others. for complete television schedule check your program guide or visit booktv.org. now we kick off the weekend with radio host bob garfield's thoughts on how to address the political divide. >> good evening, everybody. welcome to politics and prose. i'm bradley graham. let me just sat the outset that i have no idea what directions the conversation this evening is going to take because we have for you not one but two very irreverent, witty candid personalities who have ranged widely in their penetrating and prescient critiques of events and people and could take us who knows where in the next hour but i expect some of the talk will have to do with the future of american democracy and how to save it from villains, vandals, and ourselves because that at least is the subtitle of bob garfield's new book "american manifesto: saving democracy from villains, vandals, and ourselves" and he is going to be speaking with photojournalist mark leibovich who has a keen interest in what is happening in our democracy. bob has had a diverse journalistic career that has spanned four decades. he has been a reporter, a columnist for usa today and advertising age, contributed to washington post magazine and he has written for a number of other publications. he has also made his mark in the world of casting, broadcasting and podcasting. for a dozen years he was a commentator correspondent for all things considered specializing in quirky americana. he cohosted a popular podcast called lexicon valley and ditched that to create audible's podcast the genius dialogues in which he interviewed macarthur genius grant winners and as new york observer put it brought his own sense of what, charm and candor to the proceedings. most consistently since 2001 he has cohosted the weekly award-winning public radio program on the media which covers journalism, technology and first amendment issues. i will skip over bob's involvement with abc, cbs, nbc but i will say along the way he published a collection of short essays and books on advertising, marketing and the media plus a novel so all in all a pretty eclectic resume. his online biography begins with the sentence bob garfield isn't exactly a media war but is extremely promiscuous. in his new work "american manifesto: saving democracy from villains, vandals, and ourselves" he examines our nation's division into smaller interest groups each with its own desires and grievances coupled with the disintegration of much of our mass media but he follows this analysis of our national unraveling with 6 recommended actionable steps to counter the divisive notice and pull our fractured country back together and his official title is chief national correspondent for the new york times magazine but what mark is especially known for our his incisive and entertaining profiles of political and media figures. jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic once famously told mark the most important journalist in washington for his ability to make his profile subjects look like rock stars on the one hand and make others look like complete idiots. mark has been a journalist for 30 years and has been several books including the best-selling this town, a searing examination of washington, and his most recent, the big game, about the most powerful in the national football league. please join me in welcoming bob garfield and mark leibovich. [applause] >> a non-alcoholic. >> i'm not going to answer that question. hi, bob, hi, everyone. thanks for being here. should i start? i guess i will start. i'm the guy interviewing. >> i, thank you for being here. i have no idea how this is going to play. >> bob has written a book, actually a manifesto. it is called "american manifesto: saving democracy from villains, vandals, and ourselves". this is your thing. i want to start with something because it is the kind of thing that is usually a telltale sign the guy asking the question didn't read the book but i did read the book but the telltale sign, you ask about that but actually i am going to read it. in a vast american wasteland of homogenized regurgitated media there is alone heroic taco truck. bob garfield is that taco truck, very smart and very brave. alec baldwin. do you think he read this? >> how did you get him to read your book? >> a fully my mother were alive to hear me being compared to a food truck by end of the star. >> in all seriousness this is a great book. i read it, i got an early, decided to talk about it and it is not the kind of book are usually like. i usually like something that is not a manifesto. i've never read a manifesto before except for the communist manifesto. do you have a favorite manifesto that you modeled this after? >> know. i am manifesto free myself until i wrote this. >> host: what made you decide to do this? >> guest: i didn't decide to do this. what i decided to do was a book that spun off a stage show called lovingly jewish which was an exploration of my jewish identity such that it is and try to look at it in the context of where we are as a society today. there were weird stories in it and i thought it was a better book than it was a stage show. i couldn't pull it off. it did not work on page the same way it did on stage. it got me to thinking is there another way to approach this that is less theatrical and maybe i could sell to a publisher and find an audience willing to page through it? after some fits and starts i came up with this. >> host: it worked. it actually has worked fabulously. what was great about it as i read, i wasn't sure there would be a call to action toward the end or any hope and i guess backing up, it sounds very basic but how do you write something like this. you have written a lot of nonfiction, i don't know if you ever dabbled in fiction but there were strategy to sitting down and writing what is essentially 150 page essay with