Sam Harris appeared on the Triggernometry podcast and covered several topics. Of note, his previous appearance (which I have not seen) figured prominently. I am sure some of the comments went over my head for lack of that context. The main topics were Trump, the irresponsible right, COVID, and Islams incompatibility with the West.
To say that Harris is opposed to Trump is to massively understate his position. Wow, is he opposed to Trump. With the sole exception of getting hostages released by Hamas - for which Harris thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump is all bad. However, when challenged on some topics, he could not provide the alternative. The one that stood out for me was the immigration issue. Harris is strongly opposed to how ICE is apprehended people from the streets, separating families, and so forth. Yes, he agreed that the Biden Administration fumbled it badly and that was a large part of why Trump won. Even so, the border could be handled much better. The hosts noted that it had not. One might not agree with precisely how Trump is handling illegal immigration and the border, but at least he is handling illegal immigration and the border. Harris was still unhappy. He views Trump as vastly more corrupt than Biden and brushed Hunter's laptop away as an irrelevancy. Sure, it was handled poorly by social media, but he still views it as a nothingburger compared to Trump. He stated that Trump is enriching himself with cryptocurrency and using tariff negotiations to enrich his family. It is odd that this was the first I heard these accusations; why is that?
Harris views the right as more dangerous regarding violence and terrorism. Yes, he admitted that incidents of mass looting are almost always a leftwing phenomenon, but still views the right as more violent. In fact, a helpful graphic (from CSIS) was presented that showed rightwing terrorism has vastly outpaced leftwing terrorism since 1994, this year being a rare exception. Hmm. That looks like it needs more context. Charlie Kirk, who was clearly killed by a leftist, figured prominently in this discussion. He conceded that it was not good to label opponents as fascists and Nazis.
Harris was a COVID apologist. Everything that was done wrong during COVID was just honest mistakes in addressing a new crisis. He thinks that Joe Rogan misinformed the populace on this, convincing them the vaccine was bad. Though he held that it was mostly honest mistakes, the outcome is that we are less prepared for the next pandemic. The implication is that loss of trust in the institutions is more an issue of misinformation from the likes of Joe Rogan rather than the bad policy decisions of the institutions themselves.
Finally, the discussion found its way to Israel and October 7. He was dumbfounded that Israel, which was clearly attacked, had lost the PR war. Of all people for Hamas to kill, they had attacked the peaceniks who were inclined to side with them. Even so, Israel was quickly the bad guy. Harris is no fan of religion and particularly not Islam. Where Christianity and Judaism have nixed some passages over the centuries - slavery, animal sacrifice, etc., Islam has not. He views it as 14th century Christians who would still proselytize by the sword. So, it just needs a reformation? He would rather do away with religion. As it stands, Islam is incompatible with Western societies. On that, I agree.
Overall, it was an interesting discussion. His strongly contrasting views on Trump vs. Biden convinced me that he is a TDS sufferer. So eager to forgive the corruption of the last administration and strident in his denunciation of the current one. It was too much. I would think Trump killed his dog.
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