Modern WisdomThe Divided State Of A Broken America - Ben Shapiro (4K)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,101 words- 0:00 – 4:38
Why This Election is Particularly Wild
- CWChris Williamson
Busy time for you at the moment. Is this more intense than typical election years?
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How normal is this?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, th- this one is, is pretty intense. I mean, I'm, I'm personally invested in this election. Like I, I want Trump to win, obviously. I've made that very clear. I'm personally campaigning with six different Senate candidates, like going out and trying to raise money for them and, and get them publicity. Uh, it, it's a really, really important election and so I've, I've been, you know, taking that pretty seriously. Plus, this is a wild ride. I mean, nobody's ever seen an (laughs) election in which one of the nominees completely drops because he dies on stage and is replaced within 24 hours by a completely different human being and everybody acts like that's normal. And then within the space of eight weeks, you have one of the candidates, uh, the subject of two separate assassination attempts. Uh, I, I will say it is kind of weird that, that Donald Trump has been subjected to more assassination attempts in the past eight weeks than Kamala Harris has to one-on-one interviews. Um, I didn't see that one coming, but you know, it's, it's, it's a wild election season for sure.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think is driving that? Why is it so wild?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, uh, I mean, I, I think that part of it is, is just the unique circumstances of the candidates and that the Democrats in a normal election cycle probably wouldn't have nominated Joe Biden in 2020, which meant that they wouldn't have had to deal with a person who is 8,000 years old in 2024. Uh, and also, Donald Trump is a wild character. I mean, the fact is that he's the first person who has run for non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland and he's widely perceived as sort of an incumbent figure, despite the fact that he was out of power for four years. And he's Donald Trump, which means that he's eccentric and he says wild things, and, and you get a lot of internet memes, and, and all that's very entertaining. Well, one of the things that's kind of frustrating for those of us who watch politics professionally or who are very into public policy is that there's kind of the bread and circuses aspect of all these elections. And then there are the very real policy consequences of who gets elected, and that's, that's a completely different thing that seems to get ignored in all of the hubbub about who performed better in a debate or who is jabbering about eating cats and dogs or, or any of that sort of thing.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the arc that you went through from being not keen on Trump 2016, kind of keen on Trump 2020, to now...
- BSBen Shapiro
Fundraising for him, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Can you explain that to me?
- BSBen Shapiro
Sure. So 2016, I looked at both candidates and I said, "Both of these people are not fit to be presidents of the United States." I'm not gonna vote for Hillary Clinton, obviously. I think she's wrong on everything politically. I think that she's corrupt. Uh, I'm not voting for her. And Donald Trump, you know, I had no idea what his policies were going to be. He seemed to take every single side of every single issue in 2016. Was he pro-free trade or anti-free trade? Was he, uh, more hawkish on foreign policy or isolationist on foreign policy? Where was he on social policy? Was he sort of socially liberal or was he pro-life? Like where was he on anything? And nobody kinda knew. And so and you combine that with, you know, his various sort of eccentricities, uh, and some of the things that he said, which I really radically disapproved of, and I was just like, "I'm sitting this election out. I don't like either of these people." Now, I also had the luxury of living in California where my vote literally counts for nothing. If I'd been living in Ohio or a swing state, I assume I would've voted for Trump. 2020, I got to see what I was right about with regard to Trump and what I was wrong about with regard to Trump. Uh, I had assumed that he was gonna govern a lot more liberal than he did. He governed in ways that I thought were, were much better for my point of view than I thought they were going to be. Obviously, he appointed Supreme Court justices that I liked. I thought that his, his Middle Eastern policy was excellent. Uh, I thought that his peace through strength general policy was really good. I liked his tax cuts. There are a lot of things he did that I liked. There were some things I didn't like, his spending policies for example. But by 2020, I hadn't changed my mind about Donald Trump in terms of his character, but in terms of his policy, I changed my mind because, you know, I saw that he had done a lot of things that there was no guarantee he would. Now I'd seen his record and so I voted for him in 2020. In 2024, I didn't support Trump in the primaries. If I had been voting in the primaries, it didn't actually reach Florida because Trump cleaned up. Um, but I would say that I've been much more likely to vote for Ron DeSantis in, in the primaries than, than Donald Trump. It became very quickly apparent that Trump was going to be the nominee, and then it was a question of Trump versus Joe Biden, and I think Joe Biden has been a horrifically bad president. And so it became clear to me that it wasn't just enough for me to actually vote for Trump or support Trump, you know, verbally, that I actually wanted to get involved in the campaign, because I think that the consequences of, of Trump losing to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris now would have been quite disastrous. So, uh, what I would say is that my feelings about Trump on sort of a personal level haven't changed radically on, on him as a character. Uh, they've changed somewhat on him in terms of the policies that he implemented. My opinions about sort of the sanity of the left have changed fairly radically since, since 2016. Uh, I, I think that the left has, uh, th- that, that sort of meme that Elon likes to tweet out where it shows how he was sort of in the center and then the entire center just moved to the left and so he ended up on the right, I think that that's, that's fairly, that's fairly realistic about how far the left has moved.
- 4:38 – 12:43
Why Ben Hasn’t Had Trump on His Show
- BSBen Shapiro
- CWChris Williamson
Why haven't you had Trump on your show? He's talking to Adin Ross. He's talking to Theo Von. If you're one of the poster boys for the right and you're also doing the campaigning thing, how come that conversation hasn't happened?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, I'd, I'd be happy to have him on. I mean, honestly, I think that it would be a bit of a biased conversation considering that I'm supporting him and, and contributing to his campaign. And one of my jobs as a commentator is also to ask tough questions of a particular candidate. Am I the best candidate to do that?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, I don't know if I'm the best candidate to do that.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the tough questions that you would ask him if you could?
- BSBen Shapiro
Um, you know, I, I, I would ask him probably about why he chooses to use his social media influence the way that he does. Why isn't he more, uh, why isn't he more dedicated to a solidly focused campaign?
- CWChris Williamson
Stately.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, and, and not, not even stately, but just focused. I mean, it's just unfocused. It feels like he's, he's running after every squirrel in, in a 300-mile radius during this campaign, uh, and, and that's a problem for me. As somebody who wants to see him win, I'd be asking him about that. Uh, I'd probably drill down on his Ukraine policy. Uh, he, he and I are a bit at odds over his Ukraine policy, at least stated Ukraine p- uh, it's sort of unclear where he is on Ukraine. Uh, I, I'm very much of the opinion, the sort of Henry Kissinger August 2022 opinion, that the United States should be supporting Ukraine sufficient to prevent further Russian incursions and sufficient to get Russia to the table. And then the United States should essentially be brokering some sort of deal in the back room directly with Russia, and then probably having to cram that down on Ukraine specifically because Volodymyr Zelensky's interests are not aligned with the interests of the United States in terms of what he's seeking. And you get that. I mean, Zelensky doesn't wanna give up the Donbass. He doesn't wanna give up Crimea.You got that. And domestically, he'd have a hard time doing that given that hundreds of thousands of his own citizens have been killed. At the same time, is that a war that can last interminably without some sort of, you know, stasis in terms of the battle lines? Probably not. And so th- but I'm not sure what Trump thinks about any of those sorts of things. I'd probably be asking about some of his staffing. I think some of the people that he surrounds himself with, uh, don't do him credit. And th- th- those sorts of things are things that, that presumably I would ask him about. And one of the risks of interviewing President Trump always, uh, is that it's, you know, how he is going to perceive you as an interviewer. And this is something Megyn Kelly has talked about, that if you are harsh on him as an interviewer, he seems to perceive that adversarially.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, and if you are not harsh then... A- and if you're not harsh enough to ask tough questions, then you're really not kind of doing your job. And so that, that's always been sort of a concern. What, what... and what sort of answers would, would he be willing to give? Would, would there be any new information that's added to the debate other than, you know, a, a sort of weird feel in the room?
