The Two Davids

With Jonah traipsing about somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, David French takes over the hosting ...

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With Jonah traipsing about somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness, David French takes over the hosting duties to welcome David Bahnsen back on. David and David talk COVID, policy, and faith. After a jab at Jonah — will he really write a book on bigfoot erotica? — the Davids discuss team good vs. team lesser evil, noting that while Scripture anticipated the Assyrians, it didn’t predict Hillary Clinton. All hail King Dave!

Show Notes:

–Jonah, off the grid in Alaska

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  1. Avatar photo
    Kay

    Loved The Two Davids podcast! Now I want to hear the Two Davids and the one Anthony B Bradley discuss all things race, culture, economics, and PCA. I would listen for hours!

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    WKDawson

    Well, sure, I guess if Pelosi and Schumer groveled and genuflected before DJT, things __may__ have gone easier. Maybe that is true. However, we could also have groveled and genuflected before King George III and things might have gone well for us too.

    Kings and royalty can expect that, but politicians in a representative government? If that is what a politician expects, he/she hasn't really accepted what the job is. We had "I hope he fails" with the last one. Was he supposed to go into a Twitter tirade about it, or be magnanimous and let it roll off his back?

    Anyway, we all understand that things go easier when we only sing our praises to the boss, they go easier when we don't make issues with our teachers. Indeed, they go easier when we don't make issues with people in power. So we shouldn't be brisk to take issue with anyone. We also should be respectful. Politicians have to expect that not everyone will agree and try to mitigate the situation as much as possible.

    Be realistic. This is like a pastor expecting every church member to be all morally sound with no problems, blemishes, checkered pasts, sin issues, etc. By any measure, does this really represent a church?

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  3. Scott Mc

    Nice work David, it was a good show. Good Covid discussion.
    We are still in first Wave, some never really had it. The slowdown narrative seems lost on the normal news. I have newfound appreciation for the speed of normal science now when it still seems snail's pace and there is hyper-focus on it. Prayers to all the infected and hoping for full recoveries.

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  4. Fvirnellijr

    If Jonah is unavailable then David French is a worthy substitute. I enjoyed the conversation between the two Davids. My only quibble is they should have found a way to play a song from the underrated 1986 album Boomtown by David and David. https://youtu.be/97wvwuHUMCw

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    Robert Knudson

    Thanks for the great pod. I think 2 takeaways from 2020 are that we need better education in science and in civics.

    Small quibble: I think the only thing that will quickly create a widespread cultural change like masking is personal experience. People aren't used to wearing masks, don't have 2nd or 3rd hand knowledge of folks with Covid and became complacent once they came out of lockdown and didn't immediately catch the bug. The Opentable data I have seen suggests that a higher Covid risk behavior like restaurant dining followed this pattern. (https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1276159032315822080?s=20).

    I detest nanny laws but in this instance I would rather have a mask law in public spaces (which I never see enforced) than expert guidance alone.

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    Adam

    Great pod. Maybe David should take over full time? :D

    A concern I have is that both Davids were being overly careful to avoid sounding too #NeverTrump. Can we really have a conversation about cultural differences in attitudes towards masks without mentioning Trump's enormous cultural influence? For instance, when the discussion came to why we have a debate over masking but not over hand sanitizer - there's a pretty big elephant in the room that I think was largely ignored.

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    1. Laurie

      I agree with you Adam, about that elephant in the room. I was thinking the same thing.

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      1. Scott Mc

        oh I thought the elephant was David full time. :)

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      Adam

      And to be super clear, this is a criticism I'd almost never level at either David, or anyone on Dispatch staff, or even at this episode more broadly. It just seemed like such a big hole in the mask discussion!

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    Jake

    I get the point that it's bad that everyone believes they are losing. I am also not a conservative or a Christian, and I even hope that Trump loses big to marginalize the likes of Vermeule, Hawley, and Cotton (wishful thinking).

