♪ ♪ >> book tv continues on c-span2 television for serious readers. >> good evening everybody and welcome to politics and prose our new lives streaming service, i am with muscatine the co-owner of politics and prose along with my husband brad and on behalf of our entire staff, we welcome you to tonight's event which we all have been so excited about and i'm sure all of your two. let me say a few housekeeping things, first of all you'll see

at the bottom of your screen and purchase button, we hope you will purchase her book tonight from our website, you can get there by clicking on that button and we are very excited that these books have a fine book in the copy of the book. i also probably do not need to tell you this, you can probably already know this but we like all retail businesses are really doing our best to stay above water and be able to bring you the programs and books and the things that you are testing to get into politics and prose, these are rough times, gets a lot of resources to put on these events, if you feel so inclined in able to, there is a donate button at the bottom of the page and we would be so grateful for anything that you can spare to help us out in every penny counts and we thank you so much for your willingness to be generous in that way.

the other thing i want to mention, there is a question button on the bottom of your screen, if you have a question you can type it in i clicking on the button and vote on the question that others have asked and if you see a question that you most want to have answered i know that they will try very hard to get there as many as possible. we do have a firm cut off time masha gessen is going on tonight so we need to make sure she is able to do that, i'm going to get going and you will be able to hear from marcia in a moment. i would just like to say masha gessen has appeared in politics and prose for a number of times with quite a few of her books, we are always delighted to have them at the store and glad to have them online and for many reasons. i think right now i cannot think of a time when we have needed the more and is truly terrifying moment in american history.

they will be discussing their latest book "surviving autocracy" and it was just finishing as the coronavirus was hitting and mosher was able to not only sneak in, she was able to go back and rework quite a bit of the book. i know that was almost an impossible task but she pulled it off. tonight you'll hear her up-to-date ideas but many already in the book as well. having masha gessen talk about the subject, there's the best way to think about it with a new york times reporter or book reviewer said a few days ago, when it comes to hypocrisy, you need to hear and you will listen to masha gessen. that's the way that we feel about this new book. so we are really looking forward to the conversation, i will play a little bit about her back on occasion don't know having grown up in the soviet union as a

teenager masha went back to russia to report on vladimir putin in the suppression of the democracy, she moved to new york permanently in 2013, obviously targeted by pruden, being here they did not stop writing and warning us about how fascism takes through. masha has been a contributor to the new yorker and has written ten previous books and is has won more awards including the national book award in 2017. and continues to be an extraordinarily important voice explaining to us about how fascism takes root, what it looks like and feels like and how to prepare for and hopefully prevent it. we are also incredibly fortunate to have dahlia lithwick, she's a senior editor where she writes to columns, she writes to columns there, one is called the

supreme -- i had it in my head a second ago. and she also has a podcast that is biweekly on the wall of the supreme court, she hopes that and she has also won tons of awards for commentary journalism, i hope you already her column a few days ago which is a wonderful examination and expiration in so many ways from the protest of the past for years and maybe that's a hopeful sign in incredible minds in thinkers and people with such compassion and raw intelligence help guide us through this moment. please join me in welcoming masha gessen in dahlia lithwick. >> thank you so much. >> thank you so much. hi, this is a treat.

masha i've been telling her for years, even before we met in person, i felt like i could hear you right in my earbuds all the time, i felt like your voice was the voice in my head like that can't be true and after 2016, the day after the election i'm like right, everything that you said, you have been in my head in this book is fantastic, congratulations. >> thank you. >> i might be in your head in your imagination but you're in my head with podcast. it is really the most illuminating thing on the supreme court in the loft more generally. >> thank you. i want to start by asking you, one of the things, last year writing the idea of don't normalize, don't normalize, there's not going to be a fire like you write in the book and i know you massively updated the book for the covid era but i

don't know that you had the chance to update and the last week for the protest era and i wonder if we could start with a really thorny question, i feel like you're a voice for people, it is happening and you are not seeing it, does anything that has happened in the time since folks have taken to the streets and we've seen a militarized policing and a real resistance to militarize policing make you think that that kind of slow normalization that you're so afraid of might have been arrested in the last week or two? >> i don't know, actually, no. i think the protest are amazing and you written about them