- CWChris Williamson
Without you pushing so hard that, yeah, you do create that weird feel. I mean, we saw this with the most recent debate, right, that if you do throw a few squirrels around that he's probably quite likely to chase them. I... One thing that's kind of interesting, and I think it tracks with your arc nicely, is whether or not we're in a new era of politics where people are more voting against the person that they hate rather than for the person that they love. It seems like so many people are just essentially doing a protest vote now.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, I, I think that's been true for quite a while actually. Uh, I, I think that one of my general theories of politics is that people tend to vote against, they, they very rarely tend to vote for. There have been a few candidates in my lifetime that people have voted for, right? So Barack Obama 2008 was a candidate that you voted for because-
- CWChris Williamson
2012 I think was when it crossed.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, I think that's right. So m- my general grand unifying theory of American politics is that 2012 broke the country. I think the only important election of our lifetime perhaps was 2012, the one that everybody ignores, because that's when Barack Obama, who had campaigned as great unifier in his own person, he was going to end racial conflict in the United States in 2008. No red states. No blue states. Just the United States. No Black, no white. We're all just American. A- and then by 2012, he had pursued a very left-wing agenda and he decided that he was gonna campaign by essentially breaking down Americans into what would now be white dudes for Kamala. It'd be like white dudes for, for Obama and Black dudes for Obama and, and a bunch of different kind of constituency groups. He's gonna pass out goodies to each one of those, drive up the turnout in the minority community and among white college-educated women, and then who's gonna win based on that. And it was a different theory of politics. It was the first kind of base election where nobody tried to reach for the independents. In fact, Romney won with the independents and lost the election.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
And, and they were going to portray Mitt Romney, legitimately the most boring milquetoast candidate in the history of American politics, as a person who murders people by way of cancer, and straps dogs to the top of his car, and forcibly cuts the hair of gay kids in 1952 or something. And, and bec- and then Obama won. And I think Obama winning drove everyone insane because the model that Obama applied, which was, "We are going to drive out the base. And that base is so big that we're not even gonna have to appeal to independents. We don't have to appeal to Rust Belt voters. White non-college-educated males are a complete afterthought. We're not even gonna try to reach out to them or determine what makes them tick or anything like that." And he won on that basis. And Democrats fell into the trap of thinking that this was replicable with literally any candidate. And Republicans fell into the trap of thinking that it was also inevitable. So this led to two conclusions in 2016. Hillary Clinton runs on the same coalition as Obama, but she's not Obama so she loses, and Trump wins unexpectedly. And the conclusion that Democrats draw from that is, "That's not possible for her to have lost legitimately because we have an unbreakable, unshakeable coalition like 2012. How could we possibly lose? It must've been the Russians or Facebook or something corrupt happened." And on the right, it led to the conclusion that Donald Trump is a wizard, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
... and that Donald Trump has, has the ability to overcome all of the systemic obstacles that are inherent in American politics. He's not a normal candidate. He's out of the box. He's totally different. You can't chart him.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
And that also leads to 2020, right, where, where Biden successfully cobbles together again the Obama coalition, not because he's any great shakes, but because all the rules change and you get this massive uptick in the number of voters. In a normal election cycle, you have maybe four million voters per election cycle. In 2020 as opposed to 2016, you added about 22 million new voters to the election rolls. Huge expansion of the voting base because of all the early voting and 'cause of COVID and all that sort of stuff. And so the conclusion that Democrats draw is once again, the 2012 Barack Obama coalition rides again. And the conclusion Republicans draw is, "Well, Donald Trump is a wizard. So if he's a wizard, wizards don't lose. Which means that if he says he didn't lose, then he's probably right. He probably didn't lose. He was cheated," right?
- CWChris Williamson
This mythical thinking on both sides has been-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... reflected.
- BSBen Shapiro
E- exactly. And, and the actual reality is that the American body politic is split pretty much 50/50, that there is no guarantee that you're going to be able to drive out your base in the way you think you are, that somebody ought to reach out to the people who are in the middle, that 10% of people who are sort of in the middle, and that really what the American public want more than anything else is some level of sanity. And they keep reaching for it and being denied it by the political class. I, I, I think the promise of Joe Biden in 2020... I didn't vote for him obviously. I didn't support him. I think he's, I think he's a schmuck. But I think that in 2020, the promise that Joe Biden was inherently making was, "I'm dead and I am not going to radically shake things up." It's basically gonna be stasis. Things will go back to normal. Return to normalcy." And then it turns out that he was dead but also he wasn't gonna return us to normal. It was just gonna be crazy. And he pursued a bunch of very left-wing policies, spending policies, terrible foreign policy, strange social policy, and so it was chaos. It was he was dead and there was chaos, and that's why you started to lose. And then suddenly, Donald Trump starts to look like the candidate of semi-stability, right? Donald Trump is... Because he's been disappeared from Twitter and relegated to the outskirts of social media on Truth Social so you don't even see him. Right? He basically is in the Joe Biden 2020 basement strategy. And the less you see of Donald Trump, the more you're like, "I don't see him and I like his policies, and so I would like his policies back. And maybe we won't even get like the super crazy." And he was able to basically do that. That was the debate with Biden, right? The debate with Biden was Donald Trump stood there. It wasn't like President Trump actually did like an amazing job in the debate with Joe Biden. He was just not crazy. He was just like a normal person in a debate with a, a senile person.And so that's why you saw Biden's numbers start to tank. And then Kamala joins the race and Trump really has not yet been able to, I think, adjust to the change in the opposing candidate and regain that sort of momentum and that sort of focus. And that's why, you know, again, I think that people's opinions of Trump are pretty much baked in. But if what you're saying is right, which is that people vote against things, then his performance in the debate obviously is not good for him because he appeared, again, less stable, he appeared less normal. And what the American public is craving is just, "Will you, like, leave us alone? Like, I don't wanna think about this 24 hours a day."
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think happens if Trump
- 12:43 – 16:47
What if Trump Runs Again in 2028?
- CWChris Williamson
loses to the Republican, uh, candidate for 2028?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, if, if he runs again, which presumably he will 'cause he's, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
You think that he would go? How old would he be then?
- BSBen Shapiro
Let's see, he's 78 now.
- CWChris Williamson
82.
