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can work, live and move

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to the UK. Hello,

0:36

my name is David Runtzman and this

0:38

is Past, Present, Future. Today is a

0:40

bonus episode. I'm going to

0:42

be trying to answer some of your questions that

0:45

have come in about the great political fiction series

0:47

that we have been running. And

0:49

at the end of this episode, we're going to

0:51

tell you more about what's coming up on Past,

0:53

Present, Future. But before that,

0:55

I'm going to hand over to Helen and she is

0:57

going to put the questions. This

1:05

is Helen from the podcast with some of your

1:07

questions about the most recent episodes in the history

1:09

of ideas series on the great political fictions. David,

1:12

we've had loads of questions and comments about

1:14

the episode on Gulliver's travels, which seems to

1:16

have struck a chord. Particularly

1:19

the last line about Gulliver coming home from

1:21

his final journey as a Tory. Some

1:24

people loved it, some didn't. Here's one. Outrageous

1:27

and maddening ending. He became

1:29

a Tory. Sorry, but WTF.

1:32

That seemed an entirely unsatisfactory end

1:34

to an otherwise typically insightful piece.

1:37

If Gulliver slash swift is

1:39

disgusted by rationalising humankind, how

1:41

could politics be of interest?

1:43

Explain, please. So, David,

1:45

you're going to have to explain yourself. Yes,

1:49

I did see that there was quite a lot of feedback

1:51

and pushback on that last line. It wasn't a throwaway

1:53

line in that I knew that that was where I

1:55

was going to end up. It was

1:57

partly as a few people, I think, spotted a

1:59

reference. back to the episode that we did with

2:02

Roy Stewart. With Roy Stewart, I talked to him

2:04

about a bit about Gulliver's Travels, but

2:06

also about the difference between being a Tory and

2:08

a Conservative and a Tory and a Whig. Conservatism

2:12

is the more modern thing. It's not

2:14

part of Swiss world, but

2:17

Conservatism in that conversation was

2:19

closer to being a Whig because Conservatism is

2:22

the more project-oriented,

2:25

electorally-driven version of Tory politics.

2:28

Being a Tory is something

2:30

else. When I talked

2:32

to Roy Stewart, we were talking

2:34

about the fact that it's basically an

2:36

18th-century idea. When I said

2:38

he came back a Tory, I wasn't trying

2:41

to say anything about contemporary politics. It was

2:43

about the 18th century. It is true of Swift

2:46

that he did become a Tory. Swift is not

2:48

Gulliver, but he started out as a

2:50

Whig, or at least a Whig in politics, probably a

2:52

Tory in religion, but he ends up as

2:54

a Tory in politics too. I was

2:58

trying to, though, touch

3:01

a bit on what Roy Stewart said

3:03

about what made him a Tory, an

3:05

18th-century Tory. His way of summing it

3:08

up was prudence at home

3:10

and restraint abroad. I'm

3:13

aware in the Gulliver's Travels episode, I

3:15

didn't say prudence at home, I said

3:17

revulsion at home, and not restraint aboard,

3:20

but revulsion and restraint. The revulsion included

3:22

he was repulsed by

3:24

his own wife and children. I'm not

3:26

accusing Roy Stewart of that. I'm not

3:29

accusing Tories of that. There's some connection,

3:31

I think, between that

3:33

sense that Gulliver came back from his

3:35

last journey with a

3:37

sense that so much of what

3:39

passed for political life in the land that he came

3:42

from and that he'd spent a lot of his travels

3:44

trying to defend to all these people who said, why

3:46

did you do it like this? Why did you do

3:48

it like that? This doesn't make any sense to us.

3:50

It kind of seems like you come from a ridiculous

3:52

place. For most of his journeys,

3:55

Gulliver tries to, as a good patriot, tries

3:57

to defend the English way or the European way. way

4:00

of doing things. But by the time he comes

4:02

back from the last one, he's given up. He

4:05

can't defend it because he thinks it's ridiculous. And

4:07

the reason he thinks it's ridiculous is he's kind

4:09

of seen through it. And

4:11

he sees underneath it, we are

4:13

Yahoo's, we are these not just

4:15

ridiculous creatures, but these grotesque creatures.

4:17

Now, I'm only talking about 18th

4:19

century tourism here. But I feel

4:21

it has in it that sense

4:23

that what it is reacting against

4:25

is the ridiculousness of human pretension,

4:28

the ridiculousness of human beings trying to

4:31

be more than that they really are.

4:34

And Gulliver certainly has that feeling. It's

4:36

visceral in his case. So again, I'm

4:38

not sure this is true of all

4:41

Tories. He's disgusted by the look and

4:43

the smell of human beings. I

4:46

think that's probably going too far.

