- 7/30/2025
Today on The Cameron Journal Podcast, we welcome Paul Greenberg!
Paul Greenberg has just written a new book that is all hypothetical but a fun future to consider. In his new book, A Third Term, George Washington is brought back from his deathbed in 1799 to run against President Trump in 2028. Both men are seeking a 3rd time, so how will the aristocratic swagger of the 18th century compete against the bluster of Trump? Paul Greenberg explores just that. Although he is known for his work on climate change and why fish are so important (no, really, one of his books is about angling!), this new book has been featured on PBS, NPR and all your favorite places. We're having a in-depth and casual conversation about modern politics, why fish are important and much more!
Paul Greenberg has just written a new book that is all hypothetical but a fun future to consider. In his new book, A Third Term, George Washington is brought back from his deathbed in 1799 to run against President Trump in 2028. Both men are seeking a 3rd time, so how will the aristocratic swagger of the 18th century compete against the bluster of Trump? Paul Greenberg explores just that. Although he is known for his work on climate change and why fish are so important (no, really, one of his books is about angling!), this new book has been featured on PBS, NPR and all your favorite places. We're having a in-depth and casual conversation about modern politics, why fish are important and much more!
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00:00Thank you very much.
00:30Well, today on the Cameron Journal podcast, we are reaching the firmaments today. We've got a big fish. Ironically, a man who also writes about fish. We are joined today by Paul Greenberg. He is the author most well known for The Climate Diet, 50 Simple Ways to Trim Your Carbon Footprint, and also the author of Four Fish, The Future of the Last Wild Food.
00:51A lot of people eat fish on this planet. It's incredibly important. But today, we're not going to be talking about fish. No, no. Despite the fact he's written for New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other publications, we're actually talking about his new book, A Third Term, which is this really fun novella that poses the idea, what if George Washington came back from the dead
01:21That was not true when Washington was alive. So, this is going to be a lot of fun. We're probably going to start with some Gills-related content, and then move on to the political fish. So, welcome, Paul, to the Cameron Journal podcast.
01:34Thank you so much, Cameron. Great to be here.
01:35Thank you. Thank you very much. So, I want to start off first by talking, this will be an entree to everything. When it comes to fish and fishing, I will admit, I am not outdoorsy. I am indoorsy. I like a nice fish that has been prepared in a lovely restaurant and brought to me on a plate.
01:58I do not understand the obsession with people standing in the water, on the shore, on the boat, trying to catch these with a reel and rod, or whatever have you. What is that? Where did your obsession with fish and fishing start from?
02:15I think, for me, it's a way of entering into nature in an active way. You know, you spoke of yourself as a great endorsement.
02:23Yes, yes, exactly.
02:25I think Michael Pollan referred to his father as one of the world's great endorsement, which I respect. My father was a great endorsement.
02:34So, for me, I am an active kind of person. I'm a hiker, you know, runner, biker, and I've always loved ecology, and I've always loved natural systems.
02:46And as a fishing person, you get to kind of enter into those systems as a predator.
02:52And in order to catch your prey, you sort of have to understand all of the surrounding things that are going on, whether it's the insects that are hatching out of the stream, or the moon phase, or which way the currents are going.
03:06So, I guess it was sort of a stand-in for kind of the best professor you could possibly imagine, because you've got this goal to catch the fish, to catch dinner.
03:19But there's a huge, sort of very complicated puzzle put in front of you.
03:22And so, trying to solve that puzzle was sort of my childhood heart's desire.
03:27No, I think that's an excellent way to put it.
03:33I do want to ask you right away, this has not gotten any coverage, but I'm sure you've got to be aware of it.
03:41The Chinese fishing boats in South America that just seem to be dragging up the whole ocean.
03:48Like, just whatever they can grab.
03:50Rocks, fish, the Titanic, like, you know, like, whatever they can get a hold of that fits in a net.
03:55They're just dragging it up.
03:56But, I mean, I'm not, again, not an outdoorsy person, but I've written enough on climate change to know that ecological destruction is irreplaceable.
04:07Yeah.
04:07Well, the guy who's doing a lot of good reporting on this is a guy named Ian Urbina, and he has a project called the Outlaw Ocean Project.
04:13And he writes for, had written for the Times, now he writes for the New Yorker.
04:17But he has a whole kind of tracking of the Chinese fishing fleet.
04:20And you're absolutely right.
04:21It's the largest fishing fleet in the world.
04:23And it's not just South America, it's the entirety of the world.
04:27Keep in mind that fishing is often a way of expressing territorial claims.
04:33The Chinese have actually built islands from which they are able to, you know, because you own, the way that international nautical maritime law works is that you control, you're legally allowed, entitled to the ocean 200 nautical miles out from shore.
04:47So if you build a new shore, you get a new ocean.
04:50So it's, you know, it's imperialistic ideation combined with food security, which is not unlike we've behaved in the past.
04:59Certainly we've had a distant water fleet.
05:01And certainly we have distant water ambitions, as our current president is trying to imply.
05:06So it's, it's, it's, it's fishing and imperialism go hand in hand.
05:11No, absolutely.
05:13And I mean, there's also, I mean, history oftentimes mirrors the past.
05:17People also forget a lot of the lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had to do with economic sanctions, a restriction on the exportation of scrap steel to Japan.
05:28And most importantly, we restrict them from importing oil.
05:31Japan does not have any.
