#462 — More From Sam: The Iran War, American Amorality, Addressing Hopelessness, Tucker, and More

0:06Sam Harris:Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

0:58Jaron Lanier:with different voices from many parts of the world. And I just want to thank everyone for taking the time to submit the questions. There's really great stuff in here. So I'm excited for today's episode.

1:07Sam Harris:I haven't seen any of these questions, by the way.

1:08Jaron Lanier:No, you have not. I'm as excited as everybody else. Yeah, no, this is a good one. This is going to be a good episode. We'll try to get to as many as we can. And we'll get to those in just a moment. But first, a word from our sponsor. Next week, Sam has shows in Portland and Vancouver. March 11th in Portland, March 12th in Vancouver. There are still some tickets available for those shows. as well as for the shows we have on sale in May. Toronto's already sold out, but you can find info for how to get tickets at samharris.org for the other shows I just mentioned, as well as D.C., New York City, Austin, and Dallas.

1:40Jaron Lanier:Okay, on to our first topic. Sam, should the U.S. have taken military action against Iran?

1:46Sam Harris:Yeah, well, I think you have to hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously to have an adequate answer to this question. So the first thought is that at any point since 1979, it would have been a good thing to unseat the regime in Iran. It would have been true when they took our hostages. It would have been true in 1983 when they engineered the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut. It would have been true during the Iraq war, whatever you think about that war, given that they were producing all the IEDs that were killing our soldiers. It would have been true in 1989 with the Salman Rushdie fatwa.

2:23Sam Harris:I mean, this is an engine of terrorism and just awfulness for the world, right? For open societies everywhere. And to say nothing of the immiseration of the Iranian people. And I think it's a scandal of the Obama administration and the Biden administration not to have done more to support the Iranians who risked their lives to fight for the civil rights of women in particular at various moments during those administrations. I just think we have strangely been deterred by Iran for a generation and a half, right? We've been scared to tangle with Iran because there was a proper jihadist regime, is a proper jihadist regime run by true religious fanatics that show a kind of really a bottomless appetite for making life miserable in open societies, wherever they can do it directly or through their proxies, right?

3:11Sam Harris:So that's all true. And yet here's the second thought. It's also true that the Trump administration is the most corrupt and incompetent administration I think we've ever had. And we are right to worry that Trump and his enablers and, you know, the rest of his administration, people like Hexeth, don't have any real purchase on a sane, you know, philanthropic and humanitarian impulse. I mean, whatever they might say about caring about the Iranian people, we're right to worry that doesn't run very deep. I think Trump is totally capable of breaking everything over there and then just turning around and saying, well, this is victory.

3:50Sam Harris:You know, it's on the Iranian people now and we're done. I think he could do that in a way that no other U.S. president really could with a clear conscience, right? So next week he could declare victory and leave Iran in total chaos, right? So I don't know what to expect from this war. I certainly hope it goes well. I hope what happens is there is a proper regime change and the Iranian people get to express their desire for something like a secular democracy, a desire which I think many of them, probably a majority of them actually have. I think Iran was always a much better candidate for regime change and nation building than Iraq and certainly Afghanistan ever were.

4:29Sam Harris:So I think we have drawn the wrong lessons from our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq if we think that Iran was just, it's just a hopeless case and, you know, we should never have meddled there, but I think it's totally rational to worry that Trump will do this badly. The communication has been just appalling around this. I mean, he's done nothing to prepare the American people for this. We have no allies other than Israel. Congress has been sidelined, as they have been in everything, so this is a constitutional problem. So it's all kinds of bad in terms of how this has been done, and yet that doesn't mean it will necessarily fail.

5:04Sam Harris:I certainly hope it doesn't fail. So if you can reconcile those two thoughts that may seem contradictory. That's my view of it.