beautifully. but the rhetorical reaction in cities and states in the actual police reaction makes me think that the things are really, really horrible. a couple of things, one is the way that the mayors of minneapolis in new york and i'm not mentioning all the other people but the mayors of minneapolis in new york, two politicians are not only democrats but progressive democrats. far to the left of the democratic party and they went to an outside agitator when talking about the protest. the reason that is so dangerous, it's an idea and it's very, very strong in american political culture and it's gotten stronger with covid where we see

outsiders but this idea that certain bodies don't have a right to be in certain places, that you don't have a right to act politically in the place where you're currently located. which is on the face of an insane idea. your politically where you are, and the fact that this is a matter of bipartisan consensus that you can deny people the right to act politically, before even talking about whether you agree interacting politically or disagree. but to cut it off at the source, that is really terrifying. and just actual policing, the disproportionate brutal response on police, the willful flaunting

of the guidelines joining a pandemic and the curfews, it's now a matter of degree, the disagreement between the mayor of new york and the president of this country who is outperforming fascism. , they disagree on the expense to which they stage a military response to the protest. finally, the last thing that terrifies me is a new york tim times. which marks it and for those of you who do not know republican senator wrote an op-ed in the military. the new york times marks it as part of the fear of legitimate political competition.

there are a lot of things that the new york times are not part of which in the conversation but for example the essay that gave birth to this book for survival was contributing writer to the near times and was deemed alarmed us by the near times. it was not part of the kobe conversation, and for stanley just tweeted that he has been to trying to write a book of how fascism works and been trained to submit op-ed on fascism and they have been turned down. they are seen for the conversation. but this idea that you respond to the military will be judged to be mainstream in the conversation. >> i am glad that you are talking about language and i think it is true that fascism

compares to not see is him and fruitarian, all of those words that have force and meaning, we know what they mean, those are words not meant to use and at the same time, this is something you been saying for a long time, silly words have come to be words that make no sense, one of the things that i think you been worried about and you talk about in the book is destabilization of language so fake news goes to think that donald trump does not like on cnn. i wanted to talk to you and obviously this is been such a concern for me as a legal writer because words have no meaning, the law has no meaning in one of the things i have been trying to understand is how you affix meaning to a president who is so slippery with his language, i wanted to talk about some of the

words even in the last few weeks, the notion of opening up the cities, we are going to open up and we've all grasped that as it means something because donald trump used it, let's not use that look, it does not mean what do you think it means, it means what trump wants it to mean. even more pernicious the last couple of days and keep us during around and plotted clay not, lewter is meeting protester. i wonder if there is a way in which we cannot use words like fascism, we can't use words like. he, that's too loaded in troubling for mainstream media but we can happily appropriate and start using these words that mean nothing and were very comfortable with that. i don't know if the ease of which we all started talking about antifa in the last couple

of weeks does that mean what donald trump thinks it means is part of the trend where i know you say there's dualism where they turn words into gibberish or to the very opposite. i'm thinking were in a quite honestly a rule of law crisis and were appropriating all this language. >> he has been incredibly talented as dominating in other words he's recently taken a liking to the dominating of the conversation. and we saw this in quieter tim times, we saw how much he managed to shut the conversation and that's what i write about in the book, again it's a matter of degree. and like deterrence became part of our nature and will concentration camp could not be a part of the language and it was marked as extreme, when in

fact it was reality unlike our friends which were not. he has been winning the language were and he has certain talents as a performer in a way that he uses language trade and he has a real instinct for inverting language that has to do with the relationship of power and for example when he used the words like witch-hunt or conspiracy any positions himself as the victim in the most powerful i mn in the world cannot be part of a witch-hunt. he just cannot. but he completely owns the discourse. and then he also just uses words to me nothing. that is a real problem for us citizens and journalist because when a president uses words that

