You are watching book tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Tonight, one of the things you been happy to do over the past few months, you talk about things that are going on in our world and things that are happening, turn events, issues that you made in grappling with and weve had an event with a book on corruption in america we didnt want to turn that down and we had an amazing career with all types of different factors from being a reporter with National Public radio and the chairman of the joint chief of staff with all kinds of other achievements and it is one of our leading experts of a concept on corruption and what that means and thats something we are hearing about a lot these days, we will talk about this wonderful new book, what is been going on recently and much, much more, welcome, sarah is joining from West Virginia, hello. Hello and hello everyone, we were speaking before we all came on about how much we all regret not being in a room with you folks and we can connect with you which is so meaningful to us and so appreciative, you all have way too much to do in your juggling too many things and then we take some time out to spend an evening with us and we really appreciate it. I will say those of you who would like to get a copy, we will be posting links in our chat throughout the evening, occasionally to remind you, i would encourage you to do so and if you have questions while we are talking please put those in the q a and i will put those into our conversation while we are going so you will have some questions popping up, i would like to begin at a large scope and talk to you about how you get into the work of looking at and being interested in the concept of corruption and secondly what is corruption, and to add a lot of weight to it, what is actually due. I never had any intention of working on corruption, i went galloping off to cover the government for the National Public radio and decided this is a really important place at this moment and so i bailed and decided to work for a while helping rebuild this country that had in a way, it was almost an innocent bystander and it was a reconstruction thing and things like that and then as time went on it was two or three years into it and people learn and i was about the only american afghans because they could speak their language and i was known to the area and they started telling me the corruption of the government and how they were shaken down every time they interacted with the Government Official and it appeared to them that the american presence was actually really important and enabling the corruption of the government that we americans are supporting, we could not figure that out because they were actually delayed to have us there because they wanted a government that functioned in the public interest, that was an interesting thing because the cliche about afghanistan, all these people dont want to be governed, democracy is not for everyone, i was like wow, they know exactly what the market and what a government knows, i was pushed into working in corruption by my afghan neighbors, it wasnt going there with the western mindset, it was the african that forced me too focus on the topic and getting ready was and i will just apologize, i was saying earlier, this is a tiny place and im getting it in the life, if im scratching, its not that i havent taken a bath, please forgive me, in that context, i am in downtown which is the heartland in the middle what quickly started to be and i was driving people back into the taliban, i was not american, and friends in town and it was not in american culture, it was not religion, it was corruption and that really blew my mind because again that countered everything that you had heard in a red about the came on 2015 called ease the state why corruption threatens Global Security in which there i went from another systemically corrupt countries in the suburbs that they were violent insurgencies, there were revolutions happening across the arab world and it was about corruption, i suddenly realized this issue was not just an afghan weirdness that depict to that remarkable country or afghanistan, this is a global phenomenon, in that book i finished it with an epilogue that basically said guys, it is not just countries and is pakistan and nigeria and afghanistan, we are on this continuum and if we are not careful, its going to blow up in our face, i did not expect that it would blow up in our face so quickly but frankly that is really the spin i put on the election 2015, both on the left and on the right, you had politicians that blew up the political race, big surprise on both sides, both of the sides of corruption. One of the things that is interesting i think it are mine when we think of the popular consciousness and we think about corruption in america we have a few touch points historically and we think about watergate and we think about the machine, the democratic machine of new york, that is like five or six things that are touch points that we can have the notion, you look much further back and think about the concept, can you talk about the role that corruption has played in forming western democracy generally how you look to the past. Actually i go further back than that, that is one of the Different Things about this bo book, there is a lot being written about corruption in the United States, that tends to take a rather partisan approach which i dont, either of those, i actually start the book, prologue that happens in 2016 but the first little chapter starts at 600 bc, why is that, thats when money was invented. , not only that, the word basically something that is not true and that myth the most insightful things of literature review will and for humans explaining themselves to themselves sometimes i feel because weve ignored that wisdom will be forced in our life, remember the guy the god asked them for one single wish and he said i want everything that i touch to turn to gold. And he was upset about that and you know what i was upset within 30 seconds because once he got that gift he found everything he touched turned to gold, everything had value to him including water, apples, everything is beautiful and irreplaceable in a kids version is