Overtime – Episode #389 (Originally aired 05/27/16)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, real time with Bill Ma.

Okay, so we're back here, we're in the future.

Yeah, we were saying before

the one question that people in the future are going to have is, why did you think we were so into silver?

Melissa Harris-Perry, as a professor, do you find there is a culture of political correctness on college campuses that is stifling debate and learning?

I don't, but I do do think students are

atmosphere of political correctness on campus?

I don't find that, no.

Whoa.

Where do you teach?

I teach at Wake Forest University.

But I do think the students are struggling with this.

And I feel like...

Because lots of comedians wouldn't even play colleges anymore because nothing's funny.

Oh.

That's not been in my experience.

I mean, I was telling Wayne that I've got these 22 students and we went to Iowa, New Hampshire, both South Carolina primaries, the North Carolina primary.

They're Democrats and Republicans and I would assign them to work for candidates even if they didn't, if they're not from that party.

And they threw themselves into it.

So I had, you know, Republicans working for Bernie and, you know, Democrats working for Rubio.

And they...

they were very much into it.

But they are struggling with it, and we don't have good language for talking to each other across difference.

And I don't know that we're doing a good job in this country giving our young people good tools for having conversations across difference.

But I think that's our fault, not theirs.

As always, nothing's there for you.

For Scott, how does ISIS employ tactics of persuasion?

Well, the whole thing is persuasion, right?

Because they're trying to convince people to literally kill themselves for something in the future.

But what's interesting is that I'm not sure we're using the same kind of persuasion against them because bombing them isn't changing their minds.

If anything, it's probably hardening their resolve but if you look at

Trump's approach for example the same tools he uses I'm not saying that Trump needs to do it but those tools would work with ISIS you know if you adjusted them for the cultural difference I mean basically you just here's what I would do I would take a an ISIS person or somebody you thought might be become one somebody who's kind of got the mindset I would hook them up to whatever kind of brain you know scanners we have so we can see what their mental activity is and which part of the brain is lighting up And then I would AB test.

I'd say, how about this idea?

What happens when you think this?

And I would just find out what lit up.

Because you could literally persuade them out of it.

And by the way, you don't have to persuade all of them.

It has something to do with the Koran, don't you think?

But people have to believe it, right?

Right.

But if you've been reading that book, like, and sometimes only that book, since you could read.

20% of the world.

20% of the people can be talked down into anything with persuasion.

Sure.

And if you flipped 20% of ISIS, they'd start having a problem.

So you don't have to get them all, you just have to give them to people.

But not everyone can be hypnotized, right?

Because someone once tried to hypnotize me and it was not happening.

And I wanted to be.

Well, maybe you think you weren't.

No, I wasn't.

How do you think you ended up in that outfit?

So about 20% of people can have a deep hypnosis where they see things that aren't there, hear things.

The rest of us can be influenced.

So if they were trying to to influence you, it probably would have worked if you stuck with it, whatever you were trying to accomplish.

But no, not everybody goes into a deep trance.

Okay.

Michael, what do you make of Germany's decision to allow Turkish President Erdogan to prosecute a comedian who wrote a controversial poem?

It's a travesty that didn't get nearly as much coverage because

the story is basically this.

I mean, you know, the problems that we have with comedians, as you pointed out in this country, is that Jerry Seinfeld won't go to play to college.

He's He's not doing like really risque material.

And he won't go to college.

But it's slightly different in Western Europe, this supposedly a bastard of democracy.

And a Turkish comedian who lives in Germany, he's a resident of Germany, has a passport,

wrote a poem that was rather rude and pretty funny.

about Erdogan and he's being put on trial in Germany at an old law at the request of Erdogan.

And so the government of Germany obliged Erdogan, who's a knuckle-dragging dictator, and they decided decided to put him in court.

And this kind of sort of

abrogation of rights in Western Europe, this chipping away at speech, is totally insane.

And so much so that when that happened, I didn't even write a column about it.

Because it's just like that used to be the thing that would require me.

It's not so much anymore.

It's not bigotry to stand up for liberalism.

No, it's not good.

Liberalism is good.

No, it's not good.

Our values like freedom of speech and separation of church and state and respect for minorities and women as equal citizens, those are good things.

Those are very, very good things.

Yeah.

A story today.

It's not our fault.

