David Wallace-Wells On The Mutating Dangers Of Covid19 The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
-
- Politics
David is a deputy editor at New York magazine and one of the sharpest journalists covering the Covid19 pandemic. (He edited my essay on plagues this past summer.) He’s also a clear-headed expert on climate change and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. This pod is full of fact, insight and speculation on the virus, the vaccines, and the new variants. If you need to get your head wrapped around where we are in this plague, check it out.
You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To hear two excerpts from my conversation with David — on the threat posed by vaccine skeptics; and on whether lockdowns did more harm than good — head over to our YouTube page.
Meanwhile, a reader sounds off on last week’s episode:
I was so pleased to hear Christopher Caldwell on your podcast! I agree he is one of the sharpest conservative thinkers and a first-rate stylist. In fact, I’ve become a bit obsessed with his work. I’ve recently written a lengthy review of Age of Entitlement for a specialized scholarly journal, to be published soon. (So, if I'm lucky, maybe a couple dozen people will read it.) You and I have never met, but I am the editor of a book that features essays by both you and Caldwell: American Epidemic: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Opioid Crisis (New Press, 2019).
I have a few thoughts about your podcast interview. First, I wish you had pushed back at one point. Caldwell said that Age of Entitlement is “not a manifesto,” but rather “a work of history.” I suspect you will agree that it is often difficult, while reading that book, to separate Caldwell (the historian) from Caldwell (the rancorous, sharp-witted partisan). Age of Entitlement is not just an analysis of the continually broadening scope of civil rights since the 1960s. It is also, very plainly, a jeremiad against the post-1964 civil rights movement. He’s trying to have it both ways.
Second, you occasionally talk over your guests when you’re excited about something! Caldwell said he liked the idea of the 1776 Commission, and I think he was about to talk about it more substantively. I would have liked to have heard him assess the Report’s quality and execution. But he didn’t finish his thought. You declared the Report was execrable garbage, then the conversation moved in a different direction.
From another reader who listened to the episode:
Caldwell claims that civil rights legislation has created a system whereby courts can overrule democratic majorities, but the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent rule by democratic majorities. George W. Bush and Donald Trump both lost the popular vote but got to be president and appoint a bunch of judges that were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population. That the resulting court affirmed things Caldwell is uneasy with, like same-sex marriage, is no different than them carving out religious exemptions that I am uneasy with, such as allowing discrimination against same-sex couples trying to adopt children.
Importantly, that is the system working as intended. Neither of us gets entirely what we want and so we are motivated to cast our votes for representatives we feel will pass laws and confirm judges that we like, but that tension cannot be resolved because it is fundamental to our system of government.
Conservatives like Caldwell seem to be arguing against the entire constitutional system of American representative democracy because it doesn’t always deliver the results a bare majority of people want — in same way Woke critical theory adherents want to tear down the system because it sometimes delivers the results a bare majority of people want. They are both upset about the necessity of empowering minorities in a democracy. How are the two views fundamentally any different?
Ano
David is a deputy editor at New York magazine and one of the sharpest journalists covering the Covid19 pandemic. (He edited my essay on plagues this past summer.) He’s also a clear-headed expert on climate change and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. This pod is full of fact, insight and speculation on the virus, the vaccines, and the new variants. If you need to get your head wrapped around where we are in this plague, check it out.
You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app” — which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. To hear two excerpts from my conversation with David — on the threat posed by vaccine skeptics; and on whether lockdowns did more harm than good — head over to our YouTube page.
Meanwhile, a reader sounds off on last week’s episode:
I was so pleased to hear Christopher Caldwell on your podcast! I agree he is one of the sharpest conservative thinkers and a first-rate stylist. In fact, I’ve become a bit obsessed with his work. I’ve recently written a lengthy review of Age of Entitlement for a specialized scholarly journal, to be published soon. (So, if I'm lucky, maybe a couple dozen people will read it.) You and I have never met, but I am the editor of a book that features essays by both you and Caldwell: American Epidemic: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Opioid Crisis (New Press, 2019).
I have a few thoughts about your podcast interview. First, I wish you had pushed back at one point. Caldwell said that Age of Entitlement is “not a manifesto,” but rather “a work of history.” I suspect you will agree that it is often difficult, while reading that book, to separate Caldwell (the historian) from Caldwell (the rancorous, sharp-witted partisan). Age of Entitlement is not just an analysis of the continually broadening scope of civil rights since the 1960s. It is also, very plainly, a jeremiad against the post-1964 civil rights movement. He’s trying to have it both ways.
Second, you occasionally talk over your guests when you’re excited about something! Caldwell said he liked the idea of the 1776 Commission, and I think he was about to talk about it more substantively. I would have liked to have heard him assess the Report’s quality and execution. But he didn’t finish his thought. You declared the Report was execrable garbage, then the conversation moved in a different direction.
From another reader who listened to the episode:
Caldwell claims that civil rights legislation has created a system whereby courts can overrule democratic majorities, but the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent rule by democratic majorities. George W. Bush and Donald Trump both lost the popular vote but got to be president and appoint a bunch of judges that were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population. That the resulting court affirmed things Caldwell is uneasy with, like same-sex marriage, is no different than them carving out religious exemptions that I am uneasy with, such as allowing discrimination against same-sex couples trying to adopt children.
Importantly, that is the system working as intended. Neither of us gets entirely what we want and so we are motivated to cast our votes for representatives we feel will pass laws and confirm judges that we like, but that tension cannot be resolved because it is fundamental to our system of government.
Conservatives like Caldwell seem to be arguing against the entire constitutional system of American representative democracy because it doesn’t always deliver the results a bare majority of people want — in same way Woke critical theory adherents want to tear down the system because it sometimes delivers the results a bare majority of people want. They are both upset about the necessity of empowering minorities in a democracy. How are the two views fundamentally any different?
Ano