what he provided, im hesitating because im looking very dark and im not seeing myself i see you okay. I turn the light on. While were being friendly, thats a little bit better, i apologize. I think that is good. It was distracting me actually, the point there is, what i found was fascinating, we lived just about where and when money was, that myth is about money which is a revolutionary new way of storing and transferring values and what is different about it, when you get addicted to money, when you catch the disease and more than anything else, first of all you convert everything of real value to work with metal, what can you do with gold, in this teenage the problem is oneself becomes the major of special standard, how many dollars you have a big account, once a society is basically run by that, its the way to the finish line, that is such a terrifying fact because we live on a planet, people with the disease are going to convert everything of value on this planet and everything of value that humans are, produce and do into the bank account. Then you asked me too talk historically and you also asked me too talk about the definition of corruption, it is the abuse of public trust for private gain, the definition has been deliberately narrowed for in this country, and those process, and the United States were we ordinary people can smell and feel corruption when we see it, if it walks like a duck, the definition has become that its almost impossible to convict anyone for the crime of corruption, even that is not sufficient, even today where much of the news, we have a feeling that it is a collection of general acts by a bunch of different people, the story tends to be separate, divided, isolated, the investigative story for the details and after a while it bores me, corruption like that at something of individuals doing that and into government. Positions of power for personal gain, what is different in theory is that principles or governing society and the last time that really happened on the skill and the United States was a late 19th an early 20th century, you mentioned bob, that is right in my. That was up and down the political system, that was the city buses and also the grandson administration riddled with corruption, the railroad was the most to be corrupt enterprises and a lot of this i had to learn, im not a historian but not a 19th century by training and a lot of these and what i discovered in similar for what was today, corruption was the work was intertwined in the network, people who work together, friends with each other, in the same city or whatever and yet in the network that is reinforced by the exchange of favor, by the personnel, from business to government, back to business, back to government, the network runs business and government, government no longer serves upon the district, its either distorted and sometimes broken in some of the institutions are actually broken in order that the government will of the network and not the people, and i was really struck by the similarities. When you think about concepts like cronyism and nepotism, those are just branches on the tree of corruption in terms that we use in concepts. That is how the Network Functions when you say nepotism and cronyism, that is how you speak power and money inside the network with the position or contract or you name it on your friends and family, these networks, i look them in a dozen countries around the world and its remarkable how parallel the functioning is and thats what corruption was or is, i was international, i was galloping around i was at honduras and whatnot and i discovered these patterns and realized it was time to play the exact methodology and approach that i knew in countries that i dont know in countries that are alien to us and clinically i need to apply the same approach to my own country, i was pretty distraught by what i found, what i wanted to say is that we talk about cronyism and nepotism, and some countries did i look at, it was woven and typically woven about the family court and was sitting countries that ive seen, there is a tight family court and in some countries, that family court runs the whole thing, and other countries there might be networks and they compete with each other, other times its more and other countries the Public Sector is the lead for the president or whatever for the country and in a country like moldova or soviet countries that we talk about all a guard, that really means that the integrated network will and as a metaphor for these networks which is the moment that is the greek monster, exactly, one point is that if you just look if its 109 or 100, a different animal, it looks like nine different snakes, if you stand back and theyre all striking and moving and doing their own thing, you can think its nine separate things, if you stand back you see theyre all attached to the single body and theyre all doing their separate things to advance the interest of the whole and thats how these networks function. One thing that struck me about the book and made me think about what i love about books like this, were in the middle of a president ial election in the primary in every election we have ever had pretty much in my lifetime and its always been talk of getting back to a thriving class but really only existed from about 1950 1980 and ended before that in a blip on the american radar and they talk about returning to the. , my question to me in the light of corruption and we have the American Dream over here in the natural default of our system and wealth inequality is a moment like the post war middleclass and is not a place we can get back to, its a great question and i dont quite remit that way with nonproduction in america but i address basically what youre talking about, any system, capitalist, communist, you name it is something that is a set of rules that is created by human beings, it really depends on what rules that we make and enforce, during the gilded age, use the term gilded age for a long period but its really and the systemic corruption when people are captured and they were in the system because thats what they do, you have systemic corruption. , they are writing and enforcing in their own medicine and thats we have