5:12Jaron Lanier:A follow-up question. I don't need to do the whole part. I can just begin with it. I'm wondering if Sam has any regrets about his hawkish stance possibly giving the U.S. administration coverage for what looks to be naked aggression without a plan, essentially that. Do you have any regrets about taking your hawkish stance on giving the U.S. administration coverage for feeling supportive for what's happening in Iran right now?

5:35Sam Harris:Well, no, I mean, everything I said around that first thought is true. It's just what I believe now is what I believed before this war started. It's what I will believe really, whatever happens here, because I think it is just in fact true that if you look back at the protests, you know, the Iranian women some years ago, you know, crying out for their civil rights and, you know, risking torture and death, you know, merely to take off their hijabs in public. If you care about women's rights, if you care about human rights, you should care about those women, right? And it's just, it's completely intolerable that we have acquiesced to this meme.

6:14Sam Harris:It is somehow a sign of bigotry to express how evil it is that under this version of Islam, women are subjected to what is in reality gender apartheid. I mean, it's just, and obviously this is not the only concern I have with the Iranian regime, but that concern alone should have led to much greater support from us. There is no outcome other than regime change that would have, should have, or would have in reality ever been acceptable here with respect to Iran. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon because it's a jihadist regime, And I can make the generic case. We are perpetually at war with jihadism, whether we want to state it that way or not.

6:56Sam Harris:And Iran, almost uniquely, was a proper jihadist regime that was within reach of developing nuclear weapons. And so it's just, there's no world in which we can negotiate with a regime like that, even though we can pretend to, as the Obama and Biden administrations did. And as Trump may yet pretend to, I mean, that's the other thing that we have to realize, is that Trump may decide that he's going to try to create some Venezuela-like endgame here, where he's just going to install somebody who will claim to be pliant, but in this case, really can't be, because all of the people who would follow from, you know, the ranks of the, you know, surviving mullahs in Iran are, in fact, religious maniacs, right?

7:36Sam Harris:I mean, it's a very different situation than Venezuela. So I think it's just an absolute mirage to think that we could ever have negotiated any sort of proper peace with Iran, given the actual religious commitments of the regime. And that's a fairly unique case. I would not say the same thing of Saudi Arabia or many of these other Muslim states. I wouldn't say the same thing of Pakistan in its current form, and Pakistan has nukes. But if Pakistan ever got taken over by a real jihadist regime, we would have a full-on emergency with Pakistan, right? So nukes and jihadism just do not play well together, and we can never lose sight of that.

8:12Sam Harris:And we were on the verge of losing sight of that with respect to Iran, but I don't think I gave anyone cover for anything. I just think this is just true, and yet it's also true that the way Trump has done this is authoritarian, right? This is not the way a U.S. president should take our country into war without explaining anything, without consulting anyone, without having cartoon characters, you know, running the effort. You just listen to Pete Hegseth talk about anything and you know you're not in good hands. So there's nothing optimal about this, but that also doesn't mean that the aftermath of this might not be better than what preceded it, because what preceded it was just about as bad as can be.

8:54Jaron Lanier:Yes, I was interpreting the question as what you addressed was being hawkish given this administration and the way that they might go about doing this in all the wrong ways. and your comment on jihadism might answer this next question why isn't anyone calling out the trump administration on the double standard of our enthusiastic military defense of the iranian people and our lack of resolve to militarily defend the people of the democratic country of

9:19Sam Harris:ukraine well yeah it is a again i think we've been bad on ukraine too right i mean it's understandable that we're not enthusiastic about stumbling into a direct conflict with russia right so that you know, the moment of nuclear blackmail, all of that was sobering for a reason. At this distance from, you know, the start of the war, I think it was a bluff that we essentially called and it proved to be a bluff. I'm not actually worried about a nuclear war with Russia, really, over Ukraine. But yeah, I think we should have always given Ukraine more support and Europe should have as well. And it's just, it's understandable.

9:55Sam Harris:This war is awful and we fought some bad ones, right? We've fought ones that in retrospect look totally pointless and horrible. So it's easy to see how we, I mean, we basically have a renewed version of Vietnam syndrome to some degree, which makes it impossible to notice necessary wars early, right? And I think we should have helped Ukraine earlier more than we did. And I don't know, it remains to be seen what's going to happen there.