mean nothing is still means something. because it has consequences. so we have to cover it but we cannot cover it as face value. and we lose. there is no right answer, there is no way to solve this and i think journalism in the time as time reduction. and it is still going to be awful but maybe a little bit less awful where were functional and thoughtful. >> one of the things, you been saying this for three years and it's a free light in the book, this is crushing for an institutionalist like me who realizes way too much on the course but your institutions -- you say again and again, americans are so childlike in

their belief that there are guardrails and they are going to help us and we have courts and the senate and public education in a free press, all these things will kick into high gear and get us out of this. again it's very distressing for someone like me who once believed that courts in journalism work get us through this, you have been pretty consistently correct that those things can be corroded i wonder if my concerns when i am downing bourbon at three in the morning, one thing i worry about is the outer most childlike confidence that the election will save us. and i had a friend send me a note that as long as were registering voters and standing in mind that it will all work

out, even that there's a certain amount of really magical thinking about how to extract herself from this. i am not nearly as confident as i was six month ago that there will be a free and fair election and i would just add to the question, i would just add how are we going to know that it was not a free or fair election if people voted preview described russian elections and you can have a lot of elections that are not elections. i don't know that we are faces into emphasis kidded enough to distinguish. >> that's a huge question, let's start with the institution. into listening to your podcast and reading it has really help me think through the conditions and we have to remember your podcast from the travel ban in the first travel ban.

in the ways in society, i think this is something we don't think about often and certainly do not think about enough, these positions are not fixed in a vacuum. we do not actually work on their own. there entirely dependent on these conditions and there also dependent on the actors that they come up with. or the act through them. donald trump is an actor, the way he treats the court and the law is a way a real estate developer in new york treats city hall and the regulations. he sees that cause an obstacle in a way to get around. and correct me if i'm wrong, you know much more about it than i do. but i think the american court system -- i'm not sure you can

make a system that takes to the possibility and continues to function. and so when he comes with with travel ban 2.0 when the first one is still on the court and then 3.0 and basically they're all written the way -- a new york real estate developer would try to get around, okay, you want us to call the ally and the road, will call it a road whatever. that is not how courts were designed to function. the states that americans have, i would not call it childlike, i would call it religious it is safe, it is not believe, is not reliance is not a meaningful relationship, it is a relationship that does not take

into sense that we citizens of this country create the condition in which these institutions function or fail to function. >> answer the question on the election, i tried to thread a needle in the book because i have a real problem with the idea the donald trump is an anomaly, solely an anomaly in american politics. and yet i also have real trouble with any deterministic narrative. , he was predetermined and anomalous. he is a lead from the running start. in the electoral system has been eroding for a very long time. in the marriage of money in

politics which has grown in significance in the sheer amount of money over the last couple of decades is what allowed donald trump. so when you ask how are we going to know whether we have free and fair elections, when did we have free and fair elections. what are free and fair elections. i'm just avoiding the whole question altogether, what i would rather ask is if there's still a chance it will get rid of donald trump through electoral means. i'm using this terminology in the book and we can come back later of the autocratic attempt which is the stage where it still reversible, i'm assuming for the purpose of the discussion were still in the attempt stage of hypocrisy and poor november in that sense what i am actually most worried about

is he is very clearly laid the groundwork for disregarding the results of the election if he loses. >> that's the one, that's the thing that worries me, the language in the increasing language about voter fraud in millions of illegals boating and i think this campaign and it's really starting to be well-funded and leonard is involved and a lot of dark money and bill barr talking about will by mail option which as we know has function perfectly well in many states in many jurisdictions, that might be the only way people will vote if there's a second wave in november and i think this is absolutely devastating preemptive effort that bill barr has picked up this week to discredit voting by mail when

for many americans can vote in its what part of what were describing and we didn't protect the franchise and so i love what you're saying, i think what you're saying this is not an institution of voting, this is off of creating and constructing of voting in a pandemic which is what we have to pay attention to and pin the garden. i want to remind folks, we will take questions in just a minute so put them in the question box if you would and i will read them from masha but i think before i let you go i want to ask one quick question and one harder question in all stop, my quick question, i love how you catch this tendency, again it's