- BSBen Shapiro
So he'd be coming up on 82. Um, uh, I, I have a hard time believing that, that Trump will go into the, the darkness quietly. So I think that if he, if he loses in this election, then he will probably proclaim that he did not lose, which he's done before. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I, I think it's unlikely that the Republican voters, that conservative voters are going to turn to him a fourth time. I think that, that the, the three times is enough. Uh, and, you know, again, I hope he wins. I want him to win. If he loses, I think that Republicans are going to say, "Who is best poised to beat a Democrat?" This, by the way, was the mistake in the DeSantis campaign. I, I think that DeSantis was always going to lose in the primaries because Trump is magnetic figure, because he's kind of a generational figure. But if DeSantis had a hope of winning, it had to lie in very early on, like right after November 2022 saying, "Donald Trump cannot win. I can win. He lost in 2020. He, he lost us seats in 2022. If you nominate me, I'll win." And the one thing he didn't wanna do, I think, was tick off a lot of the Republican base, which believed that Trump had won in 2020.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, you've got tribalism within the tribe.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah. It was, it was, it was kind of a catch-22 for DeSantis. If he had said Trump lost in 2020, half the base which believes that Trump won in 2020 is angry at him. And if he doesn't say that Trump lost, then what's your rationale for being on stage?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, one of my friends tweeted today on the back of that, uh, voting against the thing you hate. "Leftism begins as compassion for the poor but ends as contempt for the prosperous. Rightism begins as respect for the past but ends as res- revulsion for the present. Each side grows to loathe the other's values more than it prizes its own. Politics devours love and defecates hate." And it is funny that it seems to be such a warping force, politics, that people want things to go badly for everyone when their opponents are in power. It's this sort of weird sort of zero sum type scenario that is self-defeating in a lot of ways.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, and I think that's only true because the social fabric of the United States has failed, meaning you don't feel that way about your own local community and you don't feel that way about your family. Right? In your own family, even if you're having fights with somebody or disagree with somebody in your family, you don't wish the worst for them. You don't wish the people in your family will suffer so that they learn the lesson. Like, you want things to be good, generally speaking, for the family or for your local community. It's when you don't have social solidarity with somebody that you're like, "These people need to fail so I can succeed."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
And, and I think that it speaks to a, a much greater crisis in the American body politic, which is to say a, a, a much greater crisis in the American heart, which is what, what do we even share anymore, right? There's been a lot of talk about this. What do people from California and Florida share, or New York and Texas? Uh, and I think the answer is that at a very high level, they used to share a lot of things, and I think they still do share a lot of things, but politics has become so nationalized, and I think social media is a part of this, and the federal government has gained so much power that, you know, it's, it's easy to see that polarize. Am I right?
- CWChris Williamson
The fracturing is now built into the system.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah. And, and the more you elevate power to the top level, it has to be built into the system because if, if you didn't feel like the federal government was all that powerful... Rick Perry, who obviously ran a very unsuccessful presidential campaign i- in 2012. Rick Perry had a, uh, what I thought was the, the best line about government in a presidential race. He said, "I wanna make Washington, DC insignificant in your life." I mean, wouldn't that be delightful? It'd be super nice. I've said this to people who are my kind of left-wing friends, like, "You know, wouldn't it be nice if, you know, Donald Trump's president, but you don't have to wake up every day caring what Donald Trump thinks about things because the federal government just doesn't have that much control over your life. And you wanna live in San Francisco and you wanna be governed like you live in San Francisco, you know, have at it. That's your problem. And if I don't wanna live there, I just want to live there." But I think because the federal government has sucked so much control up to the top level, government is essentially a meat hammer and it just hammers everything to the same level. And so you can do that more successfully if it's a very small community with a lot of social fabric and, and, and a lot of homogeneity in terms of viewpoint.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? Again, my local community, I live in an Orthodox Jewish community. I'd say the people in my community tend to agree 85% of the time. You, you know, take my community and you contrast that with, like, uh, an upper class liberal enclave, uh, in, in San Jose or something, and the disagreement is gonna look more like, you know, we agree 25% of the time, 30% of
- 16:47 – 19:33
Can America Ever Be United?
- BSBen Shapiro
the time.
- CWChris Williamson
How much do you think that the countrywide agreement that was maybe, uh, part of the American dream throughout the 1900s, how much of that was actual baseline and how much of that was a perversion from what it truly is, which is now what we're seeing again, something that was broken off into parts, then came together briefly, uh, we have this sense of unity? Which is, which is real and which is, uh, fabricated?
- BSBen Shapiro
So I think the system has changed. So I think that the, the social fabric of people, you know, from New York versus people from Alabama obviously was incredibly broken. I mean, like, the, the idea that people in New York and Alabama agreed about things in 1950 is obviously untrue. Most obviously on issues of race, right? Because people in New York were correct and the people in Alabama were wrong. I mean, th- so th- so th- that obviously happens to be... I mean, we fought a civil war in this country. However, one of the things that, that used to be sort of an insurance and a bulwark against that was the subsidiarity model that I'm talking about. You can see why the subsidiary model broke down because people in New York said, "You're not allowed to treat Black people like that in Alabama. We need a big federal power to come in and stop that." And that's a, that's a good moral argument. The problem is that it, it's an argument that can prove too much if applied to everything. So it applies to race for sure, right? Black citizens of Alabama should not be treated horribly and put in Jim Crow conditions, but it doesn't apply to, say, social values, like how I wanna live with my religious community, what the tax policy should be. Right? Why do, why do we have f- why do we have to agree on that?Why, why do we have to agree on what social services look like in my local community versus yours? And I think these sort of broad national model being applied to, you know, very local circumstances exacerbates division in a really divisive way. Again, the- the- the solution to the social fabric problem between, you know, people who live in desperate parts of the country and- and have different values is not to get everybody in a room and pretend that they all agree. The answer is actually probably to leave people alone so they don't have to deal with each other as much.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 19:33 – 28:16
Are Forces Conspiring Against Trump?
- CWChris Williamson
Eric Weinstein said he doesn't know if the rules-based international order will allow Trump to become president. What do you think of that?
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, I- I'm- I'm always sort of skeptical of, you know, what kind of ... What that means, what the order means. Uh, I- I- I like more specificity in- in those sorts of allegations, like who are these people so we can fight them? I- I don't like sort of vague shadowy forces that- that are systemic racism, right? The- the ... Like, who are you blaming? What do you mean? Uh, the- the- the v- ... The rules-based international order. Who specifically are we talking about that is going to ... And how? And what's the mechanism of control?
- CWChris Williamson
I- I- ... I really appreciate the fact that you seem to very rarely lean into conspiracism. It- it seems that a lot of the explanations that you give for why things are happening are out there in front in some form or another. They're sort of tangible, I can touch them. It's not this sort of up there in the ether, and yet that has become, uh, very much a signature of some areas of the right as well.
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure. For sure. And it's something ... Again, I- I think that that leads to a breakdown in politics because if you believe that there are these big conspiratorial forces that are at the center of all things and then you lose, well, then you can't really accept the loss. And if you win, you have to use your power in order to crush those big conspiratorial forces that you can't actually describe or name. Uh, and so politics becomes a little bit of blood sport at- at that point. Again, I'm not saying there aren't conspiracies, but I'd like to see some evidence of them so that we can all identify them together and then fight them. So for example, I think that it's not a conspiracy so much as it is a large-scale agreement among legacy members of the media on politics. That happens to be a truth. They- they ... Uh, the- the legacy media agree in very wide scale on politics. Do they get together in the back- back room and decide there? No, they just start mirroring each other like you would in a social club because that's actually how it works. Is that something that needs to be fought in terms of the informational dissemination? Sure. Is it a conspiracy when the algorithms are set at Facebook or YouTube or old X before Elon? Uh, is that a conspiracy when they set these things certain ways? It's not a conspiracy. It's someone who actually ... It's like Jack Dorsey who's actually pulling a lever and saying, "You shouldn't do this," and I can fight that because I know that Jack Dorsey is pulling the lever. Wh- what I don't like is stuff like the rules-based international order is going to stop Donald Trump from being president because I don't know what I'm supposed to fight at that point. How do I stop that from happening? And isn't that an- an- an un- v- ... Unverifiable hypothesis that you've now-
- CWChris Williamson
Would that not be the, uh, purposeful byproduct of such an order like that, that it's very difficult to define and we're going to stay in the shadows. It's sort of endemic to their very mode of operation?
