Speaker 1: From CurtCo Media.
Wade Davis: America has always been the best of all things and
Wade Davis: the worst of all things, which is kind of its
Wade Davis: glory and its charisma. Don't get me wrong, I love
Wade Davis: the United States. I chose to become an American, I
Wade Davis: raised my girls in the United States. I found my education,
Wade Davis: my career could never have happened in a million years
Wade Davis: in Canada. There was a great line in the Irish
Wade Davis: Times that said the emotions towards America have been various
Wade Davis: since 1945, good, bad, loving, hateful, whatever, but never before
Wade Davis: has the world felt one emotion for America, and that was pity.
Bill Curtis: Wade Davis has traveled to the farthest corners of the
Bill Curtis: globe. He's beautifully photographed and deeply studied societies of all
Bill Curtis: kinds and he's written two dozen compelling books about it.
Bill Curtis: His talent for observing people and their life drivers is
Bill Curtis: simply unmatched. Now, here with a marvelous eloquence, he is
Bill Curtis: casting a light on the apparent direction of America. It
Bill Curtis: may be hard to hear, it certainly has been for
Bill Curtis: me, but absolutely everything he will describe about our current
Bill Curtis: challenge as a country and as a people is simply
Bill Curtis: undeniable. So buckle in and listen to this remarkable man,
Bill Curtis: but as you do, make a conscious choice, because it
Bill Curtis: is our reaction to these revelations that can set a
Bill Curtis: tone for our future. We can get angry, we can
Bill Curtis: deny, we can accept his view as inevitable and lazily
Bill Curtis: go back to posting nonsense on our TikTok accounts, or
Bill Curtis: we can do the hard thing, we can change our
Bill Curtis: future. Maybe, just maybe, Wade's comprehensive catalog of America's ills
Bill Curtis: can be a wake- up call to you and to
Bill Curtis: me. We can take each of his observations and we
Bill Curtis: can do the work, open our hearts, take some responsibility
Bill Curtis: for the lives of our neighbors, nurture our workforces and
Bill Curtis: have gratitude for our coworkers. But I have a theory,
Bill Curtis: it's a wild one, but it just may be true.
Bill Curtis: Wade Davis is actually the reincarnation of Charles Dickens and
Bill Curtis: his Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as he darkly
Bill Curtis: displays to a scared and broken Scrooge all of his
Bill Curtis: sins and his terrible fate. While Wade Davis catalogs our
Bill Curtis: sins and points us to our sad and terrible fate,
Bill Curtis: ask yourself is it really inevitable or is it possible
Bill Curtis: that he's doing us a great favor? Is there still
Bill Curtis: time, like with Ebeneezer? Can we change our future and
Bill Curtis: save ourselves, our country, and what we've always wanted to
Bill Curtis: stand for? Does Wade's revelation come to us, well, just
Bill Curtis: in time? Welcome to Politics: Meet Me in the Middle.
Bill Curtis: I'm Bill Curtis. Welcome to our panel. Firstly, our cohost,
Bill Curtis: a Pulitzer Prize- winning historian, best- selling author, worldwide lecturer,
Bill Curtis: and the widely- quoted human, historical and political encyclopedia, Professor
Bill Curtis: Ed Larson. Nice to see you Zoomed in, Ed.
Ed Larson: Nice to see you too, and nice to have Wade here.
Wade Davis: Nice to meet you, Ed. Thanks very much.
Bill Curtis: Also, remotely Zooming in, Jane Albrecht. She's an international trade
Bill Curtis: attorney who fought for US economic and business interests to high-
Bill Curtis: level government officials all over the world. Hi, Jane. Nice
Bill Curtis: to see you too.
Jane Albrecht: Delighted to be here and delighted to be with you
Jane Albrecht: too, Wade.
Wade Davis: Thank you very much, Jane.
Bill Curtis: And our special guest, Wade Davis, a writer, photographer, a
Bill Curtis: filmmaker. After his 13 year tenure as explorer- in- residence
Bill Curtis: at the National Geographic Society, he took his current post
Bill Curtis: as professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
Bill Curtis: He has authored 22 books, all of which you must
Bill Curtis: acquire. He holds degrees in anthropology, biology, a PhD from
Bill Curtis: Harvard. He has been awarded 11 honorary degrees and too
Bill Curtis: many awards and medals to list. You simply must visit DavisWade.