No, it's not absolutely.

It's not our fault when there is, you know, when the people in different cultures don't follow those things.

And we shouldn't say that they're just a different culture.

There is a story to the culture.

It's not a different theocracy.

It's worse.

It's much worse.

And I say that from the future.

Or I've seen what happens.

All right.

Should Congress allocate more funding to help us prepare for the Zika virus spreading here?

Well, I heard today there is another bug that is absolutely

untreatable by antibiotics.

So I'm more worried about that one than I am about Zika.

But yes, absolutely more funding.

Zika sounds so cute.

It sounds like a pop star.

Right.

Zika's going to get a pop star.

Right, yeah.

Zika.

Zika's got the beats.

I got a little Zika going on.

Right, yeah.

Scott, how do we make ourselves less vulnerable to tricks of master persuaders?

The weird thing about persuasion is people can tell you what they're doing and doing it right in front of you and it still works.

So

things are priced at $1.99 and everybody knows, oh, you're trying to make me think it's less than $2,

and it still works.

Still do it, right?

So the answer is there really is no defense.

Do you think Trump's going to win?

I think he's going to win in a landslide.

The election.

The general election and have said that since last summer.

And it's because of tools, not because of policies per se.

Of course.

But you, wow, that's...

Can I interject here?

Yes.

I agree.

I was the first guy in the country who predicted Trump would win, and I think it'll be a landslide.

It's because of the economy as much as his branding, his persuasion, and anything else you attribute to him.

I completely believe that.

The economy is horrible.

I completely agree.

And middle-class people are angry and upset.

Here's the way to frame it.

Yes.

And that was so the fault of Obama, who took over when we were losing 800,000 jobs a month.

There's two terrible presidents back-to-back, Bush and Obama.

They both added two.

Horrible debt to the country.

Debt is poison.

Debt will destroy every country country it touches.

Bush added $4 trillion.

Obama has added $9 trillion.

By the time he leaves $10, we're $11 trillion.

It's exactly what we're doing.

We have too much debt, but no economists think that debt in itself is bad.

No economist.

The single biggest threat to America isn't terrorism and national security.

It's a debt crisis.

Just like Greece, just like Venezuela.

The single biggest threat is the environment.

But look at Venezuela.

You know, debt has to be bad.

Debt has to be bad at some level.

It is.

I just said that.

You did?

Debt is bad at some level of death.

Look at Venezuela.

Socialism leads to people.

There is no one who ever went to economic school who would say we should have no debt.

I didn't say we should have no debt.

But I certainly would like us to cut our debt dramatically.

Okay.

Will Britain leave the European Union and what would the repercussions be if they did?

Oh, well,

that's a brain teaser.

I don't think it would be good.

I mean, it would, I was reading about this recently, and it certainly would be

not a good thing for a lot of the people who came

to the UK to work, and that would be kicked in.

And this is essentially the problem in Europe, is that

this is breaking apart the Conservative Party in England.

I mean, Prime Minister David Cameron is a stay man, and the man who's opposing him, Boris Johnson, wants to pull out of the European Union.

But there's so much of this stuff, and this idea of the Schengen Agreement where you can travel anyway.

You go to Europe, you don't have to have a passport, you just go here to there.

After the Paris attacks, people started really questioning

why these people can come into Greece and move so freely throughout Europe.

So that actually buckled this idea that the European Union is a great thing.

So the kind of confidence in the European Union after the debt crisis was then compounded again by the fact that terrorists were moving freely throughout Europe.

So

I don't think it's going to be a great thing if it pulls out, but people are very, very scared.

Europe,

the easy fun of traveling to Europe, those days are just about over.

Might soon be over.

And I would ask the question again, I'm going to bring up the debt again.

Why should middle-class people of rich nations pay for free?

Italy and Spain.

Why should they pay for that?

Wayne, you do realize that Trump's economic plan would increase the debt.

No, I don't realize that.

Because I think he'll cut spending.

He cut spending.

He will cut spending.

Even if he cuts spending to nothing.

discretionary spending, not the spending that is already promised, it would increase by $8 trillion over the next 10 years because he wants to cut taxes like they all do.

My argument is there's no way to save America.

We're going down unless you increase growth.

You've got to dramatically expand growth.

You can only increase growth by cutting taxes and cutting regulations.