05:32They have to go buy it from someone else.
05:34It's part of the reason they invaded Manchuria.
05:35And so I'm, I'm being a literary historically read person being like, Hmm, very interesting that this is easily, have you read this here?
05:45Like it's, you know, and also the Japanese and Chinese competition over the Senkaku islands where no one lives.
05:52But yes, when you get into, you know, who's shore and the 200 miles around it, then you end up with the same problem between the United Kingdom and Norway over fishing rights in the North Sea.
06:03Like, yes.
06:04Yes.
06:05Yeah.
06:05So it's a, you know, it's a huge, a huge problem.
06:09It's a good thing France and Britain don't argue over that English Channel because France's territorial boundary would be someplace in Birmingham.
06:15So that's, no, I mean, that's, it's just, the destruction is just, is just tremendous.
06:23And I don't, I mean, I agree it's imperialist, but I don't under, I don't know short of starting a war, how you even begin to stop that type of climate destruction.
06:31I mean, it kind of goes back, if we could, to transition to, you know, the book on the table, which is.
06:38That's why we, yes, yes, yes.
06:40You're right with me.
06:41I mean, it goes down to the question of what is the nation state and what is the goal of nation states in general?
06:48Well, and what is our place supposedly as a democracy in this world, where up until recently, we at least stood for a notion of fairness and the rule of law.
07:01And I think that as we enter into this next phase of American history, and someday it will be history, it just feels like it's in our face 24-7, but someday it will be history.
07:13I think it will be looked at as potentially an inflection point when selfishness versus sort of fairness and balance came to rule the day, at least temporarily, we hope.
07:28But we'll see.
07:29Yes, yes.
07:30Well, why don't we dive right into it then?
07:32Tell us a little about third term.
07:33Yeah, sure.
07:34Well, so, yeah, so all of these questions have been on my mind, believe it or not, five years ago during the 2020 election.
07:41And I was thinking a lot, you know, as that campaign started gearing up, that so many of sort of what we consider as American values, you know, fairness, rule of law, kindness, hearing the other person speak before we respond.
07:58It struck me that all those things were being directly challenged by the convicted felon who currently occupies the White House and that this was – it suddenly occurred to me that so much of what we consider as sort of core values to being Americans was being rebuffed and thrown out there.
08:21I was like, well, what would happen if George Washington himself was brought back from the past?
08:27Would he, too, find himself in ridiculous arguments, getting his words turned around, getting strange things from his past pulled back and pulled up and thrown up into the campaign?
08:39And I thought, yes, that probably would happen.
08:41And so what I did was imagined this novella called A Third Term in which a sort of David Axelrod type or David Plouffe, if you will, character is so frustrated with the Democratic Party that he realizes that there's just nobody on the table that can actually lead.
08:58And through the agency of a little bit of sci-fi, George Washington is brought back to this present time and tasked with the job of defeating the tyrant.
09:11The person who's currently occupying the White House is never called the name that we hear so often in the media.
09:19He's only referred to as the tyrant.
09:21When Washington awakes, he immediately kind of understands why he's there and he says, has a tyrant arisen?
09:28And the sort of David Axelrod character, whose name is Tonnelly in the book, says, yes, yes, he has.
09:33And we prefigured as much, George Washington says.
09:37So that sets in motion, you know, so I would call it an allegory, a satire.
09:42I think it's funny.
09:43And, you know, sort of a way of looking at the absurdity of our present political moment through the eyes of a character, George Washington, that we all think we know, but actually don't really know very well at all.
09:55No, no.
09:56I mean, I think that I think the first thing would be like, you're still using the same constitution after all this time.
10:01You just kind of modified it a little bit because Jefferson is a new constitution every 20 years sort of thing.
10:07You know, so he'd be shocked about that.
10:08And then and then then also kind of like, and we're going to hold your hand while you say this.
10:12But, you know, those black people that you used to own, we've made several updates on that front.
10:21Brace yourself.
10:22These days they're running for vice president and president.
10:25And to be fair to Washington and Jefferson and everyone who is considered a founding father or sister, these were pretty radical people in their time.
10:39And, you know, they overthrew a government and replaced it with one government and then they replaced that government with another government.
10:45So these were not static people who would have sort of endured illogical things.
10:55You know, they were they were children of the literally children of the Enlightenment.
10:59They they they most of them were deists.
11:03They were not, you know, religious absolutists.
11:05They they thought of the God God out there as a as a as a clockmaker, you know, sort of who wound up the clock and let things spin.
11:12But they were they adhered to logic.
11:15They adhered to wanting to have a more rational system.
11:18And I think had they sort of heard the blather of the originalists talking about how we have to get back to some like 18th century concept of society, I think they would have having taken in everything that's changed in this country.
11:34I think they would have been pretty perfectly open to having the Constitution and having society evolve.
11:40No, I mean, there was definitely I mean, especially, you know, in the you know, we get this kind of luxury because some of them were so young, they were in their 20s that they lived well into the early decades of the Republic.
11:56And we see even at that stage, you know, things were changing.
12:01They didn't necessarily always agree with some of the changes that were happening there.
12:05People forget there were debates about the Constitution and how it worked had by the people who wrote the deal at the time.
12:14You know, you're like, that's not what we said at the you.
12:17I remember over to you specifically.
12:20Yeah, I mean, you ever have a moment in your life where you say you you do something and it sets things in motion and you can't believe that people actually took you seriously?