4:48

But that sense of revulsion is

4:51

also a revulsion from the ways

4:53

in which Yahoo's humans pretend

4:56

to be rational and reasonable

4:59

and progressive and

5:01

insightful and have good plans and

5:03

schemes for making the world a better place. And

5:06

the Tory revulsion from that is

5:08

like Gulliver's revulsion from human

5:11

beings in general, a feeling

5:13

that this is ridiculous, that we

5:15

should have spotted that these pretensions

5:17

that we have don't

5:20

amount to anything. Underneath it

5:22

all, we are still those

5:24

fallen, fallible, foolish, self-indulgent, craven,

5:28

slightly bestial creatures. So

5:30

the bit of the book that I was talking about

5:32

with Rory Stewart was the satire of the Royal Society

5:35

and the schemes and the projects of the Whigs. The

5:38

ideas that all

5:40

those scientists came up with to make the world a better place and

5:42

the way in which Gulliver,

5:44

slash, Swift saw them for the

5:46

vain glory that they were. The way

5:50

he goes further in the final part of the book is

5:52

it's not just about the vain glory of the scientists, it's

5:54

the vain glory of all of us. And

5:56

I may be

5:58

completely wrong about this, sense that that

6:00

is a sort of Tory instinct. I

6:03

was also, and this is maybe

6:06

even harder to defend, I

6:08

have this suspicion that Tory

6:10

is quite like horses and

6:13

there is, in

6:15

Gulliver's travels at the end, scenes

6:18

where he can't bear to be among human

6:20

beings, so he goes to sit in the stables and

6:23

wants to be among the horses. And

6:26

there's a sort of Tory sense

6:28

that if only people were a bit more

6:30

like horses or if only horses were a

6:32

bit more like people, because horses are so

6:34

straightforward and elegant and unpretentious, the horse is

6:36

a very unpretentious creature, sort of quick and

6:40

streamlined. And that

6:42

also to me, sort of shines

6:44

what I imagine an 18th century

6:47

Tory outlook might be, it's about

6:49

the ridiculousness of the human relative

6:51

to all the ways in which human

6:54

beings should try to locate themselves in

6:56

something more natural, not in a scientific

6:58

natural sense, but in a sense of more modest,

7:01

more in the place where

7:03

you come from. And Rory Stewart was talking about

7:05

this too, his Toryism is also a localism and

7:07

a sense that you need to

7:09

belong. And Gulliver at the end of it, he

7:13

doesn't feel like he belongs in the world

7:15

of high politics or indeed low politics or

7:17

anything else, he feels like he belongs with

7:19

the horses in the stable. It's ridiculous, it's

7:21

clearly a parody. But

7:24

it also just feels a bit like

7:26

where an anti-wig

7:28

sentiment might lead you. You don't want to

7:30

be at the Royal Society, you want to

7:32

be with the horses. I

7:35

mean, some of it, just to be clear, clearly doesn't

7:38

fit. And when

7:40

he comes back and he says he couldn't

7:42

bear to be with his wife and children

7:45

because they smelt so bad. I'm not saying

7:47

that that is Toryism. And actually, I

7:49

don't know if I said this strongly enough, I do

7:51

think that Mrs. Gulliver is one of the most unfortunate

7:54

put upon characters in all

7:57

literature, because When he goes

7:59

off in his first voice, And second version said boy

8:01

she's is meant to put up with him going

8:03

off the is leaving her with the children and

8:05

then he comes back in. You think when it

8:07

comes back he would apologize and say this time

8:09

I'm staying but after while he gets bored and

8:11

he goes off again. But. It

8:13

gets worse because after contact from his final

8:15

voyage is not even bored by them. He

8:18

is repulsed by them and he goes to

8:20

live with the horses. so she really does

8:22

scare. A. Rough ride in this and I'm

8:24

not saying that that's because she's married to a

8:27

Tory. But on that

8:29

last point in that question, If

8:31

he was really set of. An.

8:33

Anti Russian list in that way. Wouldn't he

8:36

just be against politics? On the is. The

8:38

thing about the Tory mindset, and actually I

8:40

think Murray Stewart was probably a nervous about

8:42

saying this, but he would probably recognize something.

8:45

It's in this that to be a Tory

8:47

is to be very, very ambivalent about politics.

8:50

You're. Not sure you want to do it, you

8:52

not sure you won't have anything to do with

8:54

it and wrist do it in his book. Writes

8:57

about this heat for constantly torn between a desire

8:59

to make the world a better place and a

9:01

lot to run screaming for the hills when he

9:03

sees what goes on in the House of Commons.is.

9:05

a Tory instinct to the point in a way

9:08

of being a Tory as you are very unsure

9:10

whether politics is worth doing well, whether you should

9:12

do something more modest. More. Straightforward,

9:14

less pretentious, less of a glorious

9:17

you can't do politics without. quite

9:19

a lot of vanity to Tories

9:21

are conflicted. And. Gulliver. By

9:23

the time he comes back he but the

9:25

extreme version of this being conflict. In the

9:27

end he can bear to eat his meals

9:29

with his wife and children. He sort of

9:31

reconciles himself to it. But the thing that

9:33

he does decide is he's got to withdraw

9:35

from the world are you might say how

9:37

can you be a Tory and withdrew from

9:39

the world actually of the computer a politician

9:41

and withdraw from the world. But the point

9:43

about being a Tory politician I think and

9:45

I think swift capture something this the for

9:47

be feel some of the in himself is

9:49

that. It's a real

9:52

struggle because you're fighting the impulse to

9:54

withdraw from the world all the time.

9:57

When. i think we can all synthesize that mrs

9:59

bella So here's another question from

10:01

a listener also about Gulliver's Travels. Did

10:03

Swift hope to persuade readers to

10:06

follow his political views? If not,

10:08

was there any underlying aim beyond

10:10

entertaining his readers? So what

10:12

makes it such an interesting book, and I think

10:14

I said this in the episode, is that it

10:16

can be read in all of these different ways.

