the story the sauce that was below was your tweet surely mails and your messages thank you very much indeed out for we've had a tremendous response to our show last week on vaccines a vitus on public health with over 600000 views on facebook now issue a featured professor the professor heidi burns there were so many messages in response to this interview that it's really hard to choose but here are just a few new roberson says this is great very clear useful and informative explanation of vaccine issues from dublin followed by the video shooting how do you britain's your goes on they and interesting questions too for the interviewer few excess grace interview exactly the information we need just one of you is great. most ace i would trust how do you burns with my life he's a man of great integrity when you meet him you'd recognize sincerity and to this maybe taken as makes a really important point when she said there's a need for mosques at work but accommodate deaf people who lip read they are

restless moved on to vaccines and whether any are being disposed of at the end of working days and brought a boy says my daughter's boyfriend is a g.p. an edge and and yesterday gave for unused losses to end of day patients l w says this is exactly what's happening to the news doses where my husband works given to staff of patients even have a list of people who might be able to come in at very short notice as appropriate at the end of the day with the aim that no doses should go in the bin well that's great news for us all now over to alex who's interviewing renowned anthropologist we. we're damis welcome back to the alex simon show thanks very much alex i'm delighted to be here with you we can really visit the after school which caused such a sensation last year in the rolling stone when you postulated within the trump presidency the end of the american eva no trumps gone biden sen

a new president now you revised your opinions. well yes and no alex you know part of that article was simply looking at coven through the cultural lens and looking at the response of america to the crisis and what that response told us about the sort of the status of american democracy if you will and what i would trade was a country of extreme individual ism. suspicion of institutions and basically a country that really failed miserably to the extent that it almost appeared to its citizenry as a failed state as these rates of mortality and morbidity soared so in that sense i think the argument stands on the other hand i sort of presented in that article a kind of. a sense that this could be crisis was anomalous that it was a particular fulcrum of history that this really was sort of the moment where they inject history open to the asian century in america whether it knew it or not was

in a sort of process of decline what i've come to realize in my subsequent research is that in a way this sort of dark side of america has persisted from the very inception of the country to the extent that it's impossible truly to understand. the events post coded the events of last summer with black lives matter without understanding the fundamental the sturgeon truth that race is the story of america and it's been that way from inception but one of state too polarized the vastness of america also illustrated in the black lives motto protests on the one hand and the trump ian protest march on capitol hill at the beginning of january don't lease 2 visions show the polarization of the country well absolutely and i think that's the biggest concern i mean if we look at president biden you know it's really

interesting alex when the inaugural happened and i was watching my will. whose father is a mention was almost us president she's a she's a true american if you will grew up on the campaign trail in illinois and she was weeping with relief to hear biden's inaugural address and i i found myself who is you know i'm more prone to easy weeping than winston churchill was it i found myself for the 1st time somewhat callous as i heard the american speeches on the inaugural day once again invoking this kind is sort of reflexive calling for exceptionalism and for once in my life i guess i was suspect of its of its possibilities you know biden faces just extraordinary challenges the economy as you well know has been utterly artificially propped up by these massive infusions of money from the government we have no idea how the economy structurally is going to

shake out from everything from restaurants to movie theaters to the airline industry when this pandemic settles down we have the unresolved issue of social media and the power of these internet. corporations who have siloed our opinions isolated our communities and created the foundations to only accentuate the polarity the schism between the 2 halves of the american reality and here's a critical thing you know it's fascinating alex when commentators reported on the events of january 6th in typical fashion and they got overheated and they use words like you know overthrow coup d'etat i mean if this was d'etat this was a coup by selfie it was a coup by i phone i mean this was just it reminded me more of a kind of a rock as crowd at a rock

n roll concert trying to you know with the capitol police all the. trying to placate the mob as they moved in a frenzy toward the stage i mean i don't mean to under estimate the agonies of that day the 5 innocent people who were killed but the most striking thing about that event to my mind wasn't the the actual violation of the citadel of american democracy it was 2 things it was 1st of all that the confederate flag flew in the halls of congress for the 1st time in the history of the united states something that stonewall jackson robert e. lee james longstreet and jeb stuart in 4 brutal years of civil war were never able to manage the 2nd thing was the reaction of the government including the capitol police to that mob again they seem to me to be