10:22Jaron Lanier:Hi, Sam. Having watched Donald Trump and his court ride roughshod over every norm convention, and more recently, international laws are the rules of engagement around war. My question to you is, what is the point of any of them?

10:34Sam Harris:What's the point of any of what? Wars?

10:35Jaron Lanier:No, no, no. Every norm convention and more recently, international laws. What are the point of any of these rules of engagement around war? What is the point of any of this stuff? If the question is if Trump and his cohort just completely ignore it and go about their own way?

10:50Sam Harris:Well, the point is, we used to have a liberal international order that was anchored to our being a good and viable and respectable superpower, right? So that has changed radically, and we have alienated pretty much all of our allies except for Israel. I think that's, while there's a silver lining perhaps to some of it, the net result is quite bad. And I think we're going to discover what it's like to live in a world where our country stands for nothing other than its own power and its own interests, right? I mean, we're now a country that has declared to the world that we are fundamentally amoral, right?

11:29Sam Harris:Like, we're not going to judge anyone else for being imperialistic and, you know, savage on the world stage. I mean, we're just as long as it doesn't conflict with our interests. We have a country now, you know, we have an administration now that expresses more or less nothing but contempt for our democratic allies and a very strange admiration for our actual enemies like, you know, Vladimir Putin. All of that's just bizarre and corrosive. And I think we have horrified much of the free world for good reason, right? I mean, this is just alarming. And there's been a few silver linings. I mean, one is that now Europe is taking more responsibility for its own defense.

12:07Sam Harris:I think that is a good thing, all things considered. I think that could have been engineered without us destroying our soft power for a generation and just announcing to everyone that we're purely transactional and purely corrupt. And, you know, what you really have to do is pay bakshish to our first family to get what you want from the United States. I mean, all of that's just awful, right? So I think we want all those norms back. We want a sane president in 2028 that can offer a full mea culpa for the last decade, really, and try to find some reset button with the world. I don't know how easy that would be to accomplish, but I think we need a president that will limit the powers of the presidency against his or her seemingly short-term interests in 2028.

12:50Sam Harris:That's probably too much to hope for. But yeah, those norms were there for a reason, and we wanted more of them, right? We want to be able to coordinate to solve global problems, and we have taken a massive step back there. Yeah.

13:01Jaron Lanier:I remember when you were talking to Sarah Longwell at Bulwark and she had made a comment about the Democrats being able to learn something from Trump in that he just proved that things could get done and the Democrats shouldn't fight in their other direction. They should take that lesson and get things done on their side. And given the way that Trump's been doing many things, but especially this war, how into this next question, how will you view Trump if he turns out to be the one who finally brings peace to the Middle East, having done it? Well, again, I

13:28Sam Harris:I certainly hope for that, right? And it's not impossible. I can't say I'm optimistic about that, but I do not want him to fail on this front. I hope that's obvious. And it is true that some of our norms and some of our kind of slavish devotion to process and multilateralism and everything else has produced friction where we probably didn't want friction, right? I mean, So it's not that there's no silver lining to any of this, you know, norm breaking. But for the most part, I think it's terrifying and demoralizing, right? I just think it's bad. I think Trump has revealed, you know, if we could do a proper post-mortem on his two terms, I think we would, you know, nine times out of 10, we would find that, okay, here's the thing that he broke that we didn't want broken.

14:16Sam Harris:And we need to figure out how to shore this up so that a president can't break this again. but 10 % of the time I think we might reconsider the norm, right? We might say, okay, his recklessness or his selfishness, his impulsivity, you know, his character flaws revealed something about this norm over here that, you know, we didn't need it in the first place. We didn't want it. And, you know, even a dummy like him got something done that should have been done, should have been easier to do, right? So here were regulations that we really didn't need and, And, you know, we shouldn't have had them in the first place, etc.