a tendency to assume donald trump is playing three-dimensional chest. he deliberately distracting, he change the subject from covid to race again, he is deliberately tweeting to take her attention off and i struggle with that. i don't think he is planning three-dimensional chest, i think he can barely play hungry hungry hippo, i don't know he's the bengali we all believe them to be. he makes the same point in the book that we all think putin is a devilish puppetmaster controlling everything, he is a lot closer to trump than we think. i think you broaden that in the book about robert mueller in this way and we really want to believe that somebody is in charge of all the things and i think certainly one of my

takeaways from this book, nobody is in charge of all of the things, but i wonder if you have a working theory for why there is a tendency to assume that somebody has power or his famous that they must be an absolute mastermind. >> is scary to contemplate the alternative. the only thing that is more scary than being in a bus that is being drive in turn driven by old dreams lunatic is a being in a bust drove by elvis. that is the bus. we are on that bus. >> we have a dream lunatic in the driver seat but really it's a bus driven by nobody. i had two very -- one very sad and one somewhat happy and they told you on 2016 that donald trump won and i had convinced he

was going to win since july and the other i had written this book in 2012 and the rise of vladimir putin and it was pretty well reviewed but the one criticism that a lot of the viewers had, i can trade putin as uneducated, un-curious, basically incompetent and not very smart. and a lot of people you don't get to be president of russia, now you know you can be president if unity and continue to be president if you're an idiot. i think that we like to believe that the worst -- is not what we like to believe, we basically believe the worst since human history was created by evil genius. to think that we stumbled into

them, that we gave agency over to the most emotionally dealing with clown, that's so demoralizing and awful but that is what happens. >> before i take audience questions and i for you to put that in the box above your screen to ask a question on the top box but it's way beyond my capacity to look at different boxes. i want to ask you a journalistic question that has plagued me a written aversion but you talk so much of how were doing journalism wrong and how were paying attention in the wrong way and how they treat our racing around to follow the tweets and i don't dispute any of that, we lived in

charlottesville when the nasis marched in 2017, my 11-year-old son said here's the thing when nasis marched through town, if you pay attention, they went, if you nor them, also they win. i have come to think of that as my mantra for the entire trump era. which as journalist we do not have the option to tune them out, we don't have an option to say the tweets are distracted, i'll pretend he's not tweeting, that we are going to shoot at looters. so how do we navigate and i know you thought about this more than anyone, how do you navigate someone who seems to come out and he said at the very beginning he was coming with the english language and we have all fallen in line, how do we as

journalist do this flip screen of covering him and paying attention and watching the slow denigration and deterioration of democracy and democratic institutions without centering this person who has started on her attention. >> i actually do think of as a term reduction. it's going to be awful and obviously miles behind due to my 11 year old son, he's exactly right that's the way to put it, if you ignore him, you pay attention to. we're not quick to be able to make it better by writing about it were talking about in a particular way. are we making it worse, how much are we contributing to the harm, is it possible to reduce the harm? again i think by publishing the opposite. that's an easy one. but i also think that covering

trump in the ways that are traditional for american journalism and i should probably say this, it's easy for me too say, i'm a columnist, i'm a columnist at the new yorker which which is taken a clear stand from the very beginning of the term presidency and i would argue in the position to take up more of the like of the new york times which is a very difficult large ship to steer in which there will be institutional losses to give up the foundation values like neutrality, and went jay in the media is calling the view from nowhere. , when you cover trump, when you cover him in his statements in his life in a neutral manner,

example trump says testing no longer governors disagree which is a step forward from saint scientist disagree, when you allow for that false equivalen equivalence, then your contributing. it is much more difficult to be mindful and located in politics while you are covering trump, that's what we have to do. because asking a question, how do not contribute to the harm is getting yourself in politics, it is giving up the pretense of neutrality in the pretense of you from nowhere. and then you try to figure it out and you make mistakes and you write stuff that you will regret and maybe some stuff that will mend things and bring things into focus in a way with

a neutral coverage does not. >> that is a good answer. thank you. that helps. i want to ask your audience questions, there is a bunch and i want to start with john who asses very good question and i probably should've opened with, how do you define fascism i did not actually use in the book i used in a column that i published in the reason i did not use the word fascism in the book because i don't think it's a very tight word, fascism if you look at the definition is an autocratic system that upholds the supremacy of one race over others and brutally suppresses the sentence.