a sharp opinion and fast changing of the times? >> it was just me being me. >> how does that happen? >> it has to do with me having a lot of thoughts on a lot of subjects and also being an inveterate smart ass and breathing every breath thinking of the next punchline and using the skills i have to write a serious book without the like such a wise a good that is not taken seriously. the process of writing the book was trying to make some serious observations about society and our politics and our future, to be entertaining along the way and to be sort of erudite without being ponderous. >> did you find -- how much was triggered by donald trump and all that he has represented over the last few years in our politics and culture and media world? >> i'm sorry, i am not placing the name. [laughter] >> how about mike pence? >> this book would not have been written but for donald trump and this particular political moment so a lot but it is not about donald trump and it is not about how to combat donald trump. is how american society and american politics have gotten to this stage. i will dispense with the fool pivot partly because i don't have a set of free teleprompters and also discs in my back. i apologize, this is the last you will see of me. >> host: the question is how did we get to this point in society not only where we are so polarized but truth itself has been turned where we are so nano fragmented into countless tribes often known as filter bubbles the possibility of penetrating them with facts and evidence, empirical data, documentation and history is a fool's errand. you cannot permeate those filter bubbles on the right with reality and what converging factors created the situation? that is what the book presumes to do, to explain what is about american society going back to hundred 43 years, the internet and digital revolution, how did they converge to create the situation we're in right now and by analyzing those two general spheres that actually it was inevitable because of the american fixation on identity that goes back to the preamble to the constitution, and because of the american myths, whether it was the great gatsby or, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, who's that ragged dick, who wrote ragged dick? horatio alger. i am a senior american. there are some deficits is all i am going to say. the notion of self-improvement is so ingrained that as children we are told anyone can be president which is fine, it is nice to be aspirational but it turns out we were told by our parents and commencement speakers and thomas jefferson that we are guaranteed the pursuit of happiness. the thing is we are expected to find it. we are expected to do an assay of who we are as people and fix that and if we don't do that, if we don't meet these outside expectations this every american should hold dear we are a great disappointment to everybody and one of the premises of american manifesto is that great disappointment is materializing right now in trump. if you asked tocqueville in the 1840s where does this all lead he would have said a man with an orange face doing terrible things to the law. >> how is the american fixation of identity to blame to some degree or any degree for trump? the phenomena and of donald trump having the support of 40, 50% of the country, a sort of identity, grievance, victimhood, how much of that was inevitable around the american fixation on identity? >> glad you asked that question. i will now talk about evolutionary biology. i have already said i believe there is a peculiar american 6 asian with identity and i could give more detail in a moment but it is not just a human impulse and biological impulses or human species, in all animal species. why does a peacock show off its feathers? so a peacock can impress a hidden. why do other species have characteristics the call attention to it which enable it perhaps to mate but also to make it a better target for a predator? it runs through the animal species and also class in their root systems, single to insects and other plant species what is going on and has to do with self protection and provocation, plants, it is a nature thing and all living things are impelled to announce themselves. if it is true in root systems of plants it is probably true of europeans and latin americans too. and whatever. it is a human compulsion to try to let the world know who we are but nowhere is it more pronounced than it is here and partly for the reasons i was discussing, we are told to make something of ourselves which leaves shortly to invent ourselves. think from the time we are small your clothing decisions and tastes in music and art and everything else were not just what they were been announcing to the rest of the world what kind of person you are. it is one thing to be a steelers fan. another thing to announce to the world that the centrals are central to your being because of your clothes and you have it on your number sticker. i live. here i am again. so central to your being that you clothe yourself in it and if you go to belgium you will not find a license plate that says i love tofu, you just won't. as a society -- >> literally true. not literally true. >> they just have number plates. 