any of these other things that he's done We're gonna defy your order He's kind of that there. There was they're gonna say we're not gonna do what you say Supreme Court. I
And Goldsmith and Bauer say that may frighten the court into giving him the decision he wants, or it may set up the ultimate constitutional crisis of the court and the Congress. Well, not the Congress, because it's the Republican Congress, of the court on one side and
saying, "You can't do this, Mr. President, and the Constitution forbids it." And, you know, it is the court's role to say what the law is, as John Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison. So you can't do it. And Trump said, "I'm going to do it anyway."
That is a scary prospect, but it's been in the air. Here, for example, is J.D. Vance being questioned about just this kind of eventuality. The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn't it?
The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court, and look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said that President of the United States can't fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling. And the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit. This is just basic conspiracy.
constitutional legitimacy. You're talking about a hypothetical where the Supreme Court tries to run the military. I don't think that's gonna happen, George. But of course, if it did, the president would have to respond to it. There are multiple examples throughout American history of the president doing just that. You didn't say military in your answer, and you've made it very clear you believe the president can defy the Supreme Court. Senator, thanks for your time this morning. No, no, George. Roundtable's up next. We'll be right back.
Oh, my. Talk about a nuclear ending to their colloquy. And, you know, Vance, in a podcast in 2021, was even more candid about this. He says, I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice before he was vice president—
It is, I'd fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. I'd replace them with our people. And when the courts say, stop, stop, you can't do that, I'd stand for the country like Andrew Jackson and say, the Chief Justice has
has given his, made his ruling, now let him enforce it. J.D. Vance was quoting Andrew Jackson. He said that? Yes, except Andrew Jackson didn't say that. That was a case in 1832 when the court ruled that the U.S. government and not the state of Georgia had jurisdiction over Indians in Georgia.
And Jackson didn't like that, didn't want that. But before the court had even published or given the final order to this, which would have required Jackson to do things, Georgia settled. And so the case was moved. So it never came up.
And that is one example of presidents coming close to defying court order. It happened directly in 1861 with President Lincoln. This was just the opening of the Civil War. Saboteurs, secessionists, they were cutting telegraph lines and burning railroad bridges. So Lincoln
Suspended the right of habeas corpus, giving his military the right to imprison suspected saboteurs in – well, really it was Maryland, Pennsylvania. The right to just grab people on suspicion of sabotage and never mind formal trial.
And a month later, the Supreme Court, in the shape of Roger Taney, the chief justice, who, of course, famous, infamous for the Dred Scott's decision, he said, no, that's unconstitutional. Only Congress can suspend bailouts.
the writ of habeas corpus. And Lincoln said, sorry, I'm rejecting that ruling. And he said, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?
"No, I'm not going to obey your order, Mr. Chief Justice." He defied the Supreme Court. Another case close was, of course, FDR. Everyone knows about the court packing, essentially frightening the justices in 1937 with the prospect that he was going to add more members to the court, frightening them to switch
from, you know, vetoing New Deal legislation like minimum wage to approving it. And in fact, that happened. And it was called the switch in time that saved nine when Judge Owen Roberts switched his vote. He had voted against the minimum wage in 1936. In 1937, he changed his mind. The switch in time saved the court and the New Deal sailed through the Supreme Court unscathed.
That's pretty well known. What isn't so well known is that a couple of years before, when the court seemed set to essentially limit the president's ability to rein in the gold supply, gold was hemorrhaging out of the treasury, and an adverse decision could essentially bankrupt the treasury. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but people think it was possible.
FDR came as close to outright defiance as you can, and he actually wrote out this memo. He said to carry through the decision of the court, assuming the court was going to strike down his efforts to rein in the gold supply because only Congress can do it. He says, to carry through this decision of the court to its logical and inescapable end will
will so endanger the people of this nation that I am compelled to look beyond the letter of the law. In other words, he was ready in 1935 to say to the court what Jackson didn't say. You've ruled, Mr. Chief Justice. Now execute the law. He was ready to do that. He didn't. The court, in fact, ruled.
ruled for him. He didn't have to do it. And according to historians, FDR then performed his letter for his staff who enjoyed the spectacle. Nixon came close to defying the court. This was in the Watergate Tapes case. At a press conference, he invoked Lincoln. He said, look, Lincoln, he was a very strong president for just defying Justice Taney. He
And Nixon hinted that he would follow Lincoln's example on the tape issue. Must he hand over his tapes of White House conversations to the Watergate House Committee? And Nixon said, well, you know, I will perhaps only do that with a definitive ruling of the court. Right.