more like security guards at a rock n roll concert in some cases posing for selfies with the invaders of the temple of democracy imagine for a 2nd alex. if that crowd had been those in favor of black lives matter can you imagine if you know thousands of african-americans had stormed congress or latinos or whatever i think they would have been shot down so again you saw on display this this strange. bifurcation of the of the american reality that was a crowd that was about only one thing white supremacy and this is what we're seen in the action you know this this is an america that is divided not just politically it's divided urban rural and demographically the bottom line is

america is becoming no longer a white says. side and those who are threatened by that are the ones who are reacting in this way the one thing we haven't joe biden at last is a good man a decent man a kind man for wounded man a man who can reach out to everybody he is as honest as the day is long and as decent as as the innocence of a birth. but his challenge is enormous and that's an succeeding president both an advantage and a disadvantage for foothill biden on the one hand president biden can make the news merely by one citing all the executive all does the president put into place on the other hand that doesn't in itself tackle the underlying questions on american society that you've just spoken about no you're absolutely right alex i mean i mean

one of the things that was so fascinating and i herald president biden for his executive orders i mean almost every one of these was was reversing some egregious and completely self-indulgent gesture of donald trump whether it was you know leading the world health organization stepping out of the paris chord i mean these biden has mercifully use executive privilege to to to staunch these incredible wounds in america's international reputation even the republican party thought that the american people even the 75000000 who had voted for donald trump would not tolerate confederate flags in the capitol would not tolerate capitol police being beaten would not tolerate the desecration of that institution you know

thugs and and you know sitting in the chair of the speaker of the house and so on. the the the threatened violence to members of congress from both parties and so that's why you suddenly saw people like mcconnell having to turn off the heart at the last moment and condemning or at least the 9 the legitimacy of that crowd even though don't forget that on the actual night of that incident only 10 republicans turned against their vote the vast majority continue to pursue this spurious. suggestion that the the election had been rigged by all accounts an utter fabrication but the bottom line is the republican party even on the day of the incident still. decided to vote on the spurious accusation of fraud in those elections and what have we seen since that day i think people at

mcconnell really thought that even the trump were some percentage of the trump cohort would turn on the president but when that did not happen what do we see we see the republican house and senate backtracking as fast as they they can we see members of the congress flying down to florida mara largo to pay their respects and mobs to the fallen president years seen the republican party turn all of its lenses on to 2022 and the chance to reverse its the razor lead that the democrats have now in the senate and in the congress and so you don't see any indication whatsoever that the republican party as presently constituted has any intention whatsoever of moderating its rhetoric seeking conceal

the ends or even reaching across the aisle in the slightest way. join us after the break when ali's continue says discussion with wade davis with see that. a new gold rush is underway in ghana thousands of ill equipped workers are flocking to the gold fields hoping to strike it rich here's a good idea our present. children are torn between gold. my family was very poor i thought i was doing my best to get back to school which side will have the strongest appeal. l. look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. i robot

must obey the orders given by human beings except where such orders to conflict with the 1st law show your identification for should be very careful about artificial intelligence and the point of view c. is to trace transfer every. conflict on various chozen with artificial intelligence where something different. from the obama's protect its own existence and. imagine picking up a future textbook on the early years of the 21st century what are the chapters called gun violence school shootings homelessness 1st it was my job it was my field bill it was my savings i have nothing i have nothing there's no i don't authorize alou for resources i look for drugs i look for everything i can to make

this house. annoying the doing is. the road to the american dream paved with good refugees it's this very idealized image of. americans look past the deaths that happen every single day this is a history of the usa. america on our team. welcome back alex is in conversation with anthropologist we did this on whether a biden presidency can arrest an american decline. but moving on back to the question of the end of the american either in your estimation can president biden in your words a good man can he arrested decline or as you like a good employer in ancient rome we can have a period of time quality but the empire will still the clothe and fall. well i

think i think the most important thing is a donald trump be taken out of the equation and i think the mistake the democrats made alex is calling for a 2nd impeachment what they should have done and what some people were suggesting that they do was invoke the 14th amendment which would have solved the problem the 14th amendment was brought in alex in the immediate wake of the u.s. civil war in order to prevent the leadership of the south from suddenly just slipping back into politics after all jefferson davis who was a president of the confederacy had been a well known and powerful senator from mississippi before the civil war so the 14th . amendment was designed to keep that leadership from some plea slipping back into the congress and it said explicitly that any american risk who is held.