Bill Curtis: com and experience, at very least, his remarkable photography. He's
Bill Curtis: written so many articles, including in Rolling Stone, The Unraveling
Bill Curtis: of America, which is the subject for us to explore
Bill Curtis: today. Welcome, Wade. It's really an honor to have you here.
Wade Davis: Well, thanks very, very much, Bill. I think it was Forbes Magazine said
Wade Davis: anthropology was the most pointless undergraduate discipline to engage if
Wade Davis: you actually wanted to both get a job and have
Wade Davis: a role in the world. I can't think of anything
Wade Davis: sillier because anthropology is the study of us, it's a study
Wade Davis: of humanity. Its fundamental mission has been to reveal to
Wade Davis: the world the interconnectedness of humanity, which has now been
Wade Davis: reaffirmed by genetics. We know that the genetic endowment of
Wade Davis: humanity is a continuum. Race has been proven to be
Wade Davis: an utter fiction, we're all cut from the same genetic cloth.
Bill Curtis: You wrote this remarkable essay that was published in Rolling
Bill Curtis: Stone, The Unraveling of America.
Wade Davis: I think the thing we have to always remember, and
Wade Davis: this piece I wrote in Rolling Stone is by no
Wade Davis: means a critique of America in a gratuitous sense, I think
Wade Davis: of it more as a kind of a love letter.
Wade Davis: If you have a family member in trouble, the first
Wade Davis: step in the successful intervention is to hold a mirror
Wade Davis: to them to show how far they've fallen and that
Wade Davis: realization becomes the first step on the path of rehabilitation,
Wade Davis: of regeneration. It's astonishing to recall what America did in
Wade Davis: the Second World War. It's not hyperbole to say that
Wade Davis: it literally saved civilization from going down a dark hole
Wade Davis: of oblivion, beyond anything in our imaginings, had that war
Wade Davis: been lost. Here's a great statistic. For every four pounds
Wade Davis: of material that the Japanese Empire of the Sun got
Wade Davis: to a frontline troop, the Americans got two tons across 13,
Wade Davis: 000 kilometers of open sea.
Bill Curtis: You're using these as comparisons to where we've come, obviously,
Bill Curtis: to try to outline to us and wake us up
Bill Curtis: a little bit as to how we need to reboot.
Wade Davis: America has shown through its history that it's capable of
Wade Davis: overcoming any impediment, any challenge, once it comes together in
Wade Davis: common purpose. I think the bigger point in trying to
Wade Davis: understand the issues raised in this Rolling Stone piece is
Wade Davis: to recognize that out of the disaster of the Second
Wade Davis: World War, with Europe and Asia prostrate, America inherited the
Wade Davis: mantle of world leadership. In that moment, in which 4%
Wade Davis: of the world's population generated 50% of the world's economy,
Wade Davis: making 90% of the world's automobiles, it critically allowed for
Wade Davis: a truce between labor and capital that gave us a
Wade Davis: middle class, it gave us the weekend. It gave us
Wade Davis: a time when a single breadwinner could support a wife,
Wade Davis: a family, buy a house, buy a car, and look
Wade Davis: forward to a bright future.
Bill Curtis: Jumping to today now, by comparison, you also wrote that
Bill Curtis: this pandemic has had an absolutely devastating impact on the
Bill Curtis: reputation and international standing of the United States of America.
Bill Curtis: You said that COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of
Bill Curtis: American exceptionalism.
Wade Davis: What I mean by that is the nation that once
Wade Davis: spat out jet planes by the hour suddenly in the
Wade Davis: wake of COVID was found to not be able to even
Wade Davis: manufacture the basic needs of the frontline workers. A nation-
Wade Davis: state that had led the way in medical innovation, defeating
Wade Davis: polio and smallpox, found itself led by an individual who
Wade Davis: was advocating the use of disinfectants for the treatment of
Wade Davis: disease, that he intellectually could not understand. A nation woke
Wade Davis: up to the fact that every day 2, 000 people
Wade Davis: were dying, that one American is dying every hour of
Wade Davis: every day from a disease that we had completely missed
Wade Davis: the boat on. That's what I sort of meant in
Wade Davis: the idea that COVID revealed the challenges that American now
Wade Davis: faces today.