Essentially qualifying. Well, of course, shortly thereafter, the court gave that in a unanimous decision. He had to hand over the tapes. He did. And the rest is history. Jack, can I just jump in here? Because I am very grateful that you gave us these examples of
previous times where presidents have overtly challenged the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. I'm also sobered by these examples because in thinking about Lincoln especially, I had forgotten about suspending the writ of habeas corpus. And I just looked it up once again, Jack, to breathlessly catch up even a fraction of a bit to your knowledge. And I see here that
Lincoln's actions stood until the end of the Civil War. He gets assassinated. And then Andrew Johnson is the one who restored civilian courts, specifically in Kentucky, and ended the suspension of habeas corpus. And also, I think, according to this, one judge had said that the suspension effectively ended with the end of the Civil War. But what I take away from that, Jack, though—
is that even when a president seizes or denies what is actually a fundamental legal right, the courts could do nothing in return. Right? I mean, the suspension of habeas corpus did not come to an end until another president declared it so.
That's right. That's right. I mean, the court can't self-execute. You know, it's a little bit like Stalin's quip about the pope. How many battalions does the pope have? You know, you can issue interdicts and balls and Supreme Court judgments, but executing them and in fact asserting that the rule of law will be followed is
That doesn't count against a president with an army, a navy, a marines and so on. So it makes me wonder like what recourse would people have should President Trump do as Bauer and Goldsmith say and that is provoke a standoff with the Supreme Court.
Well, you know, he would essentially be trying to destroy the constitutional order. Because, of course, you know, and why would he do it? Well, he's a lame duck. So the voters can't bother him, right? He doesn't have to answer to them. And, you know, the Republican House is unlikely to impeach him. And the GOP Senate is certain not to convict and remove him from office for the
indubitable high crime of overturning the constitutional order. So there's no restraint on him in terms of the people or the Congress.
What could the people do? I mean, there is protest, but of course, the president has indicated that he would use military force to put down protests. He's not hidden that. And, you know, all over the country, by the way, Wednesday, there were protests from coast to coast. Rachel Maddow, for the first 10 minutes of her program, showed a video of a protest happening in front of state houses in
and the capitals from literally from coast to coast, people protesting the end of AID, protesting the other executive orders. There they all were. I couldn't believe there were so many. And, you know, you have things like this. Senator Murkowski of Alaska reports that usually her office gets 40 calls a day,
Wednesday, she got 1,600 calls. That's an order of magnitude. So are the people, would protest avail? It would be so risky to have truly mass demonstrations against Trump because I don't think there'd be a moment and the hack would
the abject hack that he appointed Secretary of Defense, would, you know, he would never say, oh, no, Mr. President, you can't shoot demonstrators. I think it would be tremendously risky to mount, you know, like a march on Washington against Donald Trump. But it may have to come to that. You ask what could be done? Maybe that could be done, but it would be so, so risky. Mm-hmm.
Jack, I have a question for you. This may take us a slight bit away from provoking a constitutional crisis, but underlying what you've illuminated for us that Russell Vogt believes about the concept of the rule of law in a democracy, people are going to say I'm utterly naive, and I will accept that. But as an American...
I do not understand this yearn to monarchy. Right. I don't get it because vote calls it radical constitutionalism, but essentially defying the power of the authority of the courts.
ignoring the power of the purse of the Congress, it's a complete destruction of the entire concept of three co-equal branches of government. And it only leaves all the power in only one of those branches. That is a monarchy. Perhaps not a hereditary monarchy, but a functional one. I mean, as an American, I do not understand why we would want to drag our country down
to that. I am being naive. I get it. People love to have power. And perhaps there are many people in this country who yearn for someone powerful to rule over them.
But there are many people who don't, Jack. I just don't get it. Yes. Look at the public mood. Look how little people think of Congress. A talking shop. And look at the prestige of the Supreme Court. Ominously, in this context, it's at a historic low.
In other words, the institutions that prevent the monarchy are in complete disrepute. And you have in the president, you know, he's full of energy. He wants to get things done. Why do we have to bother about Congress and all the rest? And, you know, there's been polling for years now showing, especially among young people, there is just a...