10:19

It's very specifically satirically about a

10:21

period and a set of controversies in

10:23

early 18th century English politics. It's

10:26

a much broader and wider satire, or

10:29

I agree about the human condition. It's

10:31

an adventure story. It's quite funny. It's

10:33

quite scurrilous. It's scatological. It appeals to

10:36

children, and it appeals to people doing

10:38

PhDs in 18th century political history. So

10:41

I hesitate to say he was

10:43

trying to do this, and these were the

10:45

readers that he had in mind. I

10:48

think there are a few things that can be said in answer

10:50

to that question, one of which is, I

10:52

don't think he would have believed that

10:55

he was going to change anyone's mind

10:58

politically, in the sense

11:00

that if you think of some of the satire

11:02

in it, so in Lilliput, the satire of a

11:04

partisan world between the high heels and the low

11:06

heels, and the idea

11:09

that these partisan divisions are ridiculous

11:11

because they're based on nothing. He

11:14

was living in a profoundly partisan age, as we

11:16

are living in a profoundly partisan age, where there

11:18

is almost no communication between the two sides. It's

11:20

not that they don't understand each other. They don't

11:22

want to listen to each other. They don't want

11:24

to talk to each other. I

11:27

think Swift would think in a

11:29

world where politics is ferocious, deep-seated,

11:33

internecine struggles between groups

11:35

of people about nothing,

11:38

you're not going to persuade people to

11:40

switch sides. It's almost impossible, and it's

11:43

true of our politics that you don't win elections

11:45

or losing elections by flipping voters because it's really

11:47

hard to flip voters. You either persuade them to

11:49

vote or not to vote at all to stay

11:51

at home. In American

11:54

politics, Turning Democrats into Republicans and

11:56

Republicans into Democrats is really hard. There are

11:58

some people who are. Amenable

12:00

to that, but they are. The.

12:03

Minority and I think swift for save his

12:05

own age. It wasn't a democratic case with

12:07

the idea that these politicians could could be

12:09

flipped pretty by but like goal of his

12:12

travels would be but it would be ridiculous.

12:14

The. High heels and the low heels? the

12:17

set in their ways. I mean, if

12:19

they could see that there wasn't a

12:21

difference between them so they wouldn't be

12:23

doing what they're doing anyway Imo. Think

12:25

it's like that line from Coriolanus. Think

12:27

Orleans has had the to. Instincts

12:30

of people have in a political setting

12:32

that they just want to scream at

12:34

the other side. One is I banish

12:36

you are learning, swift is doing that,

12:38

and the other is God. If you

12:40

could see what you looked like if

12:42

you just knew how you appear to

12:45

the other side, If you knew how

12:47

ridiculous you are when you're not looking

12:49

at yourself from inside your own head,

12:51

but. As Tory Lana says, have sex

12:53

with as if you could see the name of

12:55

your next. So. I think Swift is

12:58

doing that. So then he thinks that people

13:00

who don't agree with him politically will come

13:02

to agree with him politically. I think what

13:04

he wants is for people who don't agree

13:07

with him politically. and frankly some people who

13:09

do agree with him politically to see themselves

13:11

from outside from above from a different perspective.

13:15

And. To see how ridiculous they

13:17

are and that might. Change.

13:20

Them so I don't think he thinks

13:22

it will change their beliefs. You're not

13:24

gonna turner. Anglican. Into

13:26

something else. but it might change the way

13:28

they hold their beliefs and get back to

13:30

her. Why said he wants to The previous

13:33

questions. One of the things about being a

13:35

Tory is it's not so much about what

13:37

people believe, it's about how they believe they

13:39

believe too much too strongly. The Tory feels

13:41

that to committed to a worldview when we

13:44

live in a world where you should be

13:46

over committed to anything, you should be a

13:48

good patriot. You should believe in certain things.

13:50

He should defend queen and country or king

13:52

and country. Whatever it is, a Tory thinks

13:54

the shouldn't go. Too. Deep Tories A

13:57

deeply suspicious of intellectuals. I deeply

13:59

suspicious of. Philosophy For deeply suspicious

14:01

of programs they traditionally would be

14:03

deeply suspicious of manifestoes know they're

14:05

just trying to hold it together

14:07

in a fool and world. and.

14:10

May Swift thought the if you read goal

14:12

of his travels and you were a puffed

14:15

up politician on either side or you or

14:17

someone who was sure of your own views

14:19

and that the other cyber wrong. He

14:22

wouldn't switch sides, but you would just turn

14:24

it down a bit. Because.

14:27

If. You read that book and you think. Doesn't.

14:30

Really matter if I'm a high heel or elo

14:32

hell is not that. you'd read and think oh

14:34

shit, I'm a high heel and I should be

14:36

a low hail from a low he'll I should

14:38

be I hear you think oh my god we're

14:41

fighting about heels and the size of our shoes.

14:43

That's not a good luck, but you can't see

14:45

it when you're in the middle of the fight.

14:48

Politicians. A part is, and now

14:50

I'm is sticky, trotting of American politics

14:52

that constantly behaving in ways that are

14:54

clearly ridiculous. I. Mean, just absurd

14:57

and embarrassing. And they should be

14:59

ashamed of themselves. And probably they

15:01

would be ashamed of themselves if

15:03

they weren't. So. Caught up

15:06

in it that it's impossible to see

15:08

it from the outside because all you

15:10

can hear and see if the abuse

15:12

coming from the other side something like

15:14

all good them that are swiss trying

15:16

to give people an opportunity to just

15:19

take a step back and see it

15:21

from above all. The whole

15:23

point of the book from a different perspective

15:25

you very big you have a small your

15:27

this your that you to seeing it differently.

15:30

The only other thing I'd say

15:32

is why it's such a completely

15:35

fantastic bird. And. The

15:37

safari to of all great. Books.

15:40

May fat me probably works of fiction,

15:42

maybe even great works of philosophy is

15:44

that he clearly just got swept up

15:46

by as he was going along. So

15:48

there's a sense in which as you're

15:50

reading it, you can tell he's just

15:52

really enjoying writing it. And.

15:55

He's getting carried away. And.

15:58

he's not you can't get carried away also

16:00

be thinking about how's this going to work

16:02

as a political manifesto or as an act

16:04

of persuasion. The thing that

16:06

he is carried away by is the storytelling.