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, sure. I mean that- that- that's the, that's the counterargument, but again, my problem is it's unfalsifiable. So once you pu- posit a hypothesis that's unfalsifiable, it makes it very, very difficult for me to either fight it or to- or to disagree with you because you can always, you know, move into ... It's a, it's a Monty Bailey argument. You just move right back into the next level of the conspiracy. So instead of me saying ... So for example, out of 2020 election, I've said I think that there were people who informally rigged the election in the sense that the media totally agreed that Donald Trump should not be president. They decided to promote certain narratives, to deny certain other narratives, to, for example, push with members of the government to hide the Hunter Biden laptop story. Like, there- there are obviously factors, change the voting rules in part- ... But those are all very specific things I'm naming right now, right? The- the- the media, social media downplayed a story. Can we know what that is? And we can have congressional hearings about it. That there- that there were changes to the rules in places like Pennsylvania. We know exactly what that is and we can try to win back the legislature to actually change the voting rules in Pennsylvania to- to prevent that sort of stuff. Right? These are specific things. What- what I don't like is when people will say the election was rigged and what they mean is that there was mass voter fraud. And I'll say, "Okay, well-"
- CWChris Williamson
Spooky coordination.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right. Exactly. Like, people putting ... Bring in boxes. And then you'll say, "Okay. Well, I- I- I need the evidence that people are bringing boxes." Say what ... But that's the whole point. The evidence doesn't exist. Okay, well, now- now we're arguing with- with shadows. Maybe you're right. I mean, you could be right. I- I have no evidence that you're right, but I also have no evidence that- that you're wrong. So I mean, how am I supposed to even adjudicate what to do next?
- CWChris Williamson
So do you sort of purposefully avoid the deep state coordination conspiracy thing and just, "That's an area that I'm not going to bother debating. That's ... Maybe some other people can try and work that stuff out." How-
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, usually what I do is I wait for the evidence to emerge. So sometimes it feels like I'm late on the ball because of that, right? The- the ... We live in a ... in such a fast-paced media environment that there's a weird math that applies in political media and the math is that if I jump first 100 times and I'm wrong 98 of those times, but two of those times I'm right, I'm now a credible source. If I'm the second person on the ball because I'm waiting to see the evidence emerge for this thing and I'm right like 98 times but I'm wrong two times, then I'm no longer trustworthy. Better to be first and wrong 98% of the time but right those two 'cause now you're a prophet.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that sound bite.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? Now you get ... Now you get to say now ... Exactly. Now you get to say, "You know, that Alex Jones is a prophet" bec- ... Of all the m- weird and crazy things that he says, like two times, h- he was like right on it. Like, wow, that's ama- ... Okay, well, that- that- that also used to just be called a scam, okay? Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Where does that seduction come from?
- BSBen Shapiro
... th- the necessity for immediate answers. Social media has made it so that you want, like, answers right now. People always wanted answers, but now you feel like you have the mechanism of getting an answer right away, and you get frustrated if people don't give you an answer right away. Something that-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. You'd prefer an immediate wrong answer than a delayed correct one.
- BSBen Shapiro
E- especially if it backs your priors, right? If- if- if the, if the immediate answer that comes back at you is what you wanted to hear, which is that your candidate of choice, whether right or left, this a- applies on both sides, that your candidate of choice definitely didn't lose. They actually won, and they were jobbed out of it. And you're outraged. You didn't want your candidate to lose. You're really pissed that your candidate lost. And then, you know, you have a choice between somebody who says, "Absolutely, he was jobbed out of it. There are people who were coming in the middle of the night, and they were bringing boxes of ballots, and they were shoving them through the machines, and he actually won, and it's all being rigged. And- and the red mo- and the red wave was real, but then it was jobbed out..." Like, that's a much more interesting and seductive answer than me saying, "You know what? I'm perfectly willing to hear the case. I need to see the actual evidence flow in. And then as it comes in, and if you can prove that to me, then I'm perfectly willing to- to have you make that argument. But I- I don't have the evidence at this point to actually, to actually say that." Right? One is, one is a sexier answer. And even if it turns out being wrong, there's no punishment for it-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... because you, either you don't acknowledge that you were wrong. You just keep playing the game, and we're four years later, and- and depending on the... And it's a wide variety of conspiracy theories. I feel the same way about COVID. Okay, I tried to wait for data to emerge. That meant that I got some things wrong. Then there were people who jumped one way or another. Okay? There were some people who jumped to, "We need a lockdown permanently," and then we'll just do that for three years. And then there were some people who jumped to, "Vaccines will immediately be bad, they will be terrible, and we don't need to do anything about COVID. We should basically just let it free f- free flow through the population." Well, turns out the second was probably closer to the truth in many circumstances, but I didn't have the evidence of- of any of that sort of stuff. So I, I had to wait for those things. And what that means is that sometimes I will have to apologize on the air for having gotten it wrong because I waited for the data, and I made a judgment in the absence of data that I then have to walk back because the data have arrived, right? Most famously this happened with- with me with regards to the vaccine. So in, in late 2020, Pfizer and the federal government under Donald Trump announced that the vaccines were 99% effective in preventing transmission. Not death, transmission, right? And the case that I made at that point was, "Listen, I'm healthy, I'm young, I don't really need it, but I have parents, my parents were in their 60s, and they were basically bubbled with us." We weren't bubbled at that time, but you know, we're- we're out and about, and if I can prevent my parents from getting it by getting the vaccine, fine, I'll get the vaccine. And so I said that, right? And I said like, uh, "A lot of the talk about how the vaccines are ineffective, I- I don't know what data you're basing that on." And then it turns out that Pfizer was basically lying, that they had, that they had no actual data on transmission, and they were making claims in the absence of the data. Well, when that happens, then I have to come out and I have to say, "I was too credulous." But the counter to that, you know, the other sort of possibility is people who are so skeptical of everything, or selectively skeptical, that, you know, it's unclear when they're right and when, when they're wrong. What I would hope is to live in a media environment where when I'm wrong, I admit that I got it wrong, and when other people are wrong, they admit that they got it wrong. But that's not the environment we live in.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's one of my least favorite dynamics that somebody publicly changing their mind is seen as a mark of fickleness, not a mark of intelligence. And like, I don't know, it- it seems to me that a stupid person's idea of being smart is being unwavering. But that, in my experience, doesn't seem to be the case.
- BSBen Shapiro
I- i- it's one thing to be unwavering on your principles. It's another thing to be unwavering on the data, right? Sometimes the data just change, right? Like, there's new data, or it turns out the old data were never based on anything. And at that point, if the data changed, then my opinion on the policy changes. If it turns out that the policy that I've been promoting turns out to be a giant failure... I mean, by- by the way, no good business would operate on this, right? If- if my business were pouring money down a rat hole and just kept pouring money down the rat hole no matter what, 'cause, you know, gotta make sure that we're consistent on this, then we'd lose. And that's, that's not... I- in no other area of your life do you act like this. But when it comes to politics, then you're supposed to be unwaveringly in favor of the original position that you took, regardless of the data that emerges about that position.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah. It's-
- BSBen Shapiro
You wouldn't do it with family, you wouldn't do it with friends, you wouldn't do it with your business.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like a show of fealty, or whatever, sort of loyalty to your own side. And you're seen as uh, an unreliable ally if you're somebody that does change their mind in retrospect, which I really don't like.
- 28:16 – 41:50
The Media’s Response to Assassination Attempts on Trump
- CWChris Williamson
But talking about the, uh, seduction of coordination as an explanation for stuff, two attempts on Trump's life within the space of eight weeks. Uh, some people lay that at the feet of the deep state doesn't want him to become president because they can't allow him 'cause he's gonna drain the swamp and blah, blah, blah. There are a myriad of others. W- w- how should we even come to sort of think about this election and Trump's place in it? Like, what does it mean that the media's forgotten the first assassination so much that we needed a second one to remind them?