374889. i don't know. >> those are the flemish ones. >> a little less belgian. >> it is no surprise that our politics, especially in a country that has such a rich history of oppression would also find itself carved up into first tens, then dozens and now hundreds, sometimes an infinite number of nano fragmented identity groups each with its own grievance and this is happening mostly not on the right but on the left and i will go for a few more seconds and let you pretend to be involved in this. >> i have scribble power. >> this guy came out on a crummy night, his conversation was one cup of coffee which he doesn't get to drink and during that i think he deserves a round of applause. [applause] >> mark leibovich, new york times best-selling author of this town. >> it was a bestseller. for one week. all about identity, thank you. you want to ask me for questions? >> really -- >> seriously. how does identity pollute itself into victimhood, grievance, the kinds of things you are seeing as rampant as you see identity politics? >> the first, first and foremost is because you should be aggrieved. the grievances are about real things. we are a society that has systematically oppressed all sorts of others, all sorts of marginal groups, all sorts of nonpower groups and i am delighted to say from world war ii on, just an enormous amount of success in this country, leading liberal democracies of the world in addressing these grievances, and writing historical wrongs and using legislation to not fully but at least partially fix what was broken in civil rights, the more and decisions out with people who were deprived of rights when accused of a crime. largely dealt with the church state problem from the first amendment by taking prayer out of the schools and all of these addressed certain kinds of injustices. then more and more, most recently lgbt and trans-rights in particular, a change in american law that i never thought i would see in my lifetime so good for identity politics, good for the progress we have made, but two things. it created a backlash. all these people, disappointed, seizing, resentful folks who never did achieve the american dream is explained to them it was their responsibility to achieve, all of those people who are seeing what they thought was a country being divvied up among brown people and other outsiders and others they perceive as taking what was rightfully theirs, slapping them in the face about their own values and the nature of the country they cherish growing up in creates a backlash and they have found an expression for that rage and that reasons went through the very identity politics they have been watching the left involved in for all these decades and this is what the alt right is, what trump is about, what night -- white nationalism and nativism, the woodwork seeps up and is now live every night on fox news channel. that is how these things happen and then technology, facebook in particular because they are algorithmically set up to do this and it is their business model, they discovered that feeding people who want to be angry the same stuff over and over and over again generates more advertising and they get insanely wealthy by serving all dessert and no spinach and it is the convergence of these identities with the digital revolution that i think is doing this. >> this is a curveball but it is on point. you are a media critic best known for being the host of media and npr. if you could as a soldier for democracy here take three american -- three media properties off the table and eliminate them as a wave improving our lives was would you choose? >> that is not a curveball. [laughter] >> we take them off the table but facebook and google are toxic to society. >> you want eliminate them. you have the right. >> now. >> you can eliminate three media companies if you want. >> okay. the one i will eliminate is murdoch and fox news channel. they are spreading not only a counter political viewpoint but lies and disinformation and propaganda day after day, night after night for years and years and they have created a set of worldviews that are based on lies. you want to talk about your fake news that is 1-stop shopping. it is an obviously corrosive effect. our whole history of journalism began for the first century and a half, extremely partisan. that was the norm but halfway through the last century there is certain professionalism that began to take over and it coincided with media companies acquiring everything but journalism in general got less and less partisan. there was a time when rochester was really espousing a democratic point of view but that is long gone. that no longer exists except in the right-wing media which exists to counter what they perceived to be a left-wing bias but it is not just they bring a right conservative perspective to stories and ask questions that the biased liberal mainstream, lame stream media refused to ask. it is that they propound lies, they spread lies, they give oxygen to liars. it is that they carry the water for politicians's big lies and you can see what it has wrought. there was a ready audience accustomed to getting the news they wanted to hear to validate its world and it is toxic from my perspective, it is immoral and i think it is time to stop. i'm not suggesting the government, never ever ever ever, what i suggest -- >> they don't have to. they have bob garfield. >> didn't they agree i got to choose? okay. but i do believe the marketplace should intervene and advertisers -- should be called to account. i saw a well thought out and articulate criticism by john schaefer who said we really don't want brands to be the are better of what is legitimate journalism which made me think of that, advertisers have always been our borders of appropriate content. they have always played that role and so encouraged gatekeepers of the kind of stuff they would carry some more of that. >> are you playing into the critique that they would say we are not being heard i worked for the new york times, they would say the new york times, many fox viewers say the new york times should be in the top 3 media entities which be eliminated immediately. i don't agree with that, but isn't it just a symbiotic cycle of grievance that works in both directions, but some do better than others? >> it works exactly like that. but there is one difference. and that is to destroy the argument the new york times and the rest of the media has some sort of ideological bias and more