16:08

You can feel it at various points. You

16:11

sort of think, why are you telling us

16:13

all this ridiculous detail about the

16:15

world of the giants or the world of the tiny

16:18

people or the world of the horses? All

16:20

of this incidental detail, which

16:23

is part of what makes it a magical book,

16:25

an adventure book for children, because it's just this

16:28

complete imagined mad world that's come

16:30

out of his head. I

16:33

suspect when he was in the heat of writing it, like

16:36

most people who are in the heat

16:38

of writing works of transcendent genius, he

16:41

wasn't thinking about anything except

16:44

being true to the story. In that

16:47

sense, it's not a political book at all. Which

16:50

of the four books we've done so far have you enjoyed

16:52

reading most? A

16:54

girl of his troubles. Because

16:57

I hadn't read it before.

17:00

And it was the other ones I

17:02

had read some of, or all of

17:04

them before. So I'd been

17:07

told that it gets better. And it's

17:10

true that the familiar bits are the

17:12

early bits, the little people, the big people. And

17:14

it's still really enjoyable. But I

17:17

thought, wow, this is fun, but it's going

17:20

to get better. And then it did get better. And

17:22

the final book, the yahoos and the who and

17:24

ems, and the completely

17:27

mind blowing,

17:32

passionate, all

17:34

of human understanding

17:36

and misunderstanding is somehow captured in this

17:38

thing that is completely original.

17:40

So that's like nothing else in a

17:42

way. And doesn't really

17:45

make sense. It's almost psychedelic. I

17:48

just so he got carried away writing

17:50

it. I just got carried away reading it. Erawan

18:00

So is a direct influence. I

18:04

think there must be. And when I was

18:06

reading girl of His Troubles But is one

18:08

of the books that I was reminded of

18:10

so the influence is only one way. Swift

18:12

was influenced by Butler Low when you're reading

18:14

it can. I'd read on the other way

18:16

around. Seating: Oh, did he get this from

18:18

Arrow? that oversee didn't because they are chronologically

18:20

the wrong way round. Erawan is a H

18:22

and seventy two thing. But.

18:25

No doubt. I mean no

18:27

question. Samuel Button the red

18:29

Colobus travels and they're off

18:31

various pastas in it that

18:34

that to remind the Rideau

18:36

did remind me Anyway off

18:38

Erawan. And. Part of

18:40

it I think is that sense which is

18:42

probably true. Have lots of. Utopian

18:45

is fiction. That.

18:47

The goal is to give you an

18:49

inverted perspective on your own world. so

18:51

to show you world in which things

18:54

are in different ways turned upside down.

18:57

So not so much the the

18:59

different perspective so everyone doesn't have

19:01

that big people little people thing.

19:03

And one of the odd things

19:05

about. Lilliput. For.

19:08

Instance is that it's a tiny world, but

19:10

in it's own times, it's completely recognizably just

19:12

a normal while. To the little people don't

19:15

know those people. They don't live the way

19:17

they do in behave the way they do

19:19

because they're aware that their little they don't

19:21

know that That Atlanta Lamy Gulliver. So not

19:23

that littleness that gives you that sense of

19:25

immersion. Gulliver has this weird feeling. these people

19:27

are so small do they not realize how

19:30

trivial that? consensus the data and get it.

19:33

But. They have praxis as do various

19:35

of the the people for he

19:37

encounters that are recognizably like. What

19:40

you might expect? Him and his

19:42

case, eighteenth century England And but

19:45

this case, Victorian England And yet

19:47

upside down. And

19:50

one of the things that both books are

19:52

interested in. His. Punishment.

19:55

And. The weirdness of punishment. Like why do we punish

19:57

people the way that we do one of the lines

19:59

and. Gulliver that reminded me of

20:01

Erawan was a comment which of the to

20:04

land season way says well the thing about

20:06

these people as they think it's really weird

20:08

if you want people to behave well just

20:10

to punish them for behaving bad partly why

20:12

isn't society of nice to bribe them to

20:15

behave well rather than sort of being hold

20:17

up before the courts of cause you've committed

20:19

a crime? Why you hold up for the

20:21

courts and put on trial to see whether

20:23

you did something really really good and then

20:26

given. Your sentences have ten

20:28

thousand pounds and why don't you might

20:30

as a public spectacle if you want

20:32

people to pay. Well that's a very

20:34

so that swift but it's very like

20:36

the kinds of things you get in

20:38

Erawan where. He's playing around

20:41

with the idea any has these these

20:43

fantastical court cases and at Indicator our

20:45

one people are put on trial for

20:47

getting ill. And Butler's point is we

20:49

live in a weird world where we

20:51

think that moral failings a punishable but

20:53

physical failings on because the line between

20:55

a moral failing and a physical thing

20:57

is very very hard to draw on.

20:59

But the has a lot say about

21:01

addiction and alcoholism and this not a

21:03

crime. Is that a moral weakness? Is

21:05

it a physical weakness? Why sickness one

21:07

thing and cycle criminal behavior something else?

21:09

He. Imagines a world in which. If.

21:12

You commit embezzlement, you get

21:14

sent or spittle to get better,

21:16

and if you commit consumption

21:18

or tuberculosis you get put to

21:20

death. So completely mad and

21:22

it's very very swift in

21:24

so those with a bit that

21:27

that definitely reminded me of

21:29

swift. The difference is that in

21:31

the case of Erawan it's.

21:34

Inspired by. Darwinian.

21:37

Ideas of Evolution said. the

21:40

randomness in Erawan is. Butler.