that describes a lot of places in the world given right now. so i am trying to avoid using it, the reason i felt it was important to use it yesterday was because trump's performance and what he's performing always fascism, is nothing else, it's exactly that, i don't know if he's capable probably not, but he has chosen all the symbols, visual and legalistic of fashion. >> interesting question, do you think the left and the u.s. has blind spots about its own role and contributed to the rise of hypocrisy and its own turn to its own form of authoritarian thinking? >> i don't know what the left in the u.s. is exactly.

, sometimes we talk about the left we talk about the democratic party and we talk about an actual leftist thinkers and activists marginalizing in american politics and people that we call in those countries we would not call left anywhere else in the world but i'm going to take up the question about the democratic party. i think the democratic party failed to see what it was dealing with. i think the democratic party in general for the technocratic deal of politics, the idea that a good resume is what makes a good candidate, the idea that getting voters is adding up all the columns in your excel table of which states the vp comes from and repeals to and it

states the presidential nominee can deliver in mostly electoral appeal, we know how to do politics and we've been at this for a long time and have a good resume. that is not enough. we have known is not enough for a long time. we certainly have known since 2008, even a hint of a vision of the future, works magic, and obama's message of hope -- is articulated, there was no vision that was really offered, it was a possibility of vision, that was enough to move in the way for the democratic party and

others. and that lesson is completely lost, unless we get somebody like trump who is the exact opposite, he's a politician to the imaginary past and he addresses people's anxiety and says i will transport you back to a time when we felt safer which is a white racist united states that is not going to change. in the democratic party completely misses the point of that emotional appeal and basically they suppose that's a good resume and i think that's a mistake that the party thinks they continue to make. the only way to beat trump at the ballot box and anywhere else is to offer a vision of a future

with the imaginary past. >> to have some sense the joe biden speech yesterday was some version of that or trying to put forth the narrative of empathy and that was doing exactly what you just described? >> i think he is headed in that direction. i don't think this is unnatural for him, he's a kind of politician that has the potential in him. but the machinery is geared for something entirely different. does he have the imagination to actually head in that direction and embrace it fully, i don't know but i really, really hope so. >> i guess i would also, maybe if i interpose the view, i think one of the other failures of the last, whatever that means in

your definition is the unwillingness to acknowledge that contribute to authoritarianism in the university of constitutional hardball and so many of the conversations i'm hearing, if we take back the senate let's reinstate, let's go back to the norm of blue slips and everything, i think it is almost right on to where you started, the new york times where there's an unwillingness to say, we want to be fair and there's a virtue and going back to old norms even those those norms are part of what has rightly or wrongly dumped us into this, it's a view that we can get back to something that is not necessarily helping.

>> yes, i think the democratic party has its own version of the imaginary power, as those things were fine before trump came along and i hope the book helps with the illusion and what you're talking about is a fundamental misunderstanding of what politics is, politics is not policy or the blue slip, politics is not the procedure of getting nominees through the senate. all of those things are part of politics that is not politics. politics is how we live together in a city, state, country, politics is what's happening in the streets right now, the purpose of politics -- >> here's a question that i've seen in the chat and now i see

in the question and i know you write about this so powerfully, i'm going to read it and let you go, you just enter discuss the role of enablers to gain power in our present situation, that would be the entire establishment of the gop who have sold their souls to hang onto power, how will that be countered when nothing moves them and maybe a good example today from lisa murkowski, it was sad that trump was threatening to bring the military program enter police to the far left, but i have to really think about whether i support him. and to perform as you describe in the book, and audience, brett kavanaugh but what do you do to dislodge that? >> i don't know what you do to dislodge it but let me give you another example, there's so many