- BSBen Shapiro
Right. So I think that- that a few things are very clear. One is you're asking about sort of the content of the assassination, and one is the media response to the assassination. When it comes to the media response, they're perfectly consistent. They tried to memory hole the first assassination as fast as they possibly could, and they will try to memory this hole (laughs) , this- this assassination, uh, uh, as fast as they possibly can because to acknowledge the reality, which is that the radical increase in political temperature is not a one-sided thing on the part of Donald Trump, that the left has radically increased the temperature in terms of political rhetoric. And that when you keep turning up the heat on a pot of water, it boils over sometimes, and that maybe you wanna turn that down a little bit. That would be to acknowledge that there are two sides to the political debate, and that's the thing that they- they can't really acknowledge, I think. Uh, and- and so the- the media have immediately reverted to, "Well, you know, Trump is saying that it's about violent rhetoric, but look at the violent rhetoric he uses." Okay. Well, uh, uh, that- that is like true whataboutism. Fine, let- let's assume that you, that I don't like some of the rhetoric that Trump uses about, about politics. Fine, but let's be real. The rhetoric that you guys are using in which he is orange Hitler without the mustache, in which he is a deep and abiding threat to the soul of the country, that the people who are voting for him are a threat to the very fabric and soul of the country. Like is it... If- if you believe that he is a singular Hitlerian figure and you happen to have a screw loose, I mean, w- might there not be some people in a country of 340 million people who'd wanna take a shot at the president of the United States, former president of the United States? And it seems like the answer is yes. Uh, a- as far as, you know, who's responsible for the assassinations, again, this is one where it's like I'm gonna wait to see. I think that in almost all human errors... So it's kind of funny. There- there are a lot of conservatives who seem to operate...... for all Republicans who operate from premises that I think are not particularly conservative when it comes to human nature. So a couple of things about human nature that are typically associated with conservatism. Conser- human beings are inherently flawed. They have the capacity for good. They also have the capacity for bad. And people are kinda dumb. Right? Like these are like kind of baseline biblical notions of what human beings are, right? Go back to Adam. Not super bright, makes mistakes, has some bad inclinations, follows up on the bad inclinations, also can do some good things, right? Like th- and, and this is carried through to the founders. If you read Federalist 51, James Madison is talking about if angels were, i- if human beings were angels, no government would be necessary. I- if human beings were devils, then no government would be capable. Uh, y- like that kind of shaded view of humanity leads to my politics in a lot of these situations. And, and so what that means is I look at the Secret Service and I'm like, uh, "Is it a conspiracy or are they like..." Which assumes, by the way, deep competence? Or are people just really, really incompetent and they set in s- place a bunch of really bad rules that lead to the elevation of incompetence, which seems to be the truth about like a huge wide variety of institutions in American life a- and in Western life generally. W- and, and then you have the opposite view, which is in the back room there are a bunch of people who are uber competent and they are scheming to try an assassination attempt where they somehow rope a not-particularly-good-shot 20-year-old who can't hit a target from a very close distance. I mean, that, that the original assassination attempt, the fact that he missed Trump is, is a miracle of God, truly. Like God's hand came down (laughs) and like redirected that bullet because there is no way he missed that shot. That isn't... He had a scope on the rifle. Like there is no way he missed that shot. He is extremely close with a, with a long gun. And the, so but the, I guess, sort of conspiratorial viewpoint would be that the Secret Service coordinated with the local police in order to allow a 20-year-old incompetent to get up on a roof and then take a shot at the President of the United States, but he was such a bad shot and such a nut that he missed with multiple shots. A- a- a- or everyone's stupid. I mean, like Occam's razor suggests that everyone is bad at their job and stupid. And the same thing holds true with the second assassination attempt, right? When, when it comes to the second assassination attempt, what we know is that this guy was a nut job. He happened to be a left-wing nut job, but he was a nut job. And that he was hiding out in a tree outside of Trump's property for something like 12 hours. And the Secret Service didn't have the proper staffing to walk around the exterior of the, of the golf club. And they saw him and they took a shot at him. He ran away. So is that a, is that a conspiracy to kill Trump? First of all, you have to assume uber competence in planning the conspiracy and uber incompetence in carrying it out, right, in order for this to be a deep state conspiracy. Now, if you wanna make the case that there are people inside the deep state who would prefer that Trump not have the proper levels of protection, I think that's a much easier case to make because people have said that sort of stuff pretty publicly. I mean, y- you had a full hear- and like Democrats tried to bring up a bill to strip Donald Trump of his Secret Service protection. And Benny, Representative Benny Johnson, I, I think w- was the name of the guy who, who actually tried to do that. Um, so that's, that, that wouldn't be like super shocking to me. But again, those are cases that are easier to support than the broad claims. And, you know, I'm trained to drill down on broad claims. When people say a sentence like, "The deep state wants Trump dead," okay, there's so many, there's so many elements of that that I need broken down definitionally. Who, what is the deep state? Who in the deep state? What, which agencies? What's the mechanism? How did they make the selection for this particular plan? And again, I'm not asking for each one of those things to be checked in order for me to grow increasingly suspicious, uh, about the thing. But the plausibility of the claim is directly related to the plausibility of each individual element in the claim, right? Like for example, people on the left were considering a conspiracy theory that the, the Wuhan virus was developed by the ins- the Wuhan Institute of Virology, right? And that was like, that's not a conspiracy theory. Every single element of that is incredibly plausible. You have, as Jon Stewart suggested, you have an institute that does virology, the only one in all of this area, and literally takes viruses and then mutates them so that they are applicable to humans. And then magically, that's exactly where the virus starts. Like, okay, tha- that's pretty plausible. And it's a pretty specific claim about a very specific thing happening at a specific time and place. But anytime people kind of lay out these broad charges, I just wanna know what they mean so I can either say whether I think it's true or whether it's not. And I try to be super consistent about the application of the principle. So I'll say the same thing that I'm saying right now about the conspiracy theories, uh, with regard to Trump's, you know, the assassination attempts on Trump that I'll say about systemic racism. People will say systemic racism is to blame for the, for the disparities between various groups in the United States. I'll say, "I need you to define systemic racism. What specifically are you talking about that led to... And which disparities are we talking about right now? Are those best explained? What percentage is explained by a history of discrimination in the United States?" Right? Like let's get specific, 'cause it turns out that, again, when it comes to your own personal life, no one handles politics like they handle their personal life and they would be much better off if they did. If your wife came to you and she said, "We have a problem," the first thing you would say is, "What's the problem?" And then if she said, "Now the problem's really big. It's really, really big and it's really systemic," you'd be like, "Okay. Can, can we like delve into what..." No, no, no, because that would be to grant credibility to the people who are forming the pro-... Like, I need to know what the problem is so I can solve it. If you're in the business of politics solving pro- I think maybe this is the key. If you're in the business of politics being about solving problems, you want details and you want to be able to address those details in a way that lends itself to solving the problem. If politics is just about beating up the other guy...
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... then it's a, then you really don't want to solve the problem.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. One, one is providing solutions and the other is identifying problems. There is a problem over here-
- BSBen Shapiro
A, 100%. And so this is what will happen with, you know, other people in, in sort of the conservative side of the aisle. I'll say, I've said this about even Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson, like there, there are a bunch of people who I think identify problems, sometimes pretty well, and then the solutions that they provide are completely wrong, in my view, because I don't think there are any solutions that are provided. I think that the, the generalized solution is because the other guy is mean and wants the worst for you. That's not a solution. That's a, that's an epithet. And, uh, does that get you to where you're trying to go? And I've said the same thing about Andrew Tate, right? Andrew Tate will make a bunch of claims about how men are victimized by the society and a- and how feminism has, has been terrible for men. And I'll look at the critique and I'll say like, "I think maybe 70% of that critique is, is pretty good." And then I'll look at his solutions. I mean, these aren't solutions. These are mainly just...... complaints. And every time somebody mentions a solution, he's very dismissive of the solutions. And- and so maybe you're not in the business of solving the problem, in which case you're misleading people, because, uh, I thought that the goal of this entire enterprise was to make life better for people. And-
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder whether that plays back into the desire to vote against the organization or the other side that you dislike, as opposed to love for your own side. Because as long as you can continue to identify problems as opposed to posit solutions, what you get to do is, "Well, I mean, we don't really know how we should move forward, but at least we're not those guys."