21:42

read darwin and came to realize that it's

21:44

all just sort of kinks of evolution that

21:46

evolution is random mutation and so we have

21:49

ended up the people we are in the

21:51

society's we do because of things have which

21:53

we have no power to control because they

21:55

are just part of our inheritance he didn't

21:57

know then it was genetic inheritance but their

21:59

part of our evolutionary inheritance. So we are

22:02

who we are because of things that shaped

22:04

us eons ago and

22:06

over which we had no control because they are

22:08

beneath the surface of human choice

22:10

and human volition. And so we should recognise

22:12

that how we live is really contingent. We

22:15

think we're in charge of this thing. We think we

22:18

make choices that shape who we are. They

22:20

are nothing compared to the choices that shape

22:22

who we are, over which we have no

22:24

control, which are our

22:26

evolutionary inheritance. We are the creatures we are

22:29

because of things that happened so long ago and so

22:31

hidden in the midst of time that we'll never understand

22:33

them. But imagine those things that happened just a

22:35

tiny, tiny bit differently. We might live in

22:38

an upside-down world. Swift isn't

22:40

doing that because he's not got a Darwinian

22:42

or any other kind of evolutionary

22:44

sense of how our

22:47

human condition evolved in that way.

22:50

He's a conventional Anglican clergyman. But I

22:52

think what he's doing with his version

22:54

is not doing it over time

22:56

like Butler does, but

22:58

doing it over space. So geography

23:00

is what gives him that sense of perspective. You

23:03

go in the more conventional utopian

23:05

way. You go to these far

23:07

away, non-existent but imagined places.

23:10

And they give you an upside-down world

23:12

because maybe geography does that rather than

23:14

time. In Swiss world, you're sort of

23:16

meant to believe there might be another

23:18

side of the world in

23:21

which everything is really upside down or the

23:23

people are little or the people are big.

23:25

I mean, who knows, right? They're aware that

23:27

there is a world out there that they

23:29

don't know, that's unexplored and undiscovered. By the

23:32

time Butler was writing, that isn't really the case. And

23:34

he wrote Erwin in New Zealand. So he literally was

23:37

on the other side of the world. And he saw

23:39

New Zealand and thought it's different, but it's not that

23:41

different. But let's imagine it as though it were completely

23:43

different. Swift is doing it by

23:45

saying, let's imagine places that are sufficiently

23:48

remote, they're really hard to get to,

23:50

that they might not for evolutionary reasons,

23:53

but for other unexplained reasons, have

23:56

mutated and be the

23:58

inverse of the world. of who

24:00

we are, they reward

24:03

rather than they punish. Now

24:05

all sorts of inversions, there's one bit where he says,

24:07

in this society, the way they do politics is they

24:10

have a parliament and people get up and

24:12

they make their arguments passionately, ferociously against the

24:14

other side. And if you make a really

24:16

good argument, like if you really make your

24:18

case that the other people are wrong, you

24:21

have to vote for them and not for you. And

24:24

that's how you get good laws. So the more passionate

24:26

and convincing your argument is, the

24:28

more you're required to vote for the

24:30

other side because people are terrible judges of

24:32

their own arguments. The

24:34

idea being maybe there is somewhere in the world where

24:37

they do it like that, because what they both

24:39

have in common is, it

24:41

would be insane to think that

24:44

the way we do it here is

24:47

the only way of doing it. And it would be

24:49

just as insane to think that the way we

24:51

do it here would make sense to anyone from

24:54

anywhere else just because that's how we do it

24:56

here. As always, you've

24:58

got some people thinking about Trump or at

25:00

least thinking about whether you're thinking about Trump.

25:03

One listener says, given David Runsman's obsession

25:05

with Trump, I'm surprised he didn't point

25:08

out Trumpism is more anti-wig than anti-woke.

25:10

What do you say to that? Hmm.

25:15

Is it? I

25:18

think I know what that means. I mean,

25:20

it is anti-woke, but anti-wig in

25:22

the sense that it's definitely Trumpism

25:24

is anti, that

25:26

sort of pretension of progressive politics

25:29

to know better and to have

25:32

wizard schemes for making the world a

25:34

better place. And Trump has and channels

25:37

a widespread fury at living

25:39

in a world where it feels like the

25:42

wigs, the

25:44

progressives, the schemas are scheming for all of

25:46

us. And as I said, when talking about

25:48

Gulliver's Travels, one of the things he's really

25:50

interesting about is conspiracy theories, not as we

25:52

would call them, not as he called them.

25:55

And the ways in which in a world of wigs, it's

25:59

quite tempting. think that their schemes

26:01

are literally schemes, their sort of

26:03

plots and secret agendas,

26:06

because they are schemas. To

26:08

be a Whig, to be a scientist, to be

26:10

a progressive for Swift is to be a schemer,

26:13

to be a Democrat for Trump is

26:15

to be a schemer. But

26:18

Trump's not a Tory, so

26:20

he can't be an anti-Whig in the sense that

26:22

he's a Tory. He doesn't believe, I think, in

26:25

a weird way, he does believe in restraint

26:28

abroad, but he doesn't believe in prudence at home.