in the last few days. i was really struck by the defense secretary's comment that he did not know that trump was going to the square when he followed him. and i thought really, this is going to be the secretary of defense defense that he followed the president blindly and asked where they're going. >> maybe they're going to starbucks. >> it's a casualness of which they give up responsibility, accountability agency, yes they perform for trump, what i write about in the book is a problem of audience where the country hasn't split into two different realities, two different audience and in the democracy politicians perform for the

electorate. and i don't mean perform in any sense, their statements are addressed to the electorate, they are accountable to the electorate. that is their audience. in hypocrisy, they perform the autocrat, that is what we have seen the republican party do over and over again probably me the most memorable example is the party following the passage of the tax bill. with legislative achievements where ort has it has been in congress for 250 years and it said you're the best president i've ever seen. in another senator says thank you for letting us be president

and it was shocking to me because this language in this posture that i thought to cultivate in hypocrisy. it had been a year and had been in office for 11 months at that point. it turns out that these people who used to have a public were so willing to hand themselves over completely, i don't know what to do about that, i think the only thing that can move them at this point is fear, there obviously driven by the fear of being on the wrong side of trump, trump will be on the wrong side for republican politician and the only means they will be voted out of

office. >> is there a possibility that any one of them would fear trump will toss them from office, i don't think that is very likely. >> here's another question, there's a lot of apocalyptic questions, imagine it is november, trump is reelected, looking backward, what is the thing we did not do that we should have done. i don't know if you have insight on how to reverse engineer a victory that may or may not happen but do you have some sense of what we should be doing and maybe i would marry that to there's a couple of questions about institutions, what can we do if we have given up on institutions, where are we left to work, where is the work?

>> that is a whole other level of stipulation. i usually try not to engage in the speculative questions because i think the work of journalism to describe what we can see and not to predict the future. but it's so intelligently asked that it's almost about the present. i think that if we lose, if trump is reelected is because we were imaginative enough and it's because the democrats didn't nominate a person or people who can carry a vision of the future who could speak a language of ideals and aspiration. or maybe they could but did not.

if there is a way to reverse the autocratic attempt, i would think that is only way. >> now i'm going to ask the institutions question. which is something i think about myself, my version of this at what point do you give up on the court but this is a broader question which i think sweeps and all the institutions that were talking about, given this historic fate that we have an american institutions, the thinking always works within the system for change, institutions are being crippled and being guided by actors, what is the best way for citizens to actually make a difference? >> golly, i don't know. there are so many things that we need to do.

and we need to stop defending institutions so much, we need to stop defending other people, we need to get involved in politics for that to happen, we need to have media, one of the things that concern me the most and breaks my heart the most is that we were in a crisis of local media which means the crisis of local politics, you cannot have politics without actual living breathing journalist who are right there to witness the politics. you can have journalism without politics but you cannot have politics about journalism. so we were in a crisis of local media before the coronavirus and now this economic disaster has hit local media in ways that we still have to take in but is

just a catastrophe. we are not going to be able to reconstitute ourselves politically. until we figure out new ways of having journalism. and i can go down the rabbit hole for a very long time, but just briefly we have to stop leading the public fear to profit-making corporations. and the have no incentive to facilitate our politics. >> masha a couple of questions about social media and twitter and about media bubbles and i'm going to try to most them all into two questions. i write really pointedly in the use of twitter but the easy version should his twitter account be suspended.

>> i'm really happy that twitter is doing something but from a spotlight on a really disaster situation that we have now. it's notably with the exception and we haven't seen politicians really talk meaningfully about regulating the social media. and i'm afraid the latest round of war between trump and twitter has set us back in terms of that conversation that had barely been started. what i mean, social media has to be regulated but they have been

able to convince everybody and it's very easy to convince the american public that they should self regulate. because we actually think that everything is in the public fear. and in some cases not even by shareholders, the only incentive was to make money but somehow they will self regulate in the public interest without any accountability. and so finally we see self-regulation and trump responds by essentially making calls and a promise to finally have the federal government regulate which naturally will call for a counter reaction and will end up without having not having but not even to possibly have a conversation about