12:29I can't help but think that the founders would have had a similar thing.
12:33But to your point about slavery, it is a real key point in the book.
12:38You know, and I think a lot of people have asked me about this book.
12:41Is Washington a real character?
12:43Is he real?
12:44Did you mean him to be a real person in this book or just a sort of metaphor?
12:48And I kind of wanted him to be both.
12:51You know, when you think about what America is, we have all these ideals, we have all of these sort of platitudes that we supposedly lived according to.
13:01But at the same time, we're in total denial about all the injustices that brought us to our present moment.
13:09And so what I kind of wanted to do was to take all of that denial and sort of embed it into Washington so that Washington himself is in denial about slavery itself.
13:19And so when it actually comes up during one of the debates with the tyrant, he suddenly has to kind of have a come to Jesus moment where he reads his own biography.
13:31And all these things that he thought he had secreted away, you know, the way that he pursued his Hercules, who ran away from from the household, sent slave catchers after them, the way that Billy Lee, his trusted black servant, had done, you know, literally thrown himself in the path of musket balls, was never freed in the course of Washington's life, though.
13:57He had full power to do so.
13:59So it's a little bit of a construct to make Washington have to look squarely in the face at what he's done.
14:06But I think it was kind of meant in the context of the third term, the book, as almost kind of like, what if we could do a little psychotherapy with Washington?
14:17What if we actually put him on the couch and confronted him with the reality of the things that he'd done wrong?
14:23And then, you know, the result is sort of played out in the plot, which I won't give away.
14:28No, no, I am so glad you've done that.
14:31I had an idea several years ago about, you know, I was I was deep into therapy and doing personal work.
14:36And then I do a lot of news politics.
14:39And I was kind of like, I like, yeah, it would be really cool to do, you know, founders on the couch.
14:43You know, what does you know, what is what would Thomas Jefferson say in a therapy session sort of thing?
14:49You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.
14:52Yeah.
14:53So good job.
14:54You've done it.
14:56You know, it's funny.
14:57My father was a psychiatrist and he he was there was a show back in the 90s called Dr.
15:02Dr. Katz Professional Therapist.
15:05And the concept of that show was that it was Dr.
15:08Katz himself was played by a comedian and he but he was playing a therapist and he brought in actual real comedians into the show and had them animated lying on the couch.
15:17And so the therapy routines became almost like stand up routines.
15:22But, yeah, I mean, I think people think about the founders a lot.
15:27They think about what they would be like.
15:29In fact, actually, the other reason a lot of people have asked me with this book, why did you choose to bring Washington back?
15:34Right.
15:35Conceivably, if we're in the realm of science fiction, we could have brought Lincoln back.
15:39We could have brought Jefferson back, as you mentioned.
15:42But I think what's interesting, so a few years ago, there was a pair of Russian painters who had this idea of could you paint a picture exactly according to a sociological survey of a country?
15:56And so they started doing sociological surveys of different countries and then painting accordingly.
16:00And when they did the sociological survey of Americans, Americans said that what they liked in a painting was blue.
16:07They liked nature and they liked to have a founding father, preferably Washington.
16:13And then they produced this painting and you can find it online.
16:16It's this incredibly sort of anodyne, boring painting of a riverfront and Washington and a deer.
16:22And I think, you know, I think that's the thing is that the other thing is, of course, I'm trying to sell this book both to left and right, red and blue, et cetera, et cetera.
16:32And I think that in a way, if you put Washington into a book, the right can't look away.
16:37And so there's a little bit going back to our fishing metaphor.
16:40It was bait on the hook to try and catch as many fish as possible.
16:42Well, and I think the other excellent idea, the idea that I think the other the other half of that is we have a lot of mythology about these people now.
16:55Yeah.
16:56And I think people don't understand and especially it kicks into high gear at the beginning of the Cold War.
17:04CIA, other agencies are kind of like, oh, we need to stave off communism, to stave off socialism, you know, Red Scare, all this type of thing.
17:12We need to really enforce this pro-America message.
17:17And so they kind of dig into the annals and history of the country and create this mythology about, you know, the Pounding Fathers and capitalism and freedom and all these sort of marquee concepts that we now, you know, readily associate with ourselves and our country and all this type of thing.
17:34And I think people would be shocked.
17:36And there's not very many people old enough to remember the time before that.
17:41But my Nana was in high school in the 50s and kind of remembers how that started sort of thing.
17:50And there was all this, especially coming out of the war, all this media produced around this thing.
17:55And I think especially on the right, I find that I grew up a Republican.
17:59My parents are three-time Trump voters.
18:03You know, as a young, you know, evangelical, homeschooled kid, these were mythical, almost magical men who created this kind of thing.
18:15And the people don't realize in the right, especially in, like, homeschooling evangelical church, you know, really the core of the Republican base is the – these men are revered as demigods.
18:27The mythology around them is tremendous.
18:30And one of the things I found when I went to college and started engaging with the left is the founders lose all their magic among moderates.
18:39And by the time you get to the left, it is gone.
18:42The conversations you have about the founding fathers on the left are, yeah, our country was founded by slave owners.
18:48So that's a problem.
18:49But, you know, it's funny you should bring that up.
18:54When I first wrote A Third Term, as I mentioned, I wrote it for – you know, going on five years ago.