26:32

He's not a Tory, but one thing

26:35

he has in common with Gulliver when

26:37

he comes back from his last journey

26:41

in the state that I said means that he is

26:43

a Tory. So this is the one thing that Trump

26:45

has in common with that version of Gulliver. Trump

26:48

is really squeamish about the human

26:50

body. He's really

26:53

repulsed by particularly the female

26:55

human body. He sort of gives clues to this

26:57

all the time. And Swift, Gulliver's

27:00

travels, it's repulsed by the

27:02

human body anyway. And one

27:04

of the things that makes the Yahoo

27:06

so disgusting is that the human form

27:08

is unclothed, it's naked, it's hairy, it's

27:11

dirty, it's messy, it's secreting things. And

27:14

you can tell that Swift just finds

27:16

it all completely disgusting. But there's a

27:18

misogynist streak in the earlier parts of

27:20

the book where he seems particularly repulsed

27:22

by the female human body. I don't

27:24

know what Swift's sexuality is. I mean,

27:27

I assume that Donald Trump is not gay, but

27:31

he's really squeamish

27:34

about the things that the human body

27:36

does. So he's a germaphobe. He

27:40

hates all the things that come out of the human

27:43

body. And he's

27:45

turned that into a sort of

27:47

political weapon. He sort of channeled

27:49

his repulsion into a generalized repulsion

27:51

of the other side, which

27:54

is sort of in a way, I don't

27:56

know if it's anti-wig, but

27:58

it's not straightforwardly anti-wig. It's

28:00

like he

28:02

somehow is part of his political genius.

28:05

He's weaponized the disgust he

28:07

feels being among

28:10

human beings. And there are

28:12

enough human beings who share

28:14

that or at least can be persuaded that that's

28:16

a way of channeling the different kinds of rage

28:18

that they feel, that he's

28:20

turned it into a very effective political platform.

28:22

I don't think that his supporters are all

28:24

germaphobes. I'm not sure his supporters are

28:27

all conspiracy theorists. I

28:29

think to be a supporter of Donald Trump, you have

28:31

to be angry about something. Donald Trump is angry about

28:33

the human body. And

28:38

when I look at him, someone

28:40

once told me a story which may or may not be true

28:42

of someone they knew. So this is

28:44

at least two removes who worked on

28:46

the US series of The Apprentice. And

28:49

one of their jobs was to go into the

28:51

dressing room when Trump was getting his makeup on.

28:53

And Trump is very trussed up human beings. So

28:55

to get him in his suits, there's a lot

28:57

of rapping and girdling. Because he's an overweight man.

28:59

He's not in good shape. But he has to

29:02

present to the world as this sort of solid

29:04

titan of a man. But

29:06

when all the bandages come off, it's

29:09

pretty disgusting, I was told. And

29:11

so this might be self-loathing too. I

29:14

don't know. But is

29:17

that anti-wig? It's not

29:19

anti-wig. It's not Tory. But it's

29:21

quite Swiftian. Another

29:23

listener wonders more generally about Trump

29:26

and cruelty, writing, I

29:28

know that just recently Trump told his supporters

29:30

that the survivors of a school shooting should

29:32

just get over it. I find

29:34

this sort of wanton cruelty quite beyond the

29:37

pale, but wonder whether it's now an effective

29:39

tool in today's political world. So

29:41

in a way, the thing that makes me think of

29:43

actually is Coriolanus. So Coriolanus is cruel. And

29:48

Coriolanus' political

29:50

message in Suppose He Has One is, I

29:53

don't care about your problems. Stop whinging

29:55

at me. Stop whining. Trump

29:57

doesn't like whiners, and he thinks that... liberals

30:00

and others are all whining, whining at him,

30:02

whining about this, whining about that, all

30:05

to try and sort of do him down. And

30:08

Coriolanus, one of the

30:10

things that he conveys very effectively to the

30:12

plebs in that play is that he's just

30:14

not interested in their problems. Their problems are

30:16

not his problems, get over it. So

30:19

the implication in Coriolanus is that

30:22

that's actually potentially quite an effective

30:24

political strategy, that treating

30:27

them with contempt is a

30:29

way of getting them to think that you're an

30:31

authentic person and also that you're pretty hard. And

30:34

people quite like that people respond to

30:36

hard men, usually men

30:38

in politics. The problem for Coriolanus

30:41

is that he can't

30:43

just do the minimal thing you need to do.

30:45

So he doesn't ingratiate himself at all with the

30:47

people he tells them, I don't care. I don't

30:49

want to I don't want to hear your problems.

30:53

And they still acclaim him. I mean, they

30:56

would still make him consul. He just

30:58

can't bring himself to say to them, look

31:01

at me, aren't I wonderful? Because

31:03

he thinks that demeans him too. So he can't

31:05

do the minimal thing that you need for politics,

31:07

which is not not to be cruel, but

31:10

which is to say, aren't I great?

31:13

That's what gets him into trouble. So that is

31:15

clearly not Trump's problem. So Trump does

31:18

not have a problem saying to

31:20

the people about whom and to

31:22

whom he's being cruel, by the

31:24

way, aren't I great? So

31:27

in that sense, Trump is is

31:29

Coriolanus with extra political

31:31

skills. The difference is that Coriolanus

31:33

is genuinely a soldier and brave.

31:36

And Trump is not a soldier. And I

31:39

don't know if he's brave or not. But you

31:41

know, he needed Theresa May to hold his hand

31:43

to walk down a flight of stairs. That's not

31:45

very Coriolanus like he's,

31:48

he's not Coriolanus at all. He's

31:52

a guy who presented the apprentice and

31:54

is probably wearing a girdle. So

31:57

he does do everything that you need to do

31:59

to make the politics of

32:01

cruelty work, which is you

32:04

have to stick to your guns. Trump's

32:06

view is never apologize, never explain. That is

32:09

a very effective political strategy. The reason that's

32:11

been a mantra for hundreds of years is

32:13

that it often works. If you start apologizing,

32:16

when Trump was persuaded, he had to apologize for

32:18

that tape, that grab and buy the pussy tape.