regulating social networks which so sends a message. >> this is the ontological version of that question which is the fact that the bubbles, the media bubbles are so complete now, the self reinforcing, the daily need, the idea of what is true on the other side that i can read all day and know nothing that is true, what do we do about the fact that we have two utterly different realities and not even the language to find our way back to something that looks like what you described. >> we treated as a political problem, we talk about it, we make new rules, and really new

rules, we figure out how we have media and funded publicly and we figure out how journalist can report on local politics and we can position themselves in local politics. and those of us who are journalist keep taking stock of how we use language and how we can return meaning to our profession. >> here's a question that i wondered myself, what is a symbol of the redline down the front of the book. >> i think different people see different things. in the designer says that he sees it as a radical break, i

think you can read as a break in time or also read as a break between two audience, to realities and for me it has a condensation that there is a russian expression that a red thread runs through something which means that something is so dominant in reality that is the most important thing that needs to be center. i was in conversation with tim snyder and he reminded me that particular sensitive documents in the soviet archives usually have a redline through them like that. so lots of things that are possible. >> i think there is a whole bunch of very anxious questions that are a variation on the theme of what happens if trump

loses and refuses to step down, what happens if the elections in with violence and rioting on the streets and armed militias, i guess there is just -- there are a lot of listeners that want to hear what your view is if we get there, how we tipped over into hypocrisy that you are warning about? >> i am not in the business of making predictions. what i can say, i am scared, i think that we are finally starting to realized that this is not a perfectly designed system that will withstand all attempts if we fail to maintain

it and if we fail to look after a deeply imperfect system that is the closest thing that we have known to democracy and if we look after total crumble and feel with a sledgehammer. >> and yet it's called surviving hypocrisy. i think there is some part of you -- no -- is an open question still. >> i think that any crisis, we know that any crisis is a moment of opportunity and we certainly have seen the during the trump presidency and during the coronavirus pandemic and its ideas that seemed marginal become very quickly simulated

and spread, that's a huge political possibility, will we be able to ride the into the future, it is possible. but that is not a question to me, that is a question to all of us and it's a question about right now, what are we doing to make sure that we come out of this in january 2021. >> i think she froze. >> i think we lost her, she may be reconnecting that we know that masha has to run off and you can go from this to msnbc and hear more from her this

evening. i do want to mention to all of you i had a brief recent lost the names of her columns, sorry about that, my fault. she also has a book coming out eventually, lady justice, we you please come to pmp into an event with us, we would love that. masha, think you think you think you, return to you, we have now turn to you for many years, you're a dose of reality and a dose of insight that i count on so much, i know you have many books in you and i hope you will do events for years to come and thank you all for joining us tonight, we had a huge audience, please purchase masha's book, you will get assigned plate, you can do that the link at the bottom of the screen and it's an amazingly important book, you need to read and get it for other people, we need to get it

out there and for now, we thank you all for joining, masha have a good event, you've been going all day long, all of you be well and be well read. thank you so much. >> thank you so much. >> thank you all. >> thank you good night. >> here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to newsmax, topping the list is all experienced tens claim about the effectiveness of lockdown in his pamphlet unreported truce of covid-19 on lockdown. that is followed by democracy and one book or less by former speechwriter by president obama who suggests that american democracy has been changed in our lifetime. after that former secretary of defense for the bush and obam oa administration takes a critical look at u.s. power around the world since the end of world war ii in exercise of power. then and they're not listening, political consultants ryan and

harlan argue that the failures that they created the current populist movement and wrapping up our look at the best-selling nonfiction books according to newsmax's bioethicist is equal in manual national healthcare systems in which country has the best healthcare. most of the authors have appeared on the tv and you can watch them online booktv.org. . . . >> is one of the broader question to open with. were living a moment of crisis. that is hard to deny . we have been through stream has is been dominated by public health crisis, that is still very much with us in rephrasing now also a social crisis pretty is as old as our country in some ways. the struggle for