on that in a second, you have to present evidence and there is none but if you read a fine new book called "american manifesto: saving democracy from villains, vandals, and ourselves," it is a challenge. i challenge conservatives who think there is fake news going on in the mainstream media to present, one example of it. let's turn to fox news and it is page after page after page of absolute outrage. .. >> progressive values with journalistic values. speaking truth to power. afflicting the comfortable and comforting the aflicktive, looking for corruption and malfeasance and misfeasance in government. you know, these are all things that are perceived as liberal, but they're also the watchdog role of journalism as enshrined in the first amendment. so, yeah, i'll give you that. but the people who talk about -- when the president talks about newspapers making things up, inventing sources, making up quotes, there are protocols that real news organizations, that cannot happen. and in the handful of times in the last 50 years it has happened, it has been a cluster fail for everybody. and you've worked at "the washington post," you know, janet cook. you work -- >> before i was there. >> you worked at new york times. look what happened to judith miller when he got caught being suckered by the white house into validating phony intelligence data. there are consequences when you get caught in an error and especially if you get caught making stuff up. matt kelly, "usa today." he was immediately -- the moment it turned out he was inventing anything. it just doesn't happen. except on the right where, once again, you can find chapter and verse. the seth rich murder, the poor young guy who was walking the streets of capitol hill and was murdered in an apparent robbery. on fox news you heard about the conspiracy, that it was the democratic national committee who. >> he worked for the dncx they tried to tie him -- >> he had leaks, wikileaks and then -- who knows what the theory was. it was not far off -- [inaudible] which is also completely nuts. >> sure. no, i mean, there's real world consequences, obviously, to this. i mean, i guess at what point do you sort of throw your hands up and blame the consumer, blame the reader, blame the voter? not across the board, but if you're looking for a solution here, because the last third of this manifesto is something about, you know, there's a solution 'em bedded into the -- embedded into this. how, when do the people such as they are take back whatever this world has been taken away from us? >> well, thank you for the question. and there is one because the america -- what's my book called? "american manifesto" presumes that at least for the next generation none of this is going to happen in the courts. that ship has sailed. the judiciary has been stacked. the senate does not look like it's going to change immediately, so, you know, legislation, corrective legislation doesn't seem to be an immediate answer unless the democrats -- and, by the way, i am not a democrat. i am not a democrat. but the democrats don't appear to be getting a supermajority in the senate anytime soon. so don't look to the institutions to fix these problems. we have to look within ourselves, and the manifesto portion of "american manifesto," the last third of the book, is devoted to six points where i demand that you and you and -- [laughter] stop being complacent. don't do your political activism on twitter. primal screams don't do any help. if you are in despair and if you feel rage, there are things that you can do. you know, if you want to mount a boycott, who am i to stop you? i think if, on the question of nano-identity expect cost to the body politic on people who really should be comrades in arms, if you can influence whatever identity group you belong in that think of common cause and not of, you know, every finely-sliced grievance, do that. look, i'm not saying "kumbaya," you know? no. what i'm saying is if you -- let me give you an example. may i give you an example? >> sure. >> example. the women's march. shortly after donald trump was elected, there was a women's march, marches all over the country and, i don't know, something like a million mostly women on the streets all over the country protesting his statements and his conduct and presumed policies against women. and it was a magical moment because it's not very often that people take to the streets here. this isn't france, this isn't hong kong. people don't generally lee netflix to -- leave netflix to go protest. but they did. it was magnificent. it was inspiring. it gave you hope that the complacency was on holiday. and then what happened in well, here's what happened. by the time the next year's march came along, there was all these internal rivalries within the women's march organization where the black members of the women's march organization weren't fast enough to renounce the insamely anti-semitic -- insanely anti-semitic and vile remarks of louis farrakhan to sue the jewish women in the movement. and long story short, the chicago march got canceled. in l.a. the march got canceled because, according to reports -- i have no independent verification of this -- because the african-american members of the steering committee were afraid there would be too many white and jewish women in the march, and their expression would be expropose rated, the whole nine yards. whoa! we have a chance to go into the states and protest the insanity that is taking place in washington x this is to compromd by somer nascent -- internascent feud about people who are supposed to be outraged about the same thing? no! i'm not saying one side is completely right or one side's completely wrong. what i'm saying is there are bigger fish to fry. there are children in cages. there are wars being started on a lie about embassies being attacked. there -- well, we haven't the time to go into the bill of indictment. why, why, why squander energy fighting amongst yourselves when the enemy is, you know, about 4 miles from here? >> i want to move to questions, but let me actually ask you one quick thing to tuck in before the questions. do you feel like this activism are, such as it is, or what we could see on the streets has in some ways moved online in a way that has given people the illusion of activism? >> well, twitter does that thing -- >> right. >> that very thing. and, of course, these bubbles that the groups on facebook or the algorithms that feed you more more of the content that, you know, that does its job of really pissing you off and making you want more and more and more, this does all this online. and facebook and google through youtube instead of trying to mitigate these phenomena are, they're just, you know, turning up, turning it up to 11 and obstructing the federalism -- let's talk about the russia interference in the election. facebook, when contacted by the investigators representing the senate who were trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened alongside of the justice department, they provided some data, but they provided one of the data from their vast intercept that would have been able to absolutely quantify the amount of sharing that took place of fake news because they did not want to compromise, you know, their proprietary data. now, the fate of democracy in the united states and the rest of the world was hanging in the balance, and they just, they just didn't want to divulge too much. what? what? and then mark zuckerberg, as he has done in every one of these scandals going back 15 years, said, oh, we did not do well here. we promise to do better. and the next time it's the same and it's the same and the same. i'd like to tell you that donald trump is the single most powerful and dangerous man in the world, but it's not true. mark zuckerberg is the single most powerful and dangerous man in the world. >> so fox, facebook is that a second -- >> i think they need to be -- [laughter] >> okay, google? >> google and facebook, i believe, need to face very, very serious antitrust review. and it requires a whole new protocol for antitrust. but how does that happen? well, that's if citizens start talking about it, citizens start talking to their elected representatives about it, citizens start writing to the ftc. not tweeting, expossessing your rage -- expressing your rage and despair to the people who can make decisions. as i said, i don't think institutions are going to have a whole lot of influence on righting this ship. but when spurred by large numbers of citizens, doing their duty as citizens, being active in a participatory democracy, amazing things can happen. just look at same-sex marriage. who thought they'd see that in their lifetime? it can be done. >> okay. questions. we have mics here, lots of mics. well, i see that one. there's a mic. and we have questions, it looks like. we have a line forming. so, yeah, go. >> so i heard you this morning, and i've heard you many times on the media. and it's interesting to see the body that goes with the voice. [laughter] >> striking. [laughter] >> i wonder about your application that this kind of started on the left. i mean, i was born in the 1940s, and i remember when the country came together after world war ii, and everyone was seen to have contributed something. i think it happens at a very specific time, in 1980 or actually in 1968 when nixon started the southern strategy. that was launched the problem. blacks felt humiliated, and do you remember the commercial -- maybe you don't -- for the senator from south carolina in, against a black man from charlotte north carolina -- >> jesse helms. >> jesse helms. it showed a white hand crumpling up a pink slip. you needed that job but they gave it to a back even though you were better qualified. that's what started it. and what the resentment, what has caused the resentment is big business that moved their, that destroyed unions, moved their plants overseas and blamed it on blacks, illegal immigrants -- >> let me ask you a question. >> yeah. >> excuse me for interrupting. >> what started the mideast crisis? >> i just don't think right and left are the same. >> fair enough. my point though is it's really impossible to pinpoint a single event and a set of politics that has had reaction and opposite reaction going back decades. you know, you could argue since this is a country that had slavery into the middle -- >> right. it's built in. >> -- of the 19th century, there has always been something. the argument i'm making in my book is that it's when, it's when the society started systematically addressing these injustices that the backlash mainly began. racism -- >> it's always here. >> -- that train is never late. >> uh-huh. >> but i think the forces that are unleashed today in the political right in direct reaction to the perception of lost power that you can trace to actually the corrections to the -- [inaudible] society. now, one of the possibilities i'm wrong. that happens all the time. and if you do not believe me, i have three children who can testify to a fare-thee-well. but i think it's, for the purposes of argument to try to understand the dynamics especially on the identity side, i would say prayer in the schools and the civil rights act are a good place to start. >> politically correct. >> well, yeah. and it's branded. the political right for the last 50 years has been sloganeering about a biased media, about political correctness. and, you know, it's not entirely a figment of their imagination. but it's been caricatured and misrepresented and here we are. >> bob, you mentioned miranda, right? you have a right to remain silent. [laughter] let's take another question. thank you. >> larry drove me