32:21

He started doing the apology and it

32:23

literally stuck in his throat and he

32:25

couldn't record it. He

32:27

said, I'm not doing this. I will never apologize

32:29

for anything. All the people around him said, you

32:31

finished. You don't apologize for this. You're finished. This

32:34

tape is cruel and it

32:37

is demeaning and it's insulting to half

32:39

of the electorate and more than half of the electorate

32:41

because it's also insulting to all the men who think

32:43

it's disgusting. If you're not going

32:45

to apologize, you're going to come across as

32:47

not principled and hard, but just horrible

32:50

human being. He

32:52

said, yeah, but if I apologize, I trashed

32:54

the brand. But he

32:57

didn't apologize and a few months later he was

32:59

president of the United States. So is

33:01

it an effective political strategy? Yes.

33:04

Is Trump Coriolanus? No. So

33:07

we've had some more general questions and

33:10

comments about the series and the choice of

33:12

fiction. And I think this is quite an important one.

33:15

Somebody wrote in and asked, I'm curious

33:17

about and increasingly bothered by the narrowness

33:19

of the focus on male writers. Is

33:21

this a blind spot, a personal preference or

33:24

something else? If so, what? So

33:27

without sounding too defensive, it's not

33:29

a blind spot, I don't think, because I'm very

33:31

aware of it. And it's not a personal preference.

33:33

It's not that I'm choosing to talk about male

33:36

writers because I feel more comfortable talking

33:39

about male writers, although there's

33:41

always a question when trying to talk about

33:43

a book written by a female

33:45

writer, whether you fall into the trap of mansplaining

33:47

and I do my best not to. It's

33:51

about chronology. So we do these

33:53

series chronologically. The previous

33:55

series about the great political essays, the

33:57

first three were by men. Montaigne,

34:01

who was the only person writing essays

34:03

when he wrote essays, so there was just him

34:05

to choose from, then David

34:08

Hume, then Thoreau. But

34:10

in the 20th century, I talked

34:12

about Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag

34:16

and Joan Didion and so on, and it just

34:18

becomes much, much more varied.

34:21

But it's a lot harder,

34:23

particularly in the 17th and

34:25

18th centuries, but

34:27

also in the first half of the 19th

34:30

century, to find

34:33

political fictions by women. I'm not saying that there

34:35

aren't any, because there are some.

34:38

And in fact, in the last episode that we

34:41

recorded on Toganev, I did in passing talk

34:43

about Pride and Prejudice, which is not a

34:45

particularly political book, but is as great

34:47

a novel as any that's ever been written. But I'm

34:51

wary of really straining to

34:54

include them in

34:56

order to make a point. So I try to avoid that.

34:59

I've chosen books that I feel that I can

35:01

talk about, and I have

35:03

things to say about. And to

35:05

start with, sometimes they're books that I'm familiar

35:08

with. I think to shoehorn in female

35:10

writers in the very early part of the

35:13

story, I would have to go

35:15

to places where I

35:17

probably feel I'm not qualified. And

35:19

it might also involve, because there could be

35:21

an equally legitimate question about works of fiction

35:24

outside the Western tradition. So we're going to

35:26

come to some of these. But

35:29

at this point, I don't think I'd

35:31

know how to talk about 16th or

35:33

17th century works of fiction outside of

35:35

the Western tradition. So it's partly my

35:37

own limitations. It's partly the history skews

35:39

one way early on. When

35:41

we come back to this series, the next book

35:43

will be by a woman. It'll be by George

35:46

Eliot. The trouble with George Eliot, for

35:49

the purpose of this series, is her most political

35:51

book, Felix Holt. I

35:53

tried to read it once. It's sort of

35:55

unreadable. It's all about politics, but

35:57

I'm not saying it's not very good. It's

36:00

my fault, not hers, but I couldn't

36:02

get into it. Middlemarch is a less

36:04

political book. It's

36:07

also among the greatest

36:09

works of fiction ever written, and there is masses

36:11

to say about it. I

36:13

don't think it's a contrivance to talk about it

36:15

as a political fiction, even though it's clearly not

36:19

just that and even not mainly that. But

36:22

it is a book about

36:24

social change and progress

36:26

and class and hierarchy

36:28

and science and religion

36:30

and hypocrisy and guilt

36:33

and trust. Well,

36:35

that's enough for a book about politics. So the

36:37

next one will be by women. There will be

36:40

other books by women I'm going to talk about.

36:42

I'm currently reading for later on

36:44

in this series, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

36:46

That's a book by women. It's very

36:49

long, so I haven't finished it yet. It has, to use

36:52

an unfortunate term, a

36:54

pretty problematic account

36:57

of the relations between men and women. So the fact

36:59

that it's written by a woman does not mean

37:01

that it's not an

37:04

extremely uncomfortable read when it describes

37:07

what the author thinks that women want

37:09

from men, but it's also

37:11

an incredibly influential and important book, as

37:13

important as any work of political fiction,

37:16

perhaps in English of

37:18

the 20th century. Its influence on Silicon

37:20

Valley is terrifying. So

37:22

these are great in all sorts of different ways. That

37:24

one, I'm not sure it's a great novel, but it's

37:27

had a great impact. It will

37:29

get more varied, I promise you, but

37:31

I don't think I can do it until we

37:33

get past the middle of the 19th

37:35

century. That's my limitation, but it's not a blind

37:37

spot and I think about it all the time.

37:40

I hope that explains the choice

37:42

of books to the listeners. Finally,

37:46

we'll end with another question from a listener.