- BSBen Shapiro
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Like that's the real, those are the real issues over there.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, I think that's true. And- and- and, uh, listen, I think a lot of politics is about just saying no to the person saying the wrong thing, right? I mean, like, uh, this is William F. Buckley's famous line that conservatism is about standing athwart the rails of history shouting stop. I think it's about more than that, but his- his basic premise is that if Kamala Harris wants to stack the Supreme Court and you're opposing stacking the Supreme Court, you don't have to have, like, an active agenda against that. You do have to stop her from getting elected in order to- in order to do that. And oppositionality is, I think, in some sense good for civilizations. I think that the United States was more ideologically solid when posited against the Soviet Union than it has been in the post-Soviet era because it had a contrast-
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting.
- BSBen Shapiro
... to show itself, right? It could ... Uh, people in New York and people in Alabama were like, "We don't disagree- we don't agree about a lot of things. One thing we disagree on- uh, one thing we totally agree on is those fucking commies, man. We are not gonna be like that." Like, I- I think that- I think that that is not terrible for a society. The problem is when you start applying it to people inside your own country, predominantly, or inside your own civilization. Then you got a problem. And again, I'll- I'll- I've been criticizing someone on the right here, but, uh, that- that I'll lay predominantly at the feet of- of the left, because I do think that the left in the United States particularly has undermined a lot of values that were pretty widely shared, uh, and has attempted to portray the right as the enemy of ... Uh, this is a lot of the rhetoric about Trump, that- that he's the enemy of the soul of America, that he's- he's destroying America from within.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
It seems to me that if I were to put together a list of the top 10 threats to the United States, you know, I- I think that the- the- the idea that Kamala Harris is, like, the top threat to the United States, like in the top 10 ... I think her policies are bad for the United States. That's not quite the same thing as an existential threat to the United States in the near term. I think her ideology, if applied over the long term, would be horrible for the United States, truly horrible for the United States. But if I'm thinking of, like, do I have more in common with, say, Kamala Harris or ISIS, right? Or- or-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... even Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, like, I don't share a lot with Kamala Harris, but I feel like I have more in common with- with, uh, with my Democrat, with- with Democrats on the other side of the aisle than I do with some of those folks.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, this is where I think people lay at the feet of foreign actors, the Western anti-Westernism, that, well, if you wanted to really get a co- a country or an entire hemisphere of planet to fracture itself, you would hide away what you're doing as a- a foreign state actor and you would infiltrate within there. But again, as to your sort of, uh, rubrics of, uh, being able to be accurate, that's quite unfalsifiable. That's very woolly. That's very difficult to work across from.
- BSBen Shapiro
A- and again, I- I think there are s- there are actual symptoms of that, right? I mean, th- TikTok is a Chinese algorithm, and so I think elevation of particular messages on TikTok is pretty traceable to particular moves that the Chinese government is making in elevating particular messages, for example, right? Again, specific problem with a specific solution that was actually attempted m- by the r- the Republicans in Congress recently, which was to disassociate TikTok from its Chinese ownership for it, so CCP didn't have a window into it or control over the algorithm. Um, yeah, you- you can see that with regard to, you know, allegations that- that the Iranians have been paying members of protest communities in- in universities, right? That's an actual problem with an actual solution. But yes, I mean, I- I think that, uh, again, the- the social institutions that used to hold us together have broken down. And in the absence of both the social institutions that held us together and an opposition that holds you together from the outside ... And think of- think of it as- as sort of, you know, what- what global opposition does, it holds you as a civilization together. It does. I mean, it's just what it does. And to take an example of Israel, Israel was, like, fighting each other until it w- via judicial reform, and then they get attacked by Hamas and all of a sudden, super high levels of social solidarity because, like, activate, right? (laughs) Where we- we all live in the same country, we all ... 9/11, right? Right after 9/11, for, like, half a second, the United States was like, "Okay, guys. We can see there's an external threat. It's very real. Mobilize." And then when the threat seems to go away, then people tend to turn on each other-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... if they don't have their own kind of spaces in which to operate.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 41:50 – 52:42
Ben’s Experience in School
- CWChris Williamson
checkout. Can we talk about your time in school?
- BSBen Shapiro
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, uh, I'm pretty fascinated by this. What do you think, looking back, skipping grades, uh, uh, s- social challenges, how do you reflect on that time? What are the main lessons that you took away from your period in school?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, so there- there are a few different lessons. So when I was ... Uh, so my family became Orthodox when I was 11, uh, which means that I wasn't really part of any clique in school. I was kind of in and out of different schools. I went to public school, then I went to private school, then I went to public school again, then I went to private school. Um, and- and so I didn't really have kind of a social sphere that was very stable in terms of friend groups. I was also two years younger by the time I finished high school than everybody else, which was not conducive, uh, to, uh, either situations with girls or to, uh, or to close friendships with other dudes in your class. When you're two years younger, a lot shorter, a lot shrimpier and, uh, and, you know, smarter, uh, than some of the other kids in the class, that's not, like, recipe for social success.
- CWChris Williamson
Likability.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, e- e- exactly. You get stuffed in a few lockers is, uh, is- is a thing that happens. Um, and, uh, so th- there are few... There are kind of two key lessons that I learned sort of from my schooling experience. One was, uh, pretty early, I was going into...Let's see, it would've been seventh grade at a, at a magnet school. It was a local public magnet school, and they had to give you some sort of... It was basically a rudimentary IQ test to get in. Uh, and so people who, you know, scored above a certain threshold, which was a very high, high threshold, would get in. I made it in. I didn't make it in by, like, 20 points. There were kids in my class who did. There was- there, there were kids in my class with IQs of 180, 190 and, uh, and I remember sitting in class and saying to my dad, like, "Some of these kids are really, really smart." I mean, there was a girl in our class who's seventh grade, she was doing, like, senior level calculus in- from college. And my dad said, "Well, success is a combination of inherent ability and effort, and so you're gonna have to outwork them." Right? He said, "You're pro- you're probably rarely gonna be the single smartest person in the room. You're gonna be in a lot of rooms with smart people, and for sure, on any given topic, there's gonna be somebody who knows more than you do in a room of 100 people. And so the, the best thing that you can do is just work really, really hard and assume you're not the smartest person in the room." And that was really good advice, and I- I've taken that very seriously. It's why I take, you know... It's why I take other people's opinions seriously if they have knowledge on a topic. I think, you know, there's a sort of now earned hatred of the experts because the experts have failed on so many occasions. But I don't think that the answer to that is to... I think the answer to that is better experts. I don't think the answer to that is-
- CWChris Williamson
Dismiss expertise.
- BSBen Shapiro
... knowing nothing and then just like, "Okay, well now I'm an expert," like Twitter expertise, right? "I became an expert on the situation in Singapore today because I read, like, three sentences on Wiki." Um, so that was one. Uh, the other one was that, you know, when you take a lot of crap, you either tend to basically learn to tell people to fuck off or you end up tending to cave underneath it. And so I have a very weird perspective on bullying as somebody who was viciously bullied when I was in school, like really badly bullied. Um, which is... I'm not sure that it's, like, the worst thing for all kids (laughs) . And not that I'm pro-bullying. No kid deserves to be bullied. It was a terrible experience. I hated it. Did it damage me? I think in some ways it made me a lot tougher because it's like, okay, well that's what life is gonna be. Life is gonna be a lot of people who, who very often don't like you and they're gonna do mean things to you and you can either just kind of deal with it and try to find a solve for it and weather it, or you can cave underneath that, and success is the best form of revenge basically. Uh, and, uh, and so that was something that I, I sort of cultivated in my, in my high school years.