up, very concerned citizen. did a lot of -- thank you for the conversation tonight. did a lot of talking about identity, and one quick with story, if you don't mind. but when george bush won his second term in office, a friend of mine's mother lived in london. very next day she called and he said, jeff, yesterday was iraq, yesterday was bush's war. today it's america's war. and i would just like to bring that up to this next election. because i think a lot of the world -- and we just, my wife and i just came from europe. a lot of the world may give us a pass this first time. you know, you bought a pig in a poke, you didn't know what you were getting. now you know what the pig is. and if we elect him a second time, so to your point, robert, one of the first things we can do is vote. and i'd like to make that, you know, a from by mare objective of everybody -- a primary objective of everybody in this room and tell all their friends. thank you. >> thank you. i wish you wouldn't call me robert. [laughter] my mom used to do that when i was in trouble. [laughter] also state troopers, robert, i'm going to issue you a citation. [laughter] >> thank you. not having read your book, i'm delighted to be here. >> i'm sorry, you have not read my book? [laughter] do we have nip else with a question? -- anyone else with a question in. [laughter] >> loosen me up a little. i think what i'm about to say relates to a lot of the issues that you brought upped today that you didn't bring up this one in particular. i've been volunteering in maximum prison for about 14 years through a wonderful program called alternatives to violence. and i find a great sanity in prison with the men that do this program to share their hearts and have people from the outside come in to also share their hearts. i go into a prison on friday and come out of temple on sunday, is how i feel. and so now i've been working with youth to keep them out of prison in a mentoring capacity in circles in schools and one on one. and i'm feeling that there's a huge lack of passion for that. and i feel like donald trump represents the epitome of how far, how many generations we can go without mentorship and men blessing youth and their beauty and their brilliance before we get to this place of him and you see his diabolical children holding these dead animals that they shoot in africa -- >> i have some good news for you. i think it's true that he has sucked all the oxygen out of the nation's room, and that he is the focus of the world view of what hillary called the deplorables. but there is the a movement that is based on the premise that incarceration not only is not, but that it has never been the solution to dealing with violation and the epidemic problems -- endemic problems that are attached to poverty and education and so forth. and has found another path, and it is being embraced. even in trumpland by more and more the political units, counties and so forth, and that it turned the judge, jury, incarceration mold on its head and with a great deal of success. and it's built on empathy, it's built on the needs of the victim and also the circumstances of the perpetrator, reed is sid vim is -- recidivism is way down. so even, you know, i get up in the morning every day and rage and despair. that's what -- i'm enrage before i brush my teeth. but there are pockets of progress. if you get out of washington, you know, i know that's trite, but actually government -- which is, obviously, dysfunctional in washington -- it works pretty well not in statehouses, but in communities around the country. and there are people who can get together and solve common problems together. each people who are disagreeing -- each people who are disagreeing find ways to solve common problems together. so it's the not that the everybody corner of the country is riven by polarization. by and large, it's okay. it's only on the national scale and maybe the statehouse scale where it's so horrendous. so look up a story of justice -- >> hey, bob, would you -- did you say, i'm a cynic, you're a sipc staying in washington, has something about the trump era made you feel hopeful? one thing that i've found is that a lot of people who thought they were beyond caring or thought they were above wit all actually realized that a lot of this stuff is for keeps and it actually is precarious, and, you know, maybe there is -- maybe that itself is a sign of hope? >> yeah. and, you know, i was hopeful when the women's march came and then never saw anyone on the streets ever since. i was hopeful in the midterm elections which were the consequence of a lot of people who otherwise had not raised their hands to run for office and otherwise had not raised their hand to support a political candidate had done so. so, you know, that gave me some hope. but in the meantime, i've also seen democratic tools, mechanism s usurped towards nondemocratic goals and have watched the president's political base remain exactly the same through these three years of unlawfulness and depravity. so on that point, i'm not hopeful. and, you know, the third thing i've seep, mark s is a complete precipitous drop in trust not only in government, but more or less all the societies of institutions. most particularly the press. the public is giving up, and there are poll data that i have seen and not hokey internet polls or cable news polls. i'm talking about significant polls by pew and gallup and others. the democracy project. they show that a very significant percentage of millennials -- and it's over 30 -- are prepared to give authoritarianism and army rule a try. because they're so disaffected by where democracy has gotten us after 243 years. army rule, dude, and that is, are the stakes. those are the stakes. and i don't -- i'm not in the prediction making business, but he could be reelected. and who, who knows, who