Bill Curtis: Not everything has been great for this country. I mean,
Bill Curtis: let's be honest, we built this country on the economy
Bill Curtis: of slavery. We suppressed anyone who we felt was a
Bill Curtis: little different, whether racially or gender, or-
Wade Davis: I mean, America has always been the best of all
Wade Davis: things and the worst of all things, which is kind
Wade Davis: of its glory and its charisma. I mean, don't get
Wade Davis: me wrong, I love the United States. I chose to
Wade Davis: become an American, I raised my girls in United States.
Wade Davis: I found my education, my career could never have happened
Wade Davis: in a million years in Canada. My father- in- law
Wade Davis: was almost us president, my son- in- law is serving
Wade Davis: as an active member of your military as we speak.
Wade Davis: None of what I'm saying is anti- American. Let me
Wade Davis: just cite one statistic. On July 30th of this summer,
Wade Davis: when America announced close to 60,000 new cases of COVID,
Wade Davis: just shy of that, the total number of COVID cases
Wade Davis: in all the hospitals in British Columbia, where I live,
Wade Davis: there were only five cases of COVID.
Bill Curtis: As an anthropologist, I've got to ask you, Wade, why
Bill Curtis: is that? What was the root cause?
Wade Davis: When you politicize something as fundamental as using a mask
Wade Davis: to protect your fellow citizens from yourself, when you rush
Wade Davis: off to beaches as a political statement or to conventions,
Wade Davis: Americans sort of think that's a celebration of freedom, but
Wade Davis: it's actually a demonstration of weakness, the weakness of the
Wade Davis: people who lack the stoicism to endure the pandemic, or
Wade Davis: the fortitude to defeat it. David Frum had a great
Wade Davis: article where he gave a personal account of crossing the
Wade Davis: border into the United States and then back into Canada.
Wade Davis: He went into Maine and all he was asked is, "
Wade Davis: Do you have any booze," or these standard questions. He
Wade Davis: comes back into Canada, and of course at the US
Wade Davis: border nobody's wearing masks, you come back into Canada, my
Wade Davis: daughter just went through quarantine here, it is deadly serious.
Wade Davis: We have fines of up to three quarters of a
Wade Davis: million dollars for anyone who breaks quarantine, and jail time.
Wade Davis: My daughter came home, Bill, my wife and I were
Wade Davis: not even able to pick her up at the airport.
Wade Davis: She works for the defense department in DC and was
Wade Davis: able to bring her work home because of COVID, and
Wade Davis: then she had to present the customs people with an
Wade Davis: absolute plan as to how she was going to quarantine,
Wade Davis: where, her phone number, and the health authorities called her
Wade Davis: up to make sure she was, in fact, following the
Wade Davis: protocols. I know from anecdotal information that had she not
Wade Davis: been there to receive those phone calls, we would have
Wade Davis: gotten a visit from the police. This isn't police harassment,
Wade Davis: this is the collective needs of the society being met.
Wade Davis: That's why we had five COVID cases in British Columbia
Wade Davis: when you announced 60, 000.
Bill Curtis: But basically you're saying that under a circumstance like pandemic,
Bill Curtis: the Canadian method actually brings society together with a certain
Bill Curtis: amount of discipline that, no question, America lacks.
Jane Albrecht: Bill, I think what Wade is talking about is a
Jane Albrecht: shift in our culture that has happened since the 1950s
Jane Albrecht: and 1960s. Yes, America has always been about rugged individualism,
Jane Albrecht: but there's a balance between the individual and society that
Jane Albrecht: has tipped from more balanced in the '50s, '60s to very
Jane Albrecht: much towards it's all about me, which started in the
Jane Albrecht: 1980s. It's not a matter of whether Canada is disciplined
Jane Albrecht: and America's not, it's a view of our freedom.
Ed Larson: Jane made a very good point when she talked about
Ed Larson: how America exists in a tension, the American dream exists
Ed Larson: in a tension between community and individualism, and that's always
Ed Larson: been true.
Jane Albrecht: When you think about it, I don't think there's probably
Jane Albrecht: ever been a time in America where there has been
Jane Albrecht: more me- ism. I think me- ism is not the
Jane Albrecht: same as rugged individualism. When you look at our frontier,
Jane Albrecht: there was always rugged individualism, but when those settlers went
Jane Albrecht: out and settled that frontier, there was an intense understanding
Jane Albrecht: of you being part of a community. You needed it
Jane Albrecht: to survive. In World War II, there was rationing and
Jane Albrecht: everybody sacrificed to make all that possible.