19:00And the book landed on my agent's desk literally as Black Lives Matters was at full pitch.
19:08And my agent said to me, I don't think America really wants to talk about George Washington right now.
19:14And, you know, I understand that, but I think this is a moment where, you know, the left's complete dismissal of the founders is a problem.
19:28You know, because as I mentioned earlier, these were interesting, intelligent, radical people of their time, you know, opportunistic, surely, you know, property owners, people owners for sure.
19:45But to dismiss everything about them is to dismiss the fact that they did something life-risking and brave in throwing off an empire that was trying to dictate their day-to-day.
20:01Now, they might have been doing it for economic reasons, but, you know, as Obama would say, you know, the path of – the arc of history is long.
20:07I guess he was quoting Martin Luther King.
20:09But the arc of history is long, and if you think about the arc of America as the inciting throwing off of shackles for economic reasons, then there becomes this whole arc of throwing off shackles that I think potentially, you know, could be interesting.
20:26It's interesting.
20:27My son, a couple of years ago, was studying for the AP European History exam, and I'd taken that, whatever, 30 years ago, and I never really could understand.
20:38Do you remember, like, European history, like, how your teachers get really bogged down in the Protestant Reformation?
20:45And there's – they show you the – you know, I remember my AP exam very, very well.
20:50There's, like, a gold ornate Catholic cross, and then there's this very spare wooden Protestant cross, right?
20:55And the essay was explained.
20:57And, you know, at the time, it was just a sort of, you know, debate about, you know, liturgy and how you would interpret the religious experience personally and so forth.
21:12But keep in mind that those, to us, seemingly small differences set off like wars that went on for decades.
21:20130 years.
21:21And the reason that happened is because what was really being challenged was the primacy of the Catholic Church's ability to control the human mind.
21:33And so by Martin Luther putting up those theses on that door, he basically said the monopoly on the human mind is over.
21:42And we are going to open the door to all kinds of thinking.
21:46So, you know, of course, Martin Luther would have never embraced the Enlightenment.
21:52You know, that wasn't – you know, the idea of God as a clockmaker was not cool with Martin Luther.
21:57He was a liturgist.
21:58He was a, you know, anti-Semite.
22:00He was, like, very, very, you know, from that period from which he came.
22:04But I suddenly realized as I was studying with my son is that without the Reformation, there could have never been any scientific revolution, right?
22:14Without piercing that armor of the Catholic Church, you could never have the opening of free thought the way that we'd had.
22:20So I suddenly was like, oh!
22:22No, there is a very specific through line from Protestant Reformation, the rise of literacy, Enlightenment.
22:31Yeah.
22:31What I think is interesting is how much of – in a weird way, especially the Northern Renaissance, you know, you can kind of say, you know, through Protestant Reformation, literacy, the Northern Renaissance, Enlightenment as well.
22:48The Southern Renaissance, much less so because it was controlled and dominated by the Catholic Church.
22:53Great art, but controlled by the Catholic Church.
22:56I mean, that sort of thing.
22:57And also from the Enlightenment and the embrace of reason, not only do you get the Age of Science, you also get industrialization.
23:03Right.
23:04Of course.
23:04Sort of thing.
23:05Yeah.
23:05And so it's – and it's in a weird way, even though it's only been 500 years, we're still kind of living in the shadow of all of that.
23:14Absolutely.
23:14You know, and even in this country, I'm old enough to remember when, you know, it was controversial for Protestant and the Catholic got married.
23:22That wasn't that long ago.
23:24One of my favorite books of all time, Truman Capote and Cold Blood, that was remarked that the daughter that was killed in that book, her boyfriend was Catholic and the father wanted her to not date him anymore.
23:35Those are one of the personal things I found about that family.
23:37But it was a very odd sort of thing.
23:44But we do – to bring it back around, though, we do live in these stories, don't we?
23:49Yes.
23:49And I think one of the things I think is fascinating about this book that I really like and something I've encouraged because I've talked about, you know, we've been living in this narrative and it's kind of coming to an end.
24:00Trump is not the disease.
24:02He's a symptom of the white Christian heteronormative narrative is coming to an end.
24:07America's looking different.
24:08This is the extinction burst.
24:10This is the symptom, not the disease.
24:12We live in these stories and these sometimes mythologies.
24:19What do you – one of the things I kind of like about this book is I was kind of rewriting that story.
24:23What about kind of diving into putting Washington in a modern context changed the story you had in your head about him?
24:32Yeah, well, first of all, I mean on a lighthearted way, after doing the research on it, I didn't realize to what a degree Washington was a slave of fashion and literally a clothes horse.
24:48Like he – one of the reasons he was in such huge debt was that he was constantly ordering clothes and fashionable things like carriages from Europe.
24:55So that was pretty interesting.
24:57But the other thing, the larger picture and what I learned in the course of the research was how much debt itself played a factor in his political decisions, even his decision, I think, to break away from England.
25:13He was facing huge debt as a plantation owner even though he was very land rich but very cash poor.
25:19And he was really kind of in a noose.
25:21And he had to kind of keep moving forward and that was a real motivating factor.
25:25Having been in debt in the course of my life, I really truly understand that.
25:30But I think, you know, the thing that I was – that I think I tried to kind of excavate from it all was that ultimately you can say what you will about Washington, but I don't believe there's any doubt that he was an extremely personally brave person.