Democracy, who needs it? People 18 to 29, polls just show again and again, what are we getting out of this? And it's only the older people who remember something. Certainly the World War II generation, which is all but gone, but even post-war people remember when government did all kinds of good things.
There's just that dramatic difference between people who have actually seen government work, like me, senior citizens who have Medicare, and young people who've gotten nothing. Yes. And they say, who needs democracy? Right. And so it's not coming out of a vacuum for sure. And...
You know, the lack of institutional trust is – the institutions themselves bear the blame for that, right? Because they haven't exactly been behaving in the past several decades as the unimpeachable, if I can use that phrase, height of what we'd expect from a shining democracy. Okay. But Jack? Yeah.
I would love, speaking of monarchies, I think you have a quote in mind that may sort of settle our thoughts on what we could expect next. Well, it's Edgar in King Lear, who's just found his father blinded and blinded.
That's one calamity upon many that he suffered. And he said, and worst I may be yet, the worst is not so long as we can say this is the worst. Okay, Jack Potters.
Jack, you keep giving us such very, very, very rich material. But here's what I want to know from from you, Jack Potters, out there. And that is going back to what what he pointed out, what Jack pointed out about Russell votes, radical constitutionalism, as he sees as he sees the efforts of the Trump administration. Yeah.
Do you think that one of the goals of the Trump administration this time around is to push the nation to a post-constitutional moment? And if that happens, or should that happen, what do you think you would do? What do you think we as a nation should do? That's the question for this week.
And by the way, we have been receiving a lot of new voices from jackpotlandia out there. Keep them coming. If you've been a longtime listener and haven't felt the need to speak up until now, I get it. But now is definitely the time. So do this.
Pick up your phones, go to wherever you get your apps and look for the On Point Vox Pop app. If you don't already have it, if you do, great. Don't even waste that time. Let us know what you think about whether the country is headed to a post-constitutional moment. We want to hear from as broad a cross-section of jackpotters and America as possible because this is our country today.
All of us, whether we agree or disagree with each other, together. And I want to hear your thoughts. So that's the question for this week. And Jack, when we come back from the other side of the break, are you ready? We got a lot of voices to share with you from last week. Okay? Okay. We'll be right back.
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Okay, Jack, we are back. And just a quick reminder of what you talked about last week. And that is...
Your view of President Trump's actions and executive orders in his first couple of weeks and what unites them, their ability to inflict cruelty. And you also talked about how FDR's politics of security is
had previously been central to American life. And that is a duty of American government is to help Americans feel secure in their lives. So we asked you, Jack Potters, if you think it's possible that a new politics of security could prevail over the Trumpian politics of cruelty. And let's start with Bernadette from New York.
I'm not optimistic that a new politics of security can prevail in the age of algorithms and false information. It will make new voices in politics difficult to reach the masses. The voices that do seem to reach people are those with money and entertainment value, like Trump and Musk. Gone are the days of shared experiences.
of reassuring presidential fireside chats, intelligent and compassionate speeches by great orators, and even a common news source showing the fallout of failed policies and Trump's cruelty. So that's Bernadette in New York. This is Bill in Illinois, a longtime listener, first time JackPod commenter. So thank you so much, Bill. And he says he may have previously answered your question, Jack, but he's not
With this, that a stronger Democratic Party would be the cure for or cure against the politics of cruelty. But now, Bill is not so sure. With Elon Musk being given the keys to the kitty, the keys to the vault, and essentially abrogating Article 1 of the Constitution, we are now in uncharted waters. This truly is a constitutional crisis, and it is an ongoing bloodless coup.
So, since you folks like literary quotes from time to time, let me say a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, in which Gandalf the Grey says, Things are now in motion, which cannot be undone. Like I said, this is terra incognita. We've never been here before.
Here there be dragons. Jack, go ahead. Oh, gosh. Well, yeah, I mean, he's right. This is a kind of coup going on right now. And Congress, the Republican Congress, seems to be okay with this billionaire raiding the Treasury. Now he's on to the Department of Education sending these people
beardless commandos into one agency after another.
And there doesn't seem to be any check to it. And so, yeah, we are. And it's not quite a constitutional crisis yet in that Congress has not ruled against it. Congress is not saying, you know, well, you're breaking the law, Mr. President. And it hasn't reached the Supreme Court. Then we'll have the constitutional crisis indeed.