Ed Larson: I do agree with you that we had a moment
Ed Larson: when we celebrated the world of Capra, but I just
Ed Larson: think that we have a tension. We do have a
Ed Larson: myth of community, but we also have a myth of
Ed Larson: the rugged individualism.
Jane Albrecht: This me- ism I'm talking about is not the same
Jane Albrecht: as rugged individualism. It is, " It's all about me. I
Jane Albrecht: don't want to pay for schools for anybody else's kids.
Jane Albrecht: I don't want to pay for healthcare for anybody else's
Jane Albrecht: kids. And if I'm rich, it's all because of what
Jane Albrecht: I did," no acknowledgement that it's related to anything else
Jane Albrecht: that society provides you. It's different.
Bill Curtis: Ed, the sacrifice that America took at the time of
Bill Curtis: World War II, did everybody just hop on without question
Bill Curtis: or was there actually some challenge at that time as
Bill Curtis: well? Because I have a feeling that there's a lot
Bill Curtis: less change here than some of you are describing.
Ed Larson: That's a great question, because you look back at the
Ed Larson: rising challenge of Europe, of Hitler and of fascism and
Ed Larson: of Japan, and leaders do matter. I totally agree with
Ed Larson: Wade, leaders matter. You look at the times of American
Ed Larson: crises and up pop our three greatest leaders, Washington, Lincoln,
Ed Larson: and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They took times of enormous divide.
Ed Larson: As some people say, there are better angels and there
Ed Larson: are worse devils, and pulling on those better angels has
Ed Larson: always been an enormous challenge for America.
Wade Davis: But you know, I think you're right. I mean, if you
Wade Davis: look at Washington, who famously couldn't tell a lie, the
Wade Davis: current president can't recognize the truth. That Lincoln celebrated charity
Wade Davis: toward all and malice toward none, Trump has inverted that
Wade Davis: to supporting malice towards all and charity for none. If
Wade Davis: you analyze the election of 2016, 62 million literally elected to
Wade Davis: use their precious vote to vote their indignations, personal indignation.
Ed Larson: I take a somewhat different view of the election, as
Ed Larson: Jane knows. People vote their hopes, and I don't think
Ed Larson: that Hillary Clinton gave them anything to hope for.
Wade Davis: Given that those were their motivations in 2016, and believe
Wade Davis: me, I had had trouble voting for another Clinton myself, but
Wade Davis: what I don't understand is why, given that he didn't
Wade Davis: deliver on any of those promises, are they feel so
Wade Davis: bonded to him?
Bill Curtis: Guys, I think that's a great question for when we
Bill Curtis: return. We'll be back in 30 seconds.
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Bill Curtis: Okay, we're back with my co- hosts, Jane Albrecht, Ed
Bill Curtis: Larson, and our special guest, Wade Davis. Wade, ask that
Bill Curtis: question again, because I think that was really profound.
Wade Davis: I totally reject the idea that every Trump voter in
Wade Davis: 2016 was somebody who crawled out from beneath the stone
Wade Davis: as is portrayed in the liberal media or in the
Wade Davis: Democratic ranks, but what I don't understand is how that
Wade Davis: cohort, given that he did not deliver on a single
Wade Davis: one of those promises with the possible exception of stacking
Wade Davis: the judiciary with conservatives, why do they cling to him
Wade Davis: with such tenacity to this day?
Bill Curtis: Actually, we had a previous show here on Meet Me
Bill Curtis: in the Middle with some gentlemen that I thought were
Bill Curtis: really profound, who actually defined the mindset of the conservative
Bill Curtis: voter. They said that the most powerful driver was fear
Bill Curtis: of chaos. It's clear that they are simply trying to
Bill Curtis: avoid the chaos that they feel the Democrats will bring,
Bill Curtis: or at least that's what the rhetoric is.
Jane Albrecht: I do think the people who voted for Trump, a
Jane Albrecht: good chunk of them, were frustrated by the non- responsiveness
Jane Albrecht: of the system to their needs for a long time.
Jane Albrecht: This was basically their Hail Mary pass. What happens in
Jane Albrecht: 2020 will be another question.
Bill Curtis: Wade, I think that your message actually was probably well- delivered at the
Bill Curtis: right time, when America, as a society, as a community,
Bill Curtis: can make a decision to make a change.