25:47You know, when he charged into battle in French-Indian War at the battle at the Ohio Forks against the French, something that was moralized, you might recall, in the musical Hamilton.
26:00When he came back from that charge, his tunic was literally full of musket holes, musket ball holes.
26:07He, like, really, like, dived right into danger.
26:11And I think what is really kind of missing in leadership at the present time in this country is kind of just the lack of just bald-faced courage, you know?
26:22And I think that allows the present occupant of the White House to talk courageously, but if you look at his actual record, dodging the drafts through, you know, through his bone spurs and so forth, that there's no actual center of courage, center of strength in that person.
26:41So I guess if there's, like, one takeaway, and I'm sorry, Cameron, I've drifted far from your question, but if there's one takeaway that I would like people to see in this book is that leadership requires real character, that developing leadership is hard, that leading is hard, and that all these three things combined are contributing to a crisis in leadership in this country that we have at the present time.
27:06So whether we're wiping the slate clean or not, you know, of the founding fathers, it remains the problem that we need leaders in this country, and leaders who lead not out of a desire to boost their own egos or their bank accounts, but who truly feel that their leadership can improve the condition of Americans.
27:24Well, and two, I think that's an excellent point about the story of Washington, how motivated he was by different factors.
27:31But I think also, and people also forget, he actually came from very little.
27:35He married into money by marrying the wealthy Martha Curtis, whose husband had conveniently died.
27:42And so, and I do love the fact that he was kind of a bit of fashionable.
27:47It's like, it's like we founded the first modern democratic republic and looked great while doing it.
27:53But I think, I think, I don't think any of us realized, I certainly didn't fully realize,
28:01how much of our stability of government was dependent on the character of the people in office.
28:08You know, I kind of always laugh if you had told any of us in 2006, we would look fondly upon the Bush years, particularly liberal people, we would have laughed in your face.
28:16We thought that was the low, you know, we have reached the bottom, the absolute minimum we could go, we can only go up from here.
28:24And like the old Soviet joke, there was a knock from below, and it came from Donald Trump.
28:31And so, I think, I mean, institutions in any government is only as good as the people that are in it.
28:38But I don't think people realized, even a lot of the stuff we took for granted, the stuff we thought were norms, the stuff we thought would never change,
28:45was really only there because the previous occupants weren't brave enough and or, you know, legally bold enough to go around and just do whatever they wanted sort of thing.
28:58Yeah.
28:58And relied upon people in consensus to keep things going.
29:03Trump does not care about any of those things.
29:06And I think that's the real, that has always been the real danger.
29:09Yeah.
29:09And, you know, something you mentioned at the top of the show, which is that Washington didn't serve a third term in his era, not because he was constitutionally forbidden to do so, but because he didn't want to.
29:23And because he saw it as necessary for the republic to voluntarily step down and let elections take place.
29:30He didn't have to do that.
29:31Everyone in his cabinet and a vast majority of Americans probably wanted him to stay and keep running, but he didn't do it.
29:38Now, cut ahead to 2025, where we have an occupant of the White House, convicted felon, who continues to drop the suggestion that there are ways for him to somehow obviate the Constitution and serve a third term.
29:57The 22nd Amendment, of course, forbids that, you know, and that was not, that didn't happen until 19, I think, 51.
30:05And it was, you know, a direct result of FDR seeking not just a third, but a fourth term and getting it.
30:12But to me, another reason why I decided to call this book a third term is because in a way, the seeking out of a third term is a metaphor for all of the unconstitutional things that this present regime represents.
30:29And, you know, the third term is just a cherry on top.
30:31You know, there's so many things in the Constitution and in our, you know, our democratic tradition that don't allow the kind of executive action that's taking place right now.
30:42So if we can draw our attention and just focus on the fact that we can't allow a third term, which is a very real possibility, I think everything unconstitutional underneath that premise will hopefully come to light.
30:55No, I mean, I think that's very, you know, very, a very kind of vital discussion that's happening.
31:04And I think, I think there's competing, I think, I think it's also, I think it's honestly the cherry on top of something that's very important.
31:12I was reading a tweet this morning and this guy said, you know, I voted for, you know, Trump to make the left no longer a cohesive political force in this country.
31:20And I saved that because when people say that I, in December, when I said, this is a retreat, this is a surrender and retreat by the entire, you know, Democratic Party and any sort of leftism, even milquetoast, liberal, moderate leftism in this country.
31:36And everyone thought I was crazy and being an alarmist and all this sort of thing.
31:40And I want to haul this out and be kind of like, like, I mean, like, I think people don't, people just don't, I'm like, no, it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
31:49This is a complete, we're waving the white flag and retreating.
31:54And I always laugh at people kind of like, where are the Democrats?
31:57Why aren't they doing anything?
31:58I'm like, well, first of all, the election was in November.
32:00November 5th was your day to have that option.
32:02Um, and, uh, her name was Gamaliel.
32:04You could have voted for her.
32:05Um, but also too, I said, I said, you don't understand.
32:08He's won the electoral college.
32:10He's won the popular vote.
32:12The percentages weren't great, but he's taken everything this time.
32:15This is clearly what the American people want.
32:17This is a retreat and surrender.
32:19What the, the package of goods, the Democratic Party has sold for the last decade or so is not of interest.
32:28It's going to be a retreat.
32:29And I think it's, you know, kind of interesting how nobody seems to understand, like, even with the going after colleges and universities, that's to get rid of bastions of left-wing power.
