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Historian Niall Ferguson returns to talk about his new book (with a glorious, darkly comic cover), Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. As Sven from SNL might say, this episode has it all: monkey’s paw swag-bags, the phrase “Hunnish data,” and the frighteningly named “three-body problem.” Allow Niall to explain the human tendency to prepare for one disaster scenario while another hits us square in the jaw, the reason why “we may be forced by companies to do Zoom” even after the pandemic ends, and why book tours are still delirium-inducing even when done from the comfort of one’s home. Oh, and stick around for a particularly fantastic celebrity impression in the show’s final moments.
Show notes:
it becomes obvious after listening to this that Niall is a cleverer than average straw man debater while most of The Dispatch personalities are steel man arguers. In his defense, I find him much more interesting than the average straw man arguer. However, he seemed to have two whoppers in this podcast. 1) To contrast Obama's "handling" of the opioid crisis with Trump's handling of Covid seems a far fetched comparison. Not to be a jerk, but about 80% of us could avoid the opioid crisis just by making good decisions. Covid - not so much. 2) It also seems like a bit a stretch to absolve Trump of mistakes because he personally can't micro manage everything. That is certainly true. However, he showed no ability to pick competent people to make those decisions. He also did not create a culture in which competency was particularly valued. When the vehemence of your praise for the Dear Leader is the only metric that matters, you might end up with a few stinkers in key positions.
As a historian Ferguson ironically ignores the data regarding the pandemic. The Trump Administration eliminated funding for pandemic research through the Agency for International Development and abolished the White House Pandemic Office created after the Ron Klain admission about the response of the Obama Administration to Ebola. The praise of China's response to the pandemic until March 15 by Trump in order to facilitate trade negotiations and admission to Bob Woodward about his awareness of the lethality of the pandemic while lying to the American public about the Covid hoax bordered on criminality. Turning masks into a culture war in the midst of thousands of American deaths per week reflected a willful indifference to human life. Compared with the 27 deaths experienced by Taiwan with a population of 24 million people--where mask wearing was a priority is a clear indication that leadership matters.