Wade Davis: One of the things that's interesting, I guess, is the response to this bloody article. I mean,
Wade Davis: I did it on spec, nobody expected it to take
Wade Davis: off as it did. The responses, which kind of fall
Wade Davis: predictably into two camps, are interesting. The people who are
Wade Davis: fundamentally sympathetic with the arguments respond with, maybe predictably, deep
Wade Davis: sadness and resolve, like, " Okay, we've been woken up. Let's
Wade Davis: think about these things, let's correct these things," and I
Wade Davis: think that's wonderful. The vitriolic communications that have come my
Wade Davis: way are remarkable in their singular unwillingness to deal with
Wade Davis: any of the issues, any of the questions.
Bill Curtis: You know what, Wade? Can we just talk about your signs of
Bill Curtis: progressive change for a minute, because I have a theory
Bill Curtis: about one of the ills of our society that was
Bill Curtis: best described by you and the reaction to your article.
Bill Curtis: The reality is that once upon a time the smallest
Bill Curtis: minds in America could influence the people within shouting distance.
Bill Curtis: Now, social media has given them a massive megaphone, where
Bill Curtis: they can react to someone like you to millions of
Bill Curtis: people, and they have this massive microphone and can have
Bill Curtis: a massive audience. That's one of the biggest problems with
Bill Curtis: our society. That's not a change, those people have existed
Bill Curtis: throughout our history. They just happen to have a platform
Bill Curtis: now. What are we to do about it?
Wade Davis: Yeah, there's an incredible, as I'm sure that both Jane
Wade Davis: and Ed have seen in their own careers, the democratization
Wade Davis: of opinion, the disappearance of discretion, the anonymity of the
Wade Davis: internet allowing you to say whatever you feel like saying,
Wade Davis: and the fact that most Americans now get their news
Wade Davis: from Facebook, not from the traditional media, and the algorithms
Wade Davis: of course collect our values together into cohorts so that
Wade Davis: we never speak to anyone who doesn't already agree with
Wade Davis: us. This is the most pernicious influence of social media.
Bill Curtis: But what should we do about it, Wade? We are
Bill Curtis: where we are.
Wade Davis: We have to regulate the internet. I hate to say that.
Wade Davis: You cannot have institutions as powerful as Facebook paying lip
Wade Davis: service to these issues and eliminating the odd bit of hate commentary.
Ed Larson: It used to be whether you were in a small
Ed Larson: town America or whether you were in a neighborhood in
Ed Larson: New York, social control sort of limited what you could
Ed Larson: say and what you could do because you were in
Ed Larson: a community and the community could exert control. Now, you
Ed Larson: can find your own extreme community spread out over the
Ed Larson: world. Rather than necessarily go to governmental regulation of this,
Ed Larson: federal law was passed, as you know, basically immunizing the
Ed Larson: content purveyors, be it the Facebooks or whoever of the world,
Ed Larson: from liability for what was said on their platforms. If
Ed Larson: you got rid of that law and allowed there to
Ed Larson: be liability for people injured by the content that is
Ed Larson: knowingly carried on Facebook, well, then the legal system itself
Ed Larson: would go a long way toward regulating that without having
Ed Larson: to trust some government to come in and regulate. That
Ed Larson: might be a more logical way to do it, since
Ed Larson: it was the government that gave that immunity to those
Ed Larson: content providers simply because those content providers pay great big
Ed Larson: contributions to the members of Congress, both parties, this a
Ed Larson: nonpartisan comment, to give them that immunity from liability. Now,
Ed Larson: if they were liable for the content that was spread,
Ed Larson: they might start self- regulating that content.
Wade Davis: I think that's a really good point. I mean, the
Wade Davis: minute you try to regulate through government intervention you can
Wade Davis: create political dispute and inefficiencies. When you can just simply
Wade Davis: say take away that regulation and you can liberate the
Wade Davis: thing like that, that's the way to go.
Jane Albrecht: I'm not talking about heavy regulation. I think you need
Jane Albrecht: a combination of two, and I think one reason Mark
Jane Albrecht: Zuckerberg wants it is to provide this sort of base
Jane Albrecht: level playing field so that if they get liability they
Jane Albrecht: know where that lies.
Wade Davis: You know, Bobby Kennedy is a good friend of mine.
Wade Davis: What he wrote about the fairness doctrine is so true.
