We will put a link when you can. Lets begin. When i go with your part. I hope that even though we cant see him for all of them being with us this evening. It is my honor to introduce the extraordinary guest they have about who we are. Is one of the most to influential people of our time. He also likes the controversy over the the talented area. The unique part of writing. It has never wavered. Beginning with his reporting and presence. Israel and more. Today after 30 publix published works. Hundreds of articles with the documentary. A new series of articles. And more since 200019. It has turned the inside of the mind. Returning to the medical gaze. He ask that we think critically potentially our threat. I have to say that i had been awaiting this in english. The virus is the age. It is not a vital reflection. The more perverse and dangerous pitfalls of what it means to confirm the thinking and gaze towards one another. But no to the confinement of our mind. Tonight they will discuss with Thomas Friedman one of the leading Mister Friedman began reporting to the New York Times in 1991. With that bureau chief. With the international correspondent. And since 1995. The is the author of seven bestselling books. It is such a pleasure to welcome you both at the stryker center. Thank you. I am seeing the participants. A great credit to you and a number the number of people that need to hear the insight. I think just to take five or seven minutes to summarize the book and maybe come back with our own take on the pandemic. And then iterate back and forth. It is is a great pleasure to be here. Im very happy about this. What do i mean by this. Lets start this way. It is said in a slightly different way. This virus makes us mad. There is two times of madness. The first one on which we will agree you and me. Those who deny the virus. Those who dont want to see the virus and those who put the mask on the reality. In fall into this. Like children in the sandbox. Seen where the reelection. And who does act in the crazy, stupid and criminal way. With all of their respect. Meaning your president. And others. And many others. To react with madness to this pandemic. I will not spend seven minutes on that. There is a way to be mad it is the is the way we react to this pandemic you have a course a lot of people who react and act with wisdom. For sure. But you have a pandemic of hysteria all over the world and of selfishness. I believe for example the way we are giving power to the doctors who dont wish it by it by the way. Is the reaction as if we were lost and when youre lost in a rather crazy way. They know they have to be respected. With their knowledge if we consider it. This is a way to be man. To consider i tried to listen to the wall. It is how people express in some of the sentences we spread in our world i cannot help. Something that bothers me. Social distancing. Of course it is necessary. Of course we have to accept it for a while. I dont know it would be if it would be months or a year. For myself i accept it as a terrible and sad obligation. What i see in europe and in america is a lot of people accepting it as a new normal state of things. As for myself and for you. And for the temple emanuel. We expand our life fighting social distancing. It is precisely what we are fighting against with the conversation that we are having. In all possible ways. It means despise and so on and so forth. There is a way to accept it in a new normal way of being which is a sort of panic when i hear dr. Fauci. That is okay. Like this. What is happening secants. It is a symbol of great things. As a sign of peace. It is sign of equality. The way in which with mutual respect. Instead of the previous time when one looked down at the other. In this way of consenting and accepting may be cherishing the symptoms of these moments i take the last example. And it would be to you. As we say in france. Look down as you say that. It consists for toomey people. In a sort of moment of self focusing going back to what is supposed to be the truth. For me it is opposite for the duty. Or for the jewish woman it consists getting out of yourself. And getting to the other being transforming into a host but transforming yourself into a stage of the other. And of the misery of the other. Again this is another example of this sort of bad effect. Or side effect i will accept and which one appears to me this has to be consistent with the new normal state this is for me the second madness and this is for the main idea. It is about what is called in the language of american Popular Culture today. I think you have to have a very fundamental question in the previous pandemics it certainly goes back to 1918 there was a tragic view of the human condition the coming and going up pandemics. We will not lock down the whole economy to try to save every single person. There was a much more tragic kind of sensibility. Life was national you had raised the point and in some interviews as well why did that change. We had approached this pandemic very differently from previous ones in history and what role did the internet play in that. What has changed realizing also on meca physics. In the conception of what is the meaning of being a human being. One which is good and one is less good. Life is much more sacred than it was in 1918 and 19. I was the end of the First World War it would be unacceptable today. The war for example. Even if we dont zero in. An american soldier. Even if it happens. It was not at this time. Things that were in the order today. As a tragic means of another thing. It is not as good. Where we think that we can really overcome. We can really get rid of the tragic area. We can get rid of