But before then, we have a coup that essentially has awarded Trump's major campaign funder, as Bill says, the keys to the Treasury. And you could never make up anything like this. And, of course, Musk's ignorance is just shocking. He thinks the way to stop fraud and abuse is to go to the Treasury's, you know, bank.
accounts receivable or accounts payable department and stop it there. But that department is just an automatic sender-outer of checks. That's not where people find out fraud. They find that out within the Treasury or within the bureaus where the fraud is, and they document it and they take it to law. There's nothing that's going to go out of the Treasury that's going to tell his young people, this is fraud.
He's looking in the wrong place. He doesn't understand how the government works, but that's not stopping him from playing havoc with it. And Bernadette's point is so well taken. What breaks through? I mean, Trump breaks through all the time. You know, he hasn't shut up since he's been president. And he's talked more to the press already, I swear, than silent Joe Biden did virtually for the whole of his presidency.
And he projects at every turn energy and purpose and ease. And, of course, he uses, as somebody pointed out, only 277 words. Philip Roth says he uses those 277 words, not in English. Philip Roth called it jerkish words.
Whatever it is, he gets across his point and people say, well, that's a president. That's a strong man. He's not mute like Biden. Well, Trump speak is news speak in my opinion. I'm going to throw in an Orwell reference whenever I can. Now, actually, your point about what Bernadette said about Trump breaking through leads us perfectly to Keith Grace. He's in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. He's an elementary school teacher and a father of three teens.
And he says the politics of cruelty is spreading like a contagion. I do not think that there is an end to this politics of cruelty anytime soon. The acolytes of his cruelty, they've become the teachers of it to their children, be it through their modeling, their verbalizing, or simply allowing their messiah's voice image to dominate their households all day long.
I've seen a community of cruelty consuming everything around me. It is consuming everything. And I'm not sure how this cruelty ends. So that was Keith in New Jersey. And here's Torley Bush, our eloquent poet from Webster Springs, West Virginia. Jack, you remember he gave us his prayer for the nation, that poem that he had written?
Well, he's back again. And this is what Torley says. He's saying that at some point, the politics of cruelty must be stopped. I think that while he's correctly identified the politics of security as the way to move forward, it's not put in a stark enough relief or stark enough contrast against the politics of cruelty. That is to say, if the politics of cruelty as they are allowed to continue, Jack, they will reach a point where
The ethically and morally correct response to their end is to stop it, to quote Malcolm X, by any means necessary. OK, Jack, Torley is really he's he's he's challenging my mind a lot here with this statement because I understand what he says. At the same time, stopping by any means necessary is.
was exactly what a lot of Trump supporters believed they were doing on January 6th. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So... Tolstoy said the difference in the violence of the left and the violence of the right is the difference between dog excrement and cat excrement. People die the same way. And Keith's... I think Keith, as a teacher, as a father, he sees... He's alive to this. He sees the...
You know, this may be the worst of Trump, that his example licenses the worst in people. I mean, it's just, you know, he's a convicted felon. He has, is it 15, 20 women have talked about how he is corrupt.
humiliated them. He has a terrible character, as Republicans said just yesterday when he was running for president. That has to be infecting people, giving license to their worst impulses. Will we have a moment of national recovery when people can shed the
The Trump effect on social behavior, I don't know. But, you know, this latest, just signed this executive order banning trans athletes from, you know, just going after the weakest people, the people on the most, on the margin and displaying bullying.
Canada, I'll bully you. Mexico, everything he's showing people is the worst about people, I'm afraid. Well, here's Ben Southard in Austin, Texas, and he's offering us a very different perspective on the politics of cruelty versus the politics of security.
The Trumpian politics of cruelty is security to many of the people who voted for him. Trump tells us that we are in danger from the immigrant, from diversity initiatives, from the deep state itself, and then promises to save us from these threats. I'm afraid the new politics of security is already here, and fear and cruelty are its tools. Okay, Jack, when I saw Ben's message come in, I really wanted to hear what your response was, because I think he's hitting on something very, very important.