massive wealth inequality and exploitation of labor and the reinstatement of africanamericans, we are talking approximately 70 and i put the change of little earlier than you do, i went to the change in the late 1930s, for that. The rules were written by the network, no wonder we had wealth inequality, thats not the definition of capitalism, thats a specific version of capitalism which was engineers by a tiny coalition of people people think wasted, then what happened, what i was really interested in once i found how parallel the situation was today, how did they get out of it, my question was how do you get to that and could we today learn lessons, one thing i learned about was the incredible persistent courageous, creative, sometimes violent, determine protest movement that stretched throughout the period in this book again is not meant to be everything, im looking to make it and provide leaders with a framework that they can get a prize and be able to understand what is happening to us and they did not go through every single reform in that. But i looked at the labor union, not only union but the protest movement and one interesting thing, the eight hour day was a really important aspect, i know what the law is in oklahoma but i knew all my labors enter neige working eight hour shifts, its a most important in central sight of that. And what i found really interesting it was not just about rest it was about time to read, time to educate, that was one of the answers and i really appreciated that, how do we organize our lives. That was an incredible movement, they got viciously violently again and again, much more violently than new york for example, another when i looked at, there was pretty created political movements and in oklahoma among other places, and west texas, the whole belt, you know better than i do how the homesteads were and things like that, that is real for us, they were getting together in their covered wagons and in their houses and they had traveling and it was a huge education process, we folks cross which im sure you know about and it was impossible, it was impossible to make a living, they were trying to figure out how to get around the one local stores that was extending the credit, they were coming up with all these ways to put their orders together to buy collectively and things like that, they came up with really critical and sophisticated reforms like an election of senators and at the time the country was on the Gold Standard which was killing them. And a variety, i took very focused on the rules, they understood if the rules are rigged to help the rich, they need to change the rules to make the Playing Field a little bit more level, another critical point of contention, a critical was against monopoly which is cropped up again, just like we dont have the eight hour day, your monopolies all over the country and thats not the only problem, political power or the gigantic and also i i dont know if theres any chicken farmers in the audience, we have a lot of those in West Virginia or maryland and we basically have a service and you dont have the opportunity to switch, you practically work. But what distressed me was these relief sophisticated, there ideas got implemented eventually just about but not until the. Theyre talking about, i question was what happened, what i discovered chilled my blood, what i discovered we had a bunch of calamity in the early 20th century, we had world war i, the depression, world war ii, that is to global wars. 1918 flu pandemic. Exactly, i was getting there, exactly right, the flu plan pandemic, two world wars with two genocides with two atom bombs and a Global Economic meltdown. As we are all experiencing even though prorated driving up the partly tonight, we still experience a little bit of solidarity that it brings out of people, how many people have you helped that by their groceries and how many of you have learned how to so masks, things to help people out, thats what happens in disasters. By the time you had that many disasters, that transformed enough of the population, not everyone but enough of the population especially in the elites, i dont like to forget, Franklin Delano roosevelt drove a lot of changing of the rules to benefit the people in it was actually a member of the elite, he could have been one of them and so, somehow he was transformed either by world war i which he had lived through or by his own personal crisis, i dont fit into psychology, i do not know but enough people were transfigured by those disasters it became possible. It almost took a collective ptsd assassination which is unfortunate because you dont want to have to go through chronic wisdom every time Society Changes or is needed, and that is why i think this is so urgent and thats why am shouting, the other thing about the gilded age, if there was a global not global, economic or financial crash about once eight or ten years in 1773, 1782, 1873, 1882, 1896, 1997, 1929, its ridiculous, its like a death mail from a church polling, then i turned around in the last chapter, if not the last chapter is called the pattern, what i mean, look at how precisely we are following that pattern. And so it kept happening and then the world fell apart a bunch of times. Host look at the basic timeline from the end of world war i that crashed on wall street 1929 and no harbor then you look at 9 11, and the Great Recession and the pandemic. No. I say 9 11, that is even before you get to where serious crashes. Do you see what i mean . Look at the 189041910 that even before we get there. That is the urgency. Exactly. Host your words at a lot of places adjacent to people but the absolute power corrupts absolutely. That you can reach the highest levels of government in our system right now going to the things you have to do whether elections are were campaign and the many you have to raise can you reach those levels without having been corrupted . I think its really hard. And then where people are not but then the amount of money that you have to raise means almost necessarily to be a candidate in half to the interwoven networks. And the candidates made a pledge not to accept big money donations whether from a local or the national level. I have a lot of idea