the parts of the loss and the lack whatever you call it. At the end of this process you can triumph again after this. Against delta its. Dot itself. We will be there. And we get to get rid of the tragedy. To put it far from us. It means the stream of humanity i think it is very dangerous to answer this. The experience of the last century. They tell us that if we go too far in these tragic dreams if we really cross it. With the computer and a program not convenient we get much worse. On one side we consider life is sacred on the other side we breathe this. We feed the dream of the humanity getting rid of death. This is what its one of the most interesting points in your book. It is a good place for us to segue may be to share with you my perspective. Its actually the point where we meet. I get there from a very different route. You come at through a very philosophical perspective. The man was european. And actually get there. I got this a different way. Actually by looking at a natural system your book is just such a wonderful framing of perspective. I actually come at it from the perspective and of an environmentalist. Working and at the same place. Let me share with you in brief and of how i got to the same conclusion. My daughter natalie as executive is executive producer of all Things Considered weekend on National Public radio. On Easter Sunday they did around it. With the height of the pandemic. And my favorite was Michael Curry from the national cathedral. Ended by singing a little song. If you just substitute schieffer he you know where i start with the pandemic. This is the first time for our generation of human species that at the same time we had been in the grip of Mother Nature. Unless youre 103 in your here in 1918. This is the first time and has been in the grip of one of mothers Mother Natures throws pitches at us. And fastballs at us. They are called hurricanes and tornadoes. And floods and forest fires. All the things that get thrown at us. They show get the dna into the next generation now when Mother Nature throws her fastballs at us she actually doesnt reward the strongest she doesnt reward the smartest. That is who she rewards. She only rewards three adaptations and asks every individual and collective three questions first of all are you humble do you respect my virus because if you dont i will hurt you or someone you love. Are you coordinated in your response to my virus because i have it over millennia. And define any crack in your immune system. In your collective immune system. And lastly is your adaptation strategy to my virus built on chemistry biology and physics alone. Because if they are built on patio politics in the election counter i will hurt you or someone you love. Because im just chemistry biology and physics. You cant say Mother Nature were having a bad recession. Can you take a few months off. I will do whatever chemistry biology and physics dictate. And put it in american baseball turn i always bat last and i always bat a thousand. That is where i start and its where my tragic sensibility comes from. Because when youre up against Mother Nature tradeoffs are always built into the scenario. The key mistake and our president main. I did not mean to turn this into a trumpet bashing session. The great failure analytically to begin with of many. The central one is he does not look at the world through natural systems. He only looks at the world through markets. His only experience is actually building golf courses where he believes he could actually triumph over nature because he would actually build waterfalls. He actually thought he could triumph over that. He gives a disastrous speech. It went on a Record Number of points. And that he changed policy and amended it. And the market went up a number of points. He actually took a screenshot of the market rise and send it to a man on lou dobbs. That knucklehead showed it. And that knucklehead showed it on the evening Business News of fox tv. While they were doing that. At the two of them Mother Nature was silently exponentially and mercilessly spreading coronavirus from coast to coast. The central challenge and this gets to me to the core of your tragic point and i will come at it and at nature. Is from the very beginning bernard we have to have a two prong policy that the right policy from the very beginning was how to maximize saving lives and livelihoods at the same time in a pandemic where youre up against Mother Nature. You have to try to maximize life and livelihood because if you just locked down everything and crush the economy so many more people will die overtime death of despair then well ever die from covid19. The challenge is always how do you do both we saw the three basic models around the world and that and i will end with this. We saw the chinese model. It was actually to use the state Surveillance System china has developed to control its people to try to control the virus. And they were super efficient. They didnt just flatten the curve they crushed the curb. They did it by using a huge state surveillance apparatus. We have democratic variance of that. France had one. South korea, germany, all of the democratic variance of that. And depending on the culture in the efficiency of the government some worked work better in some worked less. The second model was the sweetest model. Swedish model. Were actually going to balance lives and livelihood by keeping part of the economy open. We will close other parts to encourage social distancing but we will actually go for herd immunity. They wanted to crush the virus. The swedes said lets actually do it by letting the young and healthy go out and acquire this. And the last model is the american