- CWChris Williamson
When you talk about experiences with bullying being pretty rough, what do you mean? What are you referring to?
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, I mean, so there was a- an overnight with- with other members of the class where, uh, I was hit with belts. Uh, there was a, there, there was, you know, a lot of situations where I was, you know, kind of physically hit. Like, that, that kind of stuff wasn't super rare. Um, and, uh, and it- and I'm not talking about, like, a big public school. This is actually, like, a Jewish day school but, again, no matter what you... Uh, kids are kids. And honestly, like, I know a lot of the people who did this now and they're adults, and I've never mentioned their names publicly, nor would I, because it turns out that 16, 17-year-olds are real dumb and they do dumb stuff. And, uh, and so, you know, I give them credit for, for becoming better human beings now and, you know, that's, that- that- that is what it- that is what it is. Kids are gonna be kids no matter where you go, and particularly young males are gonna do aggressive and bad things to each other.
- CWChris Williamson
That's one of the, uh, oddest horseshoes that I've come back around to. So I was quite badly bullied in school as well and, uh, to realize that not only was this thing that at the time you really didn't enjoy and then for a period you're kind of at the mercy of and you've compensated in many ways and it's changed the person that you are, but then you end up on the other side of it being somebody that you're very proud of. And then you start to think, "Well, hang on a second. Maybe without those things, I wouldn't have become this thing." But then you also sh- sh... Does that mean that I should be thankful for it? Well, maybe not thankful, but grateful. But then does that disempower the work that I did to alchemize the thing?
- BSBen Shapiro
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Something bad happened to me and I made it into something good, so I should be thankful? No, maybe I should be proud. And you... It's a very messy-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, for sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... lineage. Have you, have you managed to undo this Gordian Knot?
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, I- I think that, you know, all I can control is the things I can control. Would I, would I... If I could retcon it and go back in time, would I have preferred to have not been bullied? Sure. Becau- and would I... I have kids who are now, you know, 10, eight, four and one. Do I want them bullied in school? Of course I don't want them bullied in school. However, do I want them to experience enough adversity that it toughens them? Yes. And whether that comes from other human beings or whether that comes from just life itself, I mean, there's a lot of adversity in life. If you're not prepped for that, you are going to collapse under the weight of it. And so if you don't have adversity in your life, thank God, you should find adversity. And by that I don't mean, you know, people who are gonna treat you horribly.
- CWChris Williamson
Start a fight in the street.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. But, but I do mean like if you're 15 years old, 16 years old and you have like a really great life, go work for a living. Like, go, go for a summer and get a- a job at McDonald's and get bossed around. Like, do things that you don't like to do and- and find the qualities in yourself that you feel like need to be cultivated and put yourself in a situation where you're forced to cultivate those values. I mean, whenever I talk to, you know, people who have done much more than I have, served in the military, for example, this is- they say the same thing. They say they'll go in and ve- very many of them are confused about what they're doing with their life and they come out and they just feel more empowered and like they're ready to take on life and attack life because they've actually been faced with forced adversity, things that they didn't actually want to do and hated in the moment. And I feel like that's true of so many things. I mean, it's- it's true in relationships, I think it's true in exercise, I think it's true in everything. Like, if you're not- if you're not pushing yourself and working to better yourself, you... Again, like, you wish that you could grow without the pain, but I don't necessarily think that that's the case. I think that you require that in order to grow as a human being.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you or did you have a chip on your shoulder about those experiences?
- BSBen Shapiro
Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
- CWChris Williamson
And how long did it take for that... There's a part of me that thinks about the alchemy of taking something bad which happened to you and turning into something which you then benefit from solely as beautiful. But then there's also a bit where I don't want to be driven by that toxic fuel for the rest of my life. There's nothing kind of sadder than the person who's 55 years old who still hasn't been able to let go of what those bullies did to them in school. So can you talk about that sort of process of-
- BSBen Shapiro
Sure, I mean, so I- honestly, I think this is where the natural life transition from being a single man to being a married man actually makes a huge difference. So y- you carry a chip on your shoulder because you're just a dude in a rough world, and then you get married and you start a family and it's like, you need to be more than just a dude in a rough world. You're now a protector, you're a provider, people rely on you and you're loved, right? You have a, you have a- a structure around you that provides you love for what you are.
- CWChris Williamson
So the thing, the- the thing that you never had in school which was somebody else who was standing up for you, that was supporting you through thick and thin no matter what, is now what your nuclear family is?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, exactly. And I- and I think that, you know... Listen, I'm lucky. I have a great set... My parents are awesome and they're always incredibly supportive and we live a mile from them and, you know, we've always lived a mile from them.... you know, our entire marriage. And that's great. And my wife's parents live a mile away. Like, we, we, we're surrounded by family and that's something that we've built up and have deliberately done, and that, that's, that's wonderful. But I, I do think that it's one of the reasons why sort of prolonged singlehood for, for both men and women is, is a problem because you get stuck in a life stage. You don't have to, but a lot of people do, where you're, you're a single man, you didn't have a great high school or college experience, and now you have a chip on your shoulder. And that chip just gets bigger and, and it doesn't really change... Because the mission is about you, right? At that point, your mission is you, right? You're looking at you and you're saying, "Okay, I was bullied. What can I do to avoid being bullied again? What can I do to become the dominant person in the room?" And s- some of that's good, but that's designed so that then you can be dominant on behalf of something else. And that's when the mission changes 'cause when you're trying to dominate on behalf of yourself, then there's no end to that. There's always another hill to climb. But when it's, "I need to dominate on behalf of my family, make sure my family is safe," every day you do that, you're a success. There's no, there, there's no point you reach in sort of single life where it's like, "Now I am the dominant one," because you're, you're n- there's always another person who's gonna be more dominant than you. But y- your own hierarchy is the hierarchy of you, your wife, your kids. When you're at the top of that hierarchy, there ain't no place to go from there. Right? We, we... You're not picking up a second wife or a second family, I hope. So, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... that, that's kind of... You've now reached the, the apex of your dominance hierarchy, to use kind of Jordan Peterson language.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. E- even if you have, uh, integrated or transcended and included in Wilbarian language, uh, what happened sort of in school, are there any ways that you see where you, uh, compensate or present now which are kind of the progeny of those experiences? I, I see a, a... in some ways a, a sort of sternness, uh, and a, a sharp outer edge. It's very difficult not-
- BSBen Shapiro
I, I'm sure that has something to do with it, for sure. I mean, like with my kids, I'm not like this at all, right? And with my wife I'm not like this. Like, the, the thing that people are, are generally surprised by in personal interactions is that I'm a nice person. Uh, because th- the thing that you cultivate, uh, is the very like, you know, don't fuck with me. Uh, and, and so I'm sure that some of that comes from bad high school experiences or bad college experiences or whatever it is. Uh, I, I think the, the other thing that, that you cultivate is a, a very self-effacing sense of humor. Right? 'Cause one of the things you learn when you're bullied is, is to make jokes about yourself.
- CWChris Williamson
Can't take yourself too seriously.
- BSBen Shapiro
Exactly. So what you end up doing is like, "I'll make..." Uh, I, I mean, I mean people know, those into the show, I make jokes about my physique all the time, right? Like, I'll be reading a- an ad for, for vitamins or for protein drinks and be like-
- 52:42 – 58:40
Advice to People Who Don’t Fit in
- CWChris Williamson
your advice for people who don't feel like they fit in, as a person who perennially maybe didn't for a while?