Reagan did it, and Trump will be another Reagan.

Okay.

I miss that.

I'd love to hear that.

I'm not Judas, like at the Bob Dylan Cup.

Yeah.

I just wanted to underline that part of what was interesting to me about what Michael was saying around the question of Europe that, again, I think we don't want to miss by simply arguing around the Trump piece, because I think he's just such an easy target to just make it about Trump and then we miss that this like the anxiety about the outsiders and the anxiety about the economy is not only not just a Trump problem it's also not just an American problem and so like like it's this big question about how we're gonna have to change a big international conversation about what is public, what is government for,

who is the we, and like, these are things that I think we're gonna have to be able to do better than just a partisan conversation, just a conversation that happens in the context of an election.

Like, these are big conversations about

borders.

That's the biggest question.

The whole world needs to be debating borders.

But they're porous, and people are pouring over them in Europe and the people.

And they're not pouring over them.

Again, another thing that they're pouring over.

Well, and I think you and I might come to a different answer on that.

But they're pouring over them.

They're not pouring over.

Net immigration from Mexico has been zero since 2007.

Again, a fact.

I know facts don't get to.

Well, and you wanted to get rid of the TSA earlier.

I think that they're not boring to see.

One of the interesting shakeouts in this election, to Melissa's point, is that American politics is actually becoming more Europeanized.

The idea that now we have

Bernie Sanders is a Social Democrat.

You have a mainstream liberal, and on the right, you have a populist candidate, and you have the mainstream Paul Ryan types.

That is something that every European country deals with and has long dealt with because they have parliamentary democracies and they have coalition governments.

And this is, we are not becoming more European just because of Bernie Sanders.

We're becoming more European in every possible way with this kind of fractured two-party system

splitting apart in so many ways.

And social issues.

Yeah, I just don't want us to miss the magician hypnotist trick of like, look over here at the shiny thing while the real thing is going over here.

That's.

I'm the shiny thing.

Indeed, sir.

You are the shiny thing.

Last question.

Does the hubbub over bathroom laws in conservative states mean the nation is less united over social issues than we thought?

Well,

I thought that the culture wars might have been over and it looks like maybe not quite yet because they are pretty upset about the fact that like three people

will be using a bathroom that wouldn't be the bathroom that they started to use when they were born.

But this is like the battle in New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812 when nobody had told them that it was over.

And it was just like this final battle.

And

someone came on horseback like a week later and said,

you know, it's done.

This is the last gasp of a 90s culture war.

No, you're not.

You're giving the elites.

It's a response, man.

You guys are so elitist.

I'm for gay rights.

I'm for gay marriage.

Transgender, you're elitist.

It's way too far.

You're pushing middle-class people beyond the point they're going to go.

I'm just telling the truth.

You're pushing them beyond the point.

It's a dumb issue for the rest of the

day.

For the driver, but it's too far.

To fall on their story.

Actually,

I'd actually say it a different way.

I live in North Carolina, and so HB2 gets passed.

And what's fascinating to me is it ain't a big fight because the next day, the entire

system of the economy, all the national folks, I mean, folks came.

So

that same state legislature had passed all of these bills that were deeply troubling and problematic around, for example, voter ID.

And the country was kind of like, meh.

But as soon as HB2 happens,

the NCAA,

the NBA, were like, oh, hell no, I bet you you won't.

And they all, with complete clarity, said, we will not come and do business

in North Carolina.

That's totally fine.

But what I've done.

Right, so what I'm saying is, that ain't a culture war.

At the point at which they extract economic costs from the state, it changes the calculus dramatically.

And it really does feel much more like Michael's point that it is, it feels much more like the last gasp when, in fact, when corporate America is on the side of, no, we really don't play that, then it's really not beyond where middle class people want.

It's totally fair, and I agree with you.

I'm for free markets, capitalism.

If you want to put them out of business, great, put North Carolina in business.

But guess what?

It's going to backfire because Target's going to be out of business.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, Target might be out of business.

But you're

not going to be able to do that.

I know that.

Donald Trump said, Caitlin Jenner, welcome to use.

And to me, to me, it's a telecourt invitation one way or the other.

I still can't.

Well, it's because you don't have a bathroom problem, but if you do, then

you have to do a death room.

I got to go right now.

Thank you very much, everybody.

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