model. Which was to talk like we were doing like china to act like we were doing like sweden to prepare for neither into claim to be superior too both. That basically is the trump strategy. Its given us this incredible point now. We arent neither maximizing lives or livelihood. That is how i come to the tragic sensibility that you arrived at. It is coming there through the root of looking at the problem as a National Systems problem and what happens when youre up against Mother Nature. Its very interesting we reach the same point and we have different stamina about trump and about the state of america alas i must say i would love for you to agree. When it first is too pessimistic. We believe 100 percent. For the european who believes so much in america it is heartbreaking. As i often say i belong to this category who would not even be alive with the out the americans and the sacrifices and the american views. In to see america in the state where it is today is catastrophic. Let me elaborate on a brilliant point that we made. From a european point of view we are almost back to a pre Christopher Columbus lovely. We europeans for the first time in ages we dont expect anything from america. Years before you have anti america at least it was on the table. It was. It was in the center of the game. In europe. No expectation for america. For the new dictators of the view. With the power with the entire point like russia. They are moving and they are stepping in as this america that did not exist. That was absolutely unthinkable a few years ago. They dont think that they will count this. This is not understood. We agree on that. We agree all that you have said. Where would we agree. Im going to stress on that. You said what Mother Nature was asking at the beginning. There are other questions which Mother Nature addresses to us. They asked also do you have a home. This is the model. But do you have a proper home. Do you have a place in which you can stay. There is a huge difference between having the house. And to being homeless. Mother nature ask do you have some money aside with which with which you can hold on for months or years. Where are you a daily daily walker. If there was one week. Mother nature ask do you have or do you belong to a network which knows you. Can goes to hospital when youre finished. Do you have to transform your home. You have to be condemned to a big hospital or your own home do you have the chance are you lucky enough to be born nevertheless despite of what we said in america. The democratic countries where you have that. When the president is too much crazy. With the dictator. And where it is used as an argument. To wheeled down people. With all the sense of the world. Mother nature ask these questions also. And Mother Nature ask in complicity it makes a separation. Between the lucky who will survive and the unlucky. How had we to react to these questions of Mother Nature. We have to react and this is my point. We have to react with intelligence and knowledge. We have to be much more sophisticated and intelligent than we have heard. With to be more wise. We have to collect. To find a vaccine we have to match that. In sweden. We have to declare a scientific emergency where all women and men of goodwill connect and work handinhand in order to reply to the challenge of Mother Nature. We have to Mother Nature act in a way she shoots blindly those who dont have healthcare and so on and so forth. We have to work exactly when we do. Remember after the center. The good news was to say we remain faithful to our values. We dont accept this moment of emergency to have as a consequence to forget. This was very important. We said today. The good reaction to these blind questions is to remain more than ever faithful to our creeds. That the other one the creed that life and the lady in bangladesh is as important as the student in yellow university this is the values in which we have to keep faithful more than ever. And because Mother Nature is humiliating these values. We to with to share this more than ever. We have to cherish the values of what we had called that. What is humanism. To be to accept her but to add to Mother Nature this fact of sophistication in the spirit. We are speaking in this is the jewish wisdom it just consists in from the start to today. To say for ages Mother Nature did dictate we are going to respect her but we decide that if we respect her too much it is idolatry and there is something about it whatever you call it. That is something that kept the human being which has to be stronger. Not engulfed of course. Sane for example is not in us. If we are not able the time and the values which is the reason why. This is one of the chapters of the book. The best doctors because they treat the body in the human and the human beings as a body. Were used to Mother Nature. And before we forget the stride of life. Which makes a woman a woman a man a man and mankind mankind. This is our difference i think i think you described it all under my category just to be cordoning in your response. American in europe. They were actually coordinated in ways that they are today. To have that for the most disadvantaged. The big question will be one of the things weve learned most from this crisis it was actually the people at the bottom of the pyramid who have been the First Responders saving us in this crisis unlike 911. Obviously the doctors and nurses in the health care workers. The people stocking the Grocery Store shelves driving the trucks. Unloading the tracks. Trucks. Working in those stores every day for minimum or near minimum wage. Probably living in conditions that they cant social distance and probably having minimal if no