32:39Going after aspects of the government, same, same situation.
32:41It's to undo any sort of organization, organizational, professional, institutional viability of a certain political spectrum, a certain political view, and to either co-opt those institutions, which the GOPs wanted to do since the 70s.
32:56That's not even new.
32:57That's an old, old thing.
32:59Or to end them entirely.
33:02Yeah.
33:02So that you don't, you don't have those as centers of power, weight, fundraising, producing professionals, good people, all this type of thing.
33:09And so in this way, if you kind of look at it from that perspective, this is a generational presidency.
33:18This is something, the effects of which people will write books about 20 years from now.
33:24PhD students will do graduate work on this, you know, maybe not in this country, but they'll do it somewhere else sort of thing.
33:31I mean, and so I think it's a very, but to circle back to about Washington, the fact that people literally was, he could have declared himself king and people would have signed up.
33:41Be like, oh yes, the new king, Washington, you know, exactly.
33:44And Queen Martha, we, we heart you, you know, the other thing.
33:47And he said, no, we need to get used to and in the practice of orderly changes of power.
33:54So guess what?
33:55We're going to do our first one, climb on board, everybody, you know, sort of thing.
33:59Yeah, and, you know, when we were talking earlier about, you know, that break with empire that the United States made through its revolution being a kind of a first part of an arc, you can look at the distribution of power in that original government between three branches as a, an acknowledgement that power should be separated, siloed, so that no single person can get a hold of it.
34:27I think that that philosophy governed the spread of educational institutions, the proliferation of educational institutions, even our style of management, you know, I, so I don't know if this came through in the biography I sent you, but, so I spent a long time working in the former Soviet Union right after the fall of communism.
34:48And I worked for, believe it or not, a USAID-funded nonprofit that the past month went from a $100 million organization to a $0 organization, was completely shuttered.
34:59But my job was to go all over the former Soviet Union, finding independent television stations that had appeared towards the end of communism, and training them and helping them become news gathering institutions that would allow a free flow of information.
35:13What was really interesting, one of the biggest, and the project worked, by the way, was doing really well.
35:20We had something like, we worked with 300 stations all over the former Soviet Union, all that was shut down by Putin, of course.
35:26But, one of the biggest problems that we found wasn't lack of enthusiasm, it wasn't journalistic acumen, it was that there were no, there was no middle management in any of these TV stations.
35:37There was just the director and a bunch of serfs.
35:40And, this country's different.
35:42Typical Russian way of doing things.
35:44Yeah, but, I mean, this country's different, right?
35:46Like, we actively encourage the development of incremental managerial skills.
35:54And that distribution of power makes a much more sound institution overall, right?
36:00If you have lots of people who, in a pinch, could step in and take over or exceed to a higher level, that makes for a much more stable business, government, state government, local government, whatever you want to say.
36:13And, you know, the present administration is all against that.
36:18And so, when you talk about a generational change that we're facing, I think we all hope that our children, certainly I hope my children, you know, will have a place in middle class society.
36:28But, in, you know, to quote Blade Runner, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with that movie, but, you know, at one point, the police chief says to Decker, he says, come on, Decker, you know the score.
36:38You're either cop or you're little people.
36:41And, you know, that's the thing.
36:42You're either a powerful oppressor or you're nothing.
36:46And that's the system that I think the present occupant of the White House would like to see put in place.
36:51And that's the thing that we're fighting against.
36:53And I think that's something that Washington himself was opposed to.
36:58I think he wanted to see a distribution of power, of intelligence, and of agency throughout the day.
37:04At least among white-owning males, yes.
37:06White-land-owning males, yes.
37:08Yes.
37:08Yes.
37:08Full disclosure, yes.
37:10True.
37:10Yes.
37:10Yes.
37:11It's hard to be divided, at least among white-land-owning males.
37:14But, you know, one thing to point out.
37:18More diffuse than Britain, though.
37:20I mean, less than that.
37:21Yes.
37:22But, you know, like, I don't know if you ever saw or listened to the musical Hamilton.
37:27But, you know, and people who read this book will see traces of it scattered throughout because my son basically grew up with Hamilton.
37:34And so it was always a CD player, you know, when we were driving anywhere.
37:38But there's that great moment when Washington and Hamilton have that duet in the second act.
37:46And he says, I want to live under my own vine and fig tree.
37:51And, you know, that's how he would like to, like, live out his retirement.
37:56But that line actually comes from an address that Washington made to a synagogue in Newport.
38:02And it's very interesting, right, like that Washington would address a synagogue.
38:05Now, of course, I'm a little biased.
38:06I am Jewish, though not particularly believing.
38:08But, you know, Jews were not necessarily a welcome presence in the colonies, you know, but that he would make a statement to a group that was not in line with the sort of dominant philosophy speaks to, I think, a potential inclusiveness that the government was intended to have, you know.
38:33So, I don't know.
38:33I mean, yes, slaveholders, slave owners, white guy, oppressor, but as I say, I think there's filigree and evidence of a future tolerance.
38:47No, that was also true of other religious groups, particularly John Adams and Jefferson, both are on the record.
38:56Jefferson, you know, was definitely, he would look at the duplicitousness of our religious thing and be like, yes, this is exactly what we intended.
39:05For anyone of every religion to come here and be able to worship freely with no state interference.
39:10I mean, that's probably one of their goals we have achieved.