proven to have promoted sedition in any way. is not eligible to run for public office well the the cameras recorded trumps gesture on that morning that if that wasn't an invalid invitation to the mob to storm the congress i don't know what it was so i think the 14th amendment which critically does not require a 2 thirds majority but a simple majority to convict someone of violating that amendment the democrats could have invoked that and simply taken trump out of the equation as a potential candidate in 2024 now i question whether or not trump will run in 2024 there are no 2nd acts in american politics but on the other hand or in american life but on the other hand trump has defied all conventional thinking since e ran for office in 2015 there is also been

a fledging effort to begin a new. party that will attract the conservative right and right of center that will no longer be a republican party so the really interesting question is whether people on the right of the american political spectrum are prepared to see that cohort of which their members divided in such a way that they will assure democrats control of both the congress and the and the presidency for the indefinite future if the right wing splits dramatically like that it's hard to imagine how the democrats won't have a run that they haven't seen since franklin delano roosevelt tom no way davis to and after all you wrote last week for the s. scientific american where you argued it was an apology for apology you argued of the role of the un for paula just and allowing people to understand the huge

changes in society and society attitudes being compressed into the the last generation attitudes to equality to race to to genda but only divisions that was spoken about between the trump in support those and the rest of america is not a sighting that not of him but he has signed up to that times for mission. oh you're absolutely correct i mean that knowledge sets that is the that is the that is a crisis you know you know i'm to spend brit brought up that article because everything up until now is has been now my expertise i'm an answer politics and i feel like i've been acting like a political pundit and i think sometimes all the pundits do is read the newspapers and regurgitate it on t.v. and so it's like then so but i am look what i was reading in the piece and in scientific american that it was just a sort of remind people of something if you know what alex if you look at the think of the life of your great grandmother or your case or my case our grandparents look

at their look at what they believed about race about the role of women about the attitudes towards the environment. you know we today would not embrace or endorse one of their moral certitude as mature as distant from our lives of the ideas of 1000 century. clergyman who believed that the earth was but 6000 years old we we live in a whole different world in show but my point is that if you. actually think it's normal for an irish boy to have an agent girlfriend or a jewish friend to find solace in the buddhist dharma or if you think that a single mother can be a good mother of the 2 women or 2 men can be good parents as long as there's love in the house if you believe all of these things you are you are a child of anthropology in other words social movements don't just come out of nowhere new ideas have to be there catalysts and so it begs the question how is

it that the world in which we lives would be as on recognizable to our grandparents as their world 'd and values are morally reprehensible from our perspective simply wrong well you know what is it in other words that allowed women in a generation or 2 to go from the kitchen to the boardroom people from of color from the. woodshed the white house gay people in the closet the altar these movements were political movements but there had be something that challenge them and what that challenge was was the visionary insights of a small group of contrary those who gathered around a legendary. figure in american history franz boas of the father of american cultural anthropology and a man who deserves to rank with darwin. starring and freud as a poor pillars of modern thought and his insights you know i mean part of what he was

saying is you know manners don't make the man men and women invent the manners race is a total fiction and he will live to see his ideas or is intuitions about cultural relativism . become both accepted and proven by hard science but also become there's. a whole new whole new era but the truth of the matter is we all live in a social reality 1st words in the dreams of these individuals and for their beliefs in the 1000 twenty's and thirty's they were hounded by the f.b.i. denied academic tenure ridiculed 'd for what they believed and punished for being the subversive that they truly were in yet they gave us the modern world as we know it boaz said so there's no point to answer policy if it's not in the service of the greater pollard's understanding and the