healthcare. The real question is after this pandemic is over we will understand what we are doing to help them how to we make that permanent. How do we understand that the values that they had been bringing through all of this. It just falls under my category of being coordinated. It just means that we cooperated. You are elevating and protecting the very people who are doing the most to protect you. You raised a really interesting question about the lockdown. In the new sort of authoritarian pockets. Talk about a little bit of that from a european perspective that is something americans might not be so aware of. How are they using this crisis to actually reinforce their authoritarian politics. See make just a minute. About those individuals who give that there. Who hold on the folder of the world. Its what they are still doing. They are really supporting the roof and of the globe there is a great coverage. The fall of the life. It was not sustained. By the humble. Those who studied by the study. Recreating itself today. Those who prevent the world from deep creation. Are the social workers. The conductors. And this is i agree so much on that and the more we can be aware of that. As for those who take advantage of the pandemic it is in europe for sure i met him. The main difference. Is that the young are having to take care of that. They care about life. They dont give a care about the life of the migrants. Were what they would consider all gearing. This pandemic for him is a divine surprise as the french philosopher said in 1914. It is the help of god god is whispering to his ear and allowing him to make more heavy, same here. It was to take advantage we have some countries its a country i happen to know. In nigeria. Now it is there. These head to be fact checked. The comparable number of dead. And from Police Taking advantage of this. For examples. When they were stopping and getting all that. And the example of that which is so sad. It happens again that just after the end of the french confinement i went to the greek island is a place where a lot of refugees from suzanne dash make sudan were there when they tried to reach europe. And they are locked down. It is organized for 2000 maximum people. And what is so despicable and horrible is that the greek government one of the things is. Was to decrease the lockdown from this huge camp of 20,000 people. One month ago i made a story a aits no longer a camp, its a jail. Its not even a jail, it is a hell. This is the limit example of what you are saying of the way in which some democratic powers, because abit is the stop of the democracy. The way in which the virus is instrumentalized in order to take some really unfair and not criminal but undemocratic lecture. On humanistic decisions. This is for example, the most striking of all. Honestly, i spend two or three days in this camp and there was horrified to see how Mother Nature was taken hostage by a democratic government decided to implement regarding refugees who are now the common enemy which is a disaster. They bring so much from europe now considered and covid help stat. A big question that im pondering here of course is how much of the madness weve seen our country will be with us if and when donald trump is no longer president. God willing. I wrote today about what is probably for me the most, every long list of disturbing things that have been evidenced by this pandemic, disturbing behaviors in america and for me it really comes down to the politicization of the facemask. The idea that. I read the text, your text. Wearing a facemask would be a cultural marker, a political statement and a society that can politicize a facemask commodities will be a seatbelt. A society that can politicize that can politicize anything. Physics, rainfall, it can politicize anything. One of the most disturbing features of the last not just 3 and a half years but even before is the inability that weve lost, what my friend rena gorgas calls our cognitive immunity. We have just lost our physical immunity, we lost our cognitive immunity, our ability to embrace and act on shared truths. Weve lost our cognitive immunities thanks to social networks attacking them, foreign powers attacking it. The president decrying anything he doesnt like as fake news and the loss of our cognitive immunity on the eve of this pandemic has only made the pandemic works. So we cannot agree on, the facts of whether the therapy is either effective or not. And we cannot agree on certain fundamental principles of like a facemask. I find that deeply threatening to our democracy whether joe biden is present or donald trump as president , certainly i prefer joe biden, i know he wont feel that fire but im curious because one of things that strikes me is that no one else in the world is behaving this way no one else is politicizing facemasks at the scale that we are doing. , from your perspective, what the hell happened to us . Trump. If you have a proper leadership, if you had a president able to give the example and consider as a possible example it would not happen. Because to be very clear, as for myself, i obeyed. I did wear the mask during the peak of the pandemic and in the places where it is required i am 100 disciplining. But i feel it as a disagreement i know that if we met, you and me, with mass, it would be a fuel of the relationship. I know we speak with their eyes, also with our mouth. Come your mustache all that belongs to face means so much, the face is such an ethical reality that it is true that to wear a mask is a sort of sacrifice. It is a sacrifice. But there are some moments where you have to make some sacrifice. We elected america abwhat you lack in america is whats