39:13No other nation on earth has done what we have done on that end of things.
39:17Yeah.
39:17Um, which I think they would very much welcome.
39:21Um, and, and that, and that Jefferson even, you know, mentioned the importance of having, as he put it, Mohammedans, but is Muslims.
39:29Um, that was the 18th century term, Mohammedans, uh, Muslims involved in, as a part and parcel of American society.
39:34I think they'd be very pleased because like, yeah, we did that and we did it really well, you know, and we taught the world how not to have a state religion, how to have a society without a state religion.
39:45Um, you know, which goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the breakup of the Catholic church during the reformation.
39:51You know what I mean?
39:52It's the logical extension of that.
39:54And I will say that Washington, you know, he was a believer and he, but he also, I think he saw in faith of any kind, um, a organizing.
40:07Ages, you know, some sort of way to organize society so that people, and a moral code.
40:13And, you know, I think it's hard to have a society without a moral code, you know, you need some levels of some institutional way of recognizing respect, um, of tolerance of, you know, of, of love.
40:24No, and I, well, and I think also the, kind of the other half of that, I think the more difficult half of that, um, is that, uh, you end up, um, you, you, you end up with different, different power centers, people finding community, all this type of thing.
40:41And that, I think in the past, and I think this is one of the things Trump wants to get rid of, and certainly Silicon Valley tech bros want to get rid of.
40:51And I'm coming back to that is you end up with different people in different centers and weights of power, which means if you want to be able to do policy, you have to have consensus.
41:00You have to bring people together, you have to, you know, engage with groups, institutions, citizen, advocate, all this type of thing to make something happen.
41:09And that means your policy and slogans is going to have a lot of, a lot of influence and people are going to need to be able to, you know, be comfortable signing on with at least most or some of what you're proposing rather than just simply articulating a vision, expecting it to be followed.
41:25And I think for the Silicon Valley tech bros, and I think why they pivoted to Trump in 24 is he offers them a vision of what they've always wanted.
41:35They, I think, and someone put it very beautifully, they said, you know, the left is mad that they don't get paid for the social good they do.
41:44The right is mad they don't get the social credit for the money they have.
41:48And I think Silicon Valley was like, wouldn't the world be better if we could run it like a startup?
41:53Wouldn't the world be better if we could run it like we do things here?
41:56And so rather than our historic zone as a power being in banking or agriculture or industry, it's now shifted West and to digital.
42:10Yeah.
42:10And I think the interesting, you know, aspect of that is Silicon Valley is one giant Ayn Randian sort of paradise.
42:21Everyone's running around asking who is John Gall.
42:23It's great.
42:24Um, and I think for them, it's a matter of society's too messy.
42:30We don't want to get consensus.
42:31We don't want to talk to people.
42:33We don't want to work with others.
42:34We don't want to watch our good ideas get blended through public wisdom and discourse.
42:39We want to top down like a giant press hammer, just reshape the country the way we think it should be like.
42:47And here comes Trump saying, hey, yeah, sounds great.
42:50When do we start?
42:51And Elon Musk is like, let me cut you a check for $270 million and we'll get to work.
42:56But I mean, I think also it's instructive to note that a lot of the people who are in management or in ownership in Silicon Valley came out of coding.
43:04And in coding, your goal is to make the most efficient code.
43:08And so some sort of evil stew has taken place whereby they consider this kind of CEO concept, the most efficient code for running a government.
43:20But as I wrote in a recent essay, you know, there's no mistake.
43:25There's no coincidence that people refer to Stalin as the boss.
43:29And, you know, he was the CEO of his corporation, which was called the Soviet Union.
43:34But the problem is, first of all, in a real corporation, there are members of the board.
43:39There are shareholders that can dump the stock at any time.
43:43I don't see this developing into that kind of framework.
43:47I think the boss will stay the boss.
43:50There will be no board of directors that can hire and fire the CEO.
43:53And the shareholders, that is, we, the people, are getting disenfranchised institution by institution to the point where we will eventually lose our inability to dump the shares of the corporation, which is, i.e., change the government.
44:08So, you know, the metaphor doesn't work.
44:10The code doesn't work.
44:12It's inefficient.
44:12And pretty soon, people like Marc Andreessen and all those other jerk-offs who, you know, went in this direction are going to see that they made a very bad mistake and that it's not going to be this sort of, as you said, Anne Randian paradise of the beautifully run corporation, but a failed and corrupt state.
44:34Well, yes, and I think, you know, I always, and it was, it's a very sobering moment.
44:40And some people kind of made fun of me, but I, I said, right after the election, I said, there's a couple realities I've had to get used to.
44:47One, I never thought I'd live in a country where by doing this job, i.e. journalism, my life would be in danger, but that's now a reality I have to live with now.
44:57This job comes with danger.
44:58You know, every time I press record and put stuff out and I say things against this, the reality is I could, you know, be imprisoned or killed.
45:09And I've had to become used to that.
45:11And I'm trying to soldier onward regardless.
45:13Yeah, yeah.
45:14Well, good for you.
45:15And I say good for you and good for everybody who at this point doesn't respond to their inner feeling of fear.
45:23And I think, you know, if you look at any oppressive autocratic system, it's always a minority of people who control the majority.
45:30And that happens through cajoling and through fear and through acquiescence.