Wade Davis: When the airways came along, the question was who owned
Wade Davis: them? You could own a radio station, but the airways
Wade Davis: were public domain. The fairness doctrine gave us Walter Cronkite
Wade Davis: and the idea that news was balanced.
Ed Larson: I don't know if we can really trust government to
Ed Larson: effectively regulate. That's where you're referenced to the fairness doctrine
Ed Larson: was so nice, because the government simply said you've got
Ed Larson: to have fairness, you've got to have balance. Actually, that
Ed Larson: law was designed by Herbert Hoover when he was Secretary
Ed Larson: of Commerce.
Bill Curtis: Wade, your essay at first read could feel like it's
Bill Curtis: hopeless, and yet it's clearly and soberly written and therefore
Bill Curtis: giving us kind of a 20/ 20 vision to look back
Bill Curtis: at our mistakes and also embrace some of our triumphs
Bill Curtis: that we've achieved. What should we do now with this
Bill Curtis: new education and our new clarity, our new vision, especially
Bill Curtis: in an election year?
Wade Davis: Well, thank you for giving me this opportunity, Bill, in
Wade Davis: general. It's been a delight to be with both Jane
Wade Davis: and ed. It's actually one of the most fun interviews I've
Wade Davis: ever done because it's-
Jane Albrecht: Oh, good.
Wade Davis: ... it's kind of fun. We're actually having a conversation.
Wade Davis: Rolling Stone actually asked me to do a follow- up,
Wade Davis: which is kind of a roadmap of hope, like what
Wade Davis: do we actually do, and one of the things we've
Wade Davis: been talking about is going out on the road and
Wade Davis: doing a kind of ethnography of America, almost like Robert
Wade Davis: Frank's The Americans. One of the things that I pride
Wade Davis: myself on is that I don't believe in enemies, only
Wade Davis: solutions to any issue. I guess this is partly the
Wade Davis: Canadian in me. I really believe in consilience and finding
Wade Davis: a way to find common ground. As an anthropologist who,
Wade Davis: especially when I had the position as being a social
Wade Davis: anthropologist of The National Geographic, I was traveling all the
Wade Davis: time and having the good fortune to spend time with not
Wade Davis: just one or two indigenous societies, but with literally scores
Wade Davis: and scores of indigenous peoples all around the world. So
Wade Davis: I like the idea of trying to reach out to
Wade Davis: all corners of America and be a conduit to common
Wade Davis: good and common ground.
Bill Curtis: In the past few years, there's been an outpouring of
Bill Curtis: protests and new voices speaking up for the rights of
Bill Curtis: a diverse number of Americans who have felt voiceless until
Bill Curtis: now. What would a healthy leadership look like in our
Bill Curtis: country today, at a time when while the economy and
Bill Curtis: the climate are battered down and it certainly is a
Bill Curtis: striking, challenging moment in our society, describe what the right
Bill Curtis: leader could do for this country.
Wade Davis: The right leader would bring us together, who would find
Wade Davis: the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln said, who would
Wade Davis: leave no doubt whatsoever that it was time to eliminate
Wade Davis: the original sin of the Republic, which is struggles with
Wade Davis: race, who would expose to all people that race is
Wade Davis: an utter fiction, and at the same time, not allow
Wade Davis: a culture of grievance to dominate the public discourse, to
Wade Davis: create some kind of sense that to be an American
Wade Davis: is not to be oneself, but to be part of
Wade Davis: something greater than oneself and not a kind of flag
Wade Davis: drape patriotism, which is so easy to evoke, but rather
Wade Davis: something deeper than that, a true commitment and knowledge, very
Wade Davis: much as Jane said, is that the roads we drive
Wade Davis: on weren't paid for by you, the hospitals we build,
Wade Davis: the national parks that we have. There is a great
Wade Davis: grand American experiment that has always been the beacon of
Wade Davis: hope for the world, and believe me, when one of
Wade Davis: the points I make in that article is that if
Wade Davis: and when the hinge of history opens to Asia and
Wade Davis: the torch passes to China, this will not be a
Wade Davis: time to gloat. It will not be a moment to
Wade Davis: celebrate. If and when the torch of history passes into
Wade Davis: the hands of a communist party with such a contempt
Wade Davis: for democracy, such treatment of ethnicities, creating a social capital
Wade Davis: index to monitor their lives of their own citizenry, we
Wade Davis: will be very nostalgic for the best years of the
Wade Davis: American century. Let's all hope that everything I described in
Wade Davis: this article can be addressed, and let's just hope that
Wade Davis: the hint in the article that this may be the
Wade Davis: end of the American era, there is no one in
Wade Davis: the world who would rather be proved to be wrong
Wade Davis: than myself,
Bill Curtis: Wade, I'm willing to make you a bet. This election
Bill Curtis: in November, America will have the greatest number of voter
Bill Curtis: voices in the history of our nation, which shows that
Bill Curtis: there's still an awareness, still a concern, and still a
Bill Curtis: path forward for our country, because of people like you,
Bill Curtis: who point out that this is the moment for which
Bill Curtis: we need it. I want to thank you for being
Bill Curtis: here today and I want to thank you so much
Bill Curtis: for spending this time. Oh boy, I'd love to have
Bill Curtis: you come back again. But first, we have a rare
Bill Curtis: opportunity before we leave, because you've got a book called
Bill Curtis: Magdalena: River of Dreams, which launched yesterday. It's a biography
Bill Curtis: of Columbia. Give us a preview of what we can
Bill Curtis: expect when we get that book.