    That said, it is just obvious that we live in Woodrow Wilson's (Pits of Orthanc theme) America. Bahnsen rightly points out that the Progressives have been winning the last century, and I think Biden will merely be a tool of the far left as President. I see nothing that will turn this trend around (not that it is impossible).

    Also, I don't think good court appointments are a guarantee in a second Trump term. I think you get more of the Common Good Constitutionalism nonsense, which would be horrifying.

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  8. Jim Heetderks

    This podcast is worth a second listen; it was all very good, but the nuanced and sensible COVID-19 discussion in the first part of the podcast was especially helpful.

    As to whether or not to mask as a political statement, In Virginia (where I reside) there is great antipathy among conservatives towards Gov. Ralph Northam, and not without good reason. However, with regard to masking, I wonder whether this antipathy has clouded the judgment of some Christian leaders on an issue about which the Gov is not necessarily wrong. While I'm hesitant to state "the" Christian position on masking, most churches, even if not mandating masking during worship services, strongly encourage it (along with other measures) as a way of obeying Jesus's command to love our neighbors. This seems fairly obvious, especially if you have older or immune-compromised people in your midst. Yet some Christian church leaders strenuously resist requiring (or even merely encouraging) those in their people to don masks during worship. I think this is a mistake.

    Maybe this is an example of the phenomenon that David B described about his father and seatbelts: As soon as someone tells you that you ought (or must) do something, you react against it, especially if you can't stand the person telling you to do it.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Tracie

    Thank you for having Bahnsen on. Noah Rothman is always referencing him on the Commentary pod, and I couldn't find his site cuz I didn't know how to spell his name.

    Interested in any reality-based commentary on COVID stats & news. There's so much cherry-picking and data mining to fit a preferred narrative, that it's really crucial to hear multiple viewpoints to frame and interpret the data. We're not really gonna know what happened w/ this virus til there are multiple post-mortems years from now, so nobody's got a monopoly on COVID truth.

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  10. Mike M

    Really good episode. Some of the best, sober COVID talk I've heard from anyone about where we are and how we got here.
    One point I would like to make to David French about who is not wearing masks. I strongly suspect who you think is not wearing masks depends strongly on where you live and who you actually encounter. I live in a diverse suburb (the 2010 census was 55% white, 40% African American, but I think it's closer to 50:50 now.) I have encountered a tiny amount of "performative" no maskers, and no performative mask "Karens". My personal experience, which is to say anecdotally, is that people who are not wearing masks run the full spectrum of people with a very slight over representation of late middle age whites, and young (20ish) African American men. I do agree that more people are wearing masks in the last two weeks, than the previous two.

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      Tracie

      I'm from Texas, now live on the Great Lakes. Everyone's talking about young people in Texas spreading it, but they're not behaving much better in my city. Live close to a college campus, and when I walk my dog on a street w/ lotsa bars, they're lined up w/o masks, sitting at the open windows at spaces tables, but not apparently being careful.

      In the town where I grew up, which is almost 100% tourism dependent, businesses are naturally distraught but most people get it. As DF said, there's a few "performative" types, but most people appear to have a reasonable amount of fear.

      This regional shaming and grandstanding is not productive. Obviously, the virus doesn't care.

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      1. Mike M

        Honestly, there is not much trendy going on at my Kroger. From the news, I sometimes think younger people were only wearing masks in the Instagram posts concerning the reopening of bars and restaurants. DF was right to say many people were not masking because of the feeling it was "over" or did not apply to them. The change form "don't wear masks in March to wear masks in April sowed a lot of confusion and mistrust.

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          Tracie

          Yeah, I had to reverse course on that myself as the recommendations changed. It's one of the reasons I volunteered to furlough from patient care in March (just started back.) I was reading all these conflicting speculations about how it spread. Our state health dept was saying no masks needed w/o symptoms. I work in a neighborhood place and the idea of accidentally killing a patient or co-worker by spitting on them (which we all do every time we talk) was just too much. By the time I came back, everybody was in full gear.

          So, yeah, it's been a work in progress.

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