14:52Sam Harris:I think there are probably honest discoveries of that sort to make. But for the most part, I think what we need to do is restore trust in institutions and processes. And we need a clean house. And I'm very worried that any sort of house cleaning after 2028 is going to look like more hyper-partisanship. And that's going to be a problem.

15:13Jaron Lanier:Are you worried about anti-Semitism on the rise? It seems there are sort of now two camps of Jews, probably. We could have used a better word for that. One that seeks to avoid the tall poppy syndrome and the other that says, you know, fuck you, we're not hiding or apologizing anymore. Where are you on that? Or how do you feel about all this? And which approach do you think is in the right direction?

15:34Sam Harris:Yeah, well, I am increasingly worried about antisemitism. It just, you know, is now, you know, fully burgeoning on the left and the right to a degree that I wouldn't have thought possible. and the alarming thing on the right when you look at what the Trump administration does and doesn't do about it and does and doesn't say about it is that clearly Republicans from Trump on down feel like they can't be too clear on this topic even if they don't share any of these you know poisonous views right so you're not getting a very clear condemnation of people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, people who are doing more than dog whistle, but just they're holding open the tent for white supremacy and anti-Semitism.

16:19Sam Harris:It's the fact that Trump and J.D. Vance and everyone who's truly in power can't say, okay, this is awful. We want nothing to do with it. That's, I think, quite alarming. I mean, they clearly think they need the anti-Semitic white supremacist vote on some level. God only knows why, but you'd think they'd be more worried about alienating independence. So yeah, I am worried about it. I think you might be referring to the talk that Brett Stevens gave at the 92nd Street Y about his views on how doomed it is to fight anti-Semitism explicitly. Well, that talk, and then there was a Super Bowl commercial that was sort of on the other side that was very...

16:57Jaron Lanier:Yeah, yeah. I didn't see that. I heard about it,

16:59Sam Harris:but it sounded terrible. Yeah. So I mean, Brett gave a very thought-provoking talk, which I don't think I agree with in the end. I certainly don't agree with his conclusion. I mean, his conclusion is to, the only real remedy is to double down on Jewish identity, right? So like, he seemed to be arguing for a Jewish identity politics that is much more muscular than it has been in the past. Then needless to say, I'm allergic to that for reasons that I could spell out if anyone's interested. But the first part of his talk, he said, listen, this has failed. There's no way we can successfully fight anti-Semitism by being more philanthropic or being more apologetic or by arguing rationally against various conspiracy theories, we have to just recognize that this is a mind virus for which we don't have an inoculation.

17:42Sam Harris:And we essentially just have to tell the antisemites of the world to go fuck themselves. I mean, he was more eloquent and less scatological than that. But that was his punchline, just like unapologetic, you know, we're just going to succeed in the face of this hatred, realizing we don't have a remedy for the hatred, right? We're just going to, you know, our success is going to be our rejoinder to this. And so it is with Israel. Israel's success and its successful defense of itself is going to be its rejoinder to this. I think I agree with that, but I'm, as you know, just very reluctant to endorse anything like a Jewish politics of identity around this.

18:20Sam Harris:I think we just, we have to fight for enlightenment values and the values of open societies, right? And that for me is a post-racial, post-identity politics future that we have to keep in sight.

18:33Jaron Lanier:I think what's so scary now is that having grown up experiencing antisemitism, you know, it was the David Duke types or it just always felt like it was in small corners. And today you have unbelievably gifted people from Nick Fuentes, Tucker to Candace who have studios, they can reach the world and they're really good at what they do. And that's, that makes it a lot for the first time where I have a different feeling about the narrative around Judaism. And then I want to hit a sort of devil's advocate question that just came in. The thing about anti-Semitism is a lot of anti-Semitism is just valid critique of Israel.

19:09Jaron Lanier:On this note, what do you think about the obvious power the Israel lobby has on our country's markets?