Wade Davis: Well, Hector Abad, the great Colombian writer, called it a
Wade Davis: love letter to his nation. I think there is a
Wade Davis: parallel to what's going on in the United States and
Wade Davis: that no country was more divided at war with itself
Wade Davis: in Columbia, and yet the people have found a way
Wade Davis: to a peace, a tentative peace, a precarious peace, but
Wade Davis: peace nevertheless. Here's a country that has had a three-
Wade Davis: way civil war fueled exclusively by the proceeds of the
Wade Davis: cocaine trade. The country has nevertheless maintained democracy, civil society,
Wade Davis: greened its cities, created millions of acres of national park,
Wade Davis: and paved the way for an incredible economic renaissance as
Wade Davis: two generations of young Colombians, forced to flee, are coming
Wade Davis: back to their country. We all have a kind of
Wade Davis: obligation, because remember that the fuel of the has always
Wade Davis: been cocaine, think about this. At the height of the
Wade Davis: cartel, the Medellin cartel was budgeting a thousand dollars a
Wade Davis: week to buy elastic bands just to wrap the money
Wade Davis: in the. The war on drugs has been responsible for
Wade Davis: Columbia's agonies. Now, just think about this. How would Americans
Wade Davis: feel if Canada had patterns of drug consumption in the
Wade Davis: bars and boardrooms of our country, laws that created the
Wade Davis: mafia facilitated its wealth, and yet our enforcement did nothing
Wade Davis: to curtail the distribution of the drug, such that 85
Wade Davis: million Americans were driven from their homes? Well, that is
Wade Davis: exactly what happened in Columbia. In that sense, it behooves us
Wade Davis: to pay attention to this country as it struggles to
Wade Davis: find its way forward. The world is falling apart, but
Wade Davis: happily, Columbia is falling together. The book is a celebration
Wade Davis: of a nation that is not a place of violence
Wade Davis: and war, but is home to the greatest biological ecological
Wade Davis: diversity on the planet.
Bill Curtis: Thank you to Wade Davis for joining us. Don't forget
Bill Curtis: to follow him at DavisWade. com. Of course my co-
Bill Curtis: hosts, Jane Albrecht and Ed Larson. If you're inspired by
Bill Curtis: this edition of Meet Me in the Middle, please send
Bill Curtis: the link to your friends and plan a Zoom discussion,
Bill Curtis: perhaps over a good single malt. This is a bunch
Bill Curtis: of very important subjects that are worthy of your consideration
Bill Curtis: and your discussion with your friends. Also, please leave a
Bill Curtis: comment about our show. Special thanks to our general manager,
Bill Curtis: Stuart Halperin, for bringing Wade to us today, and our
Bill Curtis: producer, Mike Thomas. Sound design by Michael Kennedy, and the
Bill Curtis: music for Meet Me in the Middle is composed and
Bill Curtis: performed by Celleste and Eric Dick. By the way, if
Bill Curtis: you haven't listened to last's week show with economist Daron
Bill Curtis: Acemoglu, a Nobel Prize- bound economist, do yourself a favor
Bill Curtis: and load that one up next. Bye- bye, everybody. Don't
Bill Curtis: forget to vote.
Speaker 6: ( singing).
Speaker 1: CurtCo Media, media for your mind.