- BSBen Shapiro
Um, I think it's very often good not to fit in. Again, I think that it, it cultivates your sense of individuality and your sense that you gotta push through. I mean, and this is true in weirdly like nearly every aspect of my life. So when I... I'm a sports fan. I'm particularly a big baseball fan. Uh, I grew up a Chicago White Sox fan in Los Angeles because my dad was from Chicago, so I picked up all of his allegiances. And so I never went to a baseball game pretty much my entire childhood, maybe a couple excep- of exceptions, where I was rooting for the home team. I was always visiting for the... rooting for the visiting team. I'm an Orthodox Jew in a, in a society that is largely not Jewish. You know, they, y- if you're always the visiting team, then it does force you to sort of define yourself. And I think that that's, that's not a bad thing. I think that's, that's sort of a good thing. Uh, I think when, when, when you feel part of... It's good to feel part of a thing, but it's also good to, to sometimes stand aside from the thing, uh, and, and, you know, see the compare and contrast.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you ever struggle or have you ever struggled to feel like you're a part of a thing? You know, you have this organization below you now with some ungodly number of staff that work for you. You have peers and colleagues that are sort of at your level as well. But, at least in my experience, there is a... Uh, in my less gracious moments, there is a tendency to always see myself on the outside observing things happen over there, that social stuff is this thing. And I'm aware that family life, uh, may be a little bit different, but when it comes to the sort of more of the social world side, uh, d- does that ever, do you ever sort of see that creep up inside-
- BSBen Shapiro
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
... of you a little, watching?
- BSBen Shapiro
... y- uh, yes, I think particularly in the business sphere. I think that when it comes to my social sphere, the truth is... So I, I've had this longtime categorization which is that I think people tend to be either friends people or family people. Uh, the, the, the, the... Most of the people I know. You know, whenever there's a hard division where you say, it's like these people and th- it's ne- it's never true for 100% of people, um, but there are people who like, they love their friends, they wanna hang out with their friends, they're very social, they like being out, this is th- this is their thing. And then there are people who are like, "I want... If I were on a desert island with my family, I'd be totally fine. I don't need to see lots of other people. That's fine with me. I'm definitely a family person." So, I spent my entire life not really having tons of close friends. Now I have some close friends, but they're kind of very small in number. Uh, obviously I'm best friends with Jeremy Boring, who's the co-CEO of Daily, uh, of Daily Wire and, and my co-founder over there. Uh, and I have a couple of other friends, uh, one in Israel, one, one who lives ov- a couple who live over here in Florida. But, you know, it's a fair, it's a very small circle. And even my best friends are not even remotely on the same level as my family.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Like i- like, i- there's some people who treat friends like family. And for me, it's like there's my family and then there's kind of everybody else.
- CWChris Williamson
That's an interesting, uh, solution for people who maybe didn't fit in as kids to, uh, find a, a different pathway to take their sense of social belonging from, which is to basically...... not accept defeat, but go, okay, like, you know, that's a thing and maybe there's gonna be some challenges in this one arena, but this second arena is something that's completely separate and maybe that was or wasn't the way when I was growing up. So for me, I'm an only child, uh, which means that family life is, uh, pretty low down on the totem pole of priorities. But when I start a family, I'm, I don't, I'm gonna be fascinated to see what ha- how much that's going to change. You know, it's going to be something presumably very, very important, plan is to have more than one child, so that means-
- BSBen Shapiro
That's a good plan.
- CWChris Williamson
... I-
- BSBen Shapiro
Kids need siblings. It's-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I, I, uh-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... present example, uh, shown. But yet to just think, to watch the dynamics of siblings in front of you, to see, you know, family life be the single most important thing that's in your entire life, I think it's gonna be, it's a, a different perspective that I hadn't thought of.
- BSBen Shapiro
It's also the hardest thing, and it's the, and it's, it's the most important thing and it's by far the hardest thing I do. My business is nothing compared to, you know, dealing with four kids. Like when w- my kids fight each other all the time, and they're, they're wonderful and they're lovely and also they're, they're kids. Anybody who tells you the kids are inherently good has never met a child. Kids are inherently innocent, they're not inherently good.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, and so, you know, they'll treat each other badly and you have to figure out exactly how to navigate that. But then they'll treat each other well and it's the best thing that's happening in your life. And the, the way that I've described it to people is that when you're single, you're sort of variance between happiness and unhappiness on a scale of like zero to 10. Like, when you're very unhappy, it's like you're kind of depressed and it's kind of, it's kind of bad. And when you're very happy it's like okay, this is really good, everything's really nice. Then you, then you, you know, get married, and with you and your spouse it's like, it goes all the way now to probably negative 20 and positive 20, because when you're happy together, it's better than it was when, than, when you were happy when you were single, but also when things are really bad, it's like way worse than it was when you were single. Like if you're at odds with your spouse over something, it's signifi- or if something, God forbid, terrible is happening with your spouse, way, way worse than anything you were experiencing as a single person. And then you have kids and all limits are removed. Like the happiest things by far in your life are the things that happen with your kids. It's not close. It's like, it's, it's magic, it's stuff that just shapes every aspect of, of your being. Uh, and then when bad stuff is happening with your kids, it wrecks you. I mean, absolutely wrecks you.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 58:40 – 1:04:06
Being a Father & Public Figure
- CWChris Williamson
In pivoting from maybe having a harder exterior to not, not investing, to, um, choosing to, who you have to spend your time with, and then you have this scenario, there's no escape. There's no, "I'm not going to be friends with you anymore for a daughter having open heart surgery."
- BSBen Shapiro
Right, exactly. Um, and so I think that the, uh, the, I'm able to bifurcate pretty easily kind of parts of my life. It's just something that I'm good at. I do it with my time, I can do it with humans, uh, and, uh, I can do it with sort of my business life and my, and my family life. And anything that was bleeding over, I tried to get rid of. So for example, I don't have Twitter on my phone. Right, that was bleeding over into my family life, 'cause I'd be checking my Twitter, and if I'm trending, which happens, you know, once every couple of weeks, then it would ruin my day. And my wife a few years ago, she said like, "It's ruining our day. We're out, we're having a nice Sunday with the kids and you're miserable and you're upset and it's ruining your day, so why don't you just take it off your phone? And if something urgent happens, you know a lot of people who work for you, they'll let you know, and if you have to deal with it, you have to deal with it, and that's fine." And I did. I don't have Twitter on my phone. And I use it as sort of a marketing mechanism, I'll put out a few tweets a day, but it's made my life radically better. And so the, the number one rule is like, put down the phone, put out the outside world. The outside world does not exist while you're with your family, 'cause your kids don't care. Your kids don't give a shit. Like if, if I'm having a bad day and-
- CWChris Williamson
We just want Dad with, here with us.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. And they, and they, and you know, they are first priority and they know they're first priority, but if you're browsing your phone while you're dealing with your kids, they don't feel like your first priority. Like the, the, the iPhone has ruined a lot (laughs) of lives and made things a lot worse.
- CWChris Williamson
Well it's interesting that, uh, you and Sam Harris, I mean, you went for the just off the phone, Sam went for completely off platform. I think Jordan has a perennial battle between him and, and-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... Twitter. I think it's been a warping, a warping dynamic for him many a time. Uh, but yeah, it, it's interesting that the thing that a lot of people do for fun when you get to whatever close to the most followed within that platform, uh, people are desperately trying to rip this sort of ejector seat button to get it away from them.
Episode duration: 2:07:27
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