required in the times of great sacrifices, which is a leader who says it will take some time, it will not be forever, but for the moment you have to. Even if it is hot, even if you breathe a little less, even if those who hear bad here even worse, you have to do it, what you lack is a leader and what we have is a president who has probably some there are some things going wrong but at least he is considered by the french people as as a credible example. When he wears a mask in the french think, okay, we have to and they do. We have this temptation politicization because abbut we did not. We would put a handkerchief on the possible quarrel and obey. Because we have the leadership to show the direction this is what you dont have. In america, which is the continent a free spirit without leader can lead to discourse in which you are with governors acting like crazy competitors, with social networks saying that the most crazy id has the same value as the truth with the idea that of all this witches the product of abut accelerated by the leadership that you have. We are coming close to the end of the hour and ive been keeping my eye on the questions as well, i want you to end by taking up two questions, how will europe as we want to take advantage of you being a european and being in europe, how do you think france and europe will be changed by this pandemic . And how do you think america and americas role in the world will be changed by this pandemic . It will not be changed by the pandemic, it will be changed by political will and by reconnecting yourself or not with the american creed. Its not a question of the pandemic. I refuse to give too much importance, too much importance abto this pandemic. I dont abi do not think its unprecedented. I think there is not before and after. I think we will prevail after the pandemic, i hope. I hope that it will be less deadly than some of the past but i dont think that as itself it will change the world. Except the consciousness that the proper democracy has to have proper hospitals, has to have a Proper Health system that while the worst inequalities is what i said before, those who have access, and those abthis hopefully will change. For the rest, i dont rely i dont put my hope in the reaction to the pandemic in order to build a better world. A loss, when the pandemic will be over, the world of awill restart with the same people of the two sides the barricade. Those who are happy with the world as it is and those who are honestly genuinely sometimes disparately trying to prepare to repair it will restart like that. And the real point for america is that america will have to reconsider itself as a founder of great values. The creator of the founding fathers. And so on. What is happening with europe is not new to pandemic, europe is trying to take the sin its hands because we discovered that the American Protection might not exist any longer and for the moment, god forbid, if something terrible happens to europe for the First Time Since one Century America will not come to our rescue. Its not the pandemic, its trump who created this state of political ain europe which some of us take into consideration they try their best to respond to the new challenge created by the retreat of america and you have those. I am in italy now. You have some people are happy with that, ready to make a deal with vladimir putin, a deal with apple gone, deal with worse militias in order to foot the migrants who try to cross america. This dividing lines in europe. But the dividing lines is not pandemic. I resist as for myself to the temptation to give too much historical philosophical importance to this pandemic. At the end of the day it is a tragic disease. It is a little virus but it is just a virus. As i say in the book, a virus is pure suffering, is pure death, its the sort of coagulation of poison but its not an agent of history over rules of history. Delivering a message to those who are ready to listen. I try in my book to resist to this way of considering the pandemic. Is the one area that i disagree with you on. I think it is a messenger i think both sars covid one and sars covered to arla messengers that we expanded urban areas into wilderness areas. We have killed the apex predator in those wilderness areas. We left behind generalized species of bats, rats, primates who can live and destroy the ecosystems that weve gone in and hunted those and they evolved in the wild with their viruses like the coronavirus. Weve gone in, we hunted those, we extracted them, we put them into the markets abwhich is where sars covid one came from and sars covid to where they jumped in in some way we dont fully understand from these species to humans and other mammals. I do think its a warning to us that when you press on Mother Nature too far, when you go to these extremes, you will get these deeply apparent responses and i do think this is a warning on climate that if you do go to the same extreme on climate, Climate Change has a couple differences with sars covid 1 and sars covid 2, im a change doesnt peak. Viruses peak, Climate Change is at peak. If we melt the arctic ice, it will be gone forever. It will never reflect the sun again. Belgian will rise and we will live with the implications of that forever. Not only does it not peak, there is no herd immunity to Climate Change. Theres just an endless pounding on the hurt. But there is one difference that we actually have the vaccine for Climate Change which is dramatically reducing co2 emissions. That was something that i disagreed with. I think there is an important warning here about going to extremes with nature but we have a couple minutes left, i want to get you to talk about israel