had gone and said, yeah, let s do this again. now 1 million or so people said, no. but suddenly 1 million people said yes, let s do this. it s a choice we like we make. it s highly individualized. the vote is in fact our great tool as individuals to express an individual will. so partisanship, this reflexive partisanship, reflective partisanship, that s fine. we ve been doing this since greece and rome. we ve always been part party divisions. but if you put that party above the whole civic culture that those parties
the republican party right now, you just saw this reflexive partisanship. it s easy to laugh at. but when a sitting senator posts pictures of themselves outside with firearms as though they re going to shoot down the with a weapon. they re not serious people. so i think it does have some hard indications for our own national security, certainly for our partisanship. but it s a bad reflection on today s republican party for sure. seen around the world. all right. no one is going anywhere. when we come back, i want to continue this conversation about the security and the intelligence and the diplomatic part of the story. but i also want to ask all of you why we as a country are so fascinated in the chinese spy balloon? and we ll leave it to our friends at snl to try the figure that one out for us.
that the battles of were even more ferocious than the battles of vietnam. remember, world war ii started in europe in 1939. the united states did not get into world war ii, despite the mythology, until 1941, two years later. and we did not declare war on germany so, germany declared war on us. germany there was not a reading of the news of pearl harbor and then say, okay, we are declaring war on germany. it took several days. there s an old saying misattributed to churchill, that you can always count on americans to do the right thing once they ve exhausted every other possibility. i think that we are at a place where of course there is reflexive partisanship, there is of course separate realities. but all you can do is tell the
so i think this is a conversation not just for the hill. this is a conversation for all of us to have in our own communities, whether that be at a neighborhood group or in a church. i mean, david jolly, let s just these people didn t come up with the idea that masks are a political statement in a vacuum. of course they re responsible now, especially if they contaminate their children s views about masks as something to protect their teachers and their classmates, none of whom under 12 are vaccinated, but they were also led to that view. they were led to the position that an orange piece of cloth or paper is a political statement. yes, that s right. yeah, nicolle. we are long into the era of reflexive partisanship, the notion that if another party is for it we have to be against it. you would think in the moment of a national crisis, in the moment of a national pandemic that negative politics, reflexive
coddling a viewpoint of people who say i think it s divisive. it s the trump years. trump said he loved the flag so now they say they got to be against it. it s nutty. it s reflexive partisanship and it s awful and it ought to stop. tnatasha? well, i m surprised that this is news that people are surprised that the flag is being politicized. so, i come from a proud military family. my father served in the military. my uncle served. my aunt served. they all fly the flag with pride. but at the same time, i know that there s a history in this country of certain groups using the flag, the american flag, to intimidate marginalize groups and people of color. think of 1976, a famous photo called the soiling of old glory where a black man looks as if he s being stabbed with the american flag because he s attacked by anti-bussing protesters in boston. you know, when the kkk assembled, they often used the