incredible thing is that their ideas which were intuitions have been confirmed by hard science in my lifetime geneticists for example have shown that the genetic and down if humanity is a continuum race really is a fiction we are all cut from the same generic cloth we're all descendants of the same. common ancestor concluding those. who walked out of africa 65000 years ago and then in 2500 human generations barren of 40000 years carried human spirit to every corner the have the world but here's the important dear if we're cutting the same genetic law which we are then every society series has seen juniors and where the genius of the expressed technological wizardry the great achievement of the west or for example unraveling the complex threads of memory in the myth is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation there is no how our culture and finally

profess of davis as a hopeful ah good meant to be made but a medical america was riven by slavery. lincoln won the civil war a medical was not at the end of the 19th century by come by this but a succession of presidents pursued laws medical was thought of isolationism and the 1950 s. but if i can the roosevelt to cut medicare and along with might the russian blood same to 100 from darkness so as a hopeful last but too often president biden and vice president the hottest that that combination it may be exactly what a medical needs and this moment a crisis alice you're absolutely right i mean you know when i wrote that original rolling stone piece of brought us together. i didn't forecast the decline of america with any kind of glee on the on the contrary you know if the if the world

opens to the asian century dominated by the current regime in beijing for example with their treatment of ethnic minorities their disregard for freedom of the press freedom of expression democracy itself we will all be longing for the american century and yes it's true that america's always been the best of all things and the worst of all things this is what makes it so charismatic you know this is why i peep. but like oscar wilde said it's the only country to go through birth to decadence without passing through civilization he quipped like that because it was so crazy this what it called america did tocqueville said the same thing is that this is a place that so obsessed with the individual that it becomes on the edge of a kind of a pathology and yet the same time america has thrived you know it is it has been the per the land of donald trump but it was the land of lincoln you know if lincoln called for charity for all malice toward none we unfortunate had a president who called for malice towards all unsurety for none but we can reverse

that we can become the country of walt whitman and the grateful dead and abraham lincoln again but we should always remember that in this evan flow of of of of american zeal you know from from the heights of victory in 1945 when the country really had as you suggest become the arsenal of democracy you know a few only not only allied armies but also the the russian assault on on hitler's. fortress europe. it also within years of that in fighting the cold war indulged this rat of a man called joseph mccarthy yes abraham lincoln won the civil war but in many ways the south won the peace with the violation of the reconstruction and the institution of the jim crow laws in the wake of a series of supreme court decisions calling for separate but equal when nothing was

equal and everything was separate for over 70 years so when only hopes that that as lincoln famously invoked that america would reach for the better angels of our nature and he said that even as the south led by south carolina seceded from the union and as the root remarked in that cold day in washington speaking obviously without amplification. the crowd assembled before him he had no idea that as he called for americans to turn to the better angels of their nature before they would have a chance to do that they would endure a bloody civil war for over 4 years that would create rivers of carnage in every corner of the american nation professor davis wade davis thank you so much for joining me once again i'm alex simon show many thanks alex

a week is a long time in politics but not for poll just wade davis he deals and said chiles there is little doubt that the other in challen supremacy as the world's only superpower of america which has been being says 9090 that era is coming to an end and a time to rationality in the white house is welcome but it's difficult to see how it can to rest that trend and underlying divisions in american society through and to shop relief by the trump press to the say i'm not going to go away any time soon the history teaches us that of different ways and rates of decline in the west the roman empire reached at xenophon in the 2nd century but it didn't fall for another 300 years suddenly a medical maybe on the relative decline compared with asia but it will still remain a dominant social cultural and economic influence for generations to come. so for

myself this means all of the show is goodbye for now so stay safe and we'll see you again next week. knowing. who did. good. and bad in a can matter. and a bad national. belong

to them. and the national association. said the community. was not given the impetus the in the most minute let me get a feel good. shot and now it's a one on one. in my name and here are the. reason for doing this study and the reason it's. most controversial and still important is that it demonstrates the power of social situations and playing roles

that can lead. good ordinary people to do really bad things. the head of ukraine's parliamentary health committee admits mishandling the coded response while prime minister boris johnson reveals that the country will need to vaccinate all over again in the. german. extends its long to march amid fears that new. while the government admits it was too slow in its response to the 2nd wave of the pandemic. china b.b.c. world news accusing the t.v. channel of false reporting on muslims a week after british regulations that provoked a chinese networks.