and the middle east. Both in israel and in the middle east you refer to curtis dan, different middle east populations obviously wrestling with the virus and with political disintegration at the same time, lebanon, israel, netanyahu, with the thought he slayed his dragon and now come back to bite him triggering massive protests against netanyahu. Pick your lens of the book and apply it to the middle east before we close. Before we close. I want to say that on Climate Change we are on the same page. I think i read most of your pieces on that. I agree 100 . Its an emergency. Few more pressing political questions and resisting Climate Change. I used to say that we live in the first time in history and Human History where the idea of the end of humanity has become the great historical event. It is always been taken into consideration but as an impossible event how would i say, apocalyptic event, happening nearly out of the world. For the first time in Human History you have scientists who disagree if its in one century, two centuries, 10 years, five centuries. But there is an agreement to say that the end of humanity because of Climate Change will happen in the time of Human History. This is huge. You are right that the coronavirus is the product of the description but the virus of the spanish flu virus of ab the virus for century before christ, it was before Climate Change it was before globalization and they were healing viruses. What i would say is a little different thing. There are so many viruses and many viruses in humanity that as skies in the sky. abstars in the sky. There is a lot. Take the page of over power of Mother Nature when nature is only put on you have some viruses who come and some take advantage of the degree of mankind. I dont know how else to describe it. Maybe scientist will do it someday but im sure there is there might be a difference between those who attack when Mother Nature is strong and those who attack when Mother Nature is right but the two ababout the middle east, it depends and was recently in kurdistan there is a mixture of things. I dont know if the main problem in israel today is ab there is a real problem about the destiny of zionism. Giving the new dream into the great dream of zionism. Which is for me, one of the rare will achieved revolution of this century will it die . Will it survive . Will it revive . This is the real challenge for israel. Is covid the big challenge . Im not sure. It might be a mask. It might be a mask for those who dont want to raise the real x essential question for the sake of absame political even if you look at the figures. My reaction is really to be humble and careful taking the countries the situations in the world case after case and probably not i tried to prevent myself from generalizing too much. This is been a treat to be in this dialogue. I urge everyone to go, stay online, click up amazon. Com, look at bernards name, click on the book, by the book, its the least you can do. And its been a treat for me. Anytime, bernard, i always enjoy our conversation. A pleasure for me, a great honor. Thank you for being with us tonight. During a Virtual Author Program lindsay stravinsky historian at the White House Historical association discuss the formation of George Washington president ial cabinet, heres a portion of her talk. Washington really doesnt get enough credit for being politically savvy for having good leadership skills, for being very actively involved in the president ial process. As i mentioned with the council of leadership, he was dealing with some really big personalities. They were loud, they were arrogant, they had their own ambitions but they had their own ideas about how to do things, including charles lee who famously like to bring in his pack of hounds to counsel warriors, which i as a dog lover personally think is great but anyone who knows hounds knows that they can be quite loud and perhaps not conducive to a good meeting environment. He would do this just a really colorful boisterous environment and he had to manage all these personalities. When washington was president he certainly had fewer people he had to manage in a small space. But anyone whos seen hamilton knows that hamilton and jefferson really really didnt like each other. And really didnt get along. That management was crucial. The other reason the management was so important was because washington was setting precedent in every single action he was taking. Everything from how to correspond with the secretaries or how to interact with congressmen. Hope to respond to an average person on the street. What social events to take place. Someone whos capable of managing these details and managing the people beneath him was crucial when you are talking about building out a governing structure that isnt in the constitution and isnt passed in legislation. That becomes essential. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website booktv. Org and search lindsay stravinsky, or the title of her book the cabinet. In advance of the Republic National Convention Starting monday, want to show you some related author programs from our archives. Coming up are some programs about President Trump along with some of his supporters thoughts on how he can win reelection in november. First up from this past february on our Author Interview program after words, after words, former Deputy National security advisor in the Top Administration recalls her time working for the president. Trump understood that if you rebuild the American Economy to make it his strongest economy in the world you have a lot of leverage. Interview get off middle east oil and make
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