Oh, he certainly is. And brilliant to use the word security there because that's, you know, what did Trump say? There's an invasion. We have to be protected against it. There's crime in the cities. Even though crime has gone down, we have to be protected against it.
the sense of fear, and then I will secure you by being a strong president and not being trammeled by the rule of law. I'll protect you from the aliens and all the rest. That is the new kind of security. At the same time, there's the insecurity that everyone feels in this, if you will, late capitalist moment where there is so little countervailing power that
against the power of corporations in America. Unions are...
They've never been weaker in the private sector. There's nothing. And change has never been faster. Change that just, you know, that whirligig of Schumpeter's creative destruction, it's never seemed to work so fast and now hold professions. According to some people, 85% of American workers are facing death.
obsolescence from AI. This is the insecurity that people are living with. Is there an answer on the economic side, on the social program side, on the side of remedy to those insecurities? Are those insecurities just going to feed into the fears
that Trump is exploiting and that he offers security against with his, you know, militants. Okay, Jack, this next one is,
is from Davis Jones, and he reached out to us from San Marcos, Texas. And Davis says, yes, a new politics of security can prevail, but he says it's not going to happen in opposition to Trump. He describes it as a security, quote, based on a more proximate sense of community.
The federal government since basically the 50s has embraced this role of the security blanket for the American people. And my belief is that there is something in the DNA of America after
the Civil War where states' rights is inextricably linked to the concept of slavery and the abuse of people because there was this states' rights argument for the continuation of slavery. However, there is a form of security that comes from one's proximate community, state, county,
Okay. Davis has more, Jack, because he also tells us that President Trump will usher in this new politics of security and proximity, as he's saying it. And he believes that President Trump will do it with policies like reducing the size or even the existence of some federal agencies. And Davis used the example of the Department of Education and
And by dismantling that, putting control back in states' hands. Trump's vision of the world is to devolve the powers of the federal government down to the states. So Trump's view of the future is one where your community locally is more of a part of your identity than the federal government. And it's totally possible that a future could emerge where that is the couching of one's sense of security
So, Jack, before I turn this over to you, Davis, I just want to personally thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and being part of the jackpot community. Please do keep sending us your thoughts. Tell everyone you know who might be interested. And even if you think they will disagree with with the jackpot, want to invite all of those voices in. So thank you so much. So, Jack, what do you think?
Well, I think Davis is, I mean, he makes me think. You know, community is, after all, one of the, everybody is saying this now, one of the sources of happiness, one of the sources of solidarity. It's a power that people have. On the other hand, we have Robert Putnam, our sociologist friend at Harvard, saying that
You know, people are bowling alone. Community is weak in America. The genius of forming groups, voluntary organizations that Tocqueville saw as the, you know, sort of the foundation of democratic freedom is
According to Putnam's findings, all that is decaying. Of course, other people say that's crazy. We're playing soccer leagues. Look at every Saturday. Every field is full. It's true. Maybe we're bowling alone, but we're kicking together. Who can doubt that that is the source of important emotional strength?
On the other hand, there is so, you know, the problems, what did FDR call them? The hazards and vicissitudes of life. How much can the community deal with those, right? I mean, how much can it deal with illness and with unemployment? How can it deal with funds for education? In other words, there's a limit.
to what Edmund Burke called the little platoon can do. You may need Uncle Sam on health care. You may need Uncle Sam for unemployment insurance and retraining and all the rest. So many of our problems are beyond the scope of the community, however important it may be for our emotional nurturance. Mm-hmm.
Davis, would love to hear what you think about what Jack said. But, Jack, we've got one more here. And you know me, my undying American optimism.
There's Rosemary Malfi, and she shares this optimism because she left us with this message from Salem, Massachusetts. I disagree with the Trumpian politics of cruelty, and I do believe that a new era can prevail. And the new era is possible because goodness will always be stronger than evil. Mr. Beattie, top that.
Well, you know, there's a scholar named Bradley who did a book around the turn of the 20th century on Shakespeare's tragedies. And he says that in these tragedies, good does usually triumph, but not after a colossal waste of good. Mm-hmm.
Think of all the dead littering the stage in Hamlet. Yes, think of all the horrors in King Lear. Such a waste of good before good triumphs. And that's, look at World War II. Good triumph, but there was an unspeakable waste of good getting there. You have to count the cost, and we have to take counsel with our fears as well as with our hopes.
Jack, thank you as always. Thank you. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is the one and only JackPod from On Point.