45:35And so God bless you, you know, to keep doing what you're doing and to do it with courage and not shying away from, you know, from putting important things out there.
45:45No, thank you.
45:45And the other kind of half of that sort of thing is what I always worry about.
45:51And you kind of always used to joke, you know, when would be the time to leave and how bad does it get?
45:55And we've had to start very seriously having that conversation now, is also the amount of people who, because of pulling up government funding or visa issues or immigration issues, the amount of knowledge and smart scientists and researchers and projects and all this type of thing that we are losing, we won't recover from that for decades.
46:17I mean, you have, you know, European countries openly opening up visa programs to cap, to bring people over.
46:24I was literally watching a 60 Minutes and it was an American researcher and they said, who's doing research in Canada because this person has had to leave.
46:31And I mean, if you told any of us in 1995, this is your future in 30 years, we would have laughed in your face and said, no, that will never look around you.
46:45That will never happen here.
46:46You know, all this sort of thing.
46:48And I think one of the horrors of all of this, and this kind of gets back into what the founding fathers in Washington feared.
46:57I think one of the horrors is the wolf of tyranny is never far from the door.
47:04Yeah.
47:04The founding fathers understood that very, very well.
47:06And in the intervening 200 and almost 50 years, we kind of forgot.
47:11Yeah.
47:12And here it is back again.
47:14And so I think, you know, I think Washington would be kind of like, we gave you the second amendment.
47:20Where's your well-organized militia?
47:21Why, like, where, where are they?
47:23And can I, can you call them so I can lead them into battle?
47:26Like, you know, like.
47:29Maybe, maybe.
47:30But I mean, I think also, I think he would be disappointed at the way that the distributed powers under a single party that has acquiesced to the will of a tyrant have basically reneged on their own responsibilities to run this government responsibly.
47:49So, you know, when historians write the history, it won't just be about one person taking power.
47:55It's going to be about a lot of people giving it to him, ultimately.
47:59And I mean, really, I mean, the story of Trump is the abdication of the Republican Party to anything other than him in their own quest for power.
48:08And I think that's, you know, a quite difficult and dangerous, dangerous thing.
48:14And I feel like even someone like Hamilton, who was a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, understood the gravity of running a society, of building a country sort of thing.
48:27And I, that's kind of one thing that I think is so missing from today's politics is, and when you get to the CEO thing, they want to, you know, America, we talk about America Inc., China Inc., Japan Inc., and a lot of Asian countries have these very kind of top-down sort of things.
48:44And someone like Singapore have been very successful, China, very successful, all this sort of thing.
48:49But they don't understand that America Inc. doesn't include just them and the people that work for them and do that type of work.
48:58It also includes the guy doing HVAC repair in Denison, Iowa.
49:01It includes the fish writer.
49:03It includes the podcaster.
49:06You know, we're all part of America Inc., too.
49:08And I think the part that annoys me the most about that is they seem to forget that we all live here, too.
49:13Yep.
49:14Yep.
49:14You know?
49:15Yep, absolutely.
49:16And, you know, again, going back to the kind of quest for scientific truth and for rationality and so forth, you know, the path to a perfect society and a society with good science and good rules is littered with mistakes, false starts, backtracking.
49:35And what we've created up until now is a society that, while full of intolerance, has enough tolerance to let inquiry play out and let us learn what we don't know.
49:50Let us make mistakes.
49:51Let us learn from our mistakes.
49:53That's ultimately an evolutionary society that gets better and better.
49:57And what we have here is a fork in the road where we have to decide, are we having an evolutionary society that the Founding Fathers set us forward with from an age of enlightenment, from the dawn of enlightenment?
50:10Or are we going to be a backwards place where we're just the will of a single person, you know, determines everything and inquiry comes to a halt?
50:22Yeah, and I think that's an excellent point to end almost at the top of the hour.
50:29Yeah.
50:29I try to keep these down to an hour because people, short attention spans.
50:33Understood, understood.
50:34And it's a nice length.
50:36When I first started, I always told people, I said, take me with you to work.
50:39I'm either the length of a long commute or you can listen in two halves for a short commute.
50:44So, and I still do that even though I don't really talk about that anymore.
50:47But it's a great time for plugs, so why don't you tell us where we can find you online and where we can find the book?
50:54Sure.
50:54If you go to paulgreenberg.org, that's B-E-R-G, at the end of Greenberg, paulgreenberg.org, you'll see a link to all of my books, including a third term.
51:04And third term, you can just plug a third term into Amazon.
51:07It'll come right up.
51:08You can get it in Kindle or paperback.
51:10I do try to steer people toward independent booksellers, if possible, because I really do believe that those are going to be the engine of democracy in the years ahead.
51:19So you'll see links to different individual booksellers.
51:22You can also go to bookshop.org and order the book that way.
51:25So whatever way you get it, we'd love to hear from readers, and they can get in contact with me through the paulgreenberg.org website.
51:34Excellent.
51:34Well, thank you so much for coming on the Cameron Journal podcast.
51:37I really appreciate it, Cameron.
51:38Great questions, great conversation.
51:40That's all for this episode of the Cameron Journal podcast.
51:55Thank you so much for listening.
51:57Visit us online at CameronJournal.com.
52:00We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
52:03And I love to talk to my followers and listeners, so please feel free to get us on social media at CameronJournal.com.
52:10And we'll see you next time on the Cameron Journal podcast.
52:14We'll see you next time.
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