knows? so hopeful -- >> all right. next question. [laughter] >> i'm alex -- [inaudible] old, old npr. give my best to brooke. >> i will. >> you mentioned going in. what do you do when you have a relative who posts to you who starts speaking in tongues? [laughter] >> well, i'm not quite as apt to cancel people as my children are. my, what are they, gen-x, millennials? i don't know, my 30-something children, if you get caught on the worst day of your life doing or something untoward, you're over as far as they're concerned. and i'm not quite like that. but i make a living listening and trying to understand why people think what they think and believe what they believe. and i don't is have any sympathy for maga mentality, i to -- i do not. but i'm obliged to try to understand where it comes from, i'm obliged to be respectful. but, you know, i, when i see someone in a maga hat on the street i don't go up and strike up a conversation because i'm not that interested in having one just to feel like i'm hands across the aisle. and since you're old npr, let me just say i'm not any kind of npr. our show is distributed on npr stations, but we are produced by the umic, and we are distributed by wnyc to 450 some stations. it is a show of criticism and commentary. i'm not a reporter covering the news for npr. it is my job to ask hard questions and to make judgments and to kind of call 'em as i see 'em. so i don't want you to think that because am so frank about my loathing for the way this country has turned, that i am somehow speaking constitutionally for nfr -- institutionally for npr of which i am in no way connected. so, please, if you've got an issue with what i think, what i say or what i write in this sparkling new nonfiction -- [laughter] titled "american manifesto," it isn't npr's fault. >> hi, bob, hi, mark. >> hi, jim. >> gosh. i first met this man when he was 18 years old. [laughter] it's true. >> your socks remind me that you have involved in a project called purple democracy or purple project for democracy x. in it even though you've talked about how this is the solution does not lie with institutions, in that project you talk about the role of the press as a major institution. and i wondered if you could talk about that a little bit. because, as you noted, we're an institution that is not highly regarded, yet perhaps the burden is on us to fix this thing called democracy. and i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. >> well, yeah, i would like to see the press expect media in general -- and the media in general take up that challenge. the purple project for democracy, which is an ongoing project to -- you know, i was referring to those data points about how people are giving up? we're doing our best to try to reverse those trends. it is, it is utterly nonpartisan, believe it or not. if you can hold two apparently conflicting ideas in your head time, the sandinista who's been speaking to you all night is not the guy who's involved in the purple project for democracy. that is all about trying to get people engaged again and to are recognize the stakes of giving up on democracy and to understand how even our highly flawed democracy compares to other forms of government around the world. i mean, i can complain about the united states political mess all i want, but we are not, we're not poland. we're not hungary. we're not turkey. we're not myanmar. we're not philippines. we are not brazil. we are not russia. so, you know, i just think people need to have some perspective about what it is they're giving up when they start talking about authoritarianism. >> i just got the whisper -- >> okay. so i don't care. [laughter] no, no, so the question is what's the path forward, how do we restore faith. well, the press is in a weird position because it is seen as a big part of the problem. and i believe that the press is so averse to being pimg gone holed as -- pigeon holed as some sort of liberal not fourth estate, but fifth chum of partisanship -- column of partisanship that we should say, that's what they think? fine. let them think that. we are going to perform our education of basic civics to teach people actually how things do work if only to disabuse them of the fantasies they have about how our democracy functions. and to show, you know, to focus on heroes of democracy and to e mind and to show comparisons to societies that are not blessed with that form of government. so that's what purple is, and you'll be hearing more about it in 0 -- 2020. i only hope that wholly apart from this polemic that i've written that we as a society can remember what an extraordinary gift it is to live in this country. let's fix this system, not go running to devil you don't know. [applause] >> and speaking of extraordinary institutions, thank you to politics and prose itself, an extraordinary the institution, and it deserves as much support as we can give it. thank you. >> thank you all for being here. and if i could just say one more thing, you obviously are under no pressure to buy books. i would like for you to buy a book, but if you should decide to buy a book, what i strongly advise is you buy two in case, god to forbid, manager were to the happen to the -- something were to happen to the first one. [laughter] thanks again. [applause] >> copies of "the american manifesto" are available at the checkout desk. help our staff by folding up your chairs. thank you. >> next, it's booktv's monthly "in depth" program with author and prover deirdre mccloskey. professor mccloskey's many books include "the rhetoric of economics," the bourgeois era and why liberalism works. >> host: deirdre mccloskey, in your most recent book, "why liberalism works," you write that the west side of chicago should be a hive of commercial activity. why should? >> guest: well, should because then people would have jobs other