37:48

What about TV shows and movies? Which

37:50

are fictions too? Which are

37:53

the great political ones there? So

37:55

I'm not going to answer this question. I'm not going to answer

37:57

the second part of this question because it would take a long

37:59

time. want to do a series about that. I

38:01

would love to do a series about the

38:03

great TV shows and movies, and I hope

38:05

that we will in future. I'll do them or we'll

38:07

get other people on to talk with me about

38:10

them. I'm conscious. So for instance,

38:12

what's a great political TV

38:15

show? The West Wing is a great political TV

38:17

show. There is a podcast. There

38:19

was a podcast, I think it's finished now,

38:21

about The West Wing, which I think

38:23

ran to 178 episodes. And still, I think there's demand

38:28

for more. To do The West Wing in

38:30

50 minutes, I'm not sure. I would love

38:32

to do The Thick of It. So The

38:35

Thick of It seems to me to be

38:37

a great political TV show. I would quite

38:39

like to do 178 episodes on The Thick

38:41

of It and going through episode by episode

38:43

trying to connect the predicaments and worse

38:45

that these people find themselves in with things

38:47

that have happened in politics recently. I don't

38:50

think we can do 178 episodes on The Thick of

38:52

It, but I'm not sure how you do it in

38:54

one episode. So we'll have to think about that. But

38:56

there are great movies too. One of my favorite political

38:58

films is In the Loop, which is the film

39:01

version of The Thick of It, Amanda Iannucci.

39:03

Another one is The Death of Stalin,

39:05

Amanda Iannucci. Those are films,

39:07

they're more self-contained. I think In the

39:09

Loop is just completely brilliant. It's one

39:11

of the films I can endlessly rewatch.

39:14

I would happily do that. But there

39:16

are hundreds of others that one

39:18

could do TV and film. Just a series

39:20

on the great political films would

39:23

be fantastic and somewhat overwhelming. So

39:25

I'm not going to answer the question now,

39:28

but I definitely think on this podcast, before

39:30

too long, there will be a history of

39:32

ideas series on the

39:34

great political films. And probably there will be

39:36

another separate history of ideas series on

39:39

the great political TV shows. And we

39:41

are always, always open

39:43

to suggestions. Well, we

39:45

do quite often get asked if we're

39:48

ever going to look at political pop

39:50

songs. What about that? Yeah. I think

39:53

we could do that. So

39:59

the reason that makes you nervous is it

40:01

could be really pretentious.

40:04

But maybe not, you'd have to choose them carefully. I

40:07

know that at some point, potentially

40:09

in this series, or if not in

40:11

this series, maybe as a separate series,

40:13

I want to talk about musical theatre

40:16

because I think some of

40:18

the great political fictions are musicals. I will

40:20

be talking about Hamilton in this series. I'm

40:22

not sure, but I might also be talking

40:25

about Evita. And there

40:27

are some great political songs in

40:29

Evita. So I probably should emphasize at this

40:31

point, we are open to suggestions. So this

40:34

series is not finished. There

40:36

are going to be eight more episodes. I

40:38

have some idea of what's coming next, George

40:40

Eliot, Trollope, Bertolt Brecht, Ayn

40:43

Rand and others. But we're

40:45

always open to suggestions. And

40:48

there will be many different, I hope,

40:50

future series with different themes around the

40:53

great political, whatever it is, maybe even

40:56

including pop songs. But we

40:58

are pausing this series now, because we've got other

41:00

things that we want to do. And maybe

41:03

are a bit more urgent. So coming

41:05

up next is our series with Gary

41:07

Gerstle on the ideas behind American presidential

41:09

elections. We are going to

41:11

be talking about in the first instance, eight elections,

41:14

1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1912, 1936, 1980,

41:25

2008, pivotal American presidential elections. What

41:28

were they about? What were

41:30

the ideas at stake in those elections?

41:32

Did ideas shape the election? Alternatively, did

41:34

the election shape the future of political

41:36

ideas? And what connects them? We're going

41:39

to try and find themes that join

41:41

those elections up

41:44

in various ways. And ultimately, when we

41:46

come back over the summer with Gary,

41:49

talk in much more detail about the

41:51

presidential election of 2024, and where it fits into

41:54

that history. God help us. We're

41:57

also going to be doing after that in April, a series

41:59

with layer. on the history of

42:01

freedom, different conceptions of freedom from the

42:03

ancient Greeks to Silicon Valley from anarchism

42:06

to existentialism. After that

42:08

we're going to be doing a series on the

42:10

history of bad ideas with a range of different

42:12

guests, talking about the ideas that

42:14

they think are bad, but

42:16

which were persuasive to many

42:18

not bad people, bad ideas that good

42:21

people have stuck with for too long.

42:23

We're always open to suggestions, we're always

42:25

open to suggestions. If you follow us

42:27

on Twitter at PPF Ideas you can

42:30

share your questions that way. We're also soon

42:32

going to be launching a fortnightly newsletter to

42:34

go along with this podcast that will have

42:38

guides to reading, information about what we've been

42:40

talking about and so on, connections

42:42

to contemporary politics, things written by me

42:45

and other people, but

42:47

also a space for your questions, more

42:49

detailed questions, more in-depth questions, we want

42:51

to do more of this. We

42:53

will tell you soon how to sign up

42:56

for that and before long we'll be telling

42:58

you how you can subscribe to Past, Present,

43:00

Future and get extra episodes, bonus material and

43:02

more. So we've got a lot coming up

43:05

on this podcast, but the risk is

43:07

sounding cheesy, we're pretty excited about it and

43:10

we hope you are too. If

43:13

you enjoy it please stick with all of these series,

43:15

if you think of people you know who would like

43:17

it do please, I don't normally

43:19

say this, but do please share and

43:21

recommend and do please join

43:23

us on Thursday, it'll be Thursdays and Sundays

43:26

for the next month, the

43:28

ideas behind American elections starting with the

43:30

election of 1800, the Hamilton

43:32

election, though Hamilton wasn't standing.

43:35

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