In this second episode of None Sense, I respond to the following statement by Michelle Goldberg: It’s a source of constant astonishment to me that the country has handed over the means to destroy civilization on this planet to an unhinged lunatic who lost the popular vote and was installed with the aid of a hostile foreign power. It’s such an epic institutional failure that it calls everything we thought we knew about this country’s stability into question.
What's explained at length in the podcast is summarized like this: if we're expecting institutions like the judiciary to save us from the Trump presidency, we're doomed.
Transcript:
Hi, I'm Jaime Escuder and welcome to this second episode of None Sense.
Today, I'd like to talk about institutions, or rather the appearance of institutions. And I was led to this topic by something I read again in "The New York Times."
Remember when someone asked Sarah Palin what her news sources were and she clearly had never read any news in her life because she couldn't name a single, like, news outlet? So, forewarned, my news sources are as follows: "The New York Times," "The New York Times," "The New York Times," "The Guardian," you're gonna be seeing a lot.
So, if you read my show notes, you're gonna be seeing lots of links to New York Times articles and The Guardian articles. Also, NPR, although, I gotta tell you, NPR, the website, or the way they do their print journalism, and this may be just because they're fundamentally an audio outlet, a radio outlet, their print is not so great, but the NPR and the BBC. Also, the "Washington Post."
But my primary sources of news and this is because they're well-thought out and I really believe they have integrity in the sense of, they don't, well, there's no fake news, I mean, they actually fact-check, etc.
And I actually personally know this to be true and I'm saying my main ones are "The New York Times" and "The Guardian," and I know the "Washington Post" does and I'm sure the BBC, I know the BBC does, these are reputable news outlets. I'm not going to be, I'm not much of a "Fox News" reader because I think "Fox News" is terrible news, just junk, terrible, poor quality news.
I know that "The New York Times" does fact-checking because I was actually mentioned in an article once that appeared in "The New York Times" and I remember being called by the fact-checker and asked to verify the quotes that had been attributed to me and things like that.
So, I was reading "The New York Times" as I want to do and there was an interview with a new columnist there named Michelle Goldberg, here's a quote from Michelle Goldberg (and I will have a link to this article in my show notes): "It's a source of constant astonishment to me that the country has handed over the means to destroy civilization on this planet to an unhinged lunatic who lost the popular vote and was installed with the aid of a hostile foreign power. It's such an epic institutional failure that it calls everything we thought we knew about this country's stability into question."
And what gave me pause about that, what made me think about that was that this person, Michelle Goldberg, who's apparently, obviously, very intelligent, highly educated, very thoughtful person, is acting as though she actually, not only believes in institutions and that they exist and that they actually function, but that they have the ability or the will to function when in fact there really is no such thing as an institution. There's just people and then there's an edifice that we put in front of those people to inspire awe or fear or reverence in the hope that they'll obey whatever comes from the institution, but there really is no such thing as an institution, unless the people who populate it have integrity and character and are all of the things that would